Venice Pavilion Was Other Theater at the Beach

The best theater in Venice, say many locals, is on the boardwalk, where a vast parade of humanity unfolds on any sunny weekend. Still, from 1961, when the Venice Pavilion opened, to 1985, when it was shut by the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, it was the other theater at the beach.

It also offered the kind of colorful variety that the boardwalk is famous for. In its early days as an amphitheater, the pavilion held such unlikely events as flower shows.

But as flower power hit Venice in the late ‘60s, the local counterculture adopted the pavilion as its theater. Ed Perl, former owner of the fabled club the Ash Grove, recalls how the pavilion was a key site during the 1967 “Angry Arts Against the War.” Festival headliners included Spirit, Taj Mahal and recent Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame inductees The Byrds.

With the advent of the ‘70s, the pavilion had its own resident company--Venice Free Theatre, which presented poetry readings, dance works and plays, including George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara.” Later in the decade, another short-lived group, Seaside Shakespeare, produced two works by the Bard: “The Tempest” (1978) and “Othello” (1979).

Activity began to wane with the next decade, marked only by occasional rallies (Save Our Bay Day on April 24, 1980, complete with roller disco), talks (Gore Vidal in 1982) and plays (“Colony” in 1985).

Pavilion history, even with the doors closed, continues and even repeats itself. One of the first acts to grace the theater was the Lennon Sisters; last year, at an outdoor benefit adjacent to the pavilion, was the local band Venice; four of the band’s members are members of the Lennon Sisters’ family.