2025-2026 Theatre Events
FRINGE Schedule
Fringe Festival 2025 - a creation by and for the community
Curated by John Blondell, Professor and Co-Chair of Theatre Arts
Produced by Jonathan Hicks ‘04, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Co-Chair of the Theatre Arts
April 10-13, Porter Theatre + The Community Arts Workshop
Join us for our annual smash-up of experimental theatre, dance, film, and performance art in and around the Westmont campus and downtown Santa Barbara! The Fringe offers a unique opportunity for audiences and artists alike to challenge themselves to experience life and live art in fresh, new ways. There’s nothing like it. Really.
I Hate My Work Now by
Lucca Rodriguez and Joel Michelson
Premiering During Fringe 2025
Please join us for a new work from the creative duo behind Another Year and Empty Box as we explore what it looks like to live in relationship with one another in our ever-changing world.
Fall 2024:
The 39 Steps by Patrick Barlow
Directed by Mitchell Thomas
October 25 + 26 at 7:30pm, Porter Theatre
October 31 + November 1 at 7:30pm, Porter Theatre
November 2 at 2:00pm and 7:30pm, Porter Theatre
In The 39 Steps, a man with a boring life meets a woman with a thick accent who says she’s a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered. Soon, a mysterious organization called “The 39 Steps” is hot on the man’s trail in a nationwide manhunt that climaxes in a death-defying finale! A riotous blend of virtuoso performances and wildly inventive stagecraft, The 39 Steps amounts to an unforgettable evening of pure pleasure!
Reading Series
Curated and directed by Madeline Fanton
Ada and the Engine by Lauren Gunderson
September 28 at 2:00pm, Black Box Theatre
Ada Lovelace is our main character. Fiery, brilliant woman who wrote the first computer program and imagined that computers would make music… in 1830. She is the daughter of Lord Byron (yes THAT Lord Byron). At 17 she befriends the inestimable Charles Babbage and together they would imagine the future - a world where a thinking engine could not only do complicated calculations, but talk to itself, predict outcomes, and even make music.
Alas Babbage’s machine was never built. But the program Ada wrote for it remains.
She died at 36. So too did her father, whose lyrical poems she can’t seem to get out of her head even though they never met. Ada dreamt of the future, of talking to the future through machines and engines. Today she almost is.
The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse
November 23 at 2:00pm, Black Box Theatre
Good intentions collide with absurd assumptions in Larissa FastHorse’s wickedly funny satire, as a troupe of terminally woke teaching artists scrambles to create a pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month.
*Free to the public*
Spring 2025:
Westmont Music Department Opera
Directed by Ruth Lin
January 17 + 19 at 7:00pm, Porter Theatre
This Spring, the Music Department proudly presents a recipe for operatic disaster! First, take a large cast of characters, both celebrities and lowly restaurant staff. Marinate them in their own unique personalities and mix well their petty jealousies, hopes, dreams, and quirks. Throw everyone in a blender with a fantastic Baroque orchestral score and hit the puree button! Serve immediately with garnishes of 1960s decor. Enjoy this sumptuous feast on January 17th and 19th at 7pm in Porter Theatre.
Purcells' "Fairy Queen" and John Blow's "Venus and Adonis"
Dr. Ruth Lin leads a baker's dozen of Westmont's Orchestra members and a double batch of singers on this adventurous culinary mash-up of Purcells' "Fairy Queen" and John Blow's "Venus and Adonis". Professors Christina and Colin Ramsey, Dr. Daniel Gee, Maegan Randolph, and Christina Jensen round out the support staff for this enterprising musical experience. Our crazy cast of characters include seniors Melissa Ellsworth, Ava Kimmel, Micah Howard, and Rachael Todd. There will be guest appearances by the College Choir and a few other surprises.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Adapted and Directed by John Blondell, Professor and Co-Chair of Theatre Arts
February 21 - March 2 at 7:00pm, Porter Theatre
Kenneth Grahame’s celebration of nature, friendship, and loyalty, in a new adaptation created especially for the Westmont Festival Theatre. “Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.”
