PRODUCERS ASSOCIATES
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Mission Statement
Each summer since 1967, Producers Associates Inc. has presented at least three Broadway-style musicals in historic WPA-era Woodminster Amphitheater in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park. Woodminster Summer Musicals contributes to the vitality of the Bay Area arts community by providing paying work for professional actors as well as musicians, designers, choreographers, and technicians. Casts are a combination of professional, union actors and talented community members and aspiring performers, who get invaluable experience in a professional environment. Producers Associates offers affordable family entertainment, familiar Broadway classics as well as more modern and non-traditional works that bring a new audience to live theater. We also offer discounts aimed specifically at children and teens (16 and younger) and young adults (17-30). We are proud to be the first live theater experience for many, and we boast that we have season ticket holders who have been sitting in the same seats for 3 generations.
About This Cause
Producers Associates, Inc. presents professional Broadway-style musicals, in an historic city facility, at prices that are affordable to individuals and families in the San Francisco East Bay. Producers Associates is a nonprofit arts organization (Tax ID #94-1688232) and depends on tax-deductible contributions to supplement ticket sales. Woodminster is proud to have the support of hundreds of individuals as well as many local businesses and corporations, large and small, whose contributions help us keep live theater affordable for the families of our community. The Venue and the Inspiration: Historic Woodminster Amphitheater High in the Oakland Hills, with sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay and surrounding cities, is the beautiful 500-acre Joaquin Miller Park. The park is home to one of the only urban second-growth redwood groves in existence, as well as miles of trails, picnic grounds, and a WPA-era art deco construction that includes pools, cascades, and the Woodminster Amphitheater. Designed by a team headed by Oakland Park Superintendent William Mott Jr and built as a WPA project, Woodminster Amphitheater and Cascades were dedicated in 1940 as a memorial to California writers. The trees and other vegetation along the Cascades, planted by horticulturist and design team member Lionel Sprattling, are designated Writers Memorial Grove, and individual plantings are dedicated to California’s great authors, including Joaquin Miller as well as Bret Harte, Jack London, Mark Twain, Dashiell Hammet, Ina Coolbrith, and many others. This is a fitting tribute, since so many of them visited this spot when the famously eccentric “Poet of the Sierras,” Joaquin Miller, owned this land. Woodminster Amphitheater is a city-owned venue, and from the beginning was used for a variety of concerts and other performances. In the 1950s, the Oakland Parks and Recreation Department began producing musicals and operettas in the amphitheater, and continued into the mid-1960s, when the program ended for a variety of reasons. The Organization and the Art: Producers Associates, Inc. Around the time the city of Oakland had to stop producing shows at Woodminster, Jim and Harriet Schlader moved to the area -- after Broadway careers -- to raise their growing family in California. They were approached about lending their expertise to reinvigorating Oakland's summer theater under the stars, and Producers Associates was born and produced its first show in 1967. This nonprofit arts organization has now been presenting the Woodminster Summer Musicals continuously for 50 years. Producers Associates presents at least 3 big Broadway-style musicals in the facility each summer, with shows running in July, August, and September, and is Oakland's longest continually running live theater. A uniquely American art form, American musical theatre has evolved considerably over the decades. Producers Associates has always remained true to its mission of presenting big, entertaining musicals from various eras, accompanied by live professional orchestras. For many Oaklanders, Woodminster was their first exposure to live theatre, and they remember being brought there as children for a picnic supper and the summertime magic of music under the stars. Some of these families have been sitting in the same seats for 3 generations, and evenings at Woodminster are an annual tradition. Woodminster’s Commitment to the Community Producers Associates has always been committed to keeping live theater affordable for local fans and families, and even full-price tickets are relatively inexpensive by modern standards. The organization offers free and steeply discounted tickets for children and teens 16 and younger, and several thousand free tickets and 75% off tickets are given to children and teens each season. Woodminster also offers half-price tickets at all performances to young theater-goers aged 17-30, as a friendly investment in the next 50 years. Half price group tickets have made the musicals an annual fundraiser and/or social outings for more than 100 Bay Area organizations, including the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Coast Guard Auxiliary, United Way, EDD, Rotary, Lions, and a number of other service organizations, church groups, neighborhood groups, etc. The organization also donates tickets to other nonprofits to use in their own fundraising. Producers Associates is also committed to being a vigorous participant in the Bay Area arts community, and Woodminster Summer Musicals offers paying work to professional actors, musicians, designers, choreographers, and technicians, as well as paying stipends and offering invaluable experience to teenaged backstage interns and aspiring actors, singers, and dancers. Over the last 51 years, the organization has presented 160 productions, entertaining about a million Woodminster Summer Musicals ticket holders. The shows have been performed by more than 5000 actors, over 20% of them members of Actors Equity Association, making the organization one of the Bay Area's most reliable employers of professional actors. The musicals have always been performed with live professional orchestras, which have included 23 different conductors and over 1800 members of Musicians Local #6. In addition, the organization has employed 25 professional set designers, 17 lighting designers, 24 costume designers, 6 sound technicians, 18 choreographers, 6 directors, and over 1,500 young backstage interns. The Woodminster Summer Musicals are produced with the support of a dedicated Advisory Board of Directors, long-time East Bay residents and community boosters who are energetic and responsible stewards of this historic site. Over the years, Producers Associates' tenancy has helped keep the amphitheater and surrounding area maintained, discouraged vandalism, and made a number of substantial improvements to the performance facility, including audience seating as well as improved lighting and sound systems. They have worked with the Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation and the City’s Parks department to facilitate a number of other improvements, and have kept their organization financially solvent for half a century while contributing to the artistic vitality and economic health of the City of Oakland.