Looking Glass Theatre of San Diego, CA

Looking Glass Theatre celebrated its twentieth anniversary in January 2006. Its first production, the West Coast premiere of “Alice in Blunderland”, an antinuclear – big business musical allegory ran for two years traveling throughout Southern California. In April 1986 one of the premises of the play came true with the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Looking Glass was featured on several local television news programs.

Looking Glass Theatre presented the Southern California premieres of an adaptation of Stud Thekel’s “The Good War” and Rose & Conlon’s “Yanomamo”, the rain forest musical. This play had featured Sir David Attenborough in the original recording. Filmed as “Song of the Forest” the show featured the popular singer, Sting.  

In recent years, Looking Glass Theatre has performed Broadway favorites such as “Music Man”, “Wizard of Oz”, ”Oklahoma!”, Ayn Rand’s “Night of January 16^th”, Shaw’s “Androcles and the Lion” and “Fiddler on the Roof”. 

On March 3, 2003 the group participated in the staged reading of “Lysistrata”. This coincided with other theaters groups in the United States as well as in some seventy other countries all performing this play on the same day.  

The group has performed “Speak Truth to Power”, the adapted narration of people from around the world who promoted justice and were tortured. This ran in concurrence with the touring photo exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park in 2003.

Looking Glass Theatre has created many of its own musical variety shows. This is its second year running with “Thanksgiving Extravaganza”. It has produced concert venues for local singers such as Chris Hassett, Peggy Watson, Debra Liv Johnson, Sam Hinton and Kay Etheridge.  

During the production of "A Christmas Carol" a madrigal group formed under the direction of Andrea Newall. The group sang before each show and during the intermissions. They enjoyed singing together so much that they formed the a capella group The JUUL Tones. They are now one of the performing choirs of the church and are also available for bookings for all occasions.

This diverse intergenerational group encourages community participation. Looking Glass currently produces two shows a year and performs on the campus of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego in Hillcrest. See map.

Looking Glass Theatre is managed by a Board of Directors and is chaired by Kay Furrer, one of the founding members, who is also Artistic Director.

Future Directions: We are interested in performing a one act play about the perils our planet faces with global warming.

We are also interested in collaborating with other theatres in the San Diego region producing an evening of one acts on social concerns of our community.

Please lets us know if you have or know of scripts on either subject. Especially contact us if your theatre group shares similar values as ours and is interested in establishing a venue.

# # #

Looking Glass Theatre is an intergenerational organization of Unitarian Universalists and friends who come together through the medium of liturgical theatre in a synergistic format to promote peace and harmony among all races and to highlight the interaction between human beings and their emotional, spiritual and physical