Theater director Martin Benson, who co-established the Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory and served as its founding artistic director for 46 years, has died. He was 87.
The theater’s current artistic director, David Ivers, and managing director, Suzanne Appel, announced Tuesday that Benson died Saturday of natural causes.
“Martin was a shining light for South Coast Repertory, a pioneer here and in our field,” Ivers said in a statement. “Kind, thoughtful and deeply curious, Martin was always ready with a poignant word, a handshake of support and an appetite for the work. He will be sorely missed, but his fine example of craft and leadership endures.”
A Northern California native, Benson co-founded the Orange Country theater with fellow founding artistic director David Emmes in 1964, after the two San Francisco State graduates collaborated on a 1963 production of Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde” at Long Beach’s Off-Broadway Theatre.
The company opened its first, 75-seat venue in Newport Beach in 1965 and moved to a 217-seat house in Costa Mesa in 1967. Its current Costa Mesa complex came to be upon raising $3.5 million and receiving a donation of land in 1978 for a 507-seat theater, one now complemented by 336- and 95-seat stages. The Folino Theatre Center was renamed the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center in 2014.
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South Coast Repertory’s theater complex was renamed the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center in 2014, in honor of the founding artistic directors.
(Lance Gordon / McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners)
During their tenure, Benson and Emmes established South Coast Repertory as a major player in the regional theater landscape, balancing stagings of classic works with notable commissions and championships of new plays and musicals. The theater gave an early-career boost to numerous now-established playwrights, including Donald Margulies (“Sight Unseen,” “Collected Stories”), Richard Greenberg (“Three Days of Rain”), Craig Lucas (“Prelude to a Kiss”) and Jose Rivera (“References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot”).
In 1988, SCR received the Regional Theatre Tony Award for Distinguished Achievement from the American Theatre Wing, highlighting its achievements in new play development. Upon accepting the award, Emmes reaffirmed a commitment “to nurture and support that endangered species, the American playwright, in whose hands rest the future vitality of all our theater,” while Benson added a local note of gratitude: “We want to thank an Orange County audience that has taken some very adventurous leaps with us, and we believe, very satisfying ones, both for them and for us.”
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Martin Benson and David Emmes, photographed in 2002, founded South Coast Repertory in 1964.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
Upon directing South Coast Repertory’s first show — Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” staged at the Newport Beach Ebell Club — Benson went on to helm a total of 119 SCR productions over the next six decades. He won directing honors from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards an unprecedented seven times, three of which lauded his stagings of George Bernard Shaw works (“Major Barbara,” “Misalliance” and “Heartbreak House”).
And one LADCC award honored his world-premiere production of Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” which Benson also directed at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Houston’s Alley Theatre and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1999. He closed his SCR directing career with the 2020 production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar.”
Benson also acted in 11 SCR productions, served as the scenic designer in eight, the costume designer in five and the co-director for one, and also served on the theater’s board of directors. He mentored the next generation of theater leaders, including Oanh Nguyen, executive artistic director of Anaheim’s Chance Theater, who began a Theatre Communications Group New Generations Program residency at SCR in 2010.
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“Martin was a profound influence in my life, and I am deeply grateful for the many years of friendship, mentorship and care we shared,” Nguyen told The Times in an email. “Martin was a mentor to so many. He had a way of believing in people, often before they believed in themselves. And that was definitely the case with me and the Chance Theater.”
Benson and Emmes received the L.A. Ovation lifetime achievement award in 1995, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology’s Thomas DeGaetani Award in 1998, and the Margo Jones Medal in 2008. In 2011, SCR’s Board of Trustees established the Emmes/Benson Founders Endowment in their honor.
Beyond the stage, Benson was an avid pilot, as well as a tennis and softball player who also built and raced cars as a teenager. Though he built his career in Southern California, he remained loyal to his hometown sports teams: the San Francisco Giants and the San Francisco 49ers.
Benson is survived by his stepson Justin Krumb. SCR will dedicate the Dec. 20 performance of “A Christmas Carol” to Benson and dim the theater’s lights in his honor. The theater will also host a celebration of Benson’s life in the new year, in collaboration with his family.
Forget the “video game movie” curse;The Mortuary Assistantis a bone-chilling triumph that stands entirely on its own two feet. Starring Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, the film follows a newly certified mortician whose “overtime shift” quickly devolves into a grueling battle for her soul.
What Makes It Work
The film expertly balances the stomach-churning procedural work of embalming with a spiraling demonic nightmare. Alongside a mysterious mentor played by Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), Rebecca is forced to confront both ancient evils and her own buried traumas. And boy, does she have a lot of them.
Thanks to a full-scale, practical River Fields Mortuary set, the film drips with realism, like you can almost smell the rot and bloat of the bodies through the screen.
The skin effects are hauntingly accurate. The way the flesh moves during surgical scenes is so visceral. I’ve seen a lot of flesh wounds in horror films and in real life, and the bodies, skin, and organs. The Mortuary Assistant (especially in the opening scene) looks so real that I skipped supper after watching it. And that’s saying something. Your girl likes to eat.
Co-written by the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, the movie dives deeper into the demonic mythology. Whether you’ve seen every ending or don’t know a scalpel from a trocar, the story is perfectly self-contained. If you’ve never played the game, or played it a hundred times, the film works equally well, which is hard to do when it comes to game adaptations.
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Nailed It
This film does a lot of things right, but the isolation of the night shift is suffocating. Between the darkness of the hallways and the “residents” that refuse to stay still, the film delivers a relentlessly immersive experience. And thankfully, although this movie is filled with dark rooms and shadows, it’s easy to see every little thing. Don’t you hate it when a movie is so dark that you can’t see what’s happening? It’s one of my pet peeves.
The oh-so-awesome Jeremiah Kipp directs the film and has made something absolutely nightmare-inducing. Kipp recently joined us for an interview, took us inside the film, discussed its details and the game’s lore, and so much more. I urge you to check out our interview. He’s awesome!
The Verdict
This isn’t just a cash-grab; it’s a high-effort adaptation that respects the source material while elevating the horror genre. With incredible special effects and a powerhouse cast, it’s the kind of movie that will make you rethink working late ever again. Dropping on Friday the 13th, this is a must-watch for horror fans. It’s grisly, intelligent, and genuinely terrifying.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
