LOS ANGELES MISSION COLLEGE THEATRE ARTS
Bringing professional theatre training and productions to Los Angeles's Northeast Valley since 2015
2025-26 LA Mission Theatre
Spring 2026 Production
LUIS VALDEZ'S CLASSIC MUSICAL ZOOT SUIT
Zoot Suit will be presented in the LA Mission College AMP Theater from May 15-31. Tickets range from $10-25 and are on sale now.
Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit weaves together fact and fiction to portray the events surrounding the infamous 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and the ensuing Zoot Suit riots. The show features original songs by Lalo Guerrero, pachuco style and slang, swing dance numbers, costumes from the 2017 Mark Taper Forum revival, and a design that fuses indigenous culture with the 1940s.
LA Mission College Theatre has gathered a company of over fifty students, faculty, staff, and guest artists to bring Valdez’s essential and urgent American tale to life. New faculty member Raúl Cardona leads a cast of 25 as the mythological figure El Pachuco, a role he has played at the Mark Taper and El Teatro Campesino under the direction of Luis Valdez.
Additional pre-show events are planned, celebrating Chicano culture and the vibrant community at the center of the quintessential Los Angeles musical.
Fall 2026 Theatre Production
WAITING FOR LEFTY: A SYLMAR SONATA
Our Fall 2026 production will be an expanded version of Clifford Odets’ classic, Waiting for Lefty, directed by Brian Tichnell.
When Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty debuted in 1935 it pierced the heart of the capitalist greed that fueled the Great Depression. Seven scenes unfold, revealing the intersecting lives of working class characters and their experiences with exploitation, corruption, and social injustice. Our production goes one step further, interlacing the classic play with relevant and real stories from our local student community, melding the past with our own critical moment in American history.
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LA Mission Theatre Arts is seeking actors, as well as design and production support to bring this play to life in the AMP Theater. No previous experience is necessary.
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Auditions and interviews will be in the week of September 14, 2026.
Faculty Accomplishments
NATIONAL NEWS FOR CUCUZZA, SANDS, TICHNELL
LA Mission College Theatre Arts faculty members Robert Cucuzza, Lena Sands, and Brian Tichnell are enjoying national recognition in books, opera, and Emmy Award-winning TV.
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Professor Robert Cucuzza is featured in the recently published I've Got the Shakes: Performing Richard Foreman, an oral history of artists' recollections of working with the revolutionary avant-garde theatre impresario.
In May, costume instructor Lena Sands will be scenographer for Detroit Opera's Apartment House 1776, an immersive operatic experience staged inside the galleries of the Cranbrook Art Museum.
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Acting instructor and Three Sisters director Brian Tichnell (pictured above) returns in a featured role as "Medic Amboy" in the Emmy Award-winning HBOMax show, The Pitt. After appearing in two episodes of Season One, Tichnell returns for four more episodes in Season Two.
Student-centered performance series
VOX POP, VOLUME 5 TO BE PRESENTED JUNE 4 AT 6:00
The fifth volume of Vox Pop will be presented on June 4 at 6:00 pm. Vox Pop, LA Mission’s College’s student-centered performance celebration, is designed to support the development and presentation of original artistic voices from our college community. Vox Pop is a presentation arena for works-in-progress as much as it is for finished pieces. It's an artistic atom smasher, where ideas both great-and-small collide with each other and create something unique. Past volumes have included short plays, dance, poetry, performance art, and monologues, piano, vocal, and band performances, and everything in-between.
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Admission is free.
Watch LA Mission Theatre Arts productions
STREAM OUR ORIGINAL PRODUCTIONS FOR $10
Through our streaming partner, AnywhereSeat, you can now watch several original LA Mission College Theatre productions online for only $10.
Macbeth — Our 90-minute original adaptation of Shakespeare's classic tale of murderous ambition, presented at the 2024 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Glendale, CA. â
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Mr. Grieves and The Vampires — An original production, collaging together the 1915 silent film serial, Les Vampires, and the classic Pixies album, "Doolittle," into a lightening-fast punk-inspired sordid tale.
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She Who Was No More — An original stage adaptation of the 1954 French thriller novel of the same name, where six actors play dozens of roles on a minimalist set, evoking a lurid world of murder, deception, and madness.
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El Carne King of Vallarta—An original comic adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's classic play, Life is a Dream, transported to the stockroom of a Vallarta Supermarket.
