Meet Robin Larsen | Founding Artistic Director, Lobby Theatre

We had the good fortune of connecting with Robin Larsen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Robin, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I started my own nonprofit theatre because I wanted to take full ownership of the work I was bringing to Los Angeles audiences. I was already identifying plays to pitch to producers in town, and often using my connections to secure rights. I thought: why am I giving away this level of vision and commitment? I know an exciting, engaging play when I read one, and launching my own company allows me to choose the projects I know are worthy of an audience’s attention. It allows me to run a space and populate it with artists I believe in. It allows me to create a space for bold voices that might not otherwise be heard here in Los Angeles. It turned what I was already doing informally into a focused vision, with the freedom to produce the kind of theatre I believe in. I’m proud to have programmed, in my tenure so far, three American plays that are important and timely, fearless and funny.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
There is a double meaning in our name, Lobby Theatre. Yes, we quite literally transform AGBO’s lobby into our stage. But I’m equally drawn to the verb: to lobby—to advocate, to press forward, and to insist. That dual meaning captures both the spirit of our space and the mission that drives our work.

Launching a new theatre at a time when so much in the theatre field is contracting is certainly audacious, but I believe live theatre is poised for a renaissance. In a digital world where the line between real and unreal blurs a little more daily, theatre has essential value and offers something irreplaceable: the chance to gather in a room together, to share breath, silence, laughter, and tears, and to engage with a performer we know is actually human. In this way, theatre is both ancient and urgently new.

We’ve carried that spirit into Lobby’s “Eat, Drink, Play” series, through which we stage prestige American plays that have not been seen by Los Angeles audiences. And the experience doesn’t end when the curtain falls. People stay. They eat, drink, and talk—about the play, their lives, and the world. That spirit of community sets our work apart. Lobby’s not simply producing theatre; we’re creating a space where art and conversation nourish one another. So far we’ve had the pleasure of presenting enhanced readings of Is God Is by Pulitzer-finalist Aleshea Harris, starring Jayme Lawson, Dominique Thorne, Merle Dandridge, and Andre Royo, Clare Barron’s Pulitzer-finalist Dance Nation, starring Justin Kirk and Marin Hinkle, and The Antipodes by Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Baker starring Arye Gross, Chris Parnell, and Louis Changchien. And we’re so happy to make world-class work accessible to all Los Angeles audiences through donation-based ticketing.

In addition to continuing these buzzy readings, Lobby Theatre is in discussion with other theatres – including leading venues in Southern California – about co-pro opportunities and is simultaneously discussing development programs (a re-writers lab for Los Angeles-based playwrights to further develop a work that they shelved, but still excites them and us), and also on-site full-production at AGBO.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’d start with a beach day at Zuma, near lifeguard stand 15 (bathrooms and life guard station both in view), breakfast at Malibu Farm, and sunset drinks at Neptune’s Net. We’d spend a day in Highland Park—coffee at Kindness & Mischief, thrift and vintage shopping at shops clustered near York Boulevard, dinner at Hippo. Midweek, we’d hit the Arts District for Blue Bottle coffee, lunch at Manuela, and small galleries, and then, depending what’s on stage at the time, we’d see a play at The Fountain (where I’ve worked), Rogue Machine (where I was a founding member), or the Taper. We’d wrap the week with a hike in Topanga Canyon and a show at the Geffen Playhouse.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Joe Russo, principal at AGBO Films (AGBO is producing the upcoming Marvel Avengers movies, which, of course, The Russo Brothers are directing).
Without Joe offering space and support Lobby Theatre would not exist.
At a breakfast in 2016 Joe told me his new company, AGBO, was renovating two buildings in DTLA. I told him he should build a theatre into the lobby of one of those buildings, and some months later I got architect renderings of the beginnings of a theatre built into the main lobby.

Website: lobbytheatre.org robinlarsendirector.com

Instagram: lobbytheatre thatrobinlarsen

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-larsen-138b3b267

Image Credits
Show photography by Shiloh Strong