CLOSE-UP : Play House

Many actors have devoted their lives to the stage, but Roy Brocksmith and Michael Liscio have done them one better--literally devoting their home to the theater as well.

Thus the California Cottage Theater in Sherman Oaks was born in a modest red-and-white farm-style house. Thirty-two seats is all it took to turn the living room into a performance space, with the back porch as a lobby and a bedroom for the entryway.

The California Cottage Theater is sanctioned by Actors Equity, and the venue has served some 6,000 theatergoers while receiving up to 150 scripts a year from playwrights eager to show their work.

It all started in 1986, when Brocksmith and Liscio wanted to put on a play, only to find the rents for performance spaces prohibitively high. But the show must go on, and on it did--in the living room of Liscio’s house (Brocksmith and his wife, Adele, moved in later). “It just seemed logical,” Brocksmith says. “Homes are very comfortable places. We had the space, the rent was reasonable, so we decided, why not?”

That comfort level is quickly translated into an intimacy between actor and audience As Brocksmith puts it, “In this space, the audience is as much a part of the process as the actors.”

Brocksmith directs and Liscio acts as technical director and associate producer, while Adele Brocksmith does sound for the theater when she’s not making refreshments.

Housing a theater in your house does have disadvantages. “It’s very odd,” Brocksmith says, “to fall out of your bed and walk into a room full of critics.”