Burb’s Eye View: Colony Theatre makes way for new memories

It’s five minutes to showtime and the house lights are still up at the Colony Theatre. They’d have to be, if they ever expect to sell anything.

The lobby bulbs catch every facet of the gaudy costume jewelry that’s for sale. A handwritten sign proclaims they’re a dollar apiece.

“How can you resist the ugliest jewelry you’ve ever seen in your life?” said casting director Patricia Cullen.

I take another look around. Nearby is a $500 fur coat donated to the theater by Mariel Hemingway. It too has a price tag on it. Entering the stage, I see a rack that rivals anything in the vintage stores of Magnolia Park. Around the corner are dozens, maybe hundreds, of dollar-store trinkets and housewares that at one time had been the cups of kings, or the office knickknacks of a noir detective.

For two days last week, the Colony Theatre opened its closets to sell anything and everything. Well, almost everything — the Egyptian sarcophagus with a former patron’s actual remains in it was left off the auction block.

At 10 a.m. Friday, the doors officially opened. Theater patrons and collectors from throughout the Valley scurried up and down stairs to take home the theater’s old props and costumes from some 30 years of productions. Some of them had only been worn or used once.

“We’ve progressed so much as a theater, we have to be ruthless,” said theater co-founder and artistic director Barbara Beckley. “Memories are great, but we need to make room for new memories.”

The Colony was started by some former television actors in Silver Lake in 1975. In 2000, it moved to Burbank at the corner of Third Street and Cypress Avenue.

That’s many years of accumulated sport coats, shoes, dresses, petticoats and furniture.

Toward the middle of the giant rack of men’s coats, I spy a checkerboard coat in red, white and blue. It would be at home on “Mad Men” if worn by Pete Campbell, one of the show’s slimier characters, during a cocktail party. On the Colony stage, it was worn by a chorus member during the production of “City of Angels” in the mid-1990s.

For $5, it was mine.

While considering my purchase I bumped into Annette Kargodorian who snatched up a pink boa and a blouse.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing with a boa … I’ll figure it out,” she said.

Not all purchases were made on kitsch factor alone. Theater patron Fay Playsted of Burbank saw a black sequined hat in a play once and wanted it immediately.

“I didn’t grab it off the actor’s head at that time — I’ve done it legally now,” she said.

The sale was put together by theater office manager Katie Witkowski, who seemingly moved mountains (of clothes) in record time to make the sale possible.

“In Silver Lake, we did a couple mammoth yard sales and it took us six months to put together, and it almost killed us,” Beckley said.

On Friday, Cullen had sold two fur coats in the first 10 minutes. By the end of the sale on Saturday, the Colony raised a little more than $3,000 to continue its legacy of award-winning productions.

Not everything sold, of course — the theater still needs a stock of costumes for its upcoming shows. It’s likely King Tut’s sarcophagus in the lobby won’t be going anywhere either.

The sarcophagus was required for just one play, and during the play it had to open and a character sneaks inside. The Colony kept it for years, hoping to rent it out, but few companies ever put on the show.

Then longtime Colony patron Al Weissman died. He left $250,000 to the theater. His ashes came, too.

When the theater “retired” the mummy prop, it was sealed shut — with Weissman’s urn inside.

Last weekend, the Colony Theatre made room for new memories. It’s keeping the great ones, too.

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BRYAN MAHONEY writes about Burbank neighbors and the place they call home. He can be reached at 818NewGuy@gmail.com and on Twitter: @818NewGuy.