Tag archives: high school theater

Otto Layman’s celebrated tenure at the helm of Santa Barbara High School’s Theater department spanned more than a quarter of a century and ushered in an era of big musical performances that rivaledprofessional productions.  His replacement, Justin Baldridge, started in fall 2020, and suffered from terrible timing, of course. A veteran of multiple Off-Broadway productions […]

As if persevering through a pandemic isn’t sufficiently perplexing, Santa Barbara High’s theater arts department is undertaking the challenge of cramming years of classic sagas into a single evening performance. In The Iliad, The Odyssey, and All of Greek Mythology in 99 minutes or less, written by Jay Hopkins and John Hunter, the student actors […]

If things were different, if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 hadn’t turned into a global pandemic shutting down almost everything across the world, this would have been a weekend of wonder for Otto Layman. The theater director had planned a big blowout of a show to serve as his crowning achievement in a career […]