Despite changes, building has served UCLA for years

  Geffen Playhouse The play "Four Dogs And A Bone" (1995)
was the first play the Geffen Playhouse featured.

By Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Contributor

It may be hard for young Westwoodites to believe, but the Geffen
Playhouse has not always been a theater. In fact it was originally
the Masonic Affiliate Clubhouse for UCLA, and then it developed a
mysterious tie to Scandinavian furniture, before it reverted back
once more to serve the Bruins.

Since its inception, the Geffen building has been vital to the
preservation of Westwood’s colored history. It has been
through several incarnations, and each time has emerged as an
important cultural hub for the teeming Westwood society that
surrounds it.

The MAC was one of the original Westwood Village buildings,
constructed in 1929. It was designed by architect Stiles O.
Clement

in the Mediterranean style, adhering to the original theme for
the Village, which was inspired by the landscape’s similarity
to Northern Italy, according to Steven Sann, a UCLA alumnus,
attorney and local historian.

“Surrounding those buildings was acres and acres of
dirt,” Sann said.

In its first life, the building, first called by students simply
the MAC, provided a useful place for students, faculty and alumni
whose family members were masons.

As the MAC, the building served the budding campus and village
in varied ways. It contained a library, kitchen and lounge, and
even housed some male students.

At the center was a multi-purpose room, which had basketball
courts and a stage, and housed events such as dances. It was
similar to a YMCA facility, Sann said.

During World War II the MAC pitched in to help the war effort.
The building’s facilities were used by the ROTC and then the
Red Cross, according to the Westwood Holmby Historical Society.

As the Geffen Playhouse, the UCLA-associated theater has hosted
five seasons of productions.

After the war the MAC’s existence continued to be a part
of campus life, until 1967 when already ebbing student interest in
the organization hit a particularly severe low. For the next six
years, the masons attempted to sell the building, but had no
success until a deed restriction, which banned commercial use of
the structure, was lifted.

In 1973 the building was finally bought by local storeowners
Donald and Kirsten Combs. Initially, they brought their
Scandinavian furniture store, Contempo, to the historic structure,
with plans to expand it to include a theater.

The next two years marked the building’s remodeling.
Kirsten, who was a ceramics expert, along with A. Quincy Jones, a
customer of their old Contempo store, oversaw the changes, while
attempting to stay true to the original architecture, Sann
said.

Along with the furniture store, the building housed on its
second floor a 70 foot long art exhibit which chronicled the
history of the village and is still there to this day, and a
romantic restaurant called Stratton’s.

“Take your girlfriend there and her heart would
melt,” Sann said.

The Combses also realized their vision of a theater, and the
building known as the Contempo Westwood Center became home to the
Westwood Playhouse. The theater debuted in 1975 with Lillian
Hellman’s “Little Foxes.”

“It was basically a rental house,” said Tony
Peraino, the current Geffen Playhouse’s front of house
supervisor. “I can’t even remember all the plays I saw
there.”

The 498-seat playhouse was open for 18 years and ran over a
hundred productions, including “A Room of One’s
Own,” solo performances by people such as Ian McKellan, and
notably a “Little Shop of Horrors,” produced by David
Geffen.

The ’80s brought a seismic renovation for the building,
and the death of Donald Combs. By 1993, an aging Kirsten was ready
to sell the building to UCLA to ensure that it would be preserved
and that it would continue to house the live theater so important
to her.

Two years later the theater was renamed one more time after
David Geffen made a donation of $5 million. As the Geffen
Playhouse, the UCLA-associated theater has hosted five seasons of
productions.

“It was deemed to be the finest, oldest and most intact
example that characterized all of the original Mediterranean
buildings in Westwood Village,” Sann said.