A Noise Within’s 35th Anniversary Season Celebrates
Three Decades of Transformative Theater Education
Company honored with California Educational
Theatre Association’s Professional Artist Award
PASADENA, Calif. (October 13, 2026) — As A Noise Within celebrates its 35th anniversary season, the Pasadena-based classical theater company is marking another significant milestone: the California Educational Theatre Association has honored A Noise Within with its Professional Artist Award, recognizing the company’s artistic excellence and demonstrated long-term commitment to theater education in California.
The award, presented September 26, arrives as the company looks back on 35 years of connecting young people with the transformative experience of live theater.
“This award, timed with our 35th anniversary, is a major marker in A Noise Within history,” says Lea Madda England, director of education at A Noise Within. “When we look back at how our education programs began, it’s remarkable to see how much has grown from that very first idea of welcoming students into the theater. What started with a phone book and a handful of teachers has become a community of thousands of students, teachers, artists and families.”
When A Noise Within was founded in 1991 by Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez–Elliott, education was not yet the expansive part of the company it would become. The two had withdrawn their final $3,000 from the bank to produce Hamlet in a large, empty room in the former Masonic Temple in Glendale. They created a thrust-style stage by flanking three sides of the playing space with large wooden pews left behind by the temple, a configuration that would become a trademark of A Noise Within’s theater-making style. Following the success of Hamlet, A Noise Within produced two additional productions that first season, then expanded to a six-show repertory season the following year.
Not long afterward, a company member volunteered to execute an idea that would become one of the cornerstones of A Noise Within’s education program: student matinees. With the green light from the company, she grabbed a phone book—this was, after all, the 1990s—and began cold-calling teachers in Glendale, Pasadena and Los Angeles.
The program grew gradually. Today, more than three decades later, student matinees are a bedrock of A Noise Within’s education programming. Each school year, the company presents approximately 30 to 33 student matinee performances, welcoming approximately 11,000 K–12 students between September and May. A Noise Within also offers heavily subsidized tickets to college and university student groups attending evening and weekend performances, bringing the company’s annual student reach to approximately 18,000 students.
The impact can extend far beyond the day of a performance.
Adult patrons regularly tell A Noise Within staff that their first experience with the company came through a student matinee ten, 20, or even 30 years ago. England is one of them. Her first introduction to A Noise Within was a student matinee of As You Like It in the 2010s.
“I remember falling in love with the strength of Rosalind as a young woman myself,” England says. “It’s incredibly meaningful to think that the experience I had as a student is the same kind of experience we’re trying to create for young people today.”
Student matinees can provide students with new ways to understand literature, history, and even their own families. During last season’s performances of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, multiple students told A Noise Within staff that seeing the play helped them better understand their grandparents’ experiences as Black Americans in the 1910s and 1920s.
Teachers have likewise shared how a live production can deepen classroom learning. Following student matinees for last season’s Death of a Salesman, one teacher reported that nearly all of his students wrote about the play in their AP Literature exam essays. Although the students had already read and closely studied the script, he said that experiencing a high-quality live production inspired them to engage with and discuss the work in a new way.
A Noise Within’s commitment to young people extends well beyond student matinees. Its annual Summer With Shakespeare theater camp began in the mid-1990s with 20 students and now welcomes up to 150 students each summer. In 2026, the program expanded to include a Theatre Tech Intensive, giving teens interested in stage management and design an opportunity to develop technical theater skills in response to feedback from the local community.
In fall 2025, A Noise Within reinstated its Youth Theatre Classes, providing school-year opportunities for young people to study and train in Shakespeare and other classic playwrights.
The company also offers several free programs designed to support the next generation of theater artists and arts leaders, including the Teen Leadership Council, Theatre Immersion Program, and annual Teen Monologue Festival, serving local teens interested in acting, design and theater administration. Four Teen Nites throughout the season additionally welcome teenagers who want to experience A Noise Within’s productions as individual audience members.
Together, these programs reflect a 35-year commitment not only to introducing young people to classical theater, but to creating pathways for them to become artists, audiences, educators and advocates for the art form themselves.
“A Noise Within has always believed that classical theater can enrich our shared human experience,” says England. “Education is one of the ways we make sure that experience continues from generation to generation. We’re incredibly grateful to CETA for recognizing that work, especially in our 35th anniversary year, and for giving us an opportunity to celebrate the students, teachers, artists and educators who have made these 35 years possible.”
For more information about educational programming at A Noise Within, visit anoisewithin.org/education.
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