The Interplayers Theatre

747 Beach St. | map |

 

Opening: May 19, 1962.  It was in the middle of the block on the south side of the street between Hyde and Larkin, in the block just east of Ghirardelli Square. The c.1968 photo by Tom Gray is from the Jack Tillmany collection. Before moving to this location on Beach, the group had been at the Kearny/Bella Union Theatre near Portsmouth Square.

 

An ad for their opening show at their location. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for locating it. Note that it says it's their fifteenth season. They had done a bit of wandering. See some information at the bottom of the page.

In 1969 the legit group was gone and it was something called the Circus. 

Becoming a film house: In 1970 the venue was taken over by Mel Novikoff's Surf Theatres and operated as a 16mm vintage movie site using rear projection called the Surf Interplayers. Mike Keegan and Gary Meyer note that it was programmed by Tom Luddy. 

In a "Cinema" column that listed various art houses and film societies in the Sunday October 24, 1971 Examiner and Chronicle they included the Interplayers. Thanks to Art Siegel for finding the listing:

Closing: May 30, 1972.

Status: The building survives. At last look it was a gallery. Samantha Davis comments: "The building was in my family for a few generations, and my great-grandmother, Lulu S. Davis, actually lived in the apartment above where the theater was built out."

 

The second building is the former theatre. We're looking west toward Larkin St. and Ghirardelli Square in this 2019 image from Google Maps. 

 

 

Jack Tillmany comments on the earlier history of the Interplayers: 

"The Interplayers, 'a young drama group,' first appeared on the San Francisco scene 10 May 1947 offering an evening of Chekhov at the Friends Center, 1830 Sutter St. The next few years, they seem to have floated around town, making the usual stops at the Marines Memorial Theatre, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the San Francisco Museum of Art, etc., finally settling in on their own site at 2796 Hyde on 3 December 1949, only to have it shut down the following February by the Fire Prevention Department, but finally re-opening again in November 1950. They later split up into 2 groups; group #1 remained at the Hyde St. site, now identified as The Playhouse, and group #2, using the original Interplayers identity, moved into the Verdier Mansion at 1001 Vallejo." 

See the pages about The Playhouse, the group's location at Hyde and Beach beginning in 1949, and the Kearny/Bella Union Theatre, the group's home from 1954 until 1962. Also see "The Paripatetic Interplayers Find Themselves a New Roost," a May 21, 1954 Chronicle article Jack located.  

More information: Jack Tillmany's Arcadia Publishing book "Theatres of San Francisco" can be previewed on Google Books. It's available from Amazon or your local bookseller. 

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