Theater director Martin Benson, who co-established the Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory and served as its founding artistic director for 46 years, has died. He was 87.
The theater’s current artistic director, David Ivers, and managing director, Suzanne Appel, announced Tuesday that Benson died Saturday of natural causes.
“Martin was a shining light for South Coast Repertory, a pioneer here and in our field,” Ivers said in a statement. “Kind, thoughtful and deeply curious, Martin was always ready with a poignant word, a handshake of support and an appetite for the work. He will be sorely missed, but his fine example of craft and leadership endures.”
A Northern California native, Benson co-founded the Orange Country theater with fellow founding artistic director David Emmes in 1964, after the two San Francisco State graduates collaborated on a 1963 production of Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde” at Long Beach’s Off-Broadway Theatre.
The company opened its first, 75-seat venue in Newport Beach in 1965 and moved to a 217-seat house in Costa Mesa in 1967. Its current Costa Mesa complex came to be upon raising $3.5 million and receiving a donation of land in 1978 for a 507-seat theater, one now complemented by 336- and 95-seat stages. The Folino Theatre Center was renamed the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center in 2014.
South Coast Repertory’s theater complex was renamed the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center in 2014, in honor of the founding artistic directors.
(Lance Gordon / McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners)
During their tenure, Benson and Emmes established South Coast Repertory as a major player in the regional theater landscape, balancing stagings of classic works with notable commissions and championships of new plays and musicals. The theater gave an early-career boost to numerous now-established playwrights, including Donald Margulies (“Sight Unseen,” “Collected Stories”), Richard Greenberg (“Three Days of Rain”), Craig Lucas (“Prelude to a Kiss”) and Jose Rivera (“References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot”).
In 1988, SCR received the Regional Theatre Tony Award for Distinguished Achievement from the American Theatre Wing, highlighting its achievements in new play development. Upon accepting the award, Emmes reaffirmed a commitment “to nurture and support that endangered species, the American playwright, in whose hands rest the future vitality of all our theater,” while Benson added a local note of gratitude: “We want to thank an Orange County audience that has taken some very adventurous leaps with us, and we believe, very satisfying ones, both for them and for us.”
Martin Benson and David Emmes, photographed in 2002, founded South Coast Repertory in 1964.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
Upon directing South Coast Repertory’s first show — Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” staged at the Newport Beach Ebell Club — Benson went on to helm a total of 119 SCR productions over the next six decades. He won directing honors from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards an unprecedented seven times, three of which lauded his stagings of George Bernard Shaw works (“Major Barbara,” “Misalliance” and “Heartbreak House”).
And one LADCC award honored his world-premiere production of Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” which Benson also directed at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Houston’s Alley Theatre and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1999. He closed his SCR directing career with the 2020 production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar.”
Benson also acted in 11 SCR productions, served as the scenic designer in eight, the costume designer in five and the co-director for one, and also served on the theater’s board of directors. He mentored the next generation of theater leaders, including Oanh Nguyen, executive artistic director of Anaheim’s Chance Theater, who began a Theatre Communications Group New Generations Program residency at SCR in 2010.
“Martin was a profound influence in my life, and I am deeply grateful for the many years of friendship, mentorship and care we shared,” Nguyen told The Times in an email. “Martin was a mentor to so many. He had a way of believing in people, often before they believed in themselves. And that was definitely the case with me and the Chance Theater.”
Benson and Emmes received the L.A. Ovation lifetime achievement award in 1995, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology’s Thomas DeGaetani Award in 1998, and the Margo Jones Medal in 2008. In 2011, SCR’s Board of Trustees established the Emmes/Benson Founders Endowment in their honor.
Beyond the stage, Benson was an avid pilot, as well as a tennis and softball player who also built and raced cars as a teenager. Though he built his career in Southern California, he remained loyal to his hometown sports teams: the San Francisco Giants and the San Francisco 49ers.
Benson is survived by his stepson Justin Krumb. SCR will dedicate the Dec. 20 performance of “A Christmas Carol” to Benson and dim the theater’s lights in his honor. The theater will also host a celebration of Benson’s life in the new year, in collaboration with his family.
