There is no current link between the Monterey Peninsula Theatre Trust and Monterey Peninsula College, even though the nonprofit Monterey Peninsula Community Theatre Company Charitable Trust was created in 1999 by college employees with a mission to support the MPC theater program, distribute scholarships, hire directors and manage the box office.
“The name was unwieldy,” says Gary Bolen, a board member of the rebranded and reimagined Monterey Peninsula Theatre Trust and former theater department chair at MPC. The college and the nonprofit parted ways in 2020, the end of a 30-year relationship and the beginning of a new identity and rebranding.
It’s transitional timing for theater in general as productions emerge from a Covid closure. The trust has no performance venue, and has offloaded props in a “fire sale,” to avoid the cost of renting the storage space. “We don’t have availability to produce [plays] at the moment, but we would like to produce in the future,” Bolen says.
In the meantime, MPTT is back with a new website (to be launched the weekend of Nov. 20) and in the coming months will concentrate on grants and scholarships. Grants are addressed to groups and institutions pursuing theatrical projects on the Monterey Peninsula. “We would consider any theatrical or music project,” Bolen says. The vision is to co-sponsor and co-produce, with a $5,000 cap.
Scholarships will be for individual students pursuing theater, and residents of Monterey County will be eligible, even if they are enrolled in school outside of the county. The program has a $1,000 cap and the money is transferred directly to an educational institution. Until recently, a similar theater scholarship program was operated by another local nonprofit, Monterey County Theatre Alliance. The Alliance announced in its most recent newsletter that it would no longer award scholarships for students. (The Alliance was not immediately available to comment on this story.)
In the past, MPTT – in its previous incarnation – was one of several Alliance member theaters, alongside the likes of The Western Stage in Salinas and PacRep in Carmel.
At the moment, MPTT is working on its first virtual performance, A Christmas Carol, which will stream from Friday, Nov. 26 to Dec. 26.