David Everett Moore, left, and Asia Nicole Jackson rehearse “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley on April 12, 2025.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
Aurora Theatre Company devastated generations of fans and artists when it announced last summer it was vacating its Addison Street space and laying off staff.
Now the 34-year-old theater, beloved for its intimate, high-quality productions featuring local actors, is coming back.
Jennifer King, a frequent Aurora actor and director, and Jennifer Ruygt, who had been the company’s production manager before it closed, are leading the new act as artistic director and managing director, respectively. They won’t be in the company’s old Addison Street space, with its proximity to BART and its distinctive deep-thrust layout, but they plan to start producing shows again in the 2027-28 season.
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A venue, programming and other specifics will be announced at a later date.
Jenn Ruygt, left, is Aurora Theatre’s next managing director; Jennifer King, the next artistic director.
Lisa Keating
King and Ruygt have been working part-time in their new roles since March, the reconstituted company announced Monday, June 8.
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“I never thought that I would step into a role like this, but with Jennifer, I feel like it’s possible,” Ruygt said.
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For her part, King — who runs Napa Valley College’s theater arts program — said she felt a “calling” to find some way to bring it back.
Aurora Theatre’s revival, while still nascent, is a rare sign of life in a scene characterized by closures, from Berkeley’s Central Works to Orinda’s California Shakespeare Theater.
When the company announced its closure, Ruygt thought, “I don’t feel like this is the end,” in part because she observed more audiences finally starting to return.
At the time, King was directing “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” Aurora’s last show before ceasing operations.
“That seemed like a really strange juxtaposition,” she recalled during a joint interview with the Chronicle. “It almost felt like, ‘Oh, we’re finally getting to that place where we can recover from the pandemic, but time is against us.’”
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Taylor Rivers, center, and Jack Grable, right, wait to check out at the Aurora Theatre Company’s general open house sale in Berkeley on Aug. 25, 2025.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
By the time the company had its moving-out sale, King and Ruygt decided to pitch themselves to the board. They were the only ones who did so, and immediately, King remembered, “I was ready to accelerate to 150.”
But a board member cautioned her to slow down, posing questions that included, “Is there a place for Aurora in our community? Or is the perceived failure really telling us that Aurora is no longer relevant?
“That was hard to hear,” King said. “But it was smart.”
The board did a feasibility study, asking various stakeholders including donors and industry and foundation leaders what they valued about the company, what they were missing from its closure and whether they could find those qualities anywhere else.
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Marga Gomez in Aurora Theatre Company’s “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” directed by Jennifer King.
Kevin Berne/Aurora Theatre Company
The results validated their feelings. Daria Hepps, who joined Aurora’s board in 2024, having also worked as a fundraiser for the company two decades ago, said one recurring theme was the way Aurora hired local actors and designers.
“It was an opportunity to become invested in the careers of these folks and see them over and over,” she said.
Another was how, as Hepps put it, “the audience members that were sitting across from you became part of your experience of the play.” Those qualities seemed reproducible even without Addison Street.
Skeptics might wonder why aspiring theater leaders might not start a new company, with their own vision and free of baggage. But Hepps said that during the feasibility study, other such leaders told her, “You would be nuts to start a theater company right now, because of the environment.”
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David Everett Moore, left, and Carrie Paff rehearse “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley on April 12, 2025.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
From that point of view, Aurora’s history is an asset. It has some money in the bank from bequests, along with 1,100 subscribers, a mailing list, a reputation for excellence and goodwill from the community — advantages a new theater company would have to build from scratch.
Aurora also shed a major expense when it left Addison Street, according to Josh Costello, Aurora’s most recent artistic director.
“If they were just trying to find a way to get back into space and raise enough money to reopen just the way it was, I’d be saying, ‘Good luck, but I don’t think that that’s going to work,’” he said. “But that’s not what they’re doing.”
He added, “I’m behind them 100%.”
For King, taking time to hibernate and reassess, has been “a gift.”
“How often do you get to really take that amount of time,” she said, “to look back at what works, what doesn’t work, and what is necessary for the future?”
Now, Ruygt said, their task — in addition to fundraising — is “building trust with our community.”