While scouring microfilm in the History & Genealogy Department at Central Library a few months back, I was startled to see a name that seemed entirely out of place in a particular publication.

Charlotta Bass, a name well known in Los Angeles history circles, has surfaced recently on a national front thanks in part to the ascension of Senator Kamala Harris to the position of Vice President of the United States.

For someone who only spent about 25 years in Los Angeles, Edwin Cawston made a lasting impression on the cultural history of our great city and he did so through, of all things, a farm. Dubbed by the New York Journal as “one of the strangest sights in America”, the farm was anything but ordinary.

Los Angeles is a city whose theater scene is typically overlooked, yet every now and then we are host to a production that is monumental.