Obituary: South Coast Repertory co-founder Martin Benson led players to renown

Martin Benson — who with friends and fellow lovers of the stage developed South Coast Repertory from a single summertime performance to an award-winning theater company and who directed 119 productions across its 60-year history — died Saturday at age 87.

In addition to forming the company alongside co-founder and colleague David Emmes, and serving with him as a co-artistic director for 46 years, Benson built and painted sets, designed costumes and constructed and fixed props for many of the performances he also directed.

Leaders of the Costa Mesa-based nonprofit Tuesday recalled Benson’s pivotal role in establishing the regional theater and staging Orange County productions at a time when theatrical endeavors and careers were only possible in major metropolitan areas.

Martin Benson, right, directs an actor for a 2015 production of “The Whipping Man” at South Coast Repertory.

(Courtesy of South Coast Repertory)

“Martin was a shining light for South Coast Repertory, a pioneer here and in our field,” current Artistic Director David 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.”

In his honor, the theater company will dedicate its Dec. 20 performance of “A Christmas Carol” to Benson, dimming the theater’s lights in recognition of his legacy. A celebration of life is being planned, in collaboration with the Costa Mesa resident’s family, for sometime in January.

In an interview with the Pilot, Emmes recalled the incredible happenstance behind South Coast Repertory’s inception, when he and Benson were no more than friendly classmates who’d attended theater courses at San Francisco State University.

A Northern California native bitten by the acting bug, Benson and a friend had moved out to L.A. after graduation to make a name for themselves but weren’t having much luck.

During a 1963 sojourn to visit Emmes, who’d gone the directorial route and was teaching classes at Long Beach City College, a conversation sprung up about attracting the attention of agents with a one-time performance at a local community theater.

Martin Benson and David Emmes, photographed in 2002, founded South Coast Repertory in 1964.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

“I thought maybe we could actually produce a showcase for Martin and Ed. That way, people would come and see it, maybe agents from Los Angeles would come down and see the work of that,” Emmes recounted. “Little did we know driving to Long Beach, for an agent in Los Angeles, was like going to Siberia.”

No agent attended the show, a staging of Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde,” and no contracts were offered or signed. But a bit of theater magic happened all the same.

In crafting the show, a group of San Francisco State-trained thespians had joined their erstwhile schoolmates and formed a bit of an ensemble under Emmes and Benson.

On a fateful trip to a local diner, the story goes, the duo began sketching out plans for a three-play series they would put on the following summer at the same Long Beach venue, the Off-Broadway Theatre.

South Coast Repertory Artistic Director David Ivers, from left, Martin Benson, Managing Director Paula Tomei and David Emmes at a gala in 2023.

(Courtesy of South Coast Repertory)

What began as scribblings on a napkin turned into the experience of a lifetime, Emmes recalled of the 1964 productions.

“It ended up being artistically exhilarating for all of us,” he said Wednesday. “The takeaway was, what we’re doing is so exciting, we should keep doing this, we should become a company. That’s the real genesis of South Coast Repertory.”

In the decades that followed the company moved from rented venues, such as marine shops and converted dime stores, to a 75-seat theater on Balboa Peninsula in 1965 and two years later to a 217-seat space in Costa Mesa.

The current headquarters, at 655 Town Center Drive, was initially named the Folino Theatre Center but was renamed the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center in 2014.

“It has meant far more to me than I thought,” Benson told Daily Pilot theater reviewer Tom Titus at the time. “There is in it a sense of permanence, which is the opposite of the transitory nature of theater itself.”

South Coast Repertory co-founder David Emmes, with former Board President Paul Folino and fellow co-founder Martin Benson at the 2002 naming of a theater renamed for Emmes and Benson in 2014.

(Courtesy of South Coast Repertory)

A seven-time winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Achievement in Directing, Benson helped South Coast Repertory secure a Tony Award for Distinguished Achievement in 1988. In 1995, he and Emmes were recognized with an L.A. Ovation lifetime achievement.

Although the pair stepped down from their positions as artistic directors in 2011, Benson continued directing one play each season, helming the 2020 production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar.”

In their decades together, Benson and Emmes jointly decided on every production at the company. Although they granted one another veto power, it was a privilege neither ever invoked.

“He was there to support the work,” Emmes said Wednesday. “There was never any pretense, never any ego. It was always about what we could do to move the theater forward ever more — that was a great gift.”