Friday, May 22, 2026

Stephen Schwartz Headlines Pasadena Benefit for Altadena Music Theatre’s Comeback

[photo credit: Altadena Music Theatre]

The “Wicked” composer leads a one-night gala Sunday at the Manoukian Performing Arts Center to help rebuild a company that lost its stage in the Eaton Fire.

Sarah Azcarate built her theater company in a nearly 90-year-old outdoor amphitheater in Altadena. The Eaton Fire took both. On Sunday, May 24, Altadena Music Theatre stages “An Evening with Stephen Schwartz,” a benefit gala headlined by the three-time Academy Award-winning composer and lyricist of “Wicked,” “Pippin” and “Godspell” at the AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, with the goal of funding the company’s return.

The January 7, 2025 blaze destroyed the Charles S. Farnsworth Park Amphitheatre, the home of Altadena Music Theatre since 2022, and burned through the Altadena neighborhood where Azcarate and her co-director and husband, Oliver Azcarate, had built their lives. Their home was gone. So was the stage. Fifteen months later, the Azcarates have lined up a one-night Broadway summit to help bring back the company.

Schwartz, whose Broadway musicals have run for decades and whose film and stage work includes “Pocahontas,” “The Prince of Egypt,” “Enchanted” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” shares the program with longtime friend Brian Justin Crum, a frequent “America’s Got Talent” finalist who performed in “Wicked” as a teenager, and Alisan Porter, the Season 10 winner of “The Voice.” The evening is billed by producers as a reunion of artists donating time and craft to a community still rebuilding.

The gala opens at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail hour and VIP experience, followed by the performance at 7:30 p.m. The Manoukian Performing Arts Center, on the campus of the Armenian General Benevolent Union’s complex on Mountain Street in Pasadena, has hosted concerts and benefits since opening as one of Pasadena’s newer mid-sized venues.

Tickets are available at altadenamusictheatre.org/StephenSchwartz.

An Evening with Stephen Schwartz” will run on Sunday, May 24, with cocktails at 6:30 p.m. and the performance at 7:30 p.m. AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Performing Arts Center, 2495 E. Mountain St., Pasadena. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit altadenamusictheatre.org/StephenSchwartz.