Saturday, August 22, 2026

A Noise Within Opens Pasadena Previews of ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ Sunday

Jamar Gilbert and Amber Liekhus [Photo by Daniel Reichert]

The production opens the Pasadena company’s 35th anniversary season and is its seventh staging of a play from Wilson’s American Century Cycle. Three more previews follow before the Aug. 29 opening, and two of them are priced by the patron.

The Aug. 26 and Aug. 27 previews, both at 7:30 p.m., are Pay What You Choose performances. Tickets are $10 or $20 online from noon on the Monday before, and at the box office after 2 p.m. on the day of the performance. A third preview follows at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28.

Regular tickets start at $41.75 including fees, and student tickets start at $20.

Wilson set the play in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, where a blues singer and her band contend over money, credit and control. Gregg T. Daniel directs. Amber Liekhus plays Ma Rainey and Jamar Gilbert plays Levee, with Byron Smith as music director.

The season “explores empathy and the enduring human capacity for compassion,” co-artistic directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott said when the company announced its lineup in April.

The run continues through Sept. 20. The theatre has scheduled a Black Out Night on Sept. 12, a free INsiders discussion at 12:30 p.m. Aug. 30 before that afternoon’s matinee, and closed captioning at the 2 p.m. performances on Sept. 19 and Sept. 20.

The play is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French.

The box office is open Tuesday through Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m. and two hours before curtain on performance days, at 626-356-3121. The theatre is cashless and takes debit and credit cards only. It sits steps from the Metro A Line station at Sierra Madre Villa.