Civic Light Opera of the South Bay finds likely new home
The Centinela Valley Center for the Performing Arts, located at Lawndale High, is the likley new home for the Civic Light Opera of the South Bay. Photo At one o’clock in the morning on one of the worst days of his life, James Blackman was sitting in the parking lot of the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, weeping. The city had that day formally evicted The Civic Light Opera of the South Bay, the award-winning theatrical production company that Blackman founded twenty years ago. The organization had succeeded against all odds from the very beginning, launching in a dilapidated auditorium at the former Aviation High School in the depths of recession in 1991. The CLOSB went on to develop a devout following, helping establish the Performing Arts Center as a viable venue and reestablish musical theater as an art form regionally. It had been like an urban fairytale come true. Blackman, a 6’ 6” larger-than-life character who spouts hyper-articulate, meandering sentences like a fountain sprays water, had grown up in a trailer park down the street in Lawndale. He was literally too large – and perhaps too theatrical – for Lawndale High, so a kindly teacher sent him up the street to…
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