In 1966 Robert Ellenstein founded the Los Angeles Repertory Company and for it's first five years had it's home base at a theatre fashioned out of a machine shop in Studio City. The Rep presented many productions there and achieved considerable notice. After several years the building was sold out from under us and we became gypsies, choosing our venues based on the type of piece we were presenting.

In the 1970's we produced only once, Samuel Beckett's Endgame at Theatre Vanguard.

In 1987 we produced our award winning six actor version of Hamlet at the Megaw theatre for the inaugural Fringe Festival in LA. The LA Rep garnered numerous awards for this production and remounted it in 1988 at the Actors Center in Studio City and again in 1994 at the LA Theatre Center.

In the 1990's with Peter Ellenstein acting as the Producing Director the Rep moved to its base in Hollywood, where we maintain offices, rehearsal studios and a small proscenium theatre. The Rep mounted numerous productions at various venues including the award winning Assassins by Stephen Sondheim at LA Theatre Center, Misalliance by G.B. Shaw, Rocket to the Moon by Clifford Odets, King Lear and Shaw's epic Back to Methuselah. We also had a free play-reading series with dozens of plays both new and old, a production of the children's tour of Face to Face, by Richard Helleson & Michael Silversher, as well as conservatory featuring such noted teachers as Michael Frederick, Robert Easton and Janet Eilber.

We draw upon the past legacy of memorable playwrights as well as the exploration of the new theatrical horizons of contemporary writers. Over the years we have produced the plays of William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Thornton Wilder, Eugene O'Neil, Samuel Beckett, Michel de Ghelderode, Jean Giradoux, Jean Paul Sarte, Clifford Odets, as well as numerous other dramatists in a wide variety of Southern California theatres and schools. In addition to LA Rep's own productions and theatre classes, the Rep has provided extra services and donations to other local, nonprofit theatre.