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Aurora Theatre Company

organization

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4822614 ↗
Source-derived summary

Aurora Theatre Company is a professional theatre company located in Berkeley, California.

History

The company was founded by actor and director Barbara Oliver along with Dorothy Bryant, Marge Glicksman, Richard Rossi, and Ken Grantham in 1992 with the desire to continue to produce plays "about something important; ideas mediated by language and people, which are assisted by other elements like sets, lights and costumes," not dominated by them. The founders of Aurora Theatre Company came together around the development and production of a new play: Dorothy Bryant's Dear Master.

Programs

The company produced a five play season until 2024, when its programming was cut to four productions. In addition to their regular season, they produced an annual staged reading festival known as the Global Age Project.

Location

Aurora Theatre Company has a small, intimate performance space, and had been referred to as “chamber theatre.”

In 2001, the company moved to a dedicated custom-designed 150-seat theater in downtown Berkeley, situated immediately adjacent to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Recognition

The company has won 20 awards from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Aurora received a $25,000 Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation award in 2000 for new play production. The San Francisco Weekly named Aurora Outstanding Bay Area Theatre Company.

They operate under a Tier 4 BAT contract with Actors' Equity Association.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Aurora Theatre Company” as organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Aurora, Theatre and Company.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 2024, 2001, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1992-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Aurora, Theatre and Company providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Aurora Theatre Company”, the useful work is to connect “organization” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4822614. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2024, 2001 and 2000.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Aurora Theatre Company”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Aurora Theatre Company primary sources, Aurora Theatre Company archive and Aurora research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Aurora Theatre Company”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Aurora Theatre Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.