Los Alamos Little Theatre is a hidden gem in the ‘town of secrets’

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (KRQE) – In Los Alamos, the history of the town of top secrets is well known. One outlet of fun for lab workers has not only been keeping theatre alive for about 80 years but also had one particular scientist taking on the role of a corpse.

In a city with some of the most brilliant minds in the country and known for being the place where the atomic bomb was built, you wouldn’t necessarily peg Los Alamos as a place where thespians come to life, but you’d be wrong. “I’ve always said that Los Alamos Little Theatre is the great equalizer,” says actress Holly Robinson.

Performing continuously since the 1940s, the Los Alamos Theater Group has been bringing plays to the stage in the Secret City ever since. Its beginnings came at a time when the world was at war, and scientists were stationed here during the Manhattan Project but that also meant staying close to home in Los Alamos. They needed an outlet for entertainment.

“I think it was like paramount to the survival of them because, again now you know there’s like one way in, one way out here and when they were here in the 40s, they literally were here. They didn’t leave very often, and so they couldn’t go to Santa Fe to go to a movie. They couldn’t, like we do, go to Amazon Prime, and watch something. So they had to kind of create their own fun,” says Robinson.

Getting in on that fun on stage during one of those early performances was none other than J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. “His tie was in 1944. The Los Alamos Little Theater did “Arsenic & Old Lace” and someone must’ve asked him to be the dead body in the coffin, and he gracefully agreed,” says actress Gracie Cainelli.

But without an actual theater, the first plays were pretty much performed anywhere they could find a spot. From places like churches and schools, then to buildings like Fuller Lodge, it wasn’t until the early 70s that the theater finally found a home with ties to the Manhattan Project.

“This building was the enlisted men’s mess hall cafeteria. At times, there may have been productions in this building as well, but whatever they could find space for, the Los Alamos Little Theater performed until 1972 when this building, which is now called the Performing Arts Center, in Los Alamos Little Theater came together,”

In a world where entertainment is at our fingertips with smartphones, the players in this small-town theater group say they’re doing something right to attract young actors and audiences and keep theater alive. “It is a dying art, and the live theater is dying art, and if you know, if we don’t keep that here and keep it available for folks, you know, how are kids especially living in this town going to see plays? How are they going to know that this is an option because that leads to working in television, it leads to any sort of creativity; writing plays, you know,” says Robinson.

“There are so many moving parts to every show and it really takes a community of people to do that and to work together to bring that to the audience every show,”

Incidentally, for anyone going to the Los Alamos Little Theatre for a show, organizers still honor the memory of Dr. Oppenheimer in a quirky way, with a plaque in the very men’s room he used, indicating, it’s still pretty much the same as when he was there.

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