Preserving the Ojai Playhouse

I love make-overs. Others must, too. Reality TV is flooded with “before and after” episodes of neglected houses transformed — Cinderella tales of homes.

Bob Kupiec is a Cinderella man, an architect trained in New York City who has designed and redesigned scores of houses, made over Times Square for Disney Studios and Store, and created galleries for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After 9/11, he moved from New York to Santa Barbara with his wife and daughter but continued his work to modernize museums and theaters around the world and at home, including the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Poland and the Santa Barbara Art Museum.

Recently, Kupiec was commissioned to rescue the badly damaged Ojai Playhouse for a client who spared no expense, and the results are preservation perfection.

The Ojai Playhouse, which sits on Ojai Avenue, is a Mission Revival structure built in 1914 that opened as the Isis Theater. Its debut screening that year was Jack London’s Valley of the Moon, an early silent film. For more than 100 years, the theater operated as an important local venue that featured plays, puppet shows, first-run films and the Ojai Film Festival. It was a cultural and social hub for Ojai residents, until the day in 2014 when a water main broke and flooded the playhouse, undermining its foundation. 

“The water district didn’t know how to turn the water main off, and the torrent of water ran down the street, burst into the theater and washed out the soil that was underneath,” Kupiec says. “The theater was literally floating six feet in the air.”

The flood left a disaster. It took several years to settle the claim against the private water company that owned the broken water main. In the wake of the catastrophe, heated debate in Ojai and Santa Barbara bubbled up about the pros and cons of water being privatized, the cons winning hands down. Meanwhile, members of the Ojai Film Society who were eager to buy the building and restore it recruited Kupiec to head up the rebuilding effort. In the end, however, the price tag was out of reach.

Enter a white knight — David Berger.

Berger had just sold his successful company, One More Time VIP, a specialty ticket service in the music industry, and he was ready for a new mission. He bought the theater in 2020 and hired Kupiec for the project. Together they followed Berger’s dream to build the most state-of-the-art modern theater in the region without sacrificing the character of the structure, which was designated as a historic landmark in 2020.

“It became the most delicious, wonderful, perfect space, both technologically and aesthetically,” Kupiec says.

Berger wanted the 200-seat theater to be streamlined with luxe comfort, while retaining elements of the 1914 building. To achieve that goal, Kupiec says, they had to get creative with parts of the structure.

“Under normal circumstances you would cover up old ceiling joists with some kind of acoustical ceiling, but [Berger] wanted to keep them exposed,” Kupiec says. “But they couldn't hold the weight of the mechanical plant to go above them on the roof. So we built a second roof you can’t see.”  

When it came to light and sound considerations, Berger always chose excellence over cost savings. Acoustic engineering is different for movies and live performances, and Berger and Kupiec worked with top sound engineers to figure out how to have the best possible sound quality for both. They also added a complex lighting system with an array of color choices that can be adjusted to fit the spirit and mood of the event. 

Ann Kale, a nationally known lighting specialist and Kupiec's wife and “best friend,” worked on the project, too. Kale passed away two months before the opening, but Kupiec says she loved how it was coming together.

The theater reopened in November 2024. “People were amazed when they saw the building,” Kupiec says with a twinkle. Berger curated the lineup of music performances and diverse films for the launch, including some of last year’s Oscar contenders, like Emilia Perez and The Brutalist, along with classics like Mulholland Drive and Heat. Audiences were treated to the rare — and dazzling — experience of seeing films shot in 35mm projected on a top-quality system.

Needless to say, Kupiec chooses sustainable building materials wherever possible. “We couldn’t do solar with all the mechanicals on the roof, but certainly the materials and lighting are LEED,” he says. “The best kind of sustainability is repairing what exists and not tearing something down because it’s old.” 

The duo has moved on to new projects: Berger has revitalized the Libbey Bowl and brought back the Ojai Music Festival, and together, Kupiec and Berger are restoring the historic 1911 Tower Theater in Santa Paula. Maybe some of those lost silent movies are in the closets or hidden somewhere in the building. I’d love that. Then they just need to find a Wurlitzer. Who knows? Seems these guys can do anything.