Plays At Balboa Park's Starlight Bowl Spark Vivid Memories

KPBS | By Elizabeth Vrabel

Published April 13, 2015 at 10:39 AM PDT

This story was published more than 9 years ago.

The open-air seating is shown at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park, April 7, 2015.

A view of the open-air seating at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park is shown from behind the stage, April 7, 2015.

I am lucky enough to have many, many wonderful memories of Balboa Park, as I spent much of my childhood in San Diego — and even worked at the Museum of Man as an adult — but one of the most vivid is of going to see plays at the Starlight Bowl, next to the aerospace museum.

If you aren't familiar with it, it is an open-air amphitheater that happens to be directly under the flight path for the San Diego International Airport. As you can imagine, it is hard to hear actors when a jet is zooming just above your head. So they had an ingenious system that just before the plane was in range, a red light was lit and all the actors, musicians, etc., would freeze mid-step, mid-sentence or even mid-song until the all clear was given. As a pre-teen back in the late '70s, I found this fascinating and loved going to the shows.

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The Starlight Bowl today

A performance hasn't been held at the Starlight Bowl since the summer of 2010, and the Starlight Theater declared bankruptcy in 2011.

The theater's board president, Kimberly Layton, said the group plans to renovate the theater. It is expected to cost $20 million. The group is in the process of recruiting potential donors, including a naming donor, Layton said. She said the goal is to resume performances at the theater by the summer of 2017.