Director Steven Spielberg, his actress wife Kate Capshaw, playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon and other Hollywood luminaries are expected to attend Edgemar Center for the Artsí official ribbon-cutting ceremony and cocktail reception

Venice recently had the pleasure of meeting with Michelle Danner, Edgemar’s executive artistic director and co-founder, to discuss the Edgemar Center for the Arts, its upcoming cabaret extravaganza, and how Danner found herself spearheading this remarkable artistic sanctuary.

"Swimming in creativity." That was the assessment of the Feng Shui consultant who visited the new home of the Edgemar Center for the Arts on Main Street during its final stages of construction earlier this year.

"The Night of the Black Cat" experienced great success with sold out performances, which prompted them to re-open for an extended run.

Behold the new math of 99-seat theater: Three seasoned stage directors, one eccentric millionaire and two acting coaches have produced a pair of new venues, skewering in the process any notion that cutting-edge performance necessarily equals funky little storefront theaters.

A Star is Born when you enroll your child in an eight-week on-going actor's work-shop at the Edgemar Center for the Arts.

Efforts have been in play since 1997 to turn the Edgemar building in Santa Monica into a center for the arts. But after the failure of one group, it took a group with major celebrity ties to raise the funding necessary for the facility to open its doors.

"...Though ostensibly a political fable about the senselessness of the death penalty and the vampirism of the cable-news provocateur/commentator class, its powerful subplot traces the moral resurrection of Mailer's character at the unlikely hands of the fortress-hearted, charismatic teen angel of death."