Los Alamos Little Theatre hosts adult variety-show fundraiser May 16

A no-holds-barred, 18-plus variety show will take over the Los Alamos Performing Arts Center on Saturday, May 16, as Los Alamos Little Theatre turns a night of comedy, music and performance into a fundraiser for the volunteer-run stage it has operated for decades. The show runs from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m., and the lineup includes performers from LALT, Atomic Gems, AtomiComedy and Syzygy, along with special guests Band O’Lears, Santa Fe Improv, En Pointe, Rocky Horror Picture Show and more. Drinks will be sold by Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op.

The event is about more than a packed house and a late-night laugh. Los Alamos Little Theatre says it operates the Performing Arts Center on behalf of Los Alamos County on a completely volunteer basis and gathers thousands of volunteer hours each year to keep the building active. That makes the fundraiser a direct test of community support for one of Los Alamos’s most durable arts institutions, where ticket sales help sustain programming, operations and the ability to keep local performances on the calendar.

The PAC itself carries a long history. Los Alamos County describes it as a live community theatre in a historic WWII-era mess hall at 1670 Nectar Street, and says the Little Theatre has entertained Los Alamos and northern New Mexico residents with live shows for 50 years. LALT’s history page says the dramatic club formally organized in November 1943, under the name Little Theatre Group, and staged its first play, “Right About Face,” at the end of that same year.

The building might not still be there without that volunteer effort. The National Park Service says that in 1971, when Los Alamos County was planning to tear down the old mess hall, the Little Theatre company stepped in and renovated it. The structure then continued as a performing arts center supported entirely by volunteers, a model that still defines the organization today.

LALT says it is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) community theater group founded in 1943 and typically produces up to five shows per season, from September to May. That schedule depends on an audience willing to show up not just for a single night of adult-oriented entertainment, but for the broader local arts network that keeps the PAC alive. The May 16 fundraiser is meant to do exactly that.