L.A. History of Open-Air Theaters

At This Stage: John Steven McGroarty (1862-1944), born and educated in Pennsylvania, moved to Los Angeles in 1901, having already established himself as a lawyer, a city administrator and a corporate executive with a mining company. So naturally, upon settling in LA, he took up poetry, playwriting and journalism, becoming a columnist with the LA Times. In 1909, McGroarty edited the LA Times centenary edition. His growing interest in local history led him to script The Mission Play (1911), a three-hour pageant on the history of the California Missions, chronicling their founding in 1769 through secularization in 1834, ending with their “final ruin” in 1847.