The old Crest Theater on Westwood Boulevard will become the UCLA Leonard Nimoy Theater. The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture and its performing arts program, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA purchased the venue with funds from the actor’s widow Susan Bay Nimoy and an anonymous donor, and will use it as an off-campus performing arts space.
“As a long-standing supporter of the Center for the Art of Performance and its inspired artistic director, Kristy Edmunds, I am thrilled to help provide UCLA with a long-awaited state-of-the-art theater,” Nimoy said. “My late husband and I admire Kristy’s passion for the art of performance, her out-of-the-box imagination, razor-sharp intellect, and her vision for what the UCLA Nimoy Theater will bring to Los Angeles.”
The UCLA Nimoy Theater will return the Crest Theater to its roots as a performing arts venue. The space originally opened in December 1940 as the Westwood Theater, a live performance hall. It underwent a renovation in 1987 when the Walt Disney Company replaced the façade. The city of Los Angeles designated the theater as a historic-cultural landmark in 2008.
Leonard Nimoy, best known for his role as Mr. Spock on “Star Trek,” died at 83 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on Feb. 27, 2015.
