“ “ A sharply dressed crowd assembled in the ‘s Pacific Ballroom in Carmel chanted this refrain in unison, led by an ensemble of actors from the this past winter. Among the more than 250 attendees gathered for the celebratory weekend to mark the grand reopening of the historic venue were , , actor and writer/podcaster . ‘s and and ‘s beamed from the audience as they watched fellow thespians from the Atwater Village-based theater they co-founded perform the prologue of , a one-night, site-specific immersive play directed by Eli Gonda and commissioned for the occasion by hotelier John Grossman of .
Playwright Christian Durso’s story — set in 1907 and inspired by Carmel’s unorthodox creative legacy — proceeded to unfold throughout the property. Chef and food writer was there, too, having prepared a locally sourced dinner the previous night for this high-spirited convergence of guests representing many disciplines and fields. is often associated with the hamlet located at the southern end of the Monterey Peninsula.
But it’s also where over a century ago, figures such as Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, Edward Weston, Sinclair Lewis and painter Chris Jorgensen, found refuge and community. It was Jorgensen who in 1905 built the winter home that would become La Playa Hotel for his wife, San Francisco chocolate heiress Angela Ghirardelli. Elements of this early bohemian culture are still felt around the gridded streets of the one-mile-square village of Carmel-by-the.