The Maverick Theater is a storefront theater in the city of Fullerton, California

Fullerton, California

Fullerton is a city located in northern Orange County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 135,161.It was founded in 1887 by George and Edward Amerige and named for George H. Fullerton, who secured the land on behalf of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway...

, in Orange County

Orange County, California

Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...

. The theater was founded in 2002 by Artistic Director Brian Newell. Needing a venue to run his Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 musical The King, Newell rented a space at The Block at Orange

The Block at Orange

The Outlets at Orange is an open-air shopping mall developed by The Mills Corporation and now owned jointly by The Mills, A Simon Company,, Faralon Capital and KanAm, in Orange, California, a few miles southeast of Disneyland near the heart of the Orange Crush interchange...

, formerly occupied by Mars Music. Finding a large "M" cemented into the floor, Newell arrived at Maverick as the name of the theater.

The King eventually ran from September 6, 2002, through December 22, 2002. The theatre also staged productions of Amadeus

Amadeus

Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...

and The Rocky Horror Show

The Rocky Horror Show

The Rocky Horror Show is a long-running British horror comedy stage musical, which opened in London on 19 June 1973. It was written by Richard O'Brien, produced and directed by Jim Sharman. It came eighth in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "Nation's Number One Essential Musicals"...

. However, The Block at Orange proved a difficult host for the theatre, forcing them to move to a different location to make room for a bowling alley, then cutting their square footage in half, placing a candy store next to the space. Finally, in June 2004, the Maverick Theater was forced to leave and was replaced with a pet store.

Newell relocated to Fullerton, employing theatre designer Joseph Musil to give the theater an art deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 look. The new venue had two stages—a cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 stage for musicals, and a black box

Black box theater

The black box theater is a relatively recent innovation, consisting of a simple, somewhat unadorned performance space, usually a large square room with black walls and a flat floor.-History:...

 stage for larger-scale plays.
The new space opened in June 2005 with a revival of The Rocky Horror Show. Since then, The Maverick has become known for its Staged Cinema Productions, in which they stage adaptations of popular and lesser-known films, including Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...

(an annual Halloween production), Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a 1964 science fiction film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made. It is regularly featured in the "bottom 100" list on the Internet Movie Database, and was also featured in an episode of the 1986 syndicated series, the Canned Film...

(an annual Christmas production). Other Maverick productions have included Shakespeare (Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

), comedy (Noises Off

Noises Off

Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...

, Father of the Bride, Below the Belt and Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a play written by Steve Martin in 1993. It features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin Agile in Montmartre, Paris...

), drama (Angels in America

Angels in America

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winning play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. It has been made into both a television miniseries and an opera by Peter Eötvös.-Characters:...

, Stalag 17

Stalag 17

Stalag 17 is a 1953 war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is a traitor...

, A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men is a play by Aaron Sorkin, first produced on Broadway by David Brown in 1989. It tells the story of military lawyers at a court-martial who uncover a high-level conspiracy in the course of defending their clients, United States Marines accused of murder.It opened on Broadway at the...

, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (play)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a play based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel of the same name. Dale Wasserman's stage adaptation, with music by Teiji Ito, made its Broadway preview on November 12, 1963, its premiere on November 13, and ran until January 25, 1964 for a total of one preview and 82...

, The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate , by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party....

, The Hobbit

The Hobbit

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...

, American Way

American Way (play)

"American Way" is a one-act play by Jeremy Gable. The plot centers around three comic book superheroes who, in the midst of a break, are faced with a tragedy that they could not prevent from happening, despite having superpowers. It is notable for its sudden shift in tone and use of metaphor to...

, and the West Coast premiere of Rising Water), and musicals (Cabaret

Cabaret (musical)

Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....

, Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness (musical)

Reefer Madness is a musical satire of the 1936 cult classic Reefer Madness that opened in Los Angeles in 1998. The book and lyrics were written by Kevin Murphy and the music by Dan Studney. Directed by Andy Fickman, it was initially shown at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los...

, The Full Monty

The Full Monty (musical)

The Full Monty is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally and score by David Yazbek.In this Americanized musical stage version adapted from the 1997 British film of the same name, six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers, low on both cash and prospects, decide to present a strip act at a local club...

, Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors (musical)

Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman...

, Giant Green Lizard! The Musical

Giant Green Lizard! The Musical

Giant Green Lizard! The Musical is an original two-act musical written for and produced at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton, California in July 2006. It is a musical parody of the Japanese monster movies from the 1950s...

, Urinetown

Urinetown

Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...

, Rent

Rent (musical)

Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème...

, The Producers

The Producers (musical)

The Producers is a musical adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan from Brooks' 1968 film of the same name, with lyrics written by Brooks and music composed by Brooks and arranged by Glen Kelly and Doug Besterman. As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich...

, Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical

Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical

Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical is an Off-Broadway musical with a book by Susan L. Schwartz, composed by Andrew Sherman, with Tom Kitt and Jonathan Callicutt providing additional music and lyrics. It is based on the 1978 pornographic film Debbie Does Dallas...

, The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer is a 1998 romantic comedy film written by Tim Herlihy and directed by Frank Coraci. It stars Adam Sandler as a wedding singer in the 1980s and Drew Barrymore as a waitress with whom he falls in love....

, and Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

).

The Maverick is also the home of The Skipper Stand Up Show, a comedy show that uses only Dinseyland

Disneyland Park (Anaheim)

Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company. Known as Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955, and still almost universally referred to by that name, it is the only theme park to be...

 Jungle Cruise

Jungle Cruise

The Jungle Cruise is an attraction located in Adventureland at many Disney Parks, including Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland. At Hong Kong Disneyland, the attraction is named Jungle River Cruise...

Skippers, and the improv troupe Improv Shmimprov.