Toby Bluth

College Friend

“All the multiple creative things I ended up doing, I did first at SMC.”

It’s a nice little show business niche Toby Bluth has found for himself. In the land of hyphenated professions, he’s the ultimate: a writer-producer-director-actor-choreographer-playwright-set designer-illustrator…well, you get the picture. “I guess I qualify as a Rennaissance man,” he says with enormous understatement.

Toby has directed Dramalog Award-winning productions of Peter Pan and Babes in Toyland. He’s published nine children’s books which he wrote and illustrated. He and brother Don (who animated An American Tale for Stephen Spielberg) ran their own musical comedy theater in Culver City. And at the Santa Monica firm known as Duck Soup, he writes-produces-and-directs animated television commercials. But of all his creative projects, one of which he is most proud is the production of the play Tchaikovsky which he first presented at SMC. “We were doing readings of the play and theater arts professor Adrienne Harrop asked me to do it in the campus theater,” recalls Toby. “It also was presented as part of an exchange program with Guildford, England,” he adds. Toby traces his SMC connection back to professor Don Richardson “who was my high school music teacher and actually introduced me to the music of Tchaikovsky.”

“SMC has a faculty that was willing in my case to produce a totally untried piece,” says Toby. “And that makes it a very valuable place.”

With all of his creativity, he finds the idea of “relaxation” a little foreign. “I’m driven,” he says. “And that’s when I’m happiest: when I’m focused and have direction. So there’s no retirement for me,” he says, laughing. “I’ll die with my boots on.”

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