Upcoming Productions
Sep 17, 2026 6:30 PM
Peter Gelblum, Director MCT
Upcoming Productions
Mountain Community Theater’s (MCT) Peter Gelblum knows a good story when he hears one. Whether it’s one of loss or perseverance, success or struggle, Gelblum is a student of the human condition, and he uses that insight to help shape his actors into storytellers on stage.
Peter received his B.A. in Theater from Wesleyan University, then worked professionally as an actor and director in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, including a role as a misunderstood killer on Kojak, the TV show.
Finding it difficult to make a living as an actor, he went to law school and worked as an attorney in Los Angeles for 32 years, working on such cases as Goldman vs. OJ Simpson, Recording Industry of American vs. Napster, a case settling ownership of the artwork of Alberto Vargas, creator of the Vargas Girls, and a decades-long case concerning a trust worth several hundred million dollars for the benefit of the heirs of Walt Disney.
Peter moved to the San Lorenzo Valley in 2008 and returned to his first love, theater. He has been involved with Mountain Community Theater since then. He was President of MCT for five years, and has directed many shows for MCT, including August: Osage County, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, Moon Over Buffalo, Other Desert Cities, Steel Magnolias, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Miracle on 34th Street.
His acting roles range from Kris Kringle in Miracle, to Brutus in Julius Caesar. He has also directed for many years at Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater annual 8 Tens at 8 Short Play Festival. In 2022, he created “The CZU Fire In Their Own Words,” a 90-minute film about people who lost their homes in, and fought, the catastrophic August 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fires.