Stars Theatre Bakersfield and Kern County's Live Arts Scene

Between the Fox and Stars Theatre Bakersfield keeps a real, working arts and entertainment scene downtown: a cluster of working theaters and galleries anchored by a historic movie palace and a long-running dinner theater, plus the county’s deeper claim to fame in American country music (covered in full in our Bakersfield Sound guide). This page is about the venues themselves: where to catch a live show, a film screening, or a gallery walk today.

The Arts District, downtown Bakersfield

Bakersfield’s Arts District sits roughly around the intersection of 19th and Eye streets downtown, and it’s the closest thing the county has to a dedicated cultural quarter. Several galleries operate in the area alongside a handful of theaters, making it walkable enough to combine a few stops (a gallery, a coffee shop, a show) into one evening.

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Bakersfield Fox Theater

The Historic Bakersfield Fox Theater, at 2001 H Street, opened on Christmas Day 1930 as a Fox West Coast Theatres movie palace, designed by architect S. Charles Lee in a Spanish Colonial Revival style with an “atmospheric” interior meant to feel like an open-air Mediterranean courtyard under a star-filled ceiling. The Art Deco-style interior visitors see today dates to a 1953 renovation led by Fox West Coast executive Charles Skouras. The theater survived the 1952 Kern County earthquake structurally intact, and the Skouras-era redesign followed the next year. It closed in 1984 and faced possible demolition before the nonprofit Fox Theater Foundation began a restoration in 1994, eventually reopening it as the working venue it is today, hosting concerts, comedy tours, classic film screenings, and community events on a calendar that runs well into the following year. Our full Fox Theater history covers the whole arc in more depth. It’s the county’s best-preserved historic theater and generally the marquee stop for touring acts passing through Bakersfield.

Its companion venue, the Nile Theater, books similar programming (music, comedy, and themed events) under the same foundation, rounding out the pair with Stars Theatre Bakersfield as the county’s two anchor stages.

Stars Theatre Bakersfield: a dinner-theater landmark

Stars Theatre Bakersfield, at 1931 Chester Avenue downtown, is a dinner theater that has been staging shows since 1969, making it one of the longest-running entertainment venues in the county. Operated today as Stars at The Fillbrandt Theatre, it runs six-week engagements of off-Broadway-style musicals and comedies performed by local cast members, paired with a sit-down dinner service. It’s a different kind of night out than the Fox: smaller-scale, locally produced, and built around the dinner-and-a-show format rather than touring acts.

Larger venues: concerts, conventions, and sports

For bigger touring shows, Bakersfield has two large-capacity venues downtown: the Mechanics Bank Theater & Convention Center (the former Bakersfield Civic Auditorium), which hosts Broadway-style touring productions, comedy, and conferences, and the Dignity Health Arena, Theater and Convention Center, which handles arena-scale concerts, sports, and family shows. Between the two, most major touring acts that route through Kern County play one of them.

Community and smaller stages

Beyond the marquee venues, Bakersfield Community Theatre and The Empty Space are smaller, community-run stages that round out the local theater scene with more intimate productions, and are worth checking for visitors who prefer a smaller house over an arena or a restored movie palace.

Planning a visit

Because nearly everything above is clustered in or near downtown Bakersfield, a night of theater-hopping is realistic without much driving, though individual venues keep their own booking calendars, so it’s worth checking listings before planning a trip around a specific show. Outside Bakersfield, the county’s arts scene thins out considerably; smaller towns like Tehachapi and Ridgecrest lean more on museums (see our museums guide) and seasonal festivals than on year-round theater venues.