Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in downtown San Diego's Balboa Park is a 620-seat outdoor stage within The Old Globe's Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, rebuilt in 1985 after a 1984 arson fire destroyed the original festival platform. Summer programming centers on The Old Globe's Shakespeare Festival, running since 1949, and new-work premieres that have transferred to Broadway—including A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—a development track distinct from the touring-show model at Balboa Theatre in the Gaslamp Quarter. The outdoor thrust stage places audiences on three sides within feet of the performers, using Balboa Park's eucalyptus canopy as a natural scenic backdrop that eliminates conventional fly-tower requirements. The Globe's three-stage operation—the 580-seat indoor Old Globe Theatre, the 250-seat Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, and this outdoor house—runs roughly 15 productions and 600 performances annually under a combined budget of approximately $30 million, sustaining a graduate MFA program with UC San Diego that trains actors who also appear at smaller downtown stages like Saville Theatre. The most ambitious outdoor productions stage full Shakespeare cycles with original scores, multi-level scenic builds, and cast sizes exceeding 20 actors performing nightly through the July-to-September season.