Home to the annual North Park Playwright Festival since 2005, North Park Vaudeville & Candy Shoppe operates a 35-seat performance space at 2031 El Cajon Blvd in North Park. The theater is run by GB Productions and stages new plays, melodramas, improvised sets, and vaudeville-style variety shows, with performing-arts instruction available through neighborhood programs such as Dance With Liza. A concession stand stocked with over 60 varieties of old-fashioned candy — salt water taffy, root beer barrels, and vintage candy bars — runs alongside each performance. The venue also operates the STARS program, a theater-arts curriculum for individuals with developmental challenges, and collaborates with local arts educators including BigArtVentures. The festival’s most intensive production cycles are the ten-minute play showcases, which require casting, directing, and staging upward of a dozen original scripts from international playwrights within a single multi-weekend run.