In Buyer & Cellar, by Jonathan Tolins, Portland Stage Affiliate Artist Dustin Tucker plays an actor who takes the bizarre job of working in a shopping mall that Barbra Streisand has built in the basement of her Malibu home.

Although what happens in the play is fiction, the private shopping mall – with its doll store, clothing boutique and sweet shop – actually exists.

“Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them,” Streisand once told Harper’s Bazaar.

Playwright Jonathan Tolins was inspired by Streisand’s coffee table book, My Passion for Design, which includes a chapter devoted to her underground arcade.  “I studied that book and every picture very closely,” says Tolins, “I became obsessed with it and made a joke about what it would be like to be the guy that works down there. A lot of people see the play and buy the book and are shocked at how little I made up.”

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