Longtime director of theater guild

Roberta “Bobbi” Holtzman, 81, longtime artistic director of the Northridge Theatre Guild, died Dec. 31 at a care facility in Northridge, friends told The Times. She had been battling vascular dementia.

Starting in 1968 and continuing through the mid-1980s, Holtzman directed more than 25 productions for the innovative Northridge Theatre Guild.

The troupe eventually moved from its home in the San Fernando Valley to a space above an Armenian church in Hollywood and renamed itself “NTG Upstairs.”

In 1969, the guild was honored with a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for “consistently high achievement.”

Her many directorial accolades included Drama-Logue awards for productions of Horton Foote’s “The Traveling Lady” (1985) and Jean-Claude van Italie’s “Paradise Ghetto” (1987), both at Actors Alley.

In addition to her directing work, Holtzman was an actor in television and film. She won Drama-Logue awards for outstanding performance in long-running productions of Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing” (1982) and Lee Blessing’s “Eleemosynary” (1996).

A native of Everett, Wash., Holtzman earned her degree in theater arts at Mills College in Oakland.

After her husband, Alan Holtzman, finished his stint as a doctor in the Korean War, they settled in Los Angeles, where she taught at Cal State Northridge.