GRAND KABUKI COMING TO UCLA’S ROYCE HALL

Grand Kabuki, one of the most magnificent forms of theatrical expression in the world, will come to UCLA’s Royce Hall at the end of a national tour Aug. 7, bringing with it a number of firsts and mosts.

The company of 91 is the largest ever to tour the United States. (It arrives after playing the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and Kennedy Center in Washington.) American audiences will witness, for the first time, the Kojo Ceremony, in which Ebizo Ichikawa will have a ceremonial name change and elevation to Danjuro Ichikawa XII, Kabuki’s counterpart to papal selection.

Danjuro XII will appear in three classic Kabuki works, along with, among others, the actor-dancer Shoroku Onoe, who has been designated in Japan as a National Living Treasure. A National Living Treasure? Does an NLT fight with his wife, or cut himself shaving? What happens if you get into a fender-bender with one?

Tamasaburo Bando V, an onnagata (an actor specializing in female roles), will re-create one of his famous roles. In the American premiere of a work entitled “Kasane,” he’ll be joined by Japanese film, TV and Kabuki stage star Takao Kataoka. Their act, “Tamataka Konbi,” reportedly is one of the hottest tickets in Japan. That’s a first here, too, as well as the construction of a hanamichi runway at Royce Hall to authenticate the Kabuki style of entrances and exits.

The presentation is sponsored by the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, the Metropolitan Opera Assn., the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and Mazda. Tickets for the seven performances go on sale July 1 at the Japan America Theatre, (213) 680-3700, and UCLA’s Central Box Office, (213) 825-9261.

When an Equity Waiver production moves to a mid-size or larger house, it’s become somewhat of a local custom for the principals concerned to offer handshakes all around and crank out a barrage of press releases alerting everyone to the nobility of the enterprise, and that’s all well and good.

But no one so far has mentioned Norman Maibaum’s new record--including Maibaum himself--of having moved two Waiver shows simultaneously, from Waiver to full Equity status. “Sills & Co.,” which has been playing Sills’ theater on Heliotrope, is now at the Westwood Playhouse. “Duet for One,” which played the Back Alley in Van Nuys, is now at the Hollywood Center Theatre. Maibaum runs both Equity houses.

Now that the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre is about to become the Los Angeles Theatre Center as Bill Bushnell & Co. cart their trunks downtown, what will happen to the old space on Oxford Avenue?

As of June 1, the Ensemble Studio Theatre/L.A. will take over. “This is a very good move for us,” said Ensemble artistic director Linda Callahan. “We had been moved into a small space at the Embassy, which wasn’t suitable for producing. Now we have two spaces to work in, where we can combine work from our own writers’ workshop with experimental works of established writers. We’re looking at Gertrude Stein, we’d like to do a new version of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and in October we’ll do Eduardo Machado’s ‘Fabiola.’ We’d like to do a preseason production, perhaps Brecht’s ‘Happy End.’ But we’re not sure what we’ll do in that slot.”

The title at least sounds like a good one to characterize the move.

Andrew Robinson and his accomplices will not get time off for good behavior when “In the Belly of the Beast” closes at the Mark Taper Forum on Sunday. On July 6, the production moves to the 474-seat Joyce Theatre in New York as part of the legit showcase for nonprofit resident theaters from around the country.

The other two productions are the Yale Repertory’s “Faulkner’s Bicycle” by Heather MacDonald, and the Alley Theatre of Houston’s “Seasons Greeting” by Alan Ayckbourn. The overall program is called the American Theatre Exchange. Nearly 75% of its $825,000 budget has been supplied by the Joyce Theater Foundation. This is the first showcase for regional legit work in New York since the late ‘60s, when the American National Theater and Academy sponsored productions.

LATE CUES: “Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been” reopens this weekend at the Back Alley theater . . . The East West Players will stage Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera,” which opens May 22. Mako directs.