REPERTORY STAGE GROUP PLANS DEBUT

Go south, young man. At least, that’s the direction Jamie Baker, Fred Davis and Jim Matthis took when they decided to form their own repertory theater group.

They were staging a one-act play called “Minnesota Moon” at the Itchey Foot Ristorante in Los Angeles when they decided the time was right to explore the possibility of starting a theater company down the freeway in Orange County.

The result is the Orange Repertory Theater, which makes its public debut tonight with a revival of “Golden Boy” by Clifford Odets. The 1937 drama about a prizefighter will play at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 7 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 27 at the Cypress Cultural Arts Center.

Artistic control was one of the deciding factors that sent them south, Davis said. There was also disillusionment with the small theater scene in Los Angeles.

“Our experience was that it had sort of become not so much a venue for the product itself, but sort of a two-hour audition,” he said.

The long-term goal is to create a solid, resident company in Orange County, along the lines of South Coast Repertory, he said. Meanwhile, the immediate goal is to locate funding and a space to perform. They hope “Golden Boy” will attract attention from a civic group willing to provide municipal funding.

So far, support and encouragement have come from the Cypress Civic Theatre Guild, which has provided the use of its theater free, along with funds to help get the first production off the ground. Other funding was solicited through a small direct-mail campaign.

“Our marketing budget has been nonexistent, as has most (of our) other budgets,” Davis said. “The whole thing has really been . . . people who genuinely want to support the theater, because there’s no other payoff.

“Everything in this production has been pretty much donated,” he said, including the costumes, the equipment and the actors’ time.

The company functions as a triumvirate, with Baker, Davis and Matthis acting as co-associate artistic directors. Davis, a graduate of Cal State Fullerton who trained at the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts, has worked as an actor and teacher in Orange County and Los Angeles. Baker has worked in regional theater for the last six years, most recently at the Denver Performing Arts Center, and Matthis is a master’s graduate teaching at Cal State Fullerton.

Baker is directing the first production, which features Davis as Joe Bonaparte, a kid from the slums who gives up a promising violin career to become a boxer. Diane Dale will play Joe’s girl, Lorna, and Matthis will play Tom Moody, his boxing manager.

“We are going to see how much noise we can make,” Davis said. “And if we make a lot of noise, and if it’s a lot of positive noise, then we definitely plan to go ahead (with future productions.) The enthusiasm and the direction is there to go ahead. Now it is just a matter of logistics.”

Cypress Cultural Arts Center is at 5172 Orange Ave., on the campus of Barclay College. Tickets are $5; information is available at (714) 528-7347.