Regional Tony to South Coast

South Coast Repertory of Costa Mesa has won this year’s regional Tony Award, it was announced Thursday at a meeting of the American Theatre Critics Assn. here.

The award, which includes a $15,000 prize, is made on the strength of a theater’s body of work and continuing contribution to the cultural life of a community. It will be officially presented at the Tony Awards ceremony June 5 in New York.

“We’re dancing on the ceiling,” David Emmes, co-founder and producing artistic director of South Coast Repertory, said in Costa Mesa. “This is a wonderful affirmation of what we’ve been doing.”

As for the cash prize, “we haven’t begun to think about what we’ll do with it, but undoubtedly we’ll plow it right back into programs that will advance the cause of new plays and new playwrights.”

SCR, which began in a converted five-and-dime store in Newport Beach in 1964, has a multimillion-dollar complex that includes the 507-seat Mainstage theater and the 161-seat Second Stage theater. Its current annual budget is $4.6 million. It has about 25,000 subscribers, which makes it the fourth largest subscription theater in the country.

“The (movie and television) industry doesn’t take South Coast into mind,” said guest artist Joe Spano, who gained fame as Lt. Henry Goldblume in “Hill Street Blues” and currently is starring on the Mainstage in Sheridan’s 18th-Century comedy of manners, “School for Scandal.”

“Producers don’t come here to see your work and you don’t come here to be seen,” Spano said. “So you’re free to serve the play and the director and the audience.”

Apart from the prestige of national recognition, the regional Tony award can translate into greater box office receipts. “We got a boost in subscriptions,” said Robert Whitney, house manager of the Trinity Repertory in Providence, R.I., which won a regional Tony in 1981.

Previous California winners of the regional Tony are the Mark Taper Forum, San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

SCR was this year’s big winner at the Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards on March 28. Its production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Misalliance” took six awards, and “Three Postcards” by Craig Lucas won a seventh.

Don Shirley contributed to this article.