THEATER AND FILM / Jan Herman : ART Troupe Hopes It Wasn’t Just Curiosity That Produced Those Lines at the Box Office

The founders of the Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana thought they had seen everything until the Rolls-Royce pulled up in front of Tony’s Auto Upholstery, their next-door neighbor. They were wondering what Tony could do for a Rolls that a Rolls dealer couldn’t . . . and then the obvious dawned on them:

The people in the fancy car had come for ART’s production of Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” which was about to end a successful 10-week run at the troupe’s storefront playhouse.

“My teeth nearly fell out of my mouth!,” says business manager David Palmer, recalling the incident with delight.

“We don’t know who they were,” producer Kathleen Bryson adds, “but we seem to attract all kinds of theatergoers.”

From high school students to Bohemian intellectuals to well-heeled sophisticates, about 2,600 people bought tickets to 100 performances of the troupe’s three offerings last season. While that’s not enough to sell out a one-night show at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it isn’t bad for a 61-seat theater tucked away in a small industrial/retail park off Grand Avenue.

Last season was ART’s first, and the plays--Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” and “Seascape”--were scarcely calculated to draw box-office crowds.

Yet it happened, not only with Albee’s play but with Sartre’s. “On closing night (of ‘No Exit’) so many people came through the door, we did an impromptu second performance,” says Palmer, who doubles as lighting and scenic designer. “We said we’d do another show if they were willing to hang around for two hours. And they did.”

Now, as ART contemplates its second season, the troupe wonders whether its beginner’s luck will hold. “We’re still throwing the dice here,” artistic director Patricia Terry says. “All we can hope to do is maintain the quality that is so important to us.”

Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” will begin the 1988-89 season Sept. 30, followed by Arthur Kopit’s “End of the World With Symposium to Follow” on Dec. 3. A third play, to be chosen from the works of Jean Cocteau for participation in an international Cocteau festival, will be announced, as will a fourth play to close the season.

“If we fail financially or critically,” Terry notes, “I guess we’ll say, ‘Okay, it didn’t happen. What did we do wrong?’ We have friends who told us, ‘You’re in a warehouse in Orange County and you’re doing Sartre? You’re crazy.’ But we expect to be around for a long time.”

Actress Amy Larson, doubling as the troupe’s publicity director, says surveys of their audience show most patrons attend theater on a regular basis. About 10% come from Santa Ana, most of the rest from Irvine, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Anaheim and Placentia.

“We also pull a lot of people from Long Beach,” she says.

ART began with $13,000 in seed money put up by the founders: Terry, Palmer, Bryson, Larson, ad manager Gary Christensen and director/set designer Robert Sternberg. Their first season ran on a $27,000 budget, which included the one-time $17,000 cost of renovating the 1,200-square-foot storefront/warehouse.

The troupe anticipates a budget of roughly $30,000 for the coming season, of which at least two-thirds is expected go into productions. The theater operates according to Equity-waiver rules (though they don’t formally extend to Orange County).

“I think newness has a lot to do with our success so far,” Palmer says. “But our smallness does too. It has helped us establish a certain ambiance.”

BACKSTAGE NOTES: When the Garden Grove City Council established a 15-member committee to figure out what the city should do about subsidizing the arts, the council majority was trying, among other things, to take the political heat off its reluctance to support the Grove Theatre Co.

Well, gentlemen, take a bow.

The committee has effectively deep-sixed the entire issue of money for the arts until after the November election. According to a committee insider, it has decided that no recommendations will be made before then, because it doesn’t know much about Garden Grove’s cultural organizations and needs at least three months to bone up.

TOOT, TOOT: As the Orange County Performing Arts Center prepares to “Strike Up the Band,” Center president Thomas F. Kendrick caught the show on opening night Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium with his former boss, Kennedy Center chairman Roger Stevens.

The revival of George and Ira Gershwin’s 1927 musical is a cooperative venture among Pasadena’s California Music Theatre, OCPAC (where it arrives Aug. 18 for nine performances), and the Music Center Operating Company in Los Angeles, where it will play the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion from Aug. 26 to Sept. 11.

If Stevens is “eyeing it for a possible tour,” as Robert Osborne of the Hollywood Reporter claims, that should provide some balm for Kendrick after the box-office debacle of the New World Symphony, which the Center adventurously co-sponsored with the Orange County Philharmonic Society and UC Irvine. Of the 9,000 tickets available to three New World concerts at the Center, just 2,200 were sold, and the venture ended up $250,000 in the red.

Incidentally, the OCPAC Guilds will get a private showing of “Strike Up the Band” at the Center on Aug. 17, in honor of their 10th anniversary.

NEW TROUPE: The Professional Actors Conservatory of Rancho Santiago College has announced the formation of the PAC Theatre Company. A troupe of professional and student actors, it will mount five productions at the college’s Garden Grove Center under the artistic direction of Victor Pappas.

William Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life” will begin the first season (Oct. 12 to Nov. 5), followed by Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” (Nov. 9 to Dec. 3); Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (Dec. 14 to Jan. 7); Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” (Feb. 22 to March 18) and Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” (March 29 to April 22).