1990 ORANGE COUNTY : Depth of Commitment to Be Measured : THEATER

The consensus of the experts on the Orange County theater scene in the ‘90s may be summed up in two words: more growth. And it will come on both sides of the footlights, they predict, in terms of larger audiences and the establishment of new troupes at all levels of accomplishment.

“A county this big could stand one or two more professional companies,” says Thomas F. Bradac, artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival in Garden Grove. “It’s bound to happen, probably in the South County. And I think we’ll get more cutting-edge type of theaters, storefront places that are willing to take chances because they want to make a name for themselves.”

At South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, producing artistic director David Emmes echoes those views, noting that much of the anticipated growth is a function of the countywide “infancy” of the arts. However, since SCR has just come off a decade of dramatic institutional expansion, he expects his Tony-winning company to do comparatively less growing than others in the ‘90s.

“I like to think we are in our artistic maturity,” Emmes says.

Only if the Orange County Performing Arts Center gets around to building an 800-seat drama house--which is currently under study along with a 2,200-seat concert hall--would SCR be likely to undertake a major new venture in the scope of its operations.

“If they decide to go forward with that in the ‘90s, then that is something we would be interested in using,” Emmes says. “ . . . Saying anything further would be to presuppose that the Center is going to want to go ahead with a drama house, and I don’t know that that is the case at all.”

Across the street, Center president Thomas R. Kendrick asserts that plans definitely call for the construction of two halls. “Things are going faster than anybody thought,” he says, referring to the current implementation of a $100,000 design study. But just when these plans would be realized remains hazy.

Meanwhile, Douglas C. Rankin, who heads the Irvine Theatre Operating Co., expects the opening of the $17.6-million, 750-seat Irvine Theatre in October, 1990, to generate a “wave of momentum” for the creation of new theater facilities across the county. One indication of that, he notes, is the effort now under way in Mission Viejo to explore the possibility of building a 1,500-seat arts center there.