Not Playing in Orange County : Theater: A Fullerton acting troupe splits with the Muckenthaler Cultural Center and accuses its trustees of trying to interfere with programming.

The Resident Theatre Company, which has produced the Muckenthaler Cultural Center’s summer Theatre-on-the-Green program for three years, has parted ways with the center, citing attempts by center trustees to interfere--complaints similar to those that last week led to the resignation of the center’s curator.

Among other things, some trustees had objected to the depiction of an openly gay character in one play and a slapstick scene in another play in which a character’s pants drop to reveal his boxer shorts, according to Bob Jensen, the troupe’s managing director.

Muckenthaler curator Norman Lloyd resigned Thursday after extended public controversy over a decision by some trustees to remove a nude photo of John Lennon from an art exhibit entitled “Heroes, Heroines, Idols and Icons.” The trustees wound up voting to restore the photo, but Lloyd quit anyway, saying the trustees had usurped his powers by dictating the content of the show.

The theater troupe, a satellite program of Fullerton College, ended its association with the Muckenthaler on March 22, further citing inadequate financial support from the city, which owns the center, and various recurring problems with city staff members, Jensen said.

Center director Judith Peterson said “the main area” of disagreement was financial. But according to Tom Blank, the troupe’s artistic director, “the bottom line” in the troupe’s decision was the trustees’ “insistence over programming. They wanted the right to deny productions based on their interpretation of the community tastes and morality.”

The decision came during contract talks, when trustees on the center’s theater committee complained about two of the three plays mounted last summer: Christopher Durang’s comedy “Beyond Therapy,” which had the gay character, and John Bishop’s spoof “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940,” which included the scene with the falling pants. Jensen said the latter scene had been labeled “gratuitous sex” by theater committee chairwoman Barbara Kilponen. She could not be reached for comment.

Center director Judith Peterson acknowledged that some trustees did not like “Beyond Therapy” and that some patrons walked out of the production and wrote angry letters to the center. The depiction of homosexuality “was probably one of the areas” that drew complaints, she said. But she said she does not recall complaints about Bishop’s play from the trustees or from the public.

With or without the Resident Theatre Company, there was to be a hiatus in the Theatre-on-the-Green series this summer because of renovations to the area in front of the Muckenthaler, where the plays are presented. A new theater platform, new portable scenery supports and 250 seats are being installed.

The city is negotiating with a new company to continue the Theatre-on-the-Green series in 1991, Peterson said.

The Resident Theatre Company, which now hopes to find a new home, had been created specifically for the Theatre-on-the-Green program as an adjunct to the Fullerton College theater department to provide students with professional exposure and experience. Programming choices were submitted each season to Muckenthaler trustees for approval. The vote “had been a formality in the past,” Blank said.

But lately, he said, “our judgment was coming under much more serious scrutiny, which after three successful seasons seemed counterevolutionary.”

“We are very aware of the personality of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center,” Blank added. “We’re not out to, by any means, rub our patrons in the face with depravity.”

Blank and Jensen both see parallels between their situation and the Lennon controversy. “The same problem seems to be surfacing in more than one area,” Blank said. “It would suggest that some attention be paid.”