Kelly McGillis May Join Board of Grove Festival

Hollywood actress Kelly McGillis, best known for starring roles in “Top Gun,” “Witness” and “The Accused,” is expected to join the board of directors of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, according to its artistic director, Thomas F. Bradac.

Bradac--who was McGillis’ drama teacher at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach during the mid-’70s--said she was nominated to the board by the Grove trustees on March 28. The nomination still needs the approval of the Garden Grove City Council, which Bradac said is expected later this month.

McGillis, who lives in Los Angeles, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman, Jay Sures of the Bauer-Benedek agency, last week denied that she was even considering joining the Grove board. “I asked her, and she’s not joining,” Sures had said in response to an inquiry from The Times.

Reached again Tuesday, Sures conceded that he had not spoken directly with McGillis as claimed but that he had transmitted her response from someone who had. Bradac, however, said McGillis attended the Grove trustees’ meeting of March 28 as his guest and privately indicated then that she would accept the nomination.

“She’s not doing this just as a favor to me,” Bradac added. “I think she has a legitimate interest in Shakespeare. She is a classically trained actress, and she has done a lot of Shakespeare.”

In fact, McGillis surprised the movie industry when she left Hollywood last year to become a member of the professional Shakespearean theater company at the Folger Library in Washington. In November, after starring there in “Twelfth Night,” McGillis left the troupe to have a baby, which is due in June.

McGillis’ mother, Joan, directs plays in Orange County, including a production of “Sarcophagus” now at Orange Coast College.

The Grove’s five-play 1990 subscription season begins May 17 at the Gem Theatre with a ‘20s-style update of Moliere’s “The Miser.”

In a related announcement Tuesday, Bradac said he will join his actors on stage this season for the first time in nearly a decade, playing Dogberry, a comic role in “Much Ado About Nothing,” which opens in June at the Festival Amphitheatre.

“I originally came here as an actor,” he said. “I think it’s important to put myself through the process I ask my actors to go through.”