‘Actors Alley’ Moves to a New Stage : The rent went up at its Van Nuys theater, so the troupe packed its props over to Sherman Oaks, where it will take over the former Main Stage Theatre

If there are two charming theater cliches that are also stark theater realities, they are: 1) The show must go on, and 2) If I have one life to live, let me live it in a trunk. Look, for example, at what Actors Alley Repertory Theater has been going through for the past few months.

Along with countless L.A. nomads and transplants emptying out their old abodes and stuffing trucks full of their possessions with the advent of the busy summer moving season, the members of Actors Alley vacated their Van Nuys Boulevard haunts in Sherman Oaks in late May and moved into the former Main Stage Theatre on North Hollywood’s Riverside Drive.

The people at Actors Alley are putting a game face on the move, with artistic director Jeremiah Morris ready to enumerate the advantages of the new home, and managing director Robert Caine making assurances that the transplant is not affecting the theater’s operation, identity or programming. Caine said: “We ain’t ready to throw in the towel.”

The change does mark the end of an era for theater in the Valley. It means the departure of a seeming fixture in an upscale, urbane and increasingly cosmopolitan neighborhood starved for theater. Actors Alley had resided in its small but friendly Van Nuys Boulevard location just south of Ventura Boulevard for more than 15 years. While most smaller Valley theaters were situated to the east, Actors Alley was one of the few long-running mid-Valley houses. (The Gnu Theatre, Group Repertory Theatre and Magnolia Playhouse are in North Hollywood; the Victory, Venture and Alliance theaters in Burbank. While the veteran Back Alley Theatre closed its Van Nuys doors last year, the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks and West End Playhouse in Van Nuys remain active.)

The move also means there will be one less Valley theater, as the Main Stage, which had been operated by Albert Bratchell, a professional hairdresser, will bow out for the new occupant. The Main Stage had been used as a rental space, and it is the third theater in the area in as many years to shut down: Along with the Main Stage and Back Alley, the defunct Room For Theatre is a fading memory for Valley theatergoers.

The change at Actors Alley was precipitated by the same forces that forced Room For Theatre’s closing--a rent increase. According to Caine, when the Sherman Oaks lease was up for renewal in February, owner Robert Lim wanted to almost double the monthly rent, from $2,600 to $5,000.

“I thought that the price we were already paying was more than enough, to be honest,” Caine said. “This new figure was completely beyond our budget. But he is a businessman. I can’t blame him. That area has become a very hot commercial zone since we moved there. He’s just asking for the price he thinks he can get for it.” (Fab’s, a restaurant next door to the theater, has rented the space as part of its expansion plans.)

The reaction of Actors Alley’s actors and friends was a mixture of wistfulness and resentment. Both emotions came out during a final Saturday night party, when many toasts to 15 years were made. A few spray-painted messages on the vacant theater’s walls, such as “Eat at Que Pasa,” a nearby restaurant. It really meant “Don’t eat at Fab’s.”

“There were some folks who were understandably upset,” Morris said.

Sometimes, the feelings crept into the last performances at the old venue. During one show with the Alley Oops, the theater’s improvisational group, Morris recalls how an actress, who takes on the role of Dorothy in a “Wizard of Oz” skit, began to cry on stage as she chanted “There’s no place like home.”

“She really cried. Several people in our company have been associated with only one theater--ours. There was a great deal of sadness when the move was inevitable,” Morris said.

Finding a new home was hardly automatic. Morris and Caine scoured the mid-Valley area, with disappointing results. “We looked at the Back Alley building. The theater itself was gutted. We would have had to rebuild an entirely new theater, which we couldn’t afford. Besides the square-foot price was way beyond our range,” Morris said.

Caine points out that, in the “nice parts” of the Valley, as in every inviting and relatively safe area in Los Angeles, “you’re going to be faced with high rents.” Either that, or a theater group about to be thrown out on the street is faced with the problems of the low rent areas, as when Morris and Caine visited the West End Playhouse in central Van Nuys. “It’s hard to even tell there’s a theater from the street. The parking lot was in terrible condition and full of broken glass.”

So, these two caretakers of the Actors Alley fortunes were confronted with several demands--far beyond the kind of work being put on stage--that make a theater viable. “Audiences require some basic things,” Morris said. “They deal with the front of the house. Is it in a safe neighborhood? Is there parking? Air conditioning? A roomy lobby? Comfortable seats?” (In fact, Morris says his audience’s only artistic desire is, “Give us more musicals.”)

Given this wish list, the Main Stage space amply filled the bill. There is, as Morris’ wife, Laura, puts it, “a real box office.” There is plenty of parking. Although the theater’s low ceiling, which hides ducts for the large air conditioning system, presents its own problems--Morris’ hopes for staging “You Can’t Take It With You” were dashed with the move, since the play’s set is at least two stories tall. There is a refreshment bar, which Morris hopes can provide the theater with a modest sum of weekly cash.

Above all, there is a large lobby, complete with restrooms. Moving through the tiny lobby of the old 67-seat Sherman Oaks location during intermission felt like a replay of college students stuffing themselves inside a phone booth. It also meant that you had to walk across the stage to use restrooms adjacent to the dressing rooms, leading to frequently embarrassed glances between actor and audience member in various states of undress.

“When I announced before a performance that the new location included restrooms in a big lobby,” says Morris, “I received the biggest applause since I’ve been with the theater.” Morris replaced Jordan Charney as artistic director in February, 1989.

The theater has assumed the remaining 34 months on Bratchell’s lease, at a monthly rental figure of $2,400--less than what the theater was paying in Sherman Oaks, Caine said. And for this price, Actors Alley has expanded to a 97-seat house.

There are, of course, downsides. The site lacks storage and office space. While Caine is shopping for an office, much of the theater’s technical equipment is stored in the outside rear parking lot, or in a rented garage, or in the lobby (“Before we open,” says Caine, “I promise that it will be out of there”).

Although Caine and Morris deny that the move placed Actors Alley in financial straits, it forced a change of artistic plans. “The only hole we’re in,” said Morris, “is that we had to push back the season’s opening from mid-June to mid-July. That’s a little more dark time than I had originally counted on.”

The season is shaping up to be a typically eclectic one for the theater. The first show will be either “Tintypes,” a musical, or the West Coast premiere of Kevin Patterson’s “A Most Secret War,” about the tormented British scientist Alan Turing, who was also the subject of Hugh Whitemore’s play, “Breaking the Code.”

Rounding out the schedule: a revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”; John Lisbon Wood’s “Feast of Illusion”; and the regular Christmas offering, “Bah! Humbug!”; the theater’s free, early week program, Actors Alley II, made up of “Post-Freedom Blues,” by Actors Alley member Jean Howell; Hindy Brooks’ “What Are Mothers For?”; and a new play by Peter Lefcourt, author of the acclaimed “Only the Dead Know Burbank.” Morris is negotiating rights for Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap,” and a sixth, to-be-announced show “which can include as many members of our company as possible.”

Morris professes a certain amount of care for his actors, and they have returned the loyalty. On moving day, 30 of the 60 Actors Alley members helped lug items to North Hollywood.

Whether that loyalty will extend to a subscription audience, a base of support critical to the theater’s survival, remains to be seen. Caine is confident that the longtime audience will go east with the theater. Morris, on the other hand, remarks that “some people who live in Encino just won’t drive farther east than Sherman Oaks.” (Actors Alley subscribers number approximately 400, plus 500 to 600 regular, non-subscribing patrons.)

Since neither expects a significant increase of subscribers from the Main Stage audience, they are taking no chances with potential audience members falling through the cracks: Current subscribers, plus those on the theater’s own and other mailing lists will be invited to an opening party at the new theater to beef up subscriber support.