Laguna Playhouse Marks Its 70th Year : Theater: The renowned institution, which now sells 90% of its available seats, is saving its money to build a second, experimental venue.

Friday evening, October 22nd, 1920, a public meeting was held at the house of Mrs. Isabel Frost and Miss Gayne Peake for the purpose of organizing a Dramatic Club in Laguna Beach. --From the minutes of the first meeting that led to the creation of the Laguna Playhouse.

Seven decades to the day that Laguna Playhouse was founded, outgoing artistic director Douglas Rowe stood before a small crowd at the site of the community theater’s former home to mark its 70th anniversary. As a proper retiring chief would, he spoke words of inspiration.

“We must never lose sight of our goal: to provide a creative outlet for our constituency while presenting quality theater for our community,” Rowe said.

As evidence of that commitment, playhouse officials pointed to the theater’s longevity, its stature as Orange County’s oldest and largest community theater, and the national and international awards it has picked up in recent years.

From its genesis in 1920, the company staged its first productions in private homes and coastal storefronts, then opened its first bona fide venue in 1924. That was the 219-seat Old playhouse, located on a central Laguna side street where Monday’s commemoration was held. Today, home is on busy Laguna Canyon Road at the 418-seat Moulton Theater, which opened in 1969 on land donated by the city.

The playhouse, with a $1-million operating budget, has some 8,200 subscribers for an amateur main stage season and another 1,000 for its Youth Theater, regularly selling 90% of all its seats, according to executive director Richard A. Stein.

Respected locally, it won first place in a 1987 national competition for community theaters, sponsored by the American Assn. of Community Theaters, for its production of “Quilters.” The frontier musical was then entered into a similar international contest in Ireland, where it came in second.

Mike Farrell, known for his role in the television series “MASH,” is one of several stars who have appeared at the Laguna Playhouse before making it big; others, such as Bette Davis, have acted there well after establishing their reputations.

“The theater is tremendously highly regarded--it was then and is now,” said Farrell, who once lived in Laguna Beach and was cast by Rowe at the old playhouse. In a telephone interview, Farrell said he still attends “periodically” and describes what he sees as “invariably professional-level work.”

Further growth is the aim of playhouse officials as they look to the decades ahead, although a $3-million capital campaign to establish a smaller second theater for professional productions has been stalled at $900,000. Rowe has said that the “greatest failure” of his managerial career has been his inability to galvanize the board into purchasing a second site.

Stein, hired to the newly created job of executive director in February, is optimistic, however. Though it will be “several months” before any decisions are made, and the push for a second theater is already 7 years old, trustees have in mind three sites, he said. These include a vacant Laguna Beach General Telephone building long under consideration despite setbacks in plans to establish another venue there.

“The key is, we can be more successful in fund raising with a site to sell,” said Stein, explaining that new and experimental work would be featured at a second theater. It would also enable longer runs for popular works at the Moulton. (Plans call for lease of more storage space at a third location.)

Board president Pat Kollenda said Monday that theater officials agree that the playhouse audience and others would welcome work that stretches beyond middle-of-the-road, the fare for which the community theater is known.

“We feel there’s a real need for a small equity house that can do more avant-garde, cutting-edge work,” she said. “Laguna Beach is a very sophisticated art community, as is the surrounding area.”

Several attending Monday’s event supported the idea of an additional stage. About 50 past and present volunteers--some of whom began their association with the theater in the 1920s--attended the cake-and-punch celebration.

“As long as we don’t lose what we have now,” said Don Williamson, a volunteer since the 1930s whose grandmother, Marjorie, was a longtime playhouse director. “As long as it’s an addition, not a substitution.”