Bradac to Launch New Bard Troupe : Theater: The ousted Grove artistic director, joined by three actors who are defecting from the Shakespearean group, says season will begin next summer.

Thomas F. Bradac, recently ousted as the artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, has formed a professional theater troupe called Shakespeare/Orange County to operate at Chapman University.

Bradac announced Tuesday that the classical company, which is to work under a Small Professional Theatre contract still in negotiation with Actors’ Equity, will open its seven-week season next summer with “The Winter’s Tale” (July 10 to Aug. 2) and “Hamlet” (Aug. 7 to Aug. 31) at Chapman’s 256-seat Waltmar Theatre.

“This company is being formed from an artistic impulse (with) people I trust and (with whom) I have a long, ongoing relationship,” said Bradac, who estimated the SOC budget at $182,410 for the first year. Of that amount, $122,500 is expected to come from ticket sales. The company plans to hire “six to seven” union professionals, he said, including a stage manager.

Founding the company with Bradac, 44, are Kamella Tate, Daniel Bryan Cartmell and Elizabeth Norment, all leading actors at the Grove who are defecting in the wake of Bradac’s ouster there. Michael Nehring, who is a board member of the Friends and Artists theater company in Los Angeles, is also a founding artist of the new Shakespeare troupe. All four actors appeared with Bradac at Tuesday’s press conference at Chapman.

Chapman University provost Harry L. Hamilton emphasized at the press conference that the university will not be a financial sponsor of the troupe. He characterized the relationship with SOC as “loose but still important” in providing facilities and deriving educational benefits for both faculty and students.

Bradac said he will direct “Hamlet” and that Lee Shallat is tentatively scheduled to stage “The Winter’s Tale.” Shallat has worked extensively at South Coast Repertory and has gone on to television directing. Kristoffer Tabori, another actor/director and SCR artist who works in television, is planning to participate in a 1992 spring fund-raiser for the company, Bradac said.

“What we’re not trying to do is slap something together,” he noted, referring to the artists as well as newly appointed members of the SOC board of trustees. “If these people were not involved, I would not be involved.”

The tall, bespectacled artistic director also expressed confidence that the success of the troupe would not be hindered by competition from the Grove, which currently is the county’s largest classical company and the third-largest troupe (after South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach).

“I spent 12 1/2 years building an audience” at the Grove, Bradac said, “and it’s my belief that the audience out there is familiar (with Shakespeare). It’s not as if we’re starting from zero. Back in 1979, it was very difficult to get people to believe that Shakespeare could happen in Garden Grove. I think I was fairly successful in disproving that.”

With 1992 representing the 400th anniversary of the first public performance of a Shakespeare play in London, Bradac said, “there will be a lot of Shakespeare going on in Orange County, and that can only benefit the audience.” He cited not only “The Tempest,” “Macbeth” and an adapted version of “Henry IV,” Parts I and II, announced over the weekend by the Grove for the summer of 1992, but also productions of “Twelfth Night” at SCR and “The Tempest” by the Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana.

Although the press conference was peppered with veiled references to the controversy that has dogged both the Grove and Bradac since his ouster, he went out of his way to praise his successor, Jules Aaron, for his staging of the Grove’s lastest production, “The Taming of the Shrew.”

He pointed out that the three outdoor Shakespeare plays staged each summer at the Grove are its “largest draw” and that the Bard is “one of the largest draws on the West Coast” from San Diego to Oregon. While he said he was not looking to take theatergoers away from the Grove, he noted that the majority of those who attend the Grove’s outdoor Shakespeare productions also attend SCR productions and that they simply will have more choices available to them with the formation of SOC.

“There are people who drive to (Shakespeare) festivals from all over the United States,” Bradac said. “There’s no reason why they can’t go to Shakespeare/Orange County. . . . All I can say is the audience is there, and that theater breeds more theater. We are not in direct competition with anybody except for the entertainment dollar. And even though (the Waltmar Theatre) is not a proven venue, we think we’ll have a great tie-in to the restaurants in the city and to the (old town) area. We think it’s going to be an attractive package.”

The price of a two-play subscription will average $40, he said, with single tickets for individual shows ranging from $18 to $23.

Bradac held out the prospect that SOC productions eventually will tour in the county and statewide, with the long-range possibility of a national tour as well.

“All of that is kind of in the distance right now,” he said, “but it’s in the works.”

In addition, he unveiled ambitious plans for an educational outreach program for Orange County public schools in alliance with TROUPE, Theatre and Education, which currently brings classical productions to schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And he announced the organization of a live-in summer camp called Shakespearience, to start in August, 1992. It will be designed for high-school students who want hands-on experience in productions and in studying the texts of the plays, he said.

Named to the SOC board of trustees were Richard Bye (chairman) and Carolyn Avalino, both of Orange, Stan Smolin of Garden Grove, H. Bryan Card of Tustin, Gary Pollard of Santa Ana, and Earl See of El Toro. Bradac also will be a trustee.

SOC has been incorporated as a not-for-profit California organization, Bradac said. A volunteer group called Will’s Guild also has been formed to raise funds and assist the troupe. SOC hopes to raise $6,000 with a “Will Power Walk” on Jan. 18 and $10,000 with a celebrity event, “Much Ado About Shakespeare,” on April 18.