Troupe Waits Theater OK in San Juan

It may be a small, long-deserted structure on a side street, but it’s home. And for the members of the nomadic South Orange County Community Theatre, the prospect of any permanent facility is reason to celebrate.

Tonight, the San Juan Capistrano City Council is expected to approve a deal that would give the troupe use of a former Pacific Bell building downtown for just $1 a year. The group has bounced around among 30 different South County facilities since it was founded three years ago.

“It’s amazing,” said troupe director B. J. Scott. “I still can’t really believe it until I have my own keys. That should happen Wednesday.”

Scott said she plans to call the facility the Camino Real Playhouse. Its back-street locale on El Camino Real, next to the historic Blas Aguilar adobe and near the Swallow’s Inn, allows for plenty of parking, she said. The wide-open former interior will mean enough room for a large backstage area and an audience area for about 100 seats.

“One thing we are really excited about: It’s soundproof,” Scott said. “If you have performed in some of the places we have, where a motorcycle (going by) outside and even the flushing of a toilet can disrupt the entire room, you know why we like that so much.”

It also has a side room that Scott hopes to turn into an office and theater library for the public. “We have about 1,500 scripts and other technical books that we want to make available,” she said.

At the moment, however, Scott and her cohorts have plenty of work facing them to get the building ready for a scheduled April 1 opening of “Trapped by the Treacherous Twins,” a melodramatic comedy. They need to clean out a 3,600-square-foot portion of the building, which the city has been using for storage since 1985, and do some minor renovation.

“For the first show we may have everyone bring their own folding chairs, like we do for our summer Shakespeare shows,” Scott said. Even with the new home, the troupe plans to continue its outdoor summer Shakespeare productions, she added.

The city will lease the building to the theater company for $1 a year, Scott said, and provide help in clearing out city materials being stored there.

“The city has been wonderful,” she said. “The fact that these days they have no money for cultural institutions doesn’t mean they are not interested in culture.”

Last year, the troupe lost its bid to acquire a lease on the old San Juan Saloon, which the City Council awarded to a Western-wear store.

“We have always believed that a community theater would be good for the city,” Jones said. “I think the theater will offer a nice evening for folks to come to town, which helps all of our downtown merchants.”

Because the city’s plans for the building could still change and its use as a theater is still untested, Scott plans to make all her renovations temporary for the moment.

“We’re going to have to be creative,” she said. “But that’s typical of theater--you have to ad lib.”