Vote Could Lift Curtain on Live Stage : Theater: L.A. redevelopment agency approves $250,000 for troupe to begin renovating El Portal theater. It would be first Actors Equity-size site since ’66.

A small theatrical troupe in North Hollywood on Thursday took a significant step toward establishing the first major live theater complex in the San Fernando Valley in decades.

Actors Alley received approval for $250,000 in grants and loans from the Community Redevelopment Agency to begin renovating the venerable El Portal theater in North Hollywood. The funds will be used to temporarily divide the now-dark theater into 199- and 99-seat spaces to open in the spring.

The funding package for the initial expansion must still be approved by the Los Angeles City Council.

The proposal by the troupe--which has been performing in a 99-seat, converted storefront for 21 years--is a benchmark because theaters with more than 99 seats have full Actors Equity status, meaning performers are paid union scale at minimum. This greatly increases production costs, and there have been no Equity-sized theaters in the Valley since 1966.

Actors Alley’s long-range plans call for raising additional funds within five years to convert the El Portal, which is located on Lankershim Boulevard, into a single, state-of-the-art, 700-seat theater.

The troupe hopes to move into the El Portal by March when its current lease, which is not subject to renewal, is up.

The redevelopment agency has previously ventured into theater, with disastrous results. It initially funded the hugely ambitious Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown project that folded despite the agency’s spending more than $20 million to try and keep it afloat.

James Wood, chairman of the agency’s board, promised Thursday that the mistakes made on the LATC matter would not be repeated. This time, he said, the agency would pay only for theater renovations.

“The lesson we learned with the L.A. Theatre Center is that if you support the operations side, if you support the production side, you are in the black hole of the arts,” Wood said at the meeting at the agency’s downtown headquarters.

“If you come to us and tell us you need money to keep your doors open,” he added, turning to the troupe’s officials, “you are not going to get it.”

The funding--a $200,000 loan and a $50,000 grant--was approved unanimously by the board over objections by a few members of the public. North Hollywood business owner Mildred Weller, a longtime agency foe, criticized the board for not first seeking opinions on the matter from a citizens advisory group.

In addition to City Council approval, the theater must raise $50,000 on its own before any agency funds are released.

“That should not be a problem,” said an elated Robert Caine, Actors Alley’s managing director, after the vote. Caine, who runs a collection agency in Van Nuys and gives his time to the theater as a volunteer, allowed that the troupe had never before raised as much as $50,000 in one funding drive.

He estimated that the renovations would take about two months and would not disturb the Art Deco ornamentation of the theater, which was designed by noted theater architect L.A. Smith and opened in 1926.

Actors Alley hopes to begin its tenure at the El Portal on April 2 with a revival of “The Male Animal,” a comedy by James Thurber and Elliot Nugent. It will be followed by the debut of another comedy, “The Audit” by Peter Lefcourt, and then an as yet unannounced production to complete the 1992-93 subscription season.

The troupe joins a long line of groups and impresarios who have tried to bring Equity-sized theater to the Valley, which has not had a major venue for musicals or plays since the Valley Music Theatre in Woodland Hills folded.

Among the latest were a group calling itself the Valley Civic Light Opera, which could not sell enough tickets to open its announced series of musicals that were to be presented in 1991 in a Universal City Hilton ballroom, and a failed attempt the same year by producer Kevin Von Feldt to present large-scale musicals and dramas at the El Portal.

The Von Feldt venture--which promised a season of shows headlined by John Davidson, Don Rickles and other celebrities--had a particularly disastrous ending, even by theatrical standards. The would-be producer advertised and sold tickets for the shows before securing agreements with either his stars or local unions.

He eventually declared bankruptcy and pleaded no contest in Los Angeles Municipal Court to a charge of untrue and misleading advertising. He was fined $750, ordered to reimburse ticket holders and placed on three years probation.

Caine said Actors Alley will avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors. “We did not just start doing theater in the Valley yesterday,” he said. “We have been building an audience for years.”

He said that as a businessman, he will be wary of attempts to force the troupe into a larger space than it can economically accommodate. “We will grow gradually,” he said. “It’s a business matter. You can’t have artistic types making these kinds of decisions.”