Outdoor Series Planned at Muckenthaler Center

Fullerton Civic Light Opera will mount an outdoor season this summer in a newly constructed amphitheater here, bringing dinner theater back to the city’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center for the first time since 1989.

FCLO artistic director Griff Duncan said Thursday that the subscription series would consist of three productions: “Quilters,” a musical about a mother and her six daughters on the American frontier (June 11-July 10); “Lend Me a Tenor,” a slapstick farce about an opera company (July 16-Aug. 8); and “Foxfire,” an Appalachian drama about a conflict between a mother and her son (Aug. 13-Sept. 5).

Duncan said the FCLO budget for the series “could go as high as $250,000.” He said he plans to use professional actors, “but the extent of that will depend on the kind of contract I can work out with the union” Actors Equity.

The Laguna Playhouse put in a bid to stage a summer season at the Muckenthaler in 1992. That season was postponed because of a construction delay on the 238-seat outdoor amphitheater, which cost $750,000, according to Betty Tesman, director of development for the Muckenthaler Center Cultural Foundation. The playhouse did not renew its proposal this year.

“We didn’t want to go head-to-head with FCLO,” said Richard Stein, Laguna Playhouse executive director. “They were the obvious choice because of their strong local following” in North County.

Ironically, FCLO’s “Quilters” will be identical to the “Quilters” the playhouse staged twice in Laguna Beach--in 1987 and 1990--and again at an international community-theater competition in Ireland in 1988. Teri Ralston, who directed those productions (and, more recently, an identical revival in Los Angeles), will direct the FCLO revival.

Duncan said the shows at the Muckenthaler amphitheater will run Tuesdays and Wednesdays without dinner and Thursdays to Sundays with dinners offered buffet-style. A three-show subscription will cost $54 (without dinner) and $78 to $81 (with dinner). Single tickets will cost from $18 to $21 (without dinner) and $26 to $29 (with dinner).

Summer theater, a tradition at the Muckenthaler, had been offered there by various producers at least since 1974, Tesman said. The Resident Theatre Co., affiliated with Fullerton College, had mounted a Theater-on-the-Green series for three summers before that came to an end in 1989 amid a dispute with Muckenthaler officials over the programming.