A Dramatic Rejuvenation in Old Town : Theater: New Knightsbridge Company plans to offer 18 to 24 dramas per year--more than double that of comparable local outlets.

Live dramatic theater has come to the heart of Old Town with a flourish.

The Knightsbridge Theater, a remarkably ambitious new company, has swung into action in a spiffy 99-seat Actors Equity theater in the red-bricked and renovated Braley Building, a 1906 national historic landmark.

The basement-level theater on South Raymond Avenue gives the redeveloped and festive shopping and entertainment mecca its first intimate, live theater since the departure of the much-missed Bank Playhouse more than a decade ago.

It’s a visionary venture on a scale that makes other theaters in the San Gabriel Valley pale by comparison.

For instance, the Knightsbridge plans to produce 18 to 24 plays a year in classical, original and contemporary dramas. That’s more than double the number planned by other local theaters.

“We hope to draw from this huge population of people 25 to 50 years old who throng Old Town on weekends and never see theater,” said 29-year-old Knightsbridge founder and artistic director Joseph Stachura.

A sample of Knightsbridge’s theatrical cross-pollination unfurled last weekend with a wide-ranging trio of plays set to run through July: Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” and Neil Simon’s Chekov-inspired “The Good Doctor.”

Cast with separate groups of actors and directors, the three dramas, in still another ambitious dimension, are staged back-to-back with two of the three plays in performance Friday through Sunday.

Since most theaters in the San Gabriel Valley--the Pasadena Playhouse being one of the exceptions--habitually play it safe with revivals of beloved old musicals and favorite Broadway standards, the commitment by the Knightsbridge to original drama fills a sorry vacuum.

The group’s first original play will be a romantic comedy, “I Must Be a Dreamer” by David Artuso. This is about a shy man in an office who starts having strange dreams. It will be part of the second three-play package scheduled for August, which will also include “The Taming of the Shrew.”

The third offering will likely be a Tennessee Williams play, possibly “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

How did all this get off the ground in a trendy space that, in 1918, was an Oldsmobile dealership?

“Well, first, four months ago, I walked into the mayor’s office and asked for help,” Stachura explained. “He (Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole) was very supportive and wrote us a letter of recommendation. Our real estate lady, Carol Walker, was also incredibly helpful. Those two people were crucial.” Then there was “a ton” of paperwork--getting an entertainment permit and a conditional-use permit and taking it before a city review panel.

“For the last three days, we’ve put in 18-hour days to prepare for the city inspector,” Stachura said. “Thank God we passed. . . . All of that was even tougher to wade through than the four months it’s taken to clean out what was an ugly and debris-filled underground maze of rooms.”

A tour of the 4,000-square-foot facility found freshly painted and remodeled rehearsal spaces, equipment rooms and dressing rooms, plus a comfortable theater with cushy seats.

As for the cost of the start-up, Stachura said he is running “arguably the only for-profit theater in Pasadena, which is financed entirely by private money--our own--not grants or matching funds. Right now we’re up to $58,000, everything we’ve earned over the last three years.”

By “we” Stachura means himself and his wife, key artistic associate Barbara Naylor, who is a former British midwife, nurse and theater maven whom Stachura met on a beach in Portugal seven years ago while backpacking through Europe.

After three years traveling and working together in theaters in France and England, Stachura said, the couple came to Southern California four years ago. They quickly started up a fledgling Shakespeare company called the Blackfriars, producing and acting in such venues as The Playhouse of the Foothills in Tujunga and The Magnolia Playhouse in North Hollywood.

Meanwhile, to make ends meet, Stachura worked selling subscriptions for the Pasadena Playhouse and Naylor worked as a nurse at Huntington Memorial Hospital, where she continues to be employed.

Stachura, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, said he sought to launch a theater in Pasadena “because there aren’t a million theaters out here like in Hollywood.”

Beginning with a core of eight actors, the Knightsbridge has drawn talent from all over greater Los Angeles.

“We are going to concentrate on acting,” Stachura underscored. “If an actor comes through these doors to audition, we want him to know he’s going to get a fair opportunity. We’re going to break down the fourth wall and produce in-your-face theater.

* “The Good Doctor,” “As You Like It,” “Waiting for Godot,” alternating at the Knightsbridge Theater, 35 S. Raymond Ave., Braley Building Basement, Pasadena, Friday, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Ends Aug. 1. $10-$15. (818) 440-0821.