Stage Group to Send Glendale Shows to San Diego, Fresno

Pasadena-based Theatre Corp. of America will extend its new series of musicals at Glendale’s Alex Theatre to venues in San Diego and Fresno as well, it was announced Wednesday.

In San Diego, the Theatre Corp. shows will be presented at the Spreckels Theatre and sold under the Starlight Musical Theatre name--or some version of that name, according to TCA senior vice president Jim Bardwil.

The venerable nonprofit Starlight, known for 48 years for its summer musicals under the stars in Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl, had to cancel its own announced musical series under the weight of a crushing debt, estimated at $1 million. TCA will not assume any of that debt, but it will offer its own three-show series free to Starlight’s 6,000 subscribers even as it reaches out to thousands of additional Starlight patrons who did not resubscribe when Starlight stopped its marketing efforts.

“Starlight will be in the name, but it may be a new Starlight,” Bardwil said.

To preserve the continuity, TCA has hired Starlight’s former co-artistic directors, Don and Bonnie Ward, as vice president of San Diego operations and managing director, respectively.

In Fresno, the Theatre Corp. venue will be the 2,163-seat Warnors Theatre, a former 1928 vaudeville/movie palace renovated in the ‘70s by its owner, Frank Caglia.

The expansion of the Alex-originated programming duplicates the concept Pasadena pioneered last year when it created a three-city touring circuit for shows in smaller venues. That circuit originates at the Pasadena Playhouse and then goes to the Poway Center for the Performing Arts in north San Diego County and the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara.