Cultural Staging Area : Two actors’ venues are undergoing major changes as part of North Hollywood’s growing arts scene.

Lankershim Boulevard--specifically the portion north of Magnolia Boulevard--looks like a mess right now.

And to the east, Magnolia itself looks as sleepy as ever.

Looks, though, may be deceiving.

In the midst of the NoHo arts district undergoing a gradual urban renewal engineered by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), the opening act is about to begin. Surrounded by both empty lots planned as the proposed North Hollywood Metro Rail station of the Red Line subway and vacant buildings zoned for artists’ usage, El Portal Theatre is set to open Jan. 15 as the home of Actors Alley Repertory Theatre.

The Magnolia neighborhood east of Lankershim is a different world. Quiet residential streets border it on the north and south, and the modest businesses lining the street are hardly the stuff of an artists’ colony-in-the-making. But here, with remarkable speed, the former home of the Gnu Theatre has taken on new tenants, a new name and new identity: The Epic Theatre Company at the Odessa Theatre, which opened Dec.2 with co-artistic director James Kennedy’s play, “Wrecks.”

Both Actors Alley and the Odessa are part of the rapidly changing cultural face of North Hollywood, which is attracting painters, writers, performers and entire theater companies with not only lower rents and safer streets than Hollywood, but proximity to the center of Los Angeles.

Yet both operations are studies in contrast--the large and the small of it, so to speak, among East Valley theaters.

The words on the marquee of El Portal proclaim “WE DID IT,” an exclamation partly of victory, partly of relief. Few under-99 seat theaters in Los Angeles have tried to develop an over-99 seat theater operation as Actors Alley is attempting (and the most successful previous project, the Los Angeles Theatre Center, eventually closed).

When Actors Alley opens Peter Lefcourt’s “The Audit” and James Thurber’s “The Male Animal” on Jan. 15, it will be the first time that a San Fernando Valley theater has begun a phase-by-phase process, through a special arrangement with Actors’ Equity, to expand from a smaller to a larger theater space.

“There’s no question that, for us, this is an enormous move,” says Actors Alley artistic director Jeremiah Morris.

Under the Equity plan, the company will stage one production during 1994 in a 199-seat arrangement in the “thrust” theater space occupying much of El Portal’s original seating area. In 1995, the number of 199-seat shows will increase to two, and in 1996, to three. The thrust stage will then operate under Equity’s larger theater, or LORT, contract.

Pointing toward the now-empty area on the floor of the 65-year-old former vaudeville house and movie palace, project director and Actors Alley member Terry Evans said that “during the ‘smaller’ shows on this thrust stage, we will simply curtain off the remaining seats, and remove the dividing curtain for each ‘larger’ show.”

During a Nov. 13 public unveiling of the construction work at the theater, Evans and Morris explained how the company, with architecture firm R.F. McCann and Associates, has managed to do El Portal’s reconfiguration for a little more than $300,000.

“It’s been done with a great deal of volunteers,” said Morris. “A lot of ingenuity went into this,” added Evans.

With an original CRA grant of $200,000, plus a $50,000 matching grant from the CRA (met in April), construction at El Portal began in July. Because of requirements imposed by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission due to the theater’s historic landmark status, plans to create a smaller stage in the lobby area were changed. This “arena” stage has been built instead as an enclosed space inside El Portal, as part of a platform area which includes concession stands, a new lobby and a wheelchair ramp and stairs leading to the thrust stage area.

“Although we had our gripes with the restrictions on the original lobby,” says Actors Alley managing director Robert Caine, “it’s turned out to be a real improvement over our first plans. The arena space has a very flexible stage and seating arrangement, which is great for our purposes.” Caine estimates that total construction costs have exceeded the original budget by 5%, or $15,000, “but it’s a manageable cost.”

The only other hiccup during the make-over of El Portal has been the cancellation of the planned holiday play, David Field’s “Legendary Christmas,” because of delays in the installation of electrical equipment.

Soon after Jan. 15, Caine promises, the company will announce a season and subscription drive, with a goal of 5,000 to 7,000 subscribers by the end of 1994.

When Jeff Seymour announced the sudden closing of his award-winning Gnu Theatre in June, few expected new occupants soon--in large part because Seymour had gutted the theater, which he had converted from a delicatessen.

But writer-director James Kennedy, finding that the theater space was available, made an offer to owner Armen Gregorian. “He had several offers from other theater groups,” Kennedy said. But Kennedy, with co-artistic director Reese Howard, was able to quickly move into the space and, starting Sept. 15, rebuild those key elements of the theater space which had been removed, such as the seating area and the control booth.

The total rebuilding cost, including the refurbishing of seats from a closed San Bernardino opera house, exceeded $10,000. “We had a theater,” said Howard, “and now we had to form a company.”

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These veterans of Los Angeles theater presented their plans to interested actors. (Howard had acted on the small theater scene, and Kennedy was a resident playwright at L.A. Actors Theatre in the late ‘70s, then at the now-defunct Fig Tree Theatre in Hollywood.) The pair offered a view, in Kennedy’s words, “of a theater interested in large ideas, large visions. Hence the Epic Theatre Company.”

The theater building’s name, “Odessa,” stuck after the fledgling group talked about Russian theater and initial plans to stage Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.”

Chekhov’s play was being staged at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood, however, so Kennedy offered “Wrecks” as the first of several scheduled productions. (The 1994 season includes the Epic company’s first collaborative show, “Accents,” in January; followed by “Slow Death” to be directed by Howard; Kennedy’s “The Session;” and in March, Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.”)

“I don’t see these people as wrecks,” Kennedy said of his play’s characters, “but they are dealing with being alone and vulnerable during the emotional holiday season. They’re waiting, in a bar, for something better to come along in their lives.”

And, true to this North Hollywood company’s name and optimism, Kennedy notes that this work “has its moments of epic proportion.”

Where and When What: “Wrecks.” Location: Odessa Theatre, 10426 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Hours: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Theater is dark Dec. 23-26. Play closes Jan. 9 Price: $15. Call: (818) 752-0059.