THEATER NOTES : Ventura’s New Stage Group Prepares for Debut : Founders Annie McGough and Gary Poirot, both new residents of the area, plan Sept. 24 opening for ‘The Fantasticks.’

Ventura’s newest company, the Buenaventura Theater Group, debuts Sept. 24 with “The Fantasticks” at the Ventura Elks Lodge. Founders Annie McGough and Gary Poirot tell Theater Notes that their joint experience includes several shows in Las Vegas (the music for the Folies Bergere revue, for instance). Poirot is a songwriter whose credits include a number in “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” He and McGough recently moved to Ventura, where Poirot’s family vacationed when he was a child.

Being new in town has its disadvantages, Poirot admits. “When we ran an ad to cast ‘The Fantasticks,’ we only got four responses, and they were all from people we knew. But then word got out and a number of talented people called us.” The couple have brought in longtime associate Ed Humphrey from Las Vegas to co-direct with Poirot. (The three presented a virtually unpublicized production of “Little Mary Sunshine” at the Ventura Elks Lodge over the Labor Day weekend.)

Plans call for two more shows in the coming season: a revue of the songs of a revered Broadway composer, and next spring an original musical. In the meantime, Poirot, McGough and Humphrey are adapting Victor Herbert’s original score for the operetta “Babes in Toyland” for a Christmas production in Branson, Mo.

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Several other local theater groups have announced their schedules for next season--all subject to last-minute change. If you find more than one group doing the same play after this, don’t blame us for the lack of imagination: Blame the producers for (a) not keeping track of other companies, or (b) the ego to feel that their own production will obliterate the memory of all others.

Ottavio’s in Camarillo will produce Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women” in January, followed by “Squabbles” (mother-in-law moves in, hilarity ensues); the musical about Noah and the Ark, “Two by Two”; Jim Dale’s “Scapino”; Herb Gardner’s “A Thousand Clowns” and Agatha Christie’s perennial “The Mousetrap.”

Ventura-based Plaza Players promises Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” with women in the prominent roles; “The Hands of Its Enemy” by “Children of a Lesser God” author Mark Medoff; a dramatization of Graham Greene’s “Travels with My Aunt,” and Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” (the one where the women withhold their favors until the men stop making war on each other). Group founder and artistic director Michael Maynez also promises “Paella Valenciana,” which will be his first produced original work. Maynez describes it as a black comedy based on events during a recent European vacation.

The Ojai Arts Center will present “Love Letters” in February (the Plaza Players’ version ended recently, but the Ojai group actually announced its first), then Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” and an unnamed melodrama.

The Santa Susana Repertory Company (based at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza) will debut with “Man of La Mancha” beginning Sept. 16, with next year’s shows including “The Boys in Autumn” (Tom and Huck in their golden years) in February, followed by “Bullshot Crummond” and “The Little Shop of Horrors.”

As previously announced, the California Shakespeare Company in Moorpark opens its new season with “Love’s Labours Lost” on Sept. 23, followed by “Henry V,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” and in April the oft-performed “Twelfth Night.”

For its upcoming season, the Moorpark Melodrama will program shows that have been particular audience favorites in recent years: “The Phantom of the Melodrama,” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Popeye the Sailor,” “The Pink Panther Strikes Again,” “Beauty and the Beast, Really” and “Cinderella Meets the Wolfman.”

The Conejo Players, evidently feeling that three productions of “Nunsense!” in a year’s time aren’t enough (or four, if you count Ojai’s “Nunsense! 2,” which is virtually the same show), has added a fourth, in January. Conejo Players will also be doing “Love Letters” in June. Additional programming from the Conejo group includes “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (last performed at Moorpark College in 1993), “Oklahoma!” (seen at the Camarillo Community Theater in 1991 and the Ojai Arts Center in 1993) and “Lettice and Lovage,” which the Plaza Players produced last year. The group will also present productions of “Wait Until Dark,” Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” and the recent Broadway musical noir, “City of Angels.”

And Ventura College will begin its 1994-95 season with Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” beginning Sept. 30, followed by George Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man,” the annual Student One-Act Play Festival and Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel’s Orwellian parable “The Memorandum.”

For season-ticket information, call Ottavio’s at 484-9909, Plaza Players at 643-9460, Ojai Arts Center at 646-0117, Santa Susana Repertory Company at 449-2787, California Shakespeare Company at 498-3354, Moorpark Melodrama at 529-1212 and Conejo Players at 495-3715.

And a final note to producers: Three or more plays are already announced as opening on each of the following weekends in 1995: Feb. 24, April 21, April 27, June 16 and June 24. Would you people please speak to one another.