‘Bold’ Star’s a One-Man ‘Agency’ : Just when Jeff Trachta’s soap role seemed to be diminishing, he found options. Now he has a manager, a sitcom development deal and a third music video planned.

Jeff Trachta, who for five years has played fashion scion Thorne Forrester on the CBS daytime drama “The Bold and the Beautiful,” is accustomed to singing in concerts for up to 30,000 fans in Europe, where the soap is a huge hit. But it took his performance in a one-man show at a 99-seat theater in West Hollywood to make the local entertainment community sit up and take notice.

For the past few weeks, Trachta has been spending Wednesday nights at the Coast Playhouse emoting in “Agency,” a comedy-drama that follows the life of an actor, Joel Krane, for 10 years as he moves from struggling wanna-be to disillusioned television star. Trachta portrays more than two dozen characters, male and female, most denizens of the Los Angeles talent agency that is the show’s primary setting.

Besides the initially wide-eyed, sincere Krane, for instance, there is the gravelly voiced Lydia Sanders, the agency’s veteran receptionist-cum-housemother. Putting in appearances are such clients as fictional actor Wesley Addison, a seasoned pro obsessed with having a lifelong good hair day; the Fifth Dimension’s Billy Davis Jr. and Charles Nelson Reilly.

Trachta moves seamlessly from one to another, sort of a sane “Sybil.” He also sings and does dead-on impersonations of Edith and Archie Bunker, Pee-wee Herman and Ronald Reagan. (The play continues on Wednesdays indefinitely.)

His efforts have been rewarded handsomely. Manager Buddy Morra, who represents the likes of Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, signed him. And while the play was being written, Trachta performed it for the president of Castle Rock Television, the production company behind “Seinfeld.” He was offered a sitcom development deal on the spot.

Not bad for someone who has had the acting bug since he played Papa Bunny in a third-grade Easter pageant, and who years later, as a 6-foot-3 ex-cast member of the soap “Loving,” had to earn his living by cleaning ovens for a company called the Little Elves.

“I’ve been rehearsing this show for over 33 years now--in my living room, for friends, in the makeup room at ‘The Bold and Beautiful,’ ” says Trachta, in his CBS dressing room after the day’s taping, of the gift for vocal impressions cultivated as a youngster in his native New York City. “Being the clown--because Thorne is so serious--people had been telling me to do a one-man show.”

One of those people, actor-producer-coach Jeffrey Marcus, put Trachta in touch with Charles Randolph-Wright, director and co-author of the long-running musical “The Diva Is Dismissed,” who conceived the show’s premise upon watching a videotape of Trachta’s characters.

“I tease Jeff now, and say, ‘I thought you were just another vacuous soap star,’ ” Randolph-Wright says. “Here’s someone who’s diametrically opposed in his look--that leading-man look--to what he actually does. I realized how incredible it would be to take that and harness it in a real context.”

Even the Northridge earthquake the morning after their first meeting did not deter the two. They spent the next three weeks plumbing Trachta’s life for fodder to be fictionalized, ultimately sharing co-writing credit. It was through Randolph-Wright’s contacts that Trachta found himself in the office of Castle Rock Television President Glenn Padnick.

Padnick’s immediate offer of a development deal, targeted for the 1995-96 season--”if I was interested,” Trachta says with a wry smile--was as ironic as it was welcome: Only days earlier, the actor had been notified that his status as a “contract” player on “The Bold and the Beautiful” was being reduced to “recurring” for story-line purposes. His soap role has since been rejuvenated--but Trachta has rejected a request to go back on contract.

“I want to keep all my options open at this time,” he says. “I’ve assured them I will play Thorne as long as I can. I love it, and I love the people here. The soap has been an incredible gift in my life. It has opened so many doors.”

One door has led to a real-life singing career with cast-mate Bobbie Eakes, who plays his ex-wife and singing partner Macy. Having performed in all 50 states and throughout Europe, the duo will soon make their third music video and have released a best-selling CD in the Netherlands, to be distributed in this country by the end of the year; Trachta will spend his 34th birthday in October performing a sold-out concert for 10,000 people in Rotterdam.

“I never thought I’d do any of this,” he says with the same open sincerity of the early Joel Krane. “I’d never even been on a plane till I came here at 21, from New York. I was thrilled just to have a $99- ticket.”