ENTERTAINMENT NEWS : Drama on the Menu : Granada Hills dinner theater, in its 16th season, takes prides in putting theatrical productions first, with food ‘a nice amenity.’

Although some people denigrate community dinner theater as something less than real theater, Jo Erickson doesn’t let it bother her. She’s too busy running a successful dinner theater.

Erickson is the founder and executive director of the Granada Theatre in Granada Hills, which opened its 16th season last week with its production of “Black Comedy,” written by Peter Schaffer.

“I feel we do as good work as some of the (Equity) waiver houses,” Erickson says. “Unlike a lot of dinner theaters that are staged in restaurants, our goal is to be theater first, and the food is a nice amenity.”

Each week, the theater, which has its own chef, offers three performances with meals and two with no food.

Erickson, a former UCLA theater arts department student, started the company in 1979. Its first production, Neil Simon’s “Prisoner of Second Avenue,” made its debut in January, 1980, at the Granada Hills Women’s Club. Erickson continued to stage about four productions a year for the next five years at the club before moving the company into its own facility, an 82-seat storefront theater near Balboa Boulevard and Chatsworth Street.

In 1992, the company moved into its present 120-seat theater on Chatsworth Street. The theater’s subscribers’ list has grown to 1,800.

Each year, the theater’s season consists of a mystery, a musical, a comedy and what Erickson calls a “comedy-drama.”

The rest of the Granada Theatre’s season: “Seven Keys to Baldpate,” a comic mystery written by George M. Cohan, April 21 to June 4; “Fiddler on the Roof,” July 7 to Aug. 20, and the George S. Kaufman comedy, “Solid Gold Cadillac,” Sept. 22 to Nov. 5.

Erickson says she spends a lot of time going to other theaters in the Valley.

“I go all the time to look at actors, costumes . . . , “ Erickson says, “to get ideas for sets--and anything else I can steal.”

Granada Theatre, 18167 Chatsworth St., Granada Hills, presents “Black Comedy” at 8 p.m. Thursday ($14.50) and Friday ($16.50), 7 p.m. Saturday followed by dinner ($26.50), 11:15 a.m. Sunday brunch performance ($23.50) and 5:30 p.m. Sunday followed by dinner ($25). Ends March 17. Call (818) 363-6887.

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GOING SOLO: Actor-playwright Meegan King has seen a few solo performances in his time, and he has some strong feelings about them.

“None of them have really conveyed what I think people are all about,” he says. “Some of them, like Paul Linke, take a very serious view, or a slapstick approach like John Leguizamo. Or I’d look at Anne Deavere Smith’s (“Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992”) and I’d never get to know who her people really were.”

King, a former student of Cal State Northridge’s Teenage Drama Workshop and former drama major at CSUN, believes that he has a better way, and is set to present it starting tonight at the Eclectic Theatre in North Hollywood.

“I want to create human beings rather than stereotypes, composites of people I’ve known,” he says. King’s “Livin’ in Dreamland” is a gallery of characters who, in the creator’s words, “make it to Hollywood.”

Ah, but do they make it in Hollywood? “I include a failed actor in the piece,” King says, “and the rest are supporting characters--a Teamsters official, a studio stand-by painter, a struggling producer, a Valley guy recalling the day Kennedy was shot. They aren’t all necessarily struggling, and I wouldn’t say that they’re disillusioned. None of them has given up. But they are all a bit wiser in the time they’ve been here. Some of them are changing direction in their lives.”

King has changed the course of his play, too, starting with the title. The work premiered at the Eclectic in October as “Livin’ Another Life” and was structured as a recovering alcoholic actor’s running monologue, interrupted by various people in his life. “The title was inspired, “ King says, “by Laurence Olivier’s comment that what attracted him to acting was the chance it offered to live another life.

“It lacked a solid through-line, so I pretty much revamped the whole thing. My director (and Eclectic co-artistic director) John Schmidt helped the changes along--he’s one of the sharpest theater people I’ve met. And the Eclectic’s small (45-seat) house forces me to play things smaller, more intimate. That’s not easy, since I come from a family of broad-playing, musical comedy actors.”

“Livin’ in Dreamland” plays 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at the Eclectic Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood. Runs indefinitely. $10. (213) 466-1767.

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HARD LESSONS: They say those that can, do and those that can’t, teach.

For almost 20 years, the Dick Grove School of Music proved that saying wrong. The school was a Mecca for Hollywood hopefuls who came to Los Angeles wanting to be studio musicians, arrangers and composers.

Here was a place where you could learn the tricks of the trade from the professionals who actually worked the studios--people who were doing it.

The school was a first of its kind, but it filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and finally closed in 1992 due to dwindling enrollment and other factors. But Mark Harrison is trying to fill the gap it left.

Harrison, a former teacher at Grove, has formed Harrison Music Workshops, which will offer 10-week classes in Woodland Hills. The instructors he’s hired are also former Grove School teachers. The opening curriculum consists of 11 distinct classes, ranging from Pop Keyboard Harmony 1 to Rhythm Section Arranging 1.

The new school will offer an alternative to more traditional educational options such as universities and colleges, Harrison says, and the focus of his marketing plans will be different from Grove’s.

“When Dick Grove started the school, he targeted working musicians who may have lacked the theory to make them more useful in the marketplace,” Harrison says. “Now the market has changed to include those performers plus the dedicated hobbyist and the aspiring musician.”

For information about Harrison Music Workshops, call (800) 828-MUSIC.