Broadway on Tour and Grove Center to Collaborate : Theater: The troupe will launch its inaugural season as the children’s company in residence with ‘Wizard of Wonderland.’

Broadway on Tour, the children’s theater company that has operated for the past two years from a storefront theater in Orange, will join the Grove Theater Center as its children’s theater in residence.

The 7-year-old troupe will launch its inaugural season there May 13 with “The Wizard of Wonderland,” a one-hour fantasy, in the Gem Theater.

Kevin Cochran, the Grove’s artistic director, and Dan Halkyard, Broadway on Tour’s founder and artistic director, view the collaboration as a boon for family theater audiences in Orange County.

For Cochran, the addition fills a significant void in his company.

“We knew we wanted to have a resident children’s theater company from the beginning,” Cochran said. “We had talked with several other children’s groups, but none of them were a good fit for us, either because we weren’t satisfied with the quality of their work or because they didn’t have the groundwork laid to be a resident company.”

For Halkyard, the agreement brings a frustrating search to a fruitful resolution.

“With the facilities at the Gem, the look of our shows will jump dramatically,” Halkyard said. “The professional environment will greatly enhance the quality theater product we have already been offering. The Grove has very high standards, and so do we.”

Broadway on Tour productions feature local children from 6 to 18, many students in the company’s theater-training classes. After bouncing between several temporary homes in the central and north county, the troupe took up residence in an empty storefront at The City mall in June 1993, where it has produced a number of admirable shows. The finale there will be “Little Orphan Annie” from March 18 through April 2.

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Halkyard and his board have been searching for a suitable and affordable new home for almost a year because of the scheduled spring closure of the struggling The City. In early January, Halkyard--an independent real-estate appraiser by trade who said that he and his board have volunteered thousands of hours since the group’s inception--contacted Cochran’s office.

“When Dan approached us, we saw someone who, with his board, had built an institution that had been around for seven years and was successful at what it did,” Cochran said. “It was a good match for us.”

The Grove Theater Center was established in August to take over the management of the Garden Grove-owned Gem Theater and Festival Amphitheater, former home to the now-defunct Grove Shakespeare Company. Broadway on Tour joins the Musical Theatre Company and the Company-Dance Unlimited as a Grove company in residence.

As before, Broadway on Tour will make its own selections for the season and contract with its own designers and directors. Cochran and his staff will ensure that the children’s shows do not conflict with the selections of the other resident company’s or the Grove’s own four-play season, which began last October with a production of “Dracula.

Broadway on Tour will continue its same basic format of five weekend series and two big-cast Broadway musicals. Besides “Wizard in Wonderland,” the troupe is planning to present Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” in July.

Though final selections are yet to be announced for the 1995-96 season, Halkyard said he is considering the following shows: “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” “The Trial of Alice in Wonderland,” “Jack and the Beanstalk” a new version of “Winnie the Pooh” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Ticket prices will be $6 (up from $5) for the weekend shows, and remain at $6 for children and $8 for adults for the two bigger productions.