Industrial Magic : Arts: In a desolate neighborhood, the Towne Street Theatre thrives and produces plays with an emphasis on ethnic performers and women.

Sometimes the performance goes beyond the stage.

At the little Towne Street Theatre, tucked away in one of the rougher parts of Downtown, the performers and stage crew often double as talent and management.

When Nancy Renee and her partner Nancy Cheryll Davis are not performing in their dimly lit 50-seat theater at 7th Street and Towne Avenue on Sunday afternoons, they are working at their own jobs or raising money to pay their actors. Their theater is run by volunteers and funded out of the women’s pockets.

The theater, part of a prolonged but uneven effort to cultivate an art community in Downtown’s industrial quarter, thrives in a neighborhood of decaying buildings just east of the garment district. A few blocks away, scores of homeless men and women push shopping carts and seek out food or drugs. The loft-like setting of the theater is complemented by a friendly freight elevator operator and winding hallways. It is an area whose decadence tends to scare theater-goers away.

Nevertheless, people such as Amy Lyndon of Studio City come to Towne Street to see shows such as “Before 1950,” a combination of poetry and one-act plays by black women writers.

“I like the up-close feel of the theater and there’s plenty of parking,” said Lyndon, making an unintentionally ironic comment on the desolateness of the neighborhood. Lyndon said that although she rarely travels Downtown, she enjoyed the show and the atmosphere.

When they do come, they are close to the action--so close they might get hit by one of Renee’s flying earrings, which happened at a recent performance.

Renee, 35, a secretary, and Davis, 36, an administrative assistant for the Los Angeles archdiocese, first met when they were both witches in “MacBeth” in 1987. They shared a love for the theater and a desire to get more people of color involved in the arts.

After the riots in 1992, the women set out to produce plays with an emphasis on ethnic performers and women. “We wanted to use the arts as a way to heal and bring the city together,” Renee said.

They received a cultural affairs grant in 1992 from the city to produce a series of readings by ethnic artists. Then, with help from friends such as Nathaniel Bellamy, a set designer, the women opened the theater in Bellamy’s loft in September, 1993.

This season, plays have ranged from the gritty story of a Black Panther reuniting with his family after 23 years in prison to travels back in time to South America. The most recent show, the gripping “Before 1950,” is based on the work of writers such as Lorraine Hansberry and Margaret Walker.

“We wanted to put emphasis on women and people of color issues,” Davis said.

For now, the veteran actresses struggle with the bills and the responsibility of the theater and talk about helping the area’s homeless women and aspiring child artists learn more about theater.

“A lot of African American children don’t get to see careers beyond the stage,” Renee said. “We want to show them that there are other opportunities like makeup artists, set designing and camera work.”