Valley Weekend : THEATER : NOTES : A Plan to Mix It Up at New Cabaret Theater : Ovations will offer musical revues, one-person plays and small-cast shows.

An interesting experiment is taking place in the Gaslight Alley shopping center in Studio City. It’s called a cabaret theater.

Theater can pop up anywhere. A number of years ago a play opened in a small town near London, in a pub theater. After a London critic just happened to drop in, he began spreading the word about that play, “The Elephant Man.” That’s the sort of developmental pattern at the center of the plans of Edmund Gaynes and Pamela Hall, now that they’ve taken over the old Tonto and Dietz coffeehouse and re-christened it Ovations.

Of course, Gaynes says, there will be cabaret acts appearing in the venue, but there will also be theater projects of all types.

“Our main love has always been musical comedy,” says Gaynes, who also operates the Two Roads Theatre and headed the West End Playhouse before the Northridge quake.

“Some of our biggest successes in the past 10 years have been musical revues. We’ve always wanted a place like this. We’re able to start developing musical revues again, but we can also do things like small-cast plays, or one-person plays, in addition to cabaret acts. But I’m theater-oriented, not cabaret-oriented, always looking with an eye toward theater. Like Claire Peck’s show, which Claire also considers a theater piece.”

The Claire Peck show he’s referring to is the opening event at Ovations, playing one performance only Friday night. Peck, who has been seen on “Murphy Brown” and in films such as “Splash” and “Above the Law,” has been working, along with director Joan Darling, on her piece for almost 10 years.

When talking about her show, called “Outrage ‘R’ Us,” which she intends to take to a New York theater, Peck laughingly refers to herself as “an angry woman.” She’s just realistic. And, to tell the truth, sometimes outraged.

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Peck says life is outrageous. “From birth to death,” she explains, “and all the way in between, there are a lot of things that are outrageous. But there is grace. And that’s the only thing that lifts the outrage. This is a roller coaster ride we’re on.”

Punctuated with music, including R&B; and a Broadway tune or two, Peck tells stories that derive from her experience of life. Her roller coaster speeds past her parents, a disabled friend and her son Austin Peck, an actor now prominent on “Days of Our Lives.” She discusses the uncomfortable romance of King Kong and Fay Wray, the bimbotic excesses of B-movie horror heroines and, she says, most of it is certainly outrageous.

Another this-weekend-only presentation of note is a world premiere concert reading of a new musical, as a benefit for the Interact Theatre Company at Theatre Exchange. Directed by Barry Heins, the show is called “Celebrity,” and tells the fictional story of Danny Dalton, who shot John Dillinger . . . or did he?

The story of his 15 minutes of celebrity, a familiar phenomenon today, follows his own roller coaster ride around the celebrity hounds of the ‘30s, such as Dorothy Kilgallen, Walter Winchell, Alexander Woollcott and J. Edgar Hoover, among others.

John McKinney, who wrote the book and music, was composer in residence at Washington’s Arena Stage, wrote the music for the original New York production of “On the Verge,” and was music director and orchestrator for “Tintypes” both on Broadway and at the Mark Taper Forum.

McKinney says the musical is about how people get famous, and how people stay famous.

Back in the ‘30s, he says, “you could get famous for flagpole sitting, swallowing goldfish, just being the rage of the day for a week. Then nobody heard of you anymore. Very much like it is today. You can be a star on ‘Baywatch,’ and be really famous for about a week.”

All of the famous celebrity hunters are seen through the fictional Dalton’s eyes. “He is the big thing,” McKinney explains, “so everybody wants an interview, everybody wants him to do this commercial or that, and everybody wants to sleep with him. What he picks, the way he deals with fame, and the decisions he makes, that’s what the musical is about.”

And for trivia fans, the musical director of “Celebrity” is Michael Skloff, whose celebrity is that he wrote the theme song for “Friends.”

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DETAILS

* “OUTRAGE ‘R’ US,” Ovations, 12747 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Friday only, 8 p.m. $10. (818) 506-1277.

* “CELEBRITY,” Interact Theatre Company, Theatre Exchange, 11855 Hart St., North Hollywood. Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. $15. (818) 773-7862.