VALLEY WEEKEND : So It Isn’t the Apple--L.A. Stage Is Thriving : Local successes have helped chip away at the prejudice against non-New York productions. And the new year holds promise.

For decades there was a strong feeling in New York that nothing worthwhile ever came out of Los Angeles theater. Many shows that came from Los Angeles even claimed areas closer to Shubert Alley--Chicago or Washington were always safe--as creative points of origin.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Beth Henley’s “Miss Firecracker Contest” claimed the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Ky., as its birthing ground, rather than the Victory Theatre in Burbank, when in fact that world premiere was actually the Victory’s first production.

Recently there has been a grudging nod by some in authority on the Great White Way that important theater has emerged outside New York, even out of L.A. A few years ago, the League of New York Theatres and Producers, the group that runs the Tony Awards, changed its name to the League of American Theatres and Producers. Times and attitudes are a-changin’.

In spite of statements by a few Los Angeles theater folks who claim that theater is neither as good nor as important as in New York, theater continues to thrive and grow in our town, including in the San Fernando Valley. And while we have our fair share of showcase pieces, television sitcom look-alikes and evenings of video sketches parading as one-acts, much of local theater is of very high quality, with a similar ratio of good to mediocre as exists in any city, including New York, as any visit to the Big Apple will verify.

Within the last year, the Valley has seen the seriocomic and insightful “Grotesque Love Songs” at the Whitefire Theatre; the touching and often funny fable about Holocaust survival “The Puppetmaster of Lodz,” at Actors Alley; and, probably most visible, Interact’s magnificent production of Elmer Rice’s “Counsellor-at-Law” at Theatre Exchange. All are examples of productions that were beautifully staged, directed and acted from impeccable scripts, and all of them in a class with anything to be found off- or off-off-Broadway.

Today Los Angeles, and that naturally includes the Valley, outnumbers New York in the number of theaters, both large and small, in which professional actors, including Actors Equity Assn. members, can work. Many actors, in fact, have had extensive experience in New York and Chicago. Most have relocated here to reap the financial benefits of work in television and films. As in London, they find their marks on sound stages during the day so they can feed on the joy of live theater at night. Tyne Daly and John Larroquette have been familiar faces in our small theaters. John Rubinstein graced Interact’s “Counsellor-at-Law,” and stage and film veteran Richard Herd recently starred in “Death of a Salesman” at the Ventura Court Theatre (along with soap superstar Jason Brooks).

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Here at the start of 1996, local theater is rich with talent and enterprise. With a few solid resolutions to maintain high standards and artistic integrity, the year ahead promises great rewards for theater-makers and theatergoers alike. These should be among the New Year’s resolutions that producers, directors and actors in Valley theater productions make and keep:

To provide audiences with theater for theater’s sake, with no ulterior motives, such as showcasing or as a passport to a series.

To create works that are inventive and fresh, whether from original scripts or as revivals of classic works.

To make theater breathe deeply with life.

To make sure that an audience leaves the theater thinking about what they’ve seen, which is something film and television rarely do.

To make sure an audience leaves the lobby after the bows with a determination to come back soon, because what they’ve received from the theater experience they will get nowhere else.