La Habra Theater: Acting for Community

For many years, the cavernous train depot in downtown La Habra was one of the main stops along the Pacific Electric line. Farmers from all around would gather on its long platform to load oranges, figs and avocados onto rail cars heading east.

The depot closed in the 1960s, and was even moved to city-owned property next to the La Habra Children’s Museum, a few blocks up Euclid Street from the tracks. It sat empty for years, until a small, local community theater group leased it from the city. In 1982, after refurbishing the depot, the group put on its first season of productions. The name was a natural: the La Habra Depot Playhouse. The “Playhouse” was later changed to “Theatre.”

This month, the organization kicks off its 15th season at the depot, stronger than ever but still true to its original character: a community theater held together by volunteers, with emphasis on providing stage roles for young people. Several productions each year are dominated by children.

Its first play of the year is “Ghost Train” (Oct. 18-Nov. 9), and six other shows will follow. As with all the theater’s performances, the actors for “Ghost Train” are unpaid. So are the producers, the ticket-takers, the wardrobe help, the board members and the people organizing the year’s schedule. The La Habra Depot Theatre maintains only a few paid positions, including director and costume designer.

Dennis Montgomery is typical of the volunteers. He’s box office manager, serves on the board, helps with the sets and the operation of the building, and can usually be seen on stage as one of the actors.

Following a rehearsal there this week, Montgomery told me he joined the theater team about eight years ago by a quirk of fate he’d never expected:

“I drove my 8-year-old daughter here to be in a play. (“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”) She said, ‘Uh, Dad, they need someone to play the professor. I told them that you’d at least consider it.’ ”

A reluctant volunteer, he jokes now that in a peculiar sort of way, “I love it.”

After the rehearsal I asked Leslie Hanstad, who is co-president, how she got involved. It started off, she said, by first bringing her children there to try out for a part. Her co-president is Mary Raffaelli. Raffaelli told me she’d never thought of being part of the group until she first took her children there either.

Then “Ghost Train” co-producer Vanessa Perkins joined our conversation and told me it was her children who first got her involved. She looked a little surprised when we all started laughing. “He’s looking for a different angle,” Hanstad teased her.

Chris Wolf, the volunteer artistic director who happens to be stage directing “Ghost Train,” did not get introduced by his children. But he did seek to join the group, he said, because of his intense interest in youth theater. He helped put together the YES group--Youth Experiencing Stagecraft--and an advisory board composed entirely of young people. The YES group puts on clinics in dance, music and even magic.

Wolf summed up how most of the volunteers feel: “This theater is La Habra’s little secret.”

They regret that so many people in the La Habra-Brea area don’t seem to know about them. There’s not much budget for promoting themselves, so they depend on word-of-mouth unless there is a special production. The annual Christmas show, for example, always sells well.

But there is a small loyal following for the 144-seat theater, and Hanstad says there’s no shortage of quality actors who want parts. “They just love the idea of having an Amtrak car for their dressing room,” she explained. And they showed me: An old Amtrak car parked next to the depot has been converted into a changing room, one section set aside with lights and mirrors for attending to make-up.

The spirit among this band of volunteers was even more upbeat than I had expected. I wondered aloud whether this had become more than theater to them, but a core of their social life, where they’ve formed close friendships.

“Absolutely,” Montgomery said. “That’s why I kept coming back beyond just dropping off my daughter. The people I’ve met here are intelligent and just great fun to be around. This theater is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Home Dancing: Marinka Horack of Huntington Beach wrote to point out that “ballerinas are rare creatures,” so we ought to take special notice when one of our own makes it in that world. I agree.

She was talking about Evelyn Cisneros, a graduate of Marina High School in Huntington Beach (Class of ‘76). Cisneros is now with the San Francisco Ballet, and tonight she is its lead dancer for “Swan Lake” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Horack is friends with Cisneros’ former dance coach, Marnell Himes, of the Huntington Academy of Dance.

That Thing Hanks Did: Have you caught the previews for Tom Hanks’ directorial debut, shot partly in the city of Orange, called “That Thing You Do”? They were so bad I figured the store owners of downtown Orange who’d volunteered their property for the shooting of some of the scenes for the 1960s movie last year might wish they’d said no.

But who knows from previews? Newsweek magazine this week calls it a “sweet comedy” and praises Hanks for producing a movie of innocence: “A good part of this movie’s charm is precisely its lack of consequence.”

And People magazine: “A pleasingly bouncy movie. . . . A solid job, Mr. Hanks, on both sides of the camera.” Time magazine dissented, but called the music “perky.”

“That Thing You Do” opens on 29 Orange County theater screens Friday.

Wrap-Up: Raising funds is a major task for the La Habra Depot Theatre board, even though most of the work is done by volunteers. This year, for example, it put in a new stage floor. And it’s updating the sound and lighting equipment. But a new sound board alone will cost $7,000.

So the volunteers sell hamburgers and drinks at community events to supplement what they raise at the door. Also, there’s an annual fund-raising gala. This year’s will be Oct. 12 at the city’s Community Center, 101 W. La Habra Blvd., at $50 per person, black tie optional. Tickets can be purchased at the door.

“Ghost Train,” by the way, is a 1931 murder mystery about a group of people stranded at a haunted railway depot (tickets $10). Quite an appropriate kickoff production.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com