Alternative Repertory Theatre Plans Move to Santa Ana Artists Village

Alternative Repertory Theatre, one of the county’s oldest storefront stage troupes, has announced it will move to the city’s emerging arts colony, becoming its first resident drama company.

The troupe will end its 10th season this month, take a year off, then launch its next season in fall 1998 in the vacant Grand Central Building on Broadway, which the city intends to convert into a center for Cal State Fullerton art students, co-founder Gary Christensen said Thursday.

Now based in a Santa Ana mini-mall, the company will sublease its new, slightly larger space for $1,000 a month from the university. The center, with classrooms, exhibition spaces and computer lab, will become the anchor of downtown’s Artists Village, six square blocks bounded by Broadway, Spurgeon, 1st and 3rd streets. The village already is already home to several artists’ studios, galleries and a coffeehouse.

“Our contract is all drawn and we’re getting together on June 17 with the [Cal State Fullerton] Foundation to sign it,” Christensen said.

William Dickerson, the foundation’s executive director, said the drama troupe will manage the new theater, perhaps inviting other companies to perform.

“ART has a long history of putting on very successful productions in Santa Ana,” Dickerson said. While similar groups have disappeared, Alternative Repertory has survived.

None of the troupe’s three staffers will be laid off, Christensen said. Although it could alienate a loyal following, the yearlong hiatus will buy time to enlarge the troupe’s board and to recruit corporate sponsors, he said.

The troupe, which will continue to stage educational productions in local schools, also must raise about $50,000 for new lighting and sound equipment and seats, Christensen said.

Its new, 1,600-square-foot venue is expected to hold about 85 seats, only 30 more than its current location. Previous plans to move into the Artists Village’s Santora Building recently were dropped over anticipated difficulties in constructing a theater there, he added.

Renovation of the Grand Central Building has not begun, but the university center also is expected to open next fall, city officials said Thursday. The city has allocated $1.9 million for the project.