Crazies Get a New Lease on Laughs

Cherie Kerr, executive director of the Orange County Crazies, is planning a one-woman show, “Out of Her Mind,” for next month.

That title also describes her mental state during a recent string of events that threatened to finish off the comedy troupe. For two months the Crazies had been locked in a dispute with their landlord, the Pacific Symphony, over rent and performance time, among other issues.

After initially declining to sign a new lease, the Crazies received an eviction notice last week that on Sept. 9 would have put them out of the building they share with the orchestra.

The eviction could have been the fatal blow for the financially strapped Crazies, whose attendance has dropped by half since the troupe moved to Santa Ana five years ago.

But the cloud lifted Thursday when the Pacific was expected to countersign the one-year lease that the Crazies had finally accepted a day earlier. City Manager David N. Ream helped negotiate the truce.

Kerr said she is still unhappy because the agreement, which gives the orchestra power to cancel Crazies’ performances, but it beats being homeless.

“It was either that or be ousted,” she said.

Orchestra Executive Director Louis Spisto said earlier this week he wanted to keep the Crazies as tenants, offering rent of $625 a month, up about $50 over last year, and allowing the troupe to negotiate performance time as needed.

“We truly would rather have [Kerr] stay,” Spisto said.

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The groups share the building, which the city leases to the orchestra for $100 a year, at 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd. The Pacific must also pay for utilities, insurance and other items that totaled $35,000 last year, Spisto said. The orchestra uses the building about 40 times a year for rehearsals and community programs, and it keeps a music library on the premises, he added.

The Crazies, Kerr said, use the basement for rehearsals, classes and about two dozen performances a year. They also have office space upstairs.

Kerr said few scheduling conflicts have occurred between the groups, although they have clashed over who should handle such tasks as cleaning the common bathrooms. The Crazies balked at signing the lease because it would permit the orchestra to cancel the troupe’s performance, rehearsal or class dates.

Spisto said the provision is intended to prevent time conflicts, not to strangle the troupe.

With the previous one-year lease, which expired June 30, rent of $572 covered two entities, the Crazies and ExecuProv, a for-profit business run by Kerr that shares office space with the troupe. ExecuProv, Kerr said, offers public speaking, communication and public relations skills to business executives. She typically gives seminars at client offices but also relies on the Santa Ana building about twice a month.

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Kerr said the arrangement allows her to run the Crazies without drawing a salary for her work with the troupe. The Crazies could not survive on their budget of about $25,000 a year, she said, without telephone, stationery and other subsidies from ExecuProv.

The nonprofit troupe, founded in Huntington Beach in 1990, performed at various college and community centers before moving to Santa Ana. There, the Crazies helped boost the city’s concept for a collective of private and public buildings known as the Artists Village, said Village co-founder Don Cribb.

But Kerr said attendance has plummeted since the move, averaging about 70 people per performance. She blames the decline in part on people’s reluctance to travel to Santa Ana. Poor ticket sales, she added, have meant less money for promotion.

Kerr’s one-woman show is dedicated to her sister and the play-acting they did as children. But she said the title “Out of Her Mind” accurately reflects the way things have been going for the Crazies’ leader lately.

“I was thinking, that might be the last thing here,” she said, “and that was going to be fitting.”