Shows Will Go On

The 38 West Theatre Arts Festival may have postponed Friday evening’s scheduled debut and relocated the event from the 38 W. Main St. building to the more intimate Performance Studio, but the show will still go on.

Several theatrical events will be performed between now and Dec. 5, among them the Ojai Shakespeare Festival’s “Bawdy Bard” revue Nov. 29 and a playoff between Ventura and Los Angeles TheatreSports groups Nov. 30.

The most specifically theatrical event is set for Nov. 14 and 15, when the New Ventura Theatre Project debuts with “Tennessee in the Summer.”

The play, written by San Francisco playwright Joe Besecker and to be delivered in a staged reading, concerns playwright Tennessee Williams. The New Ventura Theatre Project is under the direction of Jack Heller, a Los Angeles-based actor and director who also stars as Williams.

“Why Ventura?” Heller inquires, rhetorically. “Because there is no professional-quality theater in Ventura, which would be a perfect spot for it.”

But other troupes have tried, most recently the Los Angeles-based Fool Moon company, which departed for Simi Valley after two excellent but poorly attended summer seasons at Ventura College.

Within the county, the Santa Susana Repertory Company (the “official” in-house group of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza) has been forced to retreat and co-produce some shows with Cal Lutheran University. And Ojai’s newer Theater 150 is largely financed by co-owner Kim Maxwell-Brown’s acting classes. The Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera’s attempt to establish a beachhead in Oxnard several years ago was both artistically and financially disappointing.

Heller presses on, undaunted. He says he’s recruited several Hollywood “names”--including Gregory Peck, Anjelica Huston, Teri Garr, Dawn Wells of “Gilligan’s Island” and Greg Mullavey of “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman”--to lend their names to the project, and has assembled several local citizens to supply financial and artistic support. In addition, he is attempting to get an arts grant from the city of Ventura and is hoping to line up corporate sponsors.

Does he stand a chance? David Ralphe, artistic director of the Santa Paula Theater Center and Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center (both of which stage amateur plays, i.e., those in which the participants work without pay), thinks not. “I don’t see a demographic base at this point; if there was enough to support a small professional theater, I’d be doing that,” he said. Ralphe points out that union scale begins at $180 per actor per week, plus a union stage manager at the same rate.

Taylor Kasch, whose Flying H Productions has a virtual lock on the Ojai Art Center, is more optimistic. “You can’t go in expecting to make money right away,” Kasch said, “but it might work if it’s something that the local community can be proud of.

“Other than the occasional political cause, there’s little in Ventura to bring a community together.”

* The 38 West Theatre Arts Festival continues through Dec. 5 at the Performance Studio, 34 N. Palm St., Ventura. “Tennessee in the Summer” plays at 8 p.m. Nov. 14-15; tickets, $15. For information, call 667-2900.