The Shows Go On Despite Troupe’s Run of Bad Luck

We did what we had to do. Won’t forget, can’t regret, what I did for love. What I did for love.

--”A Chorus Line”

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Finances run dry. Your home base is bulldozed. Doors keep closing in your face. Your group’s leader is killed in a car crash.

Maybe that’s when you have to dig down deep, as the great “Chorus Line” song says, and just go on for love.

All those things happened to the Ana-Modjeska Players community theater group. After 35 years of bringing low-cost entertainment to Anaheim, it folded shop in 1994. For the next two years, the Ana-Modjeska Players existed only in the hearts of a few of its key people. The few determined not to give up.

Next month, you can see for yourself how determination pays off. The Ana-Modjeska Players will perform on three consecutive weekends at Anaheim’s Fairmont Junior High School.

“You reach a point where you do it strictly for the love of theater,” the group’s director, John Cordova, told me. “We think we’ve got something to offer this community.”

None of them are in it for the money. Cordova and stage manager Brian Cramer, who doubles as assistant director, are the only paid people in the troupe. And with the work going into the next production, they figure they’re making about $3 a day.

Many of you may remember the Ana-Modjeska Players as a strong volunteer community theater operation. In the mid-1970s, it had a cast and crew of more than 100 who put on a minimum of four productions each year.

But the recession of the 1980s cut into donations. When the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, a converted school it used as a theater, was bulldozed during redevelopment four years ago, the troupe was pretty much wiped out. The final blow came when its actors, performing in a school cafeteria, had to compete with a basketball game on the other side of a partition.

But co-founders Gail Strachan and Frances Mulalley-Smith kept trying to revive it. After two dormant years, they managed to put on two plays last year. The first was in a community room, where the audience sat on folding chairs on the same level as the stage. But last fall, Ana-Modjeska worked out arrangements to perform in the private Fairmont Junior High School in Anaheim.

Another critical setback came early this year, when Mulalley-Smith was killed in a motor vehicle accident. But Strachan and people such as Jennifer Boudreau, now the troupe’s president, were determined to keep going.

“Something inside us just wouldn’t let go of this,” Strachan said.

A nine-member board of directors is now in place. Some funding has come in--$1,200 from the city of Anaheim and about $3,000 from Disneyland. With Ana-Modjeska finally on a real stage, there’s a lot of excitement among its members that the community will want to support a troupe fighting this hard to stay alive.

Last weekend I caught some of that excitement among its members at auditions at the American Red Cross office in Anaheim.

“We think we’ve got a good future. Otherwise we wouldn’t be devoting our time to this,” Cordova said then.

Not that all its problems are solved. Fairmont is still too expensive and doesn’t have its own lighting. Negotiations remain unresolved for another facility the troupe wants, the theater at Savannah High, which has its own lights. Ana-Modjeska also had hoped to find a home in the soon-to-open Anaheim Community Center. But Boudreau says negotiations there aren’t going as well as expected.

None of them plans to give up. Anaheim is too big not to have community theater, she said.

I agree. The name honors both the city and Helena Modjeska, the great Polish actress who lived in Anaheim when she first came to America in the latter part of the 19th century. I figure any group of actors with that kind of sense of history deserves a shot.

A Little Mobilizing: I’ve got a hunch that some people would like to volunteer more time for good causes but aren’t sure how to take the first step.

Here’s a step you can take Friday morning if you want to join any of the 31 committees of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, which is holding its annual kickoff and thank you at Fluor Daniel Corp. in Irvine for hundreds of countywide volunteers who helped last year or would like to get involved.

Included will be christening of the Philharmonic’s new Music Mobile. The Philharmonic, which promotes music education in the county, takes the van, filled with musical instruments, to 250 schools countywide. Youngsters get a chance at a hands-on demonstration of instruments that might interest them.

Call the Philharmonic at (714) 553-2422 if interested.

Rose for a Day: I’ve always thought you can never have too many roses. Turns out that’s not true. Judy LaMagna of Hillview Flowers in Santa Ana says this is the time of year when growers have an abundance of roses--which will end up dying because there aren’t enough buyers. So they give people like LaMagna a break on price, which she is passing on to her customers, at least for a day.

Wednesday happens to be known as Good Neighbor Day in the floral industry. LaMagna’s shop will give away 3,000 roses--a dozen at a time--to the first customers in the door after she opens at 9 a.m. The idea is: You keep one for yourself but pass the other 11 around to friends. It helps promote the floral industry. (And, presumably, makes 11 other people appreciate you that day.)

LaMagna expects the 3,000 roses to be gone by noon.

Please note: If you picked up free flowers this way last year from Expressions in Placentia, the shop is not participating this year.

Wrap-Up: The next production of the Ana-Modjeska Players is a courtroom drama in which the audience is the jury. It’s “Night of January 16” by Ayn Rand, and runs three consecutive weekends at Fairmont school, 1565 W. Mable St. in Anaheim, beginning Oct. 10-11. Tickets are $10.

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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