Show Biz Central

With all its resident Hollywood actors and at least six locally based community theater groups in place, Ojai will face an additional onslaught of show-biz folk come the last week of July.

Between 30 and 40 participants in the inaugural Ojai Playwrights Conference are set to converge on the tiny municipality and its immediate environs just a week or so before the Ojai Shakespeare Festival.

The group will include actors, directors and at least a few of the six participating playwrights. For several days they will work on the (mostly) new plays. These sessions will culminate in public readings from July 24-26 at Happy Valley School’s new theater building, explains Kim Maxwell-Brown, co-founder with husband Dwier Brown of Ojai’s Theater 150, a conference sponsor.

The conference’s artistic director, Chris Fields, is also artistic director of the co-sponsoring Los Angeles-based Echo Theater Company.

While actors and directors are still being recruited, confirmed plays include those by Lee Blessing, whose works include the often-performed “Two Rooms,” “Eleemosynary” and “A Walk in the Woods”; Neena Beber, whose credits include several episodes of TV’s “Clarissa Explains It All”; Elroyce D. Jones; David Lindsay-Abaire; Bernardo Solano and Rick Cleveland.

Financed largely by donated money and assisted by many volunteers, the conference is going to be a “summer camp for writers,” explained Maxwell-Brown. “We’re bringing them in, putting them up and feeding them--you can’t expect them to work free and bring their own food, too.”

For information regarding tickets or the opportunity to volunteer, call (805) 640-0400.

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And About That New Theater: The Playwrights Conference is the first public event scheduled for a new theater building under construction on the privately funded Happy Valley preparatory school’s campus, just off the Ojai-Santa Paula Highway.

With 149 fixed seats and room for 50 temporary seats, the theater fills a need that’s existed ever since the current campus was first occupied. “The site has been earmarked as a theater since 1980,” explained Happy Valley’s director Dennis Rice.

Until construction on the facility began last year, the space was occupied by a large tent used for school gatherings. Dramatic and musical productions and lectures had to be held as far away as the Santa Paula Theater Center or in makeshift locations on campus.

Last week’s student production of “Our Town,” directed by Maxwell-Brown, was spread across three campus sites. The theater will cost between $800,000 and $900,000, said Adrian Sweet, the school’s director of development. The money was raised from private donations, the school’s trust and benefits, including a concert by Jackson Browne last year at Ojai’s Libbey Bowl.

Construction is part of an $8-million campaign, which will also finance a new dormitory, among other facilities. “While some alumni have been very generous,” Sweet added, “if you only have an average of 20 people graduating each year over 50 years, and you only have half their addresses, you have to look other places.”

The building will include music and rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, a proscenium stage approximately 30 feet wide and a floor that’s “floated” to accommodate dancers.

“In the past, Happy Valley had a nationally acclaimed folk dance troupe,” explained Sweet. “And, historically, we had a guest lecture every Friday night.” The new building will facilitate both, in modern comfort.

Plans are for the theater to be open to outside groups, when not in use for campus events. But only the Playwrights Conference is scheduled so far.

“I haven’t even decided what rent to charge,” admitted Sweet.