‘Hedwig’s’ Happy to Be in Hollywood

With the subway stop now open across from the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, theater lovers want to know if the area might return to former glory as a theater district. Last week’s big news was that the Ricardo Montalban-Nosotros Foundation hopes to bring more activity to the Doolittle Theatre.

But here’s a smaller sign of a revivified Hollywood: Canon Theatricals decided to bring the hit off-Broadway musical about a transsexual rock star, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” to the Henry Fonda Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard instead of the company’s home base, the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.

“Hollywood is a better place for the show,” said Canon partner Susan Dietz, who tried to make a go of mid-sized theater in Hollywood with her L.A. Stage Company at the Las Palmas (now becoming a dance club) in the early ‘80s. “The redevelopment that was promised in the ‘80s is really happening now. It’s a happening, hip place to put a happening, hip show.”

Then again, the compliment is a bit back-handed. In “Hedwig,” Dietz explained, a rock singer is trying to make a comeback “in a less than glamorous setting. Beverly Hills just isn’t right.”

The show will use 499 of the Fonda’s 863 seats. The balcony will be unoccupied, as will four rows at the back of the side sections of the orchestra. This keeps the production within the purview of an Actors’ Equity contract for mid-sized shows, although Dietz said that the decision was as much aesthetic as economic; there are only two actors in the show, and it requires intimacy. The opening is scheduled for Halloween.

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MOVING ISSUES: A Noise Within is more than doubling its seating capacity with its upcoming move from Glendale to the Luckman Theater on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. But its budget is going up only a smidgen--from $850,000 to $900,000.

“We’re being very conservative because of the uncertainty of the audience following,” said artistic co-director Art Manke. Initial response to the brochure outlining the new season has been very positive, Manke said. But just to make sure that loyal Glendale patrons don’t feel excluded, the group will sponsor shuttle service from Glendale to the new theater for one performance of each production during the coming season.

Helping keep the costs down is an agreement the company completed last week with Actors’ Equity that continues to be based on the union’s periodic performance code. The actors are paid by the performance instead of by the week. This makes repertory--in which actors often perform on irregular schedules--less expensive. The company also is spared, for one more year, the expense of contributions to the union’s health benefits and pension plan.

During the coming year, however, a long-term agreement will be negotiated with the aim of bumping the company up the Equity scale, probably to a contract that’s derived from those used by the members of the League of Resident Theatres. The new agreement will require health and pension contributions.

Manke spoke last week from the company’s old office in Glendale. A Noise Within is still looking for office space in Los Angeles. The company’s Glendale presence is rapidly diminishing, however. A recent going-away sale of props, souvenirs and donated costumes netted some $20,000.

Most of the clothes that the company sold were from recent decades, which A Noise Within, as a classical repertory company, seldom touches. The company kept most of the older styles, which will come in handy when the company revives something from its repertory--such as the show that will open the company’s new home, “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“Cyrano” is the only show in the opening season that will be revived from previous years. “We wanted to bring something from our past with us,” Manke said, “and it’s a wonderful way to open a new facility. It’s got romance, swordplay, humor. Also, since the move came up so quickly, it made sense for us to do something we’re familiar with.” Not that it’s as easy as that might sound: The new theater’s proscenium stage requires a reshaping of the production.

Annette Bening, an ex-classmate of A Noise Within’s artistic directors at the American Conservatory Theater, is the chairwoman of an opening-night gala on Sept. 18.*