Two Troupes Making NoHo Their Home

The NoHo (North Hollywood) theater scene should hit full stride within the next year. The latest indicators are the planned moves of two of L.A.’s most important sub-100-seat companies, Interact and Deaf West, into the heart of NoHo.

Interact--one of the city’s most acclaimed troupes of the ‘90s--is immigrating from its outpost in a low-income residential area on the fringe of north NoHo into a 2,400-square-foot former recording studio just west of the NoHo hub at Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards, hoping to produce something by next summer. The new home, at 5215 Bakman Ave., will increase Interact’s seating from 56 to 90.

The group’s current home is being sold, and the company must exit by February, said Interact President Stacy Ray. But necessity coincides with desire, she added, because the company has enviously eyed the hum of activity in central NoHo. The group has taken a 10-year lease and hopes to raise $100,000 for renovations--on top of $50,000 that was raised in an earlier attempt to buy Interact’s existing theater. A fund-raising run of “The Music Man,” starring and co-directed by John Rubinstein, will open Thursday with seats going for a minimum of $50 each.

Meanwhile, Deaf West plans to occupy its new space, at 5112 Lankershim Blvd. (south of Magnolia, adjacent to the Road Theatre Company’s home at Lankershim Arts Complex), by next spring. Homeless since leaving its previous Heliotrope Drive venue last year, Deaf West looked for a NoHo home for years. Its new venue, leased for five years, has 2,500 square feet and 75 seats, and it will boast subwoofers under the raked bleachers, an infrared headphones system and captioning capability, befitting California’s most notable deaf theater company.

“Our goal is to set up the world’s first professional resident theater company of the deaf,” including a conservatory and possible future expansion to 99 seats, said artistic director Ed Waterstreet. The plan is to open the space with “A Streetcar Named Desire” on March 3.

These are only the latest NoHo developments to be announced--the biggest event signaling a new theatrical era for NoHo will be the long-awaited January opening of the El Portal complex, with a mid-size theater plus a new 99-seat space, just north of Magnolia. And not to be outdone by the other spokes of the NoHo hub, the block just east of Lankershim now features three complexes with two spaces each: the Bitter Truth, the Whitmore-Lindley and the brand-new $825,000 American Renegade Theatre complex, which is already up and running with two productions.

The opening of the subway station at Lankershim and Chandler, just north of all this activity, expected next June, will add further buzz to the area. Anyone wanting to glimpse many of the leading players might want to check out the annual Valley Theatre League awards ceremony Monday at 7:30 p.m., at the North Hollywood Masonic Temple, 5122 Tujunga Ave. Ted Lange will emcee. Information: (818) 761-0704.

PASADENAN IN CHARGE: Ever since Lars Hansen left Pasadena Playhouse to run Theatre LA, Lyla L. White--a Pasadena resident since 1964--has been filling in as the executive director of “the State Playhouse of California,” and last week she got the official title of interim executive director.

Her regular job is development director, and that’s what she’ll continue doing for the most part: raising money to retire the company’s debt and, if all goes well, build a new mid-size second space for the Playhouse sometime during the next year. She doesn’t want the executive director job permanently, she said, because “it needs to be somebody who is a producer.” Her hands-on theatrical experience is limited to being an audience member, but perhaps that experience came in handy with one of the theater’s most recent acquisitions--new seats and carpets will be installed at the Playhouse over the winter holidays.