ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Friendly takeover: Grove Theater Center is taking over operations at a city-owned theater in Burbank. The 99-seat Burbank Little Theater has been dark in recent years, but Grove executive director Charles Johanson said he expects plays to resume there in about four months after some “small renovations.” It will be known as Grove Theater Center/Burbank Little Theater.

Since 1994 GTC has operated the 172-seat Gem Theater and the 550-capacity Festival Amphitheater, municipally owned facilities in Garden Grove; it also produces an outdoor summer theater series at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton.

Johanson said that the small, nonunion Little Theater eventually could dovetail with GTC’s Actors Equity contract theaters in Garden Grove as a laboratory for developing new plays that could move on to the bigger stages in Orange County. He expects programming in Burbank, where the city on Tuesday approved a five-year management agreement with GTC, to be a combination of in-house productions and shows brought in by other companies.