Playwrights Group Entering New Stage

The Rolling Stones could have provided the script that New Voices Playwrights Workshop is following these days: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

What the playwrights’ consortium wants is a theater to call its own. What it needs is a venue where it can showcase its members’ full-length plays with full runs, as opposed to the short pieces it has staged in short-running productions at several local theaters.

What it likely will get is a borrowed theater that will meet its needs, but isn’t all it wanted: the basement stage in the Pacific Symphony building in downtown Santa Ana.

Michael Buss, New Voices president, says the ideal option, renting a space at 3rd Street and Broadway in the nearby Santa Ana Artists Village, has proved too expensive: Extensive remodeling, some of it to meet fire codes, would likely cost $40,000, and New Voices has about half that much to invest.

Keen on establishing a presence in downtown Santa Ana and producing members’ plays, New Voices turned to the PSO space on Santa Ana Boulevard near Main Street, which had been home to the Orange County Crazies comedy troupe.

The advantages, Buss says, are favorable rental terms and a comparatively inexpensive move-in cost of $9,000 or less to refurbish the 65-seat space, improve the stage, and install seats, lighting and a sound system.

The chief drawback is that, like the Crazies before them, New Voices can rehearse and produce shows only when the symphony isn’t busy upstairs. Buss says New Voices nevertheless aims to produce four or five full-length productions during 2001 at the PSO space, each running four weeks.

A symphony official said Monday that although a New Voices tenancy is “very likely,” scheduling and rental terms remain to be worked out.

The PSO basement lacks air conditioning and Buss rates the parking as “not awesome, [but] sufficient.” New Voices will scout a permanent location, preferably a downtown Santa Ana storefront where it could be a part of the developing Artists Village of theaters, restaurants, art schools and galleries.

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Buss hopes to remodel the symphony building’s basement in January and put on the first play there in February. Meanwhile, New Voices will acclimate itself to its new neighborhood starting tonight with a five-show engagement at the Don Cribb Theatre at the DePietro Performance Center, the new home of the Orange County Crazies. The shows will be the first plays at the DePietro Center, which opened in June and has offered improvisational sketch comedy, jazz, gospel and other musical performances.

New Voices will present the latest installment in its occasional evenings of 10-minute plays. This one features eight quick takes on holiday themes, some comic, others darker: “Knight of the Garter” by Penny Rudge; “Colors of Christmas” by Tom Swimm; “The Security Guard” by Stephen Ludwig; “I’ve Got the Christmas Blues Again” by Christopher Trela; “Mary’s Christmas” by Jack Stanley; “Lilies and Dandy Lions” by Gina Shaffer; “The Roommate” by John Lane and “Home for Christmas” by Michael Buss.

SHOW TIMES

“Another 10-Minute Christmas: The Sequel,” presented by New Voices Playwrights Workshop at the DePietro Performance Center, 809 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Tonight through Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. $10 to $15. (949) 225-4125 (New Voices information line) or (714) 550-9890 (DePietro Center).