At Age 10, the O.C. Crazies Get New Digs

For years, as the founder-director of the satiric comedy troupe the Orange County Crazies, Cherie Kerr has made Orange County laugh at itself. Now she is making a serious investment in the future of a crucial part of the county: downtown Santa Ana, which city officials are trying to revive as a hub for the arts.

Last week Kerr marked the Crazies’ 10th anniversary by buying a 6,000-square-foot, single-story office building at 809 N. Main St. for $340,000 to serve as the troupe’s new home--and, she hopes, as a 99-seat performance center for other comedy acts and a wide range of music performances.

The Crazies previously played four blocks away in the Pacific Symphony’s rehearsal hall, where, as tenants, they were restricted in how often they could perform, rehearse and hold classes.

The Crazies’ new theater stands between the Bowers Museum/Discovery Science Center district to the north on Main Street, and the Artists Village to the south that is home to three other small theaters, as well as artists’ studios and galleries.

The Orange County High School of the Arts is expected to move later this year from Los Alamitos to a building barely a block from the Crazies’ new headquarters. Kerr sees her move as another building block in the ongoing arts-centered revitalization attempt.

“For me it was a great investment,” she said Wednesday, standing in the front hallway of her elegant home in Santa Ana. “In another five or 10 years, that whole area is going to be happening. I think I’m in the right place at the right time.”

Community activist Don Cribb, who sparked the effort to make downtown Santa Ana an arts mecca, said that the combination of the Crazies’ theater and the High School of the Arts “is going to make such a huge difference.”

Cribb sees the Artists Village and the museum district as foundations in downtown’s development. “We knew at some point the two poles would be strong enough that somebody would see the opportunity in between.”

Kerr’s purchase of a former office annex of the next-door Bank of America also is an investment in her family’s past and future. She has named it the DePietro Performance Center, in honor of her parents, Charlie and Margaret DePietro. And she sees it as a nurturing ground for the talents of Drake Doremus, the youngest of her three children, who at 16 has performed with the Crazies since he was a small boy and now has his own teenage comedy group, Generation Next.

Kerr plans to have the DePietro Center remodeled and running by late March--with, she hopes, a donor stepping forward to provide permanent theater seats and stage lighting for the intimate performing space. For now, the expansive, carpeted office warren, which sits below street level, looks like a former bank annex. Kerr’s blueprints lay out a main theater and a small second stage for rehearsals and educational workshops.

She says she has never drawn a salary since she launched the nonprofit Crazies on Jan. 20, 1990. The new digs also house her for-profit venture, ExecuProv, which she hopes will allow her to pay the performance center’s mortgage and remodeling bills. Kerr teaches businesspeople to communicate by using techniques from improvisational comedy.

The Crazies’ next performance, a fund-raiser for the new theater Feb. 26, will take place at its former home at 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd.

The Crazies, she admits, have been “in a holding pattern” with performances down to once a month over the past year--compared to weekly in the 14-member troupe’s early- to mid-’90s heyday. Her focus has been on finding and financing a new home, which a $342,000 loan from the Small Business Administration has made possible.

She expects the Crazies to be reinvigorated in the new digs. But although they will have first claim in choosing their performance nights, Kerr says booking other artists will be important. She aims to set up an advisory board to help program the theater.

Music in all genres, from jazz and folk to rock, will be welcome, she said, “as long as it’s well done.” Her goal is to have shows four days a week, Thursday through Sunday.

The inclusion of music is a way to honor her parents. Kerr, a slender woman with a wide sentimental streak, says her feelings about the new beginning for the Crazies have been bittersweet.

Her father has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and lives in a nursing home in Orange. He broke his hip and has been bedridden since New Year’s Eve. Charlie DePietro, now 83, was an accomplished jazz bassist and guitarist who performed often in films--a photo of him with Elvis Presley on the set of “Love Me Tender” is part of the army of framed family pictures atop a black baby grand piano in Kerr’s living room.

Margaret DePietro, who died seven years ago, was a singer and dancer who ended her career as a tap instructor at Coastline Community College. Kerr says she still wears her mother’s worn black tap shoes around the house sometimes to cheer her up when she is having a rough day.

Given the hubbub of closing on the new building, her father’s worsening condition and a bad bout of the flu she had around New Year’s, Kerr and the Crazies did not get to mark their 10th anniversary last month. Kerr says three of the group’s alumni--she estimates that more than 500 actors have performed with the Crazies over the years--were pushing to organize a best-of type anniversary show, but she was too busy.

“I’m not one to look back,” said Kerr, who started the Crazies with the encouragement of friends she made as a member of the Los Angeles improv comedy group the Groundlings. One of them, the late Phil Hartman, sent a letter of congratulations and support just before the Crazies’ first performance in 1990; it sits on the top shelf of a bookcase in Kerr’s office.

But she is willing to share some favorite, or at least most memorable, moments from the troupe’s history.

On the eve of one show, Kerr eschewed the usual performance-eve show biz advice to “break a leg” and broke an elbow instead.

The script called for an actor to ride across the stage on a skateboard, and Kerr, as director, hopped on the contraption to show him how she wanted it done. A trouper, Kerr got an ice pack and finished the rehearsal before heading to a hospital emergency room.

The Crazies’ satire on the foibles of Orange County life intends to tweak but not hammer its targets, she said. Once, after then-county Supervisor Roger R. Stanton got into a scuffle with a stranger at a restaurant, the Crazies did a sketch that had him punching out all his fellow supervisors during a contentious meeting.

Kerr says Stanton was in the audience, laughing so hard he cried, and later agreed to be a guest emcee.

“We’ve had a few complaints over the years but very little backlash,” Kerr said. “We’re tactful. I refuse to be malicious or hurtful to anybody. We do it in a playful way, and we’re not demeaning to anybody, ‘cause that’s not fun.”

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* The Orange County Crazies perform an improvisational comedy “Orange Lang Syne/Leap Year” show Feb. 26 as a fund-raiser for the troupe’s new theater, the DePietro Performance Center. Pacific Symphony Building, 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $40. (714) 550-9890.