Kirk Douglas, enter stage right

The Kirk Douglas Theatre, constructed from the framework of an old Culver City movie theater, was unveiled Thursday accompanied by confetti, champagne, performances -- and a couple of technical glitches.

The evening was the culmination of a 35-year campaign by Center Theatre Group and Gordon Davidson, the organization’s founding artistic director, to create a permanent CTG venue that is more intimate than the group’s downtown theaters, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre.

The $12-million Douglas, named for the actor whose donation of $2.5 million kicked off the fundraising, has 300 seats and will be used for new plays and theater for young audiences.

Douglas, a stroke survivor, spoke the first words from the new stage: “When you have a stroke, you must talk slowly to be understood. And I’ve discovered that when I talk slowly, people listen. They think I’m going to say something important.”

He then reminisced about his early stage career, recalling that in his Broadway debut, an actor cried out, “Ya-ho-o,” and Douglas’ job was to provide the backstage echo. “From an echo my career went downhill.” But after Broadway flops and then screen success, “I found out how to become a star on the stage. You build your own theater.”

Yet Davidson has not asked him to audition for the plays in the new theater, Douglas noted.

Late in the evening, the crowd adjourned to Washington Boulevard in front of theater, and Davidson and Douglas pretended to try several methods of switching on the facade’s neon lights, only to discover that the lights would blaze only when the men uttered Douglas’ old stage cry of “Ya-ho-o.” Yet even after the cry went out, the lights still hesitated before they finally were at full display.

The evening’s other technical flaw was an erratic microphone. Richard Kagan, president of the CTG board, quipped that “the Walt Disney Hall acoustics didn’t work the first night, and they spent $200 million; we’re fine.”

In an interview, architect Steven Ehrlich noted that his task was to preserve and restore the theater’s 1947 exterior while gutting the interior so that “as soon as you walk in, it’s a whole new world, as opposed to mimicking or being nostalgic” -- a goal in line with the programming.

The stage is a wide space in the south end of the hall with no proscenium arch. The raked seating area is flanked by small, split-level galleries that provide single-file seating on the sides and allow “people to look at each other and to be very engaged.” Ehrlich said. The seats, taken from the old Shubert Theatre in Century City, are upholstered in bright orange. The walls are covered with prefinished plywood that provides “the naturalness of wood at a reasonable budget,” Ehrlich said.

Readers and performers included Lily Tomlin, Douglas Sills, CCH Pounder, Brian Bedford, John Rubinstein, Linda Purl, Harry Groener, Suzanna Guzman, Luis Alfaro, Lynn Manning, young dancers from the nearby Debbie Allen Dance Academy, the Mums and others. Tommy Hawkins was the emcee.

Michael Ritchie, who takes over as CTG’s artistic director in January, said nothing during the ceremony but in a later interview said that thoughts about the space were “shooting through my head.” He also saluted “the tenacity that lasted over decades” in the planning and building of the Douglas and called it “a beautiful emblem of that dream.”