These shows may not have a prayer

Skeptics say that live theater has barely a prayer of coming across well on TV and that theater can’t flourish anywhere without star actors and name playwrights. But KOCE, the PBS outlet in Huntington Beach, is pushing ahead with “Storefront Theater Live,” a bid to give Orange County’s small-theater scene a regular broadcast outlet for new plays written and performed by relative unknowns.

That assumes, however, that prayer itself won’t elbow the show aside, along with the rest of the public TV fare on KOCE. A state appeals court ruling last month threw the station’s future in doubt and raised the possibility of a takeover by Christian broadcasters. The decision invalidated a $32-million purchase, made final last November, by a nonprofit foundation committed to public broadcasting with local, grass-roots content -- such as “Storefront Theater Live.”

Instead, a three-member panel of judges from the Fourth District ruled, the previous owner, the Coast Community College District, should have sold to a higher-bidding televangelist, the Daystar Television Network. Daystar’s $40-million offer was rejected by college trustees, who didn’t want the community to lose a public broadcasting outlet. The KOCE Foundation continues to run the station while the college district considers its options, among them appealing the decision, holding on to the station after all (and possibly striking an operating agreement with the KOCE Foundation) or seeking new bids -- which would renew the possibility of a praise-the-Lord-and-pass-on-the-storefront-thespians future.

Amid the uncertainty, the producers of “Storefront Theater Live” are bearing down and taking a show-must-go-on approach. The second play in the series, Aimee Greenberg’s one-woman show “Dona Sangre,” was on the schedule Saturday night, with rebroadcasts to be announced. Unlike the April telecast of the Chance Theater’s modern adaptation of Aphra Behn’s 17th century comedy “The Rover,” “Dona Sangre” (Give Blood) was to be taped and edited for broadcast. Greenberg’s performance incorporates songs, dancing, costume changes, masks, marionettes and multimedia. She has done it live in recent runs in Laguna Beach and at a festival in Finland, but producer Wendy Moulton-Tate says it couldn’t be done in real time without blackouts that are OK in the theater but anathema to the tube.

Moulton-Tate expects to revert to live television for future shows. One possibility is a TV staging of Orange Coast College’s Oct. 19-to-23 production of “A Patch of Earth,” a drama by KPCC radio talk show host Kitty Felde about a young soldier facing war crimes charges after the Bosnian conflict.

“Storefront Theater Live” is still evolving as dreams meet reality, Moulton-Tate says -- the ambitious original aim of a new play every month has been scaled back to every other month. And the team of four volunteer artistic directors from the small-theater scene in Orange County continues to weigh whether to open the door to theaters in L.A. County as well.

-- Mike Boehm