September 28, 2000
NewsWireÉ
Grove North?
It's a small empire, admittedly, but the 6-year-old Grove Theatre
Center in Garden Grove, a sleepy Orange County suburb, is building its own
makeshift theatre circuit, small venue by small venue. Run by its managing
director Charles Johansen and artistic director Kevin Cochran, GTC already has
two mid-sized stages of its ownÑan outdoor 300-seater and an indoor venue with
172 seats, aptly named the GemÑand has added a summer residency at Fullerton's
outdoor Muckenthaler amphitheatre. Using a variety of Equity contracts, from
the Small Professional Theatre to Letter of Agreement referencing LORT, the
Grove has attracted seasoned L.A. performers (including an annual visit from
the inspired Bard-manglers the Troubadour Theatre Company) and even some L.A.
audiences.
But this weekend the Grove brings the mountain to Mohammed with
the opening of its 98-seat venue in Burbank, to be called GTC/Burbank The space
is known to some theatregoers as the Burbank Little Theatre, on the grounds of
George Izay Park; the venue had been dark for more than a year since the
children's theatre company Serendipity gave up the lease. Opening first at the
new Grove is Denise Moses' one-woman show Girly Americana, and planned
are more original plays, co-productions with homeless L.A. companies (including
Troubadour), and possibly some productions that originate at the Garden Grove
headquarters. Indeed, the hope is to have productions move both ways. "Up
here we can workshop shows, put them on on a smaller level," said Cochran
recently. "We'll try out more new work here."
The flexibility of Equity's 99-Seat Plan, which applies in L.A.
but not Orange County, will allow Cochran and Johansen to mount more
experimental fare more cheaply than they can in Garden Grove, and they're
mulling whether to form a dues-paying ensemble company for the new Burbank
space. They hastened to add that their subscription audiences in Garden Grove
are not milquetoasts and have often surprised themÑlooking askance at
traditional musical fare, for instance, while turning a revival of Elmer Rice's
The Adding Machine into a box-office hit.
"The only times we've had failures was when we tried to
second-guess what the audience wanted," admitted Johansen. "I try to
program what I think is good theatre, rather than what an audience will like."
Once you've done that, though, Johansen said, "You've got to listen to
your audience."
Preferring to think of themselves as "impresarios"
rather than empire builders, Johansen and Cochran will be putting a lot of
miles on the freeways, but they're already used to it. "Most of the people
we use are from L.A.," explained Johansen. "We hold auditions up
here. We've even done some rehearsals up here. Garden Grove will always be our
home base, but having the L.A. venue is really important."