Troupe Acts to Make Dream a Reality

Plenty of folks thought another theater in downtown Long Beach made sense. But with little money available, few knew how to make it happen.

Long Beach is a city facing abandonment even by its downtown JCPenney and Montgomery Ward department stores.

So constructing a modest 99-seat theater is not a cinch, even when the tenant is the California Repertory Company, a Cal State Long Beach-based professional theater troupe so well known nationally that it conducts auditions in New York and Chicago.

But the elements began falling into place for the new theater about a year ago.

Not only is the theater moving toward a fall opening, but it could represent still another milestone in the struggle to pump life into downtown Long Beach and create a fledgling arts district on its eastern boundary.

First came rights to use a long-vacant two-story building, on Broadway near Pine Avenue, which the city’s Redevelopment Agency happily agreed to turn over to Cal Rep for $1 a year.

Then Westland Construction Co. agreed to quake-proof the World War I-era brick building as a gift--a contribution worth $62,000.

Using a fund-raising device popularized by other theater groups, Cal Rep began asking patrons to underwrite individual seats for $1,000 each, raising another $30,000.

Now comes an announcement that Southern California Edison is contributing $250,000 in electrical work and equipment, such as stage lights and a marquee, in exchange for naming the theater for the utility.

Slowly the Edison Theatre is taking shape.

“We are delighted to help rescue this little diamond,” Edison President Stephen E. Frank said of the historic building that will house the theater.

Whether the theater provides a shot in the arm for the downtown business district remains to be seen.

But so far it has given local officials as much of a boost as it has the theater company.

“We think it will be good for the city,” said Robert C. Maxson, president of Cal State Long Beach. “It will certainly be good for the university because of the visibility it brings.”

Howard Burman, artistic producing director of the repertory company, said last year that he needed $300,000 to open the theater. The Edison gift puts the effort over the top, although the theater is still working to come up with operating funds.

“We aspire to be the best graduate theater program on the West Coast,” Burman said. “Being downtown will give us an identity outside the campus and let us stand or fall on our merits, whatever the case may be.”

For the city’s financially strapped redevelopment agency, which is so broke it can’t finance any new projects, finding private sector contributors to help build the theater was the only way it could happen.

“We gave them the building, but they had to do all the tenant improvements and make all the changes that needed to be done,” said Susan Shick, who heads the agency. “Its a great reuse for an old, historic building. We’re hoping it will bring people downtown for dinner and the theater.”

Live theater already is available in the Terrace Theater complex downtown, which houses the International City Theater group, in the Centre Theater. Two years ago, the Long Beach Civic Light Opera could not make a go of it and went bankrupt.

Paul Stuart Graham, Cal Rep’s managing director, said he did not think the college company would compete with other theater because it specializes in producing new plays.

“We do totally different programming,” he said. “We need the synergy of all this.”