STAGE CAREER BLOOMS IN HOMETOWN SETTING

When Daniel Bryan Cartmell left Orange County in the mid-1970s to pursue his acting career, the last place he expected to land a job was in his hometown, Garden Grove.

Once widely regarded as a community of rootless residents, commercial sprawl and the butt of much ridicule, the city was known to many as “Garbage Grove”--hardly a mecca for the arts.

But when Cartmell returned 5 1/2 years ago to perform in the city’s Shakespeare festival, he found Garden Grove in the midst of a sweeping redevelopment, including the establishment of a cultural complex in the old Main Street downtown corridor.

Today, with its newly built Grove Amphitheatre, refurbished Gem Theatre and restored Mills House gallery, Garden Grove has won a reputation as a new cultural stronghold.

And Cartmell, 37, now an Actors’ Equity union member, is holding his steadiest theatrical job yet, as a salaried actor-director at the city-run Gem.

“Talk about a turnaround. I never expected to be back in Garden Grove, much less as a working actor here. But if you talk arts boom in this county, you have to mention Garden Grove,” Cartmell said.

Like Cartmell, other actors are finding more openings with the county’s professional and community theater companies. Arts growth has also widened opportunities for singers, musicians, dancers and visual artists, expanded hiring and training for arts administrators.

The arts field in Orange County was not always this encouraging.

Dan’s wife, Connie Orliski-Cartmell, a former actress, now a staff coordinator with the Mills House, put it this way: “It’s always been rough (working in the arts). You never earned a lot of money. You certainly never got much respect.”

In the early 1960s--when Garden Grove was being derided as a case of urban planning gone awry--Dan Cartmell was a student at Bolsa Grande High School who had already embarked on a performing career.

Attended Golden West

Smitten with folk music since attending his first concerts at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, he majored in music at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. In the evenings, he played guitar and banjo with a Bluegrass band that played the Orange and Los Angeles County folk-club circuit, including Knott’s Berry Farm and small colleges.

“My family wasn’t exactly crazy about me going into such an insecure line of work. Like everyone else, they wanted me to do something more conventional and less Bohemian,” Cartmell said.

By the time he was graduated from Cal State Long Beach, in 1976, however, he had switched to acting--a career just as precarious and transient, if not more so than being a club musician.

Still, he managed to find stage work. After studying at Illinois State University for his master’s degree in theater arts, he joined a federally supported Long Beach troupe that performed Shakespeare at schools and at other community halls.

For several months in 1979, he was a member of the National Shakespeare Company, appearing in “Julius Caesar” and “Much Ado About Nothing” in the New York-based troupe’s tour of theaters and campuses in the East and Midwest.

Back in California, however, Cartmell found the job picture as bleak as ever. He found occasional parts as a non-union actor at small theaters, including the Long Beach Little Theater and L.A. Actors Theatre.

‘I’ve Done It’

In trying to make it in movies, he found work only in bit roles in industrial and educational films.

To keep going financially, he continued to perform with folk bands and to take on temporary jobs in roofing, gardening and sales. “You name it, I’ve done it,” he said. “I was even a golf course starter--you know, the guy who calls the people out to the tees.”

He didn’t know it then, but in 1980, when he was offered the chance to play a featured role in Garden Grove’s second annual Shakespeare festival, Cartmell’s break was to come in his hometown.

This was a time of mounting cultural one-upmanship among the county’s cities--Garden Grove included.

As usual, the lead was taken by the county’s upscale “gold coast” municipalities. In Laguna Beach both the Laguna Art Museum and Laguna Moulton Playhouse announced major renovations. In Newport Beach, the Newport Harbor Art Museum had already opened its new facility as a regional showcase for contemporary art.

Costa Mesa was already home to the nationally recognized South Coast Repertory Theatre, the county’s only all-professional stage company. But that city came up with an even bigger coup: the Orange County Performing Arts Center was to be built in the South Coast Plaza area.

Aspirations to Glory

Even Santa Ana--once the county’s dominant community and now the city with the county’s largest concentration of low-income families--talked of expanding the Bowers Museum on a big-time scale. And the Santa Ana High School Auditorium, despite its outmoded look and deteriorating neighborhood, had become the county’s most used concert hall.

So Garden Grove, although its economic and social status was similar to Santa Ana’s, aspired to cultural glory for the same reasons given by the other cities: community pride and regional prestige.

Taking advantage of federal grants and other special financing available under city redevelopment programs, Garden Grove in 1980 had already turned the Mills House into a visual arts center and converted the 172-seat Gem movie house into a community playhouse.

The 542-seat Grove Amphitheatre was built the following year as the permanent site for what is still the county’s only festival devoted to Shakespeare (including “As You Like It,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth” and “Hamlet”).

Enter Dan Cartmell.

Since his 1980 appearance as Baptista in the festival’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” he has worked with increasing frequency at the Gem and Grove. His major roles have included Fagin in “Oliver,” Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” Frederick Treves in “The Elephant Man” and Phil Hogan in “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”

Now Gets a Salary

Named resident actor-director this season, he is the Grove Theatre Company’s only regular Actors’ Equity member. This means a salary for Cartmell and involvement in most of the Gem’s six 1986-87 productions.

(Other Equity actors or directors are hired by the Grove company, but only on a “guest artist” basis. The remainder of the troupe are non-union performers who work without pay or receive a small stipend, budget permitting.)

“Dan’s an ideal choice for the resident post. We had considered bringing in someone from outside, like L.A. But Dan’s already here, and his work has been outstanding,” said artistic director Thomas Bradac, whose regular company members consist of Cartmell and seven other actors.

The Grove connection, apparently, has given new momentum to Cartmell’s career.

As the aging and raging Lear-like actor in “The Dresser,” Cartmell this year won especially strong praise from reviewers (including the Times’ Robert Koehler, who wrote that Cartmell and co-star Bud Leslie performed with “sterling artistry”).

Cartmell’s next Gem assignment is yet another acting plum: the maverick older brother in Sam Shepard’s “True West,” opening Jan. 16.

Also, Cartmell has been directing more. In addition to “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” he has staged “Crimes of the Heart,” “Of Mice and Men” and “Chapter Two” at the Gem.

Teen-Age Children

His “biggest fans,” he said, are his two teen-age children. “Neither of them shows any inclination to follow in my footsteps (as an actor),” he said of Kim, 18, and Dan Jr., 16. “But they know this is what I love doing and what I do best.”

For the time being, Cartmell plans to continue both acting and directing, but strictly for the stage. He is not, he added, contemplating any serious attempts to “make it” in films or television.

Bolstered by signs that more acting jobs are opening up in local theaters, Connie Orliski-Cartmell, a Cal State Long Beach graduate in theater arts and a one-time Gem performer, said she plans to return to acting. At present, besides her Mills House post, she is completing her graduate work in Asian studies at the Long Beach campus.

“I think the (job) prospects are better than they have ever been in the theater and other arts. It’s just a beginning, true, but it’s a very encouraging one,” she said.

And thanks to their current jobs at the Garden Grove cultural complex, the Cartmells have acquired a bit more societal status. They have just moved from a tiny apartment into a roomier $750-a-month two-bedroom house near the theater.

But the Cartmells still can’t live entirely off their arts jobs. To help make ends meet, Dan--who said he earns $325 a week from the Grove productions--still plays the small-club circuit with an Irish folk combo called the Bold Fenian) Men. He also gives private drama and music lessons.

Even in what they describe as a “good year,” the Cartmells still live modestly. Their combined annual income remains in the lower-income range, according to Dan.

“You can’t say we’re on easy street,” he said. “But for the first time in our lives, we’re not only getting a measure of stability, but also--maybe--a little more respectability.”