STAGE NOTES : Stadium to Get Replicas of Autry’s Stars

Gene Autry, who has more stars than anyone on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (five--for radio, television, motion pictures, recording and theater) is about to get five more stars at the entrance to Anaheim Stadium.

Replicas of his Hollywood stars will be implanted in the ballpark sidewalk as part of an eight-day All Star Week celebration (July 4 to 11), culminating in the annual major league All Star Game, to be held in Anaheim this year.

The stars for Autry, who owns the California Angels, will be dedicated July 8 in a ceremony led by Bill Welsh and Walk of Fame Chairman Johnny Grant, who preside over similar unveilings in Hollywood.

The pre-All Star Game celebration could become a prototype for future celebrations in other host cities. Entertainers at the eight-day celebration will include Bob Hope, Jay Leno, Jose Feliciano, Buddy Ebsen, Pat Buttram and Clayton Moore (as the Lone Ranger). Champion, Autry’s movie horse, will be brought out of retirement for a home-plate reunion with “the singing cowboy.”

RISKING IT: The Grove Shakespeare Festival, which will open its 11th annual season next week with “Romeo and Juliet,” has decided to experiment with a Winter Festival in December, to be highlighted by an outdoor staging of its popular holiday show, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” at the 550-seat Festival Amphitheatre in Garden Grove.

Until now, the adaptation of the Dylan Thomas story has been staged indoors, at the Grove’s 161-seat Gem Theatre. But the new Grove season, which consolidates two former winter-summer schedules into a single season running from June through December, finds Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at the Gem in December.

Because “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” has been so popular that theatergoers have had to be turned away, the Grove considered staging it at a larger indoor auditorium. But Artistic Director Thomas F. Bradac discovered that all suitable indoor venues nearby already were booked for that time of year.

“So we’re going back to our original concept,” he said. “It’s a dangerous idea but an exciting one. And it’s what I first proposed to our board: I wanted to close the new consolidated season with a Winter Festival built around an outdoor staging of the play in the amphitheater. The only reason we looked into other possibilities was because we had weather concerns.”

Bradac said the larger seating capacity of the amphitheater would allow the company to stage “Child’s Christmas” fewer times--three consecutive weekends beginning Dec. 8--while accommodating more theatergoers. The play would be marketed as part of “an old-fashioned winter event,” he said. The amphitheater will be decorated to look like “a winter wonderland”--possibly with artificial snow. Community groups would be invited to stage “living Christmas cards” in the adjacent park.

“We’ll roast chestnuts and serve hot toddies,” said Bradac, adding that theater patrons would be encouraged to bundle up. “We could get rained out, but life is made of risks.”

MORE PLUCK: Way Off Broadway, the feisty Santa Ana troupe, reports that it will stage “AfterShock,” a new full-length play by Allison Gappa, in August. No opening or closing dates have been set. For information, call (714) 547-8998.

BREAK A LEG: The Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse will stage a shortened version of William Gibson’s “Monday After the Miracle” in Omaha next week at the national finals of the American Assn. of Community Theaters competition Wednesday through Sunday.

There are nine competitors. The winner will be invited to represent the United States at an international drama festival in Monaco in August. The runner-up will be invited to a festival in Tokyo. “Monday After the Miracle” is a sequel to Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker.”

BACK ON THE BOARDS: Illusion’s New View Theatre, the year-old troupe in Fullerton that is struggling to survive financially, has scheduled a pair of new one-acts (instead of going belly up, as it had feared).

“Sympathy for the Devil’s Advocate” by Lonnie Lincoln and “Slow Like Me” by Shawn Quirk will open at the troupe’s 39-seat theater on June 30 after previews Friday and Saturday. No closing date was announced. For information, call (714) 990-9605.

BACK AT SCR: Stop-Gap Theatre, the prize-winning drama-therapy troupe, will return to the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory in July with 12 performances of a musical about surviving child abuse.

The show is entitled “Shadow and Song” and was written by John Weston, who revised it from “When the Bough Breaks,” an earlier play. Ron Creager has added new songs.

The show will run July 19 through 29. For information, call (714) 648-0135.

SPECIAL EDUCATION: The Laguna Playhouse and the Orange County Department of Education are planning a theater-training program this summer for disabled youths (ages 7 to 18).

If there are sufficient funds, the program will provide a free series of workshops (Aug. 21-25) at the Moulton Theatre in Laguna Beach. For information, call (714) 494-8022.