The Stage Around the Corner

One way to find out what’s going on in the theater is to read the reviews. Another way is to push open a theater door, walk in during a rehearsal, stand smack in the middle of the performance space and say: “Hey, what are you guys doing?”

A young boy from the neighborhood chose the latter approach during a recent rehearsal of “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the 24th Street Theatre just west of Hoover Avenue near the USC campus.

The play’s director, Gregg Daniel, invited the boy to stay for awhile and watch the rehearsal of “Earnest,” Oscar Wilde’s farcical tale of Algernon and Jack, two idle young gents in upper-crust Victorian England who assume alternate identities to win the hearts of two young ladies.

Daniel’s “Earnest,” which opens Saturday, will be performed by an African American ensemble. “Algernon is back, and this time he’s black,” teases the promotional material for the show.

Daniel said he deliberately chose not to set the play in some different time or place in order accommodate audience expectations of what a “black” “Earnest” might be.

“I wasn’t going to tweak it--although I got some great suggestions, like setting it in the antebellum South,” he said. “What better way to parody aristocratic England, which was Wilde’s intent anyway, than by using those who, particularly in American culture, are thought of as being the bottom rung of the ladder, the underclass? . . . This is a dangerous play, and the more I read about Wilde, the more I think this would have been right up his alley.”

The creative forces behind the 24th Street Theatre, which launched its first season Oct. 10 with a critically acclaimed production of William Saroyan’s “The Cave Dwellers,” plan to continue the kind of boundary-free, open-door policy that allows a neighborhood boy to wanderin or a director to experiment with a new twist on a classic play, as they seek to forge a bond between a professional theater and North University Park, a modest, ethnically diverse family neighborhood.

The nonprofit playhouse, housed in a 1924 garment factory, was founded by Jon White-Spunner and Stephanie Shroyer, whose partnership began in 1992 as directors of the Westside’s Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble. For the past two years, White-Spunner and Shroyer have struggled to convert the empty warehouse space into a 99-seat theater with no proscenium stage, and changeable seating adaptable to many configurations.

The cushioned seats, donated by USC’s dental school, feature folding desktops, which may come in handy when the theater hosts educational forums. So far, the only drawback to the arrangement has been the child who chose to bang his wooden desktop up and down ad nauseam during a recent “Cave Dwellers” performance.

The theater also contains a lobby art gallery, featuring for the months of October and November an exhibition of black-and-white photography by seven African American artists who were active in Los Angeles in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. The playhouse also will make itself available to music and dance groups, and plans to offer workshops in playwriting and other theater arts. Lobby furniture is designed by Los Feliz artist Chris Kelley, and is for sale.

Debbie Devine and Jay McAdams are directors of the Glorious Players, a youth theater company, and the playhouse’s youth programs. Although “Cave Dwellers” marks the first production for the 24th Street’s own theater company, the space was used earlier this year for the Glorious Players’ “The Music of Magdalena Bay” and “Working Here,” a play about the history of the warehouse, funded by a grant from Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department, put on by 15 students from Norwood Elementary School.

“We have been here long enough that most of the community knows that we are here,” Shroyer said. “When the doors are open during rehearsals, they come in and out as they please, so that the making of theater is not a mystery. That is certainly something that does not happen in film and TV.”

Observed White-Spunner: “There are theaters that are open at night, and they do plays, and that’s what they do. Then there are arts centers that are open during the day and have kids come in and work with teachers, and that’s what they do. I think you can do both.

“The point about us being here is, a lot of people who live in this neighborhood are not going to the Ahmanson and the Taper [at downtown’s Music Center]. And why should they not see theater in a proper environment, that has a nice lobby, and has good bathrooms, that has reasonable facilities to put on a show that has lights and sound and all of those things? It should be happening in people’s communities, and we are trying to be that kind of place.”

Although the theater’s leaders are committed to community involvement, they also stress that 24th Street productions are not amateur (although the space will sometimes be lent for amateur ventures). All lead cast members for “Cave Dwellers” and “Earnest” are working professionals, many veterans of distinguished regional theaters as well as film and TV.

Still, local actors occasionally get a chance to perform alongside the pros. The “Cave Dwellers” cast includes a 13-year-old girl from the community, whom Shroyer said is thrilled to have the chance to share the stage with professional actors.

While the theater’s mission is to serve the surrounding community, its location is largely a matter of chance.

In 1995, Shroyer and White-Spunner decided they wanted to leave the Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble, an established membership theater company, and find a warehouse space that they could transform into a more broad-based arts center. They expressed that intention in a blurb in the program for one of their productions.

Robert Scales, dean of USC’s School of Theatre, attended a performance and read the blurb. He contacted the pair and asked whether they would be interested in considering a space near USC. Sure, they said.

First, Scales took Shroyer and White-Spunner to a small, unused movie house on 24th Street, directly across from the current location. Both buildings are owned by businesswoman Anne-Merelie Murrell, who owns several historic structures in the area and operates a local glass company. She plans to revitalize the neighborhood by restoring its Victorian buildings and launching an antique dealership, among other enterprises.

Shroyer and White-Spunner liked the little movie house, but could not work with its raked stage and fixed seating arrangement. They asked to see the building across the street and found its cavernous, empty space perfect for their needs.

White-Spunner, a USC faculty member, attended monthly meetings with local schools and community groups to discuss the theater plans. Money to begin the arduous process of cleaning and refurbishing the building came in the form of a $30,000 grant from USC’s Neighborhood Outreach Program, a pool of funds culled from USC faculty and staff donations that is available for neighborhood projects. The theater still needs funds to complete renovation, and plans an annual operating budget of about $80,000.

Shroyer sees “Cave Dwellers,” the 1958 story of a group of homeless squatters taking refuge in an abandoned theater, as a perfect metaphor for 24th Street Theatre.

“The play talks about the theater being a cave, a hiding place, where people come together and it doesn’t matter where they are from,” she said. “I found that play, and I knew I had to open a theater under those auspices, the philosophy that there is something here before us, and there will be something here after all of us. We are just something that passes through.”

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“THE CAVE DWELLERS” and “THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST,” 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St. Dates: “The Cave Dwellers,” today and Nov. 15, 8 p.m.; Nov. 16, 3 p.m. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Saturday, 8 p.m.; next Sunday, 3 p.m. Also: Nov. 6-8, 13-14, 20-22, 27-29, 8 p.m.; Nov. 9, 16, 23 and 30, 3 p.m. Price: $12. Phone: (213) 658-4050.