El Portal Is Once Again Ready for Its Close-Up

The people who run the new El Portal Center for the Arts in North Hollywood are accustomed to starting the year with a bang.

In January 1994, the Northridge earthquake shattered their imminent plans to reopen El Portal, a former ‘20s movie palace, as a playhouse. The disaster destroyed a city-funded $250,000 transformation of the building into 199- and 99-seat theaters.

Almost exactly two years later, after performing in temporary quarters on a campus and in a tent across Lankershim Boulevard from El Portal, the company got the good news that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would provide the first of two major grants for restoration of the building.

So it’s only fitting that the mainstage at El Portal is finally scheduled to open Friday, another mid-January milestone.

Now in a 390-seat configuration, the El Portal mainstage will be the L.A. area’s largest new (or extensively renovated) venue devoted primarily to professional play production since Los Angeles Theatre Center opened in 1985.

It’s also one of the most heavily government-financed theaters around town since the heyday of LATC, although most of the El Portal funds are federal, not local as LATC’s were. El Portal’s restoration cost includes about $4.5 million from FEMA and a $1.5-million loan from the Small Business Administration, for which repayments will begin at the end of May. Unlike LATC, El Portal is not expected to receive significant operating support from any government agency. Most of the approximately $750,000 needed for the first mainstage season was privately raised.

The theater company behind El Portal grew out of Actors Alley, a member-supported troupe that has operated various sub-100-seat venues in the San Fernando Valley for almost 30 years.

Robert Caine, the El Portal president who ran Actors Alley’s business affairs during most of the last decade, moved to the Valley as a kid in 1945, attended movies at El Portal as a teenager and co-owns and runs a collection agency in Van Nuys. Artistic director Jeremiah Morris has lived in Sherman Oaks since 1976. All theatergoers are welcome, but Valley residents are the targeted constituency.

Although Caine is neutral regarding Valley secession--and Morris is against it--Caine added that the breakaway movement “if nothing else, is an identity movement. It helps create the feeling that we need something valid out here.”

Therefore, he reasons, Valley theatergoers who have subscribed for years to institutions downtown (Caine is a Mark Taper Forum subscriber), in Pasadena or on the Westside may have a desire to support a major theater closer to home.

So far, the numbers offer support for this theory. Of the 5,000 subscribers attracted to the first season on the mainstage, about 84% are from the Valley. Among Valley neighborhoods, Woodland Hills has provided the second highest number of subscribers, right behind Studio City. Five percent more come from Glendale.

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The Valley-based demographics won’t affect Morris’ programming plans one iota. “I would program the same things if we were over the hill,” he said. “Theater in the Valley is every bit as good” as theater south of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The subscription total isn’t half as big as the initial subscription ranks at Geffen Playhouse in Westwood (in 1996-97). But it’s considerably larger than the current totals for East West Players or A Noise Within, other companies that outgrew the sub-100-seat arena. Still, 5,000 subscribers will fill only half of the seats for each El Porto production.

The first mainstage season has three titles that are new to the area: Joe DiPietro’s family comedy “Over the River and Through the Woods,” Ronald Smokey Stevens and Jaye Stewart’s small musical “Rollin’ on the T.O.B.A.” and Ben Elton’s London-produced but Beverly Hills-set comedy “Popcorn.” The fourth is a revival, but a rather obscure one, Ferenc Molnar’s “The Play’s the Thing.”

Theatergoers “are not going to keep coming to see ‘South Pacific,’ ” Morris said.

He’s aware, however, that the larger audience at El Portal (compared to previous audiences for Actors Alley, where he has been artistic director for the last decade) will want something familiar--stars, if not plays. So “Over the River” will open Friday with Carol Lawrence and Joe Campanella. “The Play’s the Thing” will feature Hal Linden.

Morris said he warned Actors Alley members that they would not dominate the casting at El Portal’s mainstage, even though they were the backbone of the struggle to open the complex.

The Actors Alley company will provide most of the casts for the building’s two smaller theaters--a 94-seat black box that will open next month with “The Puppetmaster of Lodz,” and a 43-seat storefront theater that the company has used for several years. But actors in sub-100-seat theaters are paid only token fees, in comparison to the $472 a week El Portal’s Equity contract requires on the mainstage.

Actors Alley President David Mingrino acknowledged a few growing pains as company members “learned to understand the reshaping of the company,” but he said no one left as a result. Indeed, in contrast to the days when Actors Alley members paid more in dues than they ever got back in wages, El Portal provides relatively well-paying jobs for some company members, not only as actors (two company members are in the cast of “Over the River” and others work backstage) but also in education and outreach programs.

Besides serving patrons from such upscale areas as Studio City and Woodland Hills, El Portal is the centerpiece of a burgeoning theater district in North Hollywood. And to qualify for FEMA funds, El Portal had to establish it would serve as a community center, not just a theater.

What this means isn’t completely settled, but Caine cited an array of alliances in the talking stages, in some of which Actors Alley has previously participated. Educational programs will bring students to El Portal and send artists to schools; an arts teacher training program is being discussed with the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

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In addition, because of the ethnic makeup of North Hollywood, “it’s extremely important to reach the Latino community,” Caine said. There may be cooperative ventures with two Latino companies, East L.A. Classic Theatre and New York’s Repertorio Espanol.

Yet El Portal’s relations with one nearby community are rather rocky. Slightly more than a year ago, Actors Alley withdrew from the Valley Theatre League, which is made up of many of the Valley’s small companies. The league is centered in NoHo, where it presents a series of annual theater awards for which its members are eligible.

Valley Theatre League President Ed Gaynes, who runs a small theater a couple of blocks from El Portal, declined to speak on the record about El Portal’s rift with his group. But he issued a written statement that cited the “great opportunity” at the El Portal. “With that also comes a responsibility to upgrade the consistency and quality of the artistic product.”

He cited the parallel to the government funding of LATC in the ‘80s and said, “There is a thriving, united community of 20 other NoHo theaters, who also deserve the support of government and philanthropic funding. If it turns out that [more] money is to be given out continually, it is the goal of the Valley Theatre League to see that all of our theaters benefit.”

For his part, Morris said the league is “an undemocratic organization” whose “awards are a joke.” Caine was somewhat more circumspect, saying that the decision to withdraw from the league isn’t irrevocable.

A few longtime observers, not affiliated with the league, raise questions about El Portal leadership. A former El Portal associate who tried to help raise funds for the project said that though Caine has been generous, other board members have been lax in raising money. The source, who asked not to be identified, added that the company’s status is attributable to its foresight in obtaining a lease (until 2022) rather than because of any special artistic vision.

Then again, the current leadership may not stay in power for long. Morris, who is 70, said he would like to be the artistic director for only two more years, assuming that by then “the theater has become a permanent part of our lives.” Caine, 64, has retired from running the institution’s business affairs. His first successor, Geoffrey Shlaes, returned to New York last fall after only six months, citing family priorities. He was replaced on a part-time basis for an initial six-month period by Arline Chambers, 60, who had held managerial positions at the Ahmanson, Mark Taper Forum and Reprise! but who has another job at Disney Imagineering.

El Portal probably won’t lack candidates for its next generation of leadership, once people have seen the physical plant, designed by Richard McCann of Pasadena. “The sight lines are so great,” Morris said. “No one is more than 14 rows away. The stage can go up or down. I can take over the forestage or take it away. We can fly sets.”

All this, and 390 seats waiting to be filled.