Taking its first bow

Young Chang

Like expectant fathers, David Emmes and Martin Benson stood in the

gut of a barely-there theater last April and spoke of a stage that

soon would exist.

They beamed in a dusty, hollow shell of a place. They patted, or

was it more like petted, a wooden fence that separated the soon-to-be

stage section from the audience. They boasted that the space between

would be, at most, 39 feet from anywhere in the house.

For a year now, the founders and artistic directors of South Coast

Repertory have celebrated first steps -- the groundbreaking, the

placing of the last steel beam on the Julianne Argyros Stage and the

naming of the various parts of SCR’s new Folino Theatre Center. And

for a year, they have announced all the good things -- all the

dollars and donors and endowment plans and new programs -- that have

and will come with a $19-million expansion project.

Like dads, they have been gushing good news.

Their baby, meanwhile, has grown up just the way architect Cesar

Pelli’s portraits promised it would.

What was for so long just a massive mess of noise and

Home-Depot-esque corners suddenly got a face this month, a sleek and

modern one with a whole lot of windows and silver steel borders. The

three theaters -- the Segerstrom Stage, the Julianne Argyros Stage

and the Nicholas Studio -- grew personalities. And the fancy,

windowed lobby stretching across the whole complex began to assume

enough shape to do its job, to hug its three stages.

On Saturday, the new theater complex embraced its first official

visitors as the creme de la creme of Newport-Mesa society arrived to

take part in SCR’s “Light the Night” Gala Ball. The glittering crowd

paid between $500 and $750 per person to be the first to glimpse the

theater company’s new home.

FINISHING ON DEADLINE

Dennis Astl, project manager for construction company Snyder

Langston, said the pressure to finish on deadline weighed heavy on

his staff. It wasn’t a matter of tenants who were promised the space

by a certain day. It was, instead, an engagement scheduled to attract

Orange County’s who’s who that propelled Astl and his crew to make

sure patrons decked out in frills and cuffs wouldn’t arrive onto an

unfinished, gravelly theater.

What they floated into instead was an elegantly lit Folino Theatre

Center.

“It was an aggressive schedule to start with, so we’ve been

pushing very, very hard here at the end,” the project manager said

last week. “We’re not at a point where we think there are only the

small things left. That’ll be Oct. 5.”

The small things included hinging the doors on the bathroom

stalls, replacing a bent ceiling grid, fixing a light and making sure

the carpets in all the rooms stretch to all the corners.

The big things actually added 38,000 square feet to a

40,000-square-foot complex. The construction meant closing the

theater -- both the former Mainstage and the Second Stage -- for the

summer and scheduling the Hispanic Playwrights Project for multiple

venues, including holding play readings at the Orange County

Performing Arts Center.

Here’s what went into nearly doubling SCR:

* Building the Julianne Argyros Stage, a 336-seat proscenium

theater with an orchestra level, a mezzanine, a balcony and four

boxes.

* Renovating the 507-seat Segerstrom Stage, which now has new

seats, new floors, newly painted walls and acoustic slides in the

ceiling.

* Renovating the Nicholas Studio, which has gone from housing 161

seats to 95 and will now be used more for children’s productions and

workshops, while productions previously held in that space get the

proscenium treatment in the Argyros theater.

* Building a large, all-window lobby that stretches across all

the theaters just mentioned.

* Building what officials call Ela’s Terrace, named after

Elizabeth Segerstrom, the harlequin-patterned area right outside the

lobby blooming now with great myrtles and other pretty plants.

* Constructing a set of offices, classrooms, prop rooms and

dressings rooms within the complex.

* Expanding the box office and restrooms.

REMEMBERING WHEN

Emmes remembers when SCR started as a touring company, staging

plays like Moliere’s “Tartuffe” at the Laguna Playhouse, before they

rented a marine hardware store on Balboa Peninsula in 1965. The

space, which became known as the First Step Theater, was big enough

to seat just 75.

By 1967, the theater group was operating out of the Third Step

Theater, what was previously Sprouse-Reitz Variety Store on Newport

Boulevard in Costa Mesa.

In 1978, Emmes and Benson, who had first met at San Francisco

State College in the early ‘60s, moved SCR into its current Town

Center Drive home. They had an operating budget of $250,000 at the

time of the move, a growing staff, drama awards and $3.5 million

toward their first permanent home.

Season subscriber Catherine Thyen, who saw her first SCR show in

1974, remembers the groundbreaking of more than two decades ago and

how everyone involved with the theater was so proud. The theater’s

support group, which Thyen belonged to, provided all the food and

beverages for the event.

“It was an exciting time to have a theater built just for

theater,” the longtime SCR supporter said.

Emmes added that another exciting time for SCR was when it

received its Tony Award in 1988 -- a regional theater Tony given out

once a year to a nonprofit stage.

“I feel just totally exhilarated to know that we’ve had a

remarkable odyssey of growing from a homeless touring company into

one of the leading theaters in America,” Emmes said. “We just

sometimes look back in amazement at how far we’ve come.”

In the past 37 years, SCR has premiered such plays as Richard

Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain,” Donald Marguiles “Collected

Stories,” Margaret Edson’s “Wit” and Beth Henley’s “Debutante Ball.”

Among the actors who have trod its boards are Ed Harris, Dennis Franz

and Jean Stapleton.

RAISING FUNDS

The fund-raising goal of the “Next Step” campaign was $50 million

over five years, which draws to a close at the end of 2003. The money

will cover both building and new programming costs. Major donors were

the people who got their names immortalized within the theater’s

walls. Paul Folino and his family donated $10 million, Julianne and

George Argyros donated $5 million, Stacey and Henry T. Nicholas III

contributed $2.5 million and the Segerstrom family and foundation

gave almost $3 million in money and land.

“That is a great testimony to the vitality of Orange County, the

tremendous audience that we’ve built through the years and the

extraordinary community leadership that we have been blessed to

receive,” said Emmes, of SCR’s community donors.

Work on the Segerstrom Stage and Nicholas Studio started in May,

after the theaters finished their seasons and went dark. Construction

on the Argyros started last September. Involved in the construction

were 64 subcontractors, 150 persons (at its peak), 1,362 pieces of

steel for the Argyros Stage and the new lobby, miles and miles of

electrical wiring and an immeasurable amount of cooperation between

the 100-some people regularly involved.

“Everyone did a really phenomenal job of working together to come

up with the best solution to make everyone happy,” Astl said.

The Argyros Stage was started from scratch. Irvine-based Snyder

Langston began by building a frame of the theater, paving the

asphalt, pouring 38,000 square feet with concrete, wiring up

everything mechanical, electrical and plumbing-related, sloping the

ceiling at three different angles (for acoustic and sight-line

reasons), fireproofing all the structural steel and then changing the

thickness of the fireproofing to raise the ceiling the slightest bit

to have everything make the utmost acoustical and visual sense.

Things clanged and hammered and whirred for a year.

The Segerstrom Stage, on the other hand, was more a matter of

touching up.

“All we did was refinishes in the theater,” Astl said. “The space

itself did not change and the type of equipment did not change. But

it has all new seats, new flooring, new painted sidewalls and

acoustic slides in the ceilings.”

The Nicholas Studio was repainted by SCR’s workers, stripped of

its sets and seats, re-filled with new risers and seats and newly

carpeted by Snyder Langston.

The end result, especially the Argyros, hardly varied from Pelli’s

original design.

“The design team did I think a phenomenal job. This building was

very, very complex, with all the different finishes and a very

limited amount of space,” Astl said.

When things didn’t work according to Pelli’s designs, problems had

to do with minute details like a steel beam not fitting or something

not lining up.

“Everyone really looked at this with who the client was and knew

everyone had to do their best,” Astl said. “That’s how everyone

looked at it and everyone came through really well.”

TAKING THE STAGE

So that’s the outside.

Inside, SCR officials plan to mount classics and modern classics

on the Segerstrom Stage while showcasing new and contemporary works

in the Argyros. With everything from improved wig rooms to expanded

stages, especially on the Argyros Stage, Emmes expects the increase

in creative tools to ultimately result in better shows.

“While we were able to produce a number of, I think, very exciting

and important work within that stage, it was tactically limited,” he

said of the former Second Stage. “There was no backstage and we had

difficulty in doing multi-step plays ... we felt that was really an

artistic limitation.”

An increased number of audience seats will also accommodate more

patrons when shows begin selling out.

“And perhaps importantly as well, we have more than doubled the

size of the ladies restrooms,” Emmes said. “We think that’s going to

shorten the lines considerably.”

All that’s left now is to party. Well, sort of.

Though the Nicholas Studio resembles something of a storage space,

as its dedication ceremony is set for Nov. 10, officials at SCR have

scheduled a season of celebrations to follow Saturday’s Gala Ball.

“Major Barbara,” the first show on the Segerstrom Stage, will open

for previews and its first audience on Oct. 11. The George Bernard

Shaw show will celebrate its official opening night Oct. 18, with a

dedication of the stage as well.

Richard Greenberg’s “The Violet Hour” will open for previews on

the Argyros Stage for the theater’s first audience Nov. 5. The show’s

opening night and dedication of the stage will happen Nov. 8.

The Nicholas Studio will be dedicated two days later.

Thyen remembers when SCR first arrived onto Town Center Drive in

the late ‘70s, how leaders thought they had reached “the end of the

line.”

“Because that satisfied everyone’s needs,” she said. “We had no

idea. We were happy with what we had. We didn’t look down the road

and think we needed another one.”

* YOUNG CHANG writes features. She may be reached at (949)

574-4268 or by e-mail at [email protected].