South Bay CLO in an Expansive Frame of Mind

The South Bay’s only professional theater company, Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, is expanding on several fronts.

Beginning with “West Side Story,” which previews Wednesday and opens Saturday, the company’s musicals at the 1,425-seat Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center will each play for three weeks instead of the previous two.

“We were out of real estate. We had no good tickets left to sell,” said executive director director-producer James Blackman, noting that the subscription rolls have risen to 16,700 this year, up from about 14,000 last year and from what he called “a horribly flat period in 1996-98.” A three-week run, Blackman said, gives the group a greater opportunity to reap the benefit of good reviews, which often aren’t printed until halfway through the second week.

This first production of the 1999 season also will feature the company’s first commissioned set for an established musical. Revenues from rentals will pay for it, Blackman said. However, he doesn’t plan to enter the set construction business as a regular habit.

Plans are also underway for an expansion of the Redondo Beach facility. The City Council recently agreed to request proposals for designing a new atrium lobby on the west side of the building, which would become the main entrance, as well as new chandeliers, carpet, restrooms, refreshment areas, a box office, sight line improvements for some of the rear seats, and additional facilities for the disabled. All would be part of a larger improvement of the surrounding park, which would be funded by not-yet-issued bonds that would, in turn, be repaid from the tax receipts of the local redevelopment district. Construction won’t start until next year, assuming all goes as planned.

However, one city-paid improvement is already apparent, Blackman said--a big, new marquee that “looks like an Amtrak car.”

MORE ON MUSICALS: Who’ll write and produce the “West Side Stories” of the future? Broadway on Sunset, a musical development nonprofit, hopes to help L.A.’s new-musical writers connect with people who can help them develop their shows, at what’s billed as the first annual West Coast Musical Theatre Conference next weekend at Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Friday will feature networking, remarks by director and choreographer Grover Dale and an onstage conversation with Frank Wildhorn, the “Jekyll and Hyde” and “Scarlet Pimpernel” composer who’ll soon bring yet another musical, “The Civil War,” to Broadway. Capping the evening will be a concert reading of the musical that won a Broadway on Sunset competition, Charles Bloom’s “Pablo,” about Picasso.

A panel of producers will discuss “Getting Your Musical Produced” on Saturday, followed by more networking, an appearance by Jason Alexander (a Tony-winning musical star as well as Jerry Seinfeld’s former sidekick) and a revue of songs from some of the finalists in the competition won by “Pablo.”

Broadway on Sunset co-founder Libbe S. HaLevy said L.A.--with its many small theaters, songwriters and other talent--has the potential to become “the headquarters for the creation of new musicals.” But “many fresh ideas die aborning because they’re not developed far enough before their first production. Writers risk killing their shows if they show them too early.”

Reservations for the conference: (213) 485-1681.