Are crazy real estate prices strangling the arts in Orange County?

Dorothy has dazzling adventures over the rainbow but aches for just one thing: Home. The folks at Camino Real Playhouse — and, it turns out, many other arts organizations in the O.C. — know exactly how she feels.

“I have been trying for more than two years to find a new space, gone down every possible rabbit hole, knocked on doors of buildings that aren’t for sale,” said Leslie Eisner, artistic director of the nearly 35-year-old company that’s losing its city-owned home near the historic San Juan Capistrano Mission to a redevelopment project.

“We’ve had five realtors working with us. We still don’t have a space. I just don’t know what else to do. The clock is ticking.”

There’s the low point in every second act where all seems hopelessly, desperately, irretrievably lost — and the Camino Real Playhouse seems to be there right now. But soft, what light in yonder window breaks? It’s at these most hopeless junctures that miracles can happen, actor Carla Naragon said.

“In every story there’s a hero and a villain and unexpected strangers who show kindness,” she said. “There’s an opportunity for heroes to show up. Maybe there’s a hero out there somewhere — maybe it’s in someone’s cosmic contract to come forward and have the experience of being a savior or a silent angel. This story has room for those people to come forward.”

It would be tragic to lose a community theater that managed to survive pandemic shutdowns, only to be felled by the outrageous fortune of California real estate. But it’s happening. Over the past several years, the Attic Theater lost its spot in Santa Ana. STAGEStheatre lost its spot in Fullerton. The Modjeska Playhouse lost its spot in Lake Forest.

“Real estate is expensive,” said Richard Stein, president and CEO of Arts Orange County. “It’s a bigger problem than just the community theaters — it’s everywhere in the arts. It’s very difficult to find affordable places to perform or exhibit. Thank God for Henry Segerstrom. That land for all those buildings — can you imagine?”

The Alchemy Theatre Company has been homeless since it launched in 2013. “I’ve been pushing to find a home for us, but rent is astronomical,” said Jeff Lowe, a founder. “Unless you have a city, an actual city council, willing to provide a building or put up a lot of money, it’s just not possible. And it’s tough to generate returning audience members when you don’t have a home.”

The now-shuttered Modjeska Playhouse knows. It never got back on its feet after the pandemic. Its landlord wanted to nearly double the rent — and wanted the entire lease term paid in advance.

“As much as we wanted to stay in the space, and as much as we wanted to continue as a theater company, their terms weren’t realistic, so we had to close,” said Christopher Sullivan. “Unless the theater is really well funded by donors, or the building they perform in is owned by the city making rents and day to day operating expenses less of a burden, it is very hard to survive in Orange County. Ticket sales are not enough to keep the doors open.”

Help wanted

Camino Real Playhouse appreciates the great deal it enjoyed for decades. The city of San Juan Capistrano allowed it to transform the city-owned former feed store/Pacific Bell building into a playhouse in 1991. Rent was almost free. Camino Real built up a beloved following — so beloved that a benefactor has pledged to help fund a new home so long as it remains in San Juan Capistrano. The money, however, won’t follow if the company leaves town.

Eisner has been looking. And looking. First in San Juan Cap. Then in surrounding cities, branching out further and further. Its proposal to move to a spot in San Clemente was met with great agitation by the city’s community theater; San Clemente took no action on it, and it seems moot.

“This past year we had over 11,000 people come through the playhouse to see our shows. Of 10 productions, eight had to be extended because every one sold out. We’re firing on all cylinders. If it wasn’t for the lack of a building….” Eisner said.

Some cities invest more than others in the arts. Laguna Beach owns the property that the Laguna Playhouse and Pageant of the Masters sit on, and charges them dramatically low rents for long-term leases — about $18,000 a year for the Playhouse, according to its recent audit. Garden Grove owns the Gem Theater, where One More Productions produces musicals and holds educational workshops. Brea’s city-owned Curtis Theater is available for creatives to rent, starting at about $500 per day.

Mission Viejo is studying the possibility of building a theater. Lake Forest’s city council chamber is a flexible space that can host performances.

San Juan Capistrano, meanwhile, has been on the generous-arts-benefactors list for decades — but alas. California eliminated redevelopment agencies to push surplus city-owned properties onto the market (and return them to the tax rolls). The developer’s original vision for the Playhouse site included a state-of-the-art performing arts center, but that disappeared from the project ultimately approved by the city council. The developer formed a nonprofit to raise $40 million to build the arts center elsewhere, but who knows when, and if, it will come to fruition?

The Camino Real Playhouse was told it would have to leave its home this year. No move-out date has been set, but not knowing what’s next causes enormous anxiety. Theaters need room to build and paint sets, store costumes, rehearse…. An optimal space would be a warehouse, some 10,000 square feet, with parking for 40 or 50 cars.

Eisner promised the late Barbara Jean (“BJ”) Scott, founder of the Camino Real Playhouse, that she’d take care of it for her. “It weighs on me,” Eisner said. “I want to make sure I fulfill that promise.”

Thinking out of the box

San Juan Capistrano City Councilmember John Campbell does not want to lose the Playhouse.

“They have been such an important, integral part of our community for decades. They’ve done so much for us, given back to the community… It’s a situation where we had no intentions of moving the Playhouse until we were literally forced to sell that property,” he said. “We want to keep them in town — but you can’t make someone sell them a building.”

Fellow Councilmember John Taylor feels the same way. He has served on the Camino Real Playhouse’s board. “It’s really important to me to have a community theater in the city,” Taylor said. “I’d be very sad to see it move.”

There’s no wrecking ball hanging over the playhouse just yet, and Taylor suspects it will have a bit more time at its current location than originally anticipated. As for what’s next — he understands that theater folks want space to perform as well as build and store sets and costumes, but real estate is so valuable these days that’s probably not viable. He suspects expectations will have to be adjusted.

“I wonder if they could do a thing with our local movie theater?” Taylor said. “And by the center where Marshalls is, there’s a vacancy … what about a long-term lease? The donor funding goes toward securing an endowment to pay the rent. I certainly would be creative if I had the offer of a large sum of money to make it work. A lot depends on whether the donors are willing to accept that.”

City funding, however, is out. “We’re really not in a position to be able to do that, unfortunately. I wish we were,” he said. “I wish we were like Dana Point or Newport Beach. They have millions and millions in their coffers. We run a really tight ship.”

Another out-of-the-box idea comes via Watermark OC Church, near the airport in Costa Mesa. It’s transforming thousands of square feet in its building — commercial industrial warehouse, 30-foot ceilings — into a theater.

“We feel like God called us to this space not to just serve the church, but to reach out and be a service to the community,” said Benjamin Applebee, lead pastor. “That’s our design. That’s our calling.”

The project has gotten the thumbs up from the warehouse’s owners association. Final approval is expected from the city of Costa Mesa shortly. Builders are being screened and the church hopes to finish the project before the end of the year.

Stein, of Arts OC, connected some homeless theater groups with the church to tour the space. The most common question: “When does it open?” Applebee didn’t have details on rental rates yet, but plans to make it affordable and convenient.

Edgier groups, like the homeless Alchemy, might not fit well in a church, and are forced to get creative. Consider “Drinkspeare,” its free show dedicated to “the Bard and the Bar.” The audience’s job is to get the actors tipsy before they perform Shakespeare, which leads to uproarious results. In February, Alchemy will do “Hamlet” at 8 p.m. Tuesdays at Craftsman Wood Fired Pizza in Placentia, and “Romeo and Juliet” at 8 p.m. Thursdays at the Lone Wolf Brewing Co. in Yorba Linda.

Lowe holds fast to Shakespeare’s wisdom: “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

Family

Much is at stake here. The arts enrich our lives, contribute to our health and well-being, and boost the local economy, particularly in tourism-heavy places like San Juan Capistrano, said Stein. “The whole culture of a community theater, a group of people working together to create art — that can’t be underestimated,” he said.

Camino Real has been doing that for folks in San Juan Capistrano — and throughout the region — for decades.

Jordyn Brady came to the Playhouse in 2021 to perform in “Little Shop of Horrors.” “I was so excited to be back on the stage — but what I didn’t expect was to find a family as well,” she said. “The Camino Real Playhouse turned into my home. The friends I’ve made turned into my forever family.”

Actress Naragon feels much the same way. She’s a therapist specializing in trauma care; the stage is her form of therapy. Theater is her church, how she connects with the divine, and Camino Real is one of her loves.

“Not all stories have happy endings, but I do believe — thank you, Shakespeare — that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy,” she said.

Bring it on, better angels. Bring it on.

Source: Orange County Register