Glendale Brings Acts to the Alex

Big-time theater is coming to Glendale.

Theatre Corp. of America, the same company that runs the Pasadena Playhouse, will program a separate subscription series of musicals in the Alex Theatre in downtown Glendale. The Theatre Corp. has been hired by the Alex Regional Theatre Board to manage and operate the 1,452-seat facility for the next five years.

The city-owned theater, which first opened as a movie palace in 1925, is in the midst of a $6.2-million renovation financed by Glendale Redevelopment Agency. The renovation is expected to be completed by the end of the year, in time for a New Year’s Eve bash that will open the restored facility.

The Theatre Corp. will divide its own programming into two three-musical seasons each year, the same format the company uses in Pasadena. Martin Wiviott, who in April resigned his job as executive director of Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, will run the musical series.

The focus will be on material produced for local audiences instead of bus-and-truck imports, said Lars Hansen, chief operating officer of the Theatre Corp. Some shows may be co-produced by the Theatre Corp. and the National Alliance of Musical Theatre Producers, the organization that last fall brought a tour of “Annie Warbucks” to three local venues.

Eventually, the Theatre Corp. hopes to extend the life and value of its Alex productions by booking them into a circuit of similarly sized theaters, just as productions in the smaller Pasadena Playhouse tour theaters in Poway and Santa Barbara after their Pasadena runs.

The Theatre Corp. also will book other attractions at the Alex when its own musicals aren’t there. Bob Stein, who books the Spreckels Theatre in San Diego and the Warnors in Fresno, will handle this end of the business.

The Theatre Corp. will invest at least $1 million in programming and marketing, but in the first year it gets to keep all of the gross up to $7.5 million, above which the Alex board will get 3%.

While the Theatre Corp. will assume financial responsibility for the programming and daily operations of the theater, major maintenance and capital improvements will be the board’s responsibility. The board, appointed by the city council, has a 25-year lease on the building.