FULLERTON – Orange County residents who enjoy locally produced, large-scale musical theater productions are going to have to look beyond the county’s borders starting this fall.
That’s when 3-D Theatricals, now in its sixth year as the resident theater company at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, will move to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Its departure will leave Fullerton without a large-venue professional theater company for the first time since 1971, when Fullerton Civic Light Opera was founded.
“It’s sad to see them leave,” said Tina Mittler, director of the Brea’s Curtis Theatre, just a few miles north of the Plummer. “It’s definitely a creative loss for north Orange County. But it’s a great move for 3-D and Cerritos.”
Siblings T.J., Daniel and Gretchen Dawson launched 3-D Theatricals in 2009, initially staging their shows at OC Pavilion, a 500-seat theater in downtown Santa Ana. The Orange County School of the Arts bought the venue in 2010, forcing the company to look for a new home.
When Fullerton Civic Light Opera ran into a $400,000 budget shortfall a few months later, 3-D Theatricals stepped in to finish the group’s planned season of shows at 1,300-seat Plummer Auditorium and took over as the resident company. In the years since, 3-D has gained a reputation for staging lavish, Broadway-style productions featuring a combination of well-known actors – Bronson Pinchot and Rachel York starred in “The Addams Family” last fall – and local talent.
Executive producer and artistic director T.J. Dawson said his company had been negotiating with the city of Cerritos since October 2014. City Manager Art Gallucci “had seen some of our work and was impressed by it, and knew about our growing reputation” and “had been disappointed in some of the touring productions (coming to their venue),” he said. Conversations with Cerritos Center staff members began discussions about a possible move. A final agreement was signed Feb. 3.
Cerritos Center officials agreed that 3-D Theatricals will be an upgrade in the venue’s theater programming.
“We’ve attended their performances as part of our due diligence and they’re absolutely first rate,” said Tom Mitze, the center’s interim program manager.
For 3-D Theatricals, the Cerritos Center not only offers larger seating capacity – more than 1,700 in some configurations – but also boasts enhanced amenities for both customers and cast members, Dawson said.
“The parking lot is adjacent to the building, not across the street,” he said. “The gorgeous, gigantic, comfortable lobby is great for pre-show and intermission refreshments and there are many restrooms throughout the building. … (For 3-D staff and cast members there’s) more room on- and off-stage, enough dressing rooms even for the biggest casts, some equipped with showers, and equipment that is all state-of-the-art.”
Dawson said all of these improvements will come at a lower cost to 3-D, which pays a per-show average of $80,000 to use Plummer. He said he couldn’t discuss his financial arrangements with Cerritos but that all aspects of the relocation are “extremely beneficial” for the company.
The move marks the fourth time in the past five years that a theater company has departed Fullerton’s once-thriving theater scene: Monkey Wrench Collective closed in 2011 and Hunger Artists Theater Company followed suit in 2012. Fullerton Civic Light Opera produced outdoor cabaret-style revues during its first few summers after leaving Plummer, but has staged nothing since 2013.
The city still has the theater departments of Fullerton College and Cal State Fullerton, plus smaller storefront companies Stages Theatre and Maverick Theater.
For fans of large-scale musicals, the primary remaining option in Orange County will be the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, which hosts national touring productions of Broadway hits. The Laguna Playhouse regularly presents musicals, though typically they’re more modest in scope than those in larger venues. Yorba Linda-based McCoy-Rigby Entertainment stages locally produced musicals across the county line at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.
3-D Theatricals is currently performing “Beauty and the Beast” in Fullerton through Feb. 21 and will present “The Full Monty” in April and May and “Hello Dolly!” in July before putting on its first production in Cerritos in October. For each show, the company also does one weekend of performances at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center and that arrangement will continue, Dawson said.
Staff writer Lou Ponsi contributed to this report.
