New Name, Familiar Faces

The star-studded group that broke away from the Met Theatre in 1996--and last week announced a plan to move into the Edgemar complex in Santa Monica--now calls itself the Loretta Theatre.

Loretta? A homage to Loretta Young, perhaps? Loretta Sanchez?

“We just liked it,” said Holly Hunter, one of the Lorettans. “It’s not used, even for a person, that often. It’s familiar but exotic.”

Hunter said she wasn’t sure who suggested the moniker, but fellow board member Ed Harris said it was Hunter herself. She also had come up with “The 2,000-Pound Theatre,” among others, Harris said. He likes the fact that Loretta “doesn’t mean anything.”

Nevertheless, the new name will signify a new way of operating for this group, which also includes actors Amy Madigan, James Gammon, Tom Bower, Elizabeth Ruscio and Darrell Larson and playwright Beth Henley.

They had helped re-create the Met Theatre in Hollywood in 1991 as a loose-knit group in which each board member made an initial financial contribution, and each was free to use the theater for his or her own productions.

“We left because the way it was run was not economical, timewise,” Hunter said. The new group is “pared down, and it’s easier to get decisions made. We’re all still independent producers, but we’ll also produce collectively, which we didn’t do at the Met because the size of the board bred immobility.”

Are they moving toward subscriptions? “No, because then you’d see the obligatory Agatha Christie,” Hunter said. Loretta still has “a healthy dose of anarchy.”

But they do want to broaden their base of financial support. They’ve announced a $1.2-million fund-raising campaign. “A few of us had to pump a lot of money into the Met,” Harris said. “It was very imbalanced. If someone wants to do that, fine, but they shouldn’t have to do it out of desperation.”

Pending final approval by the Santa Monica City Council of a zoning change, Loretta plans to carve 99-seat and 65-seat spaces out of the former Santa Monica Museum of Art space at the Edgemar. The space is about 50% bigger than the Met, Harris said. “It’s a wide-open space--we can make it what we want to.” It includes ample parking.

“We love the idea of being in a really accessible space,” Hunter said. “We’ll have a higher profile.” She hopes the space will be ready for Loretta to produce something by October. The group plans to take a six-year lease.