A struggling arts district: NoHo theater players keep their day jobs to support productions.

Michael Holmes has operated Chandler Studios for 10 years, putting on about five productions a year at the 33-seat playhouse. Sometimes, if the play gets critical mention, he can fill the house, but there have been times when no one shows up at all.

Holmes rents out his studio when he can and finances a lot of his productions by teaching. Each of his 30-member company chips in to run lights, manage the house and clean the bathroom.

"Everyone has to contribute something," he said. "That's the way theaters have to exist."

Chandler Studios is one of about 40 performance spaces in the NoHo Arts District that runs along Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. Just 10 minutes from some of the major film studios in Burbank, the tiny playhouses and their Hollywood brethren remain worlds apart. While Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros, and Universal Studios Inc. hatch $50 million film projects, the NoHo theater community begs, borrows and steals to scrape together its four-figure production budget.

NoHo's players typically receive $5 a performance, if they belong to an Associated Actors and Artists of America union. Some are working film and television actors. Many more support themselves teaching or with other day jobs, hoping to break into Hollywood one day.

"No one should ever get into theater to try and get rich," said Edmund Gaynes, president of the NoHo Theatre League and a producer whose Whitmore-Lindley Theater Center just opened.

The arithmetic of running a theater is stacked against most any local theater company. Many of the theaters only have 35 or 40 seats, performances are generally limited to Friday and Saturday nights, and a typical production costs $6,000 to mount. With ticket prices averaging $15, it would take 10 performances with a sell-out crowd just to break even. That's five weeks with a full house, and the typical production runs four to six weeks.

"It's nearly impossible to recoup the kind of funding we put into a production unless we extend (the ran)," said Taylor Gilbert, artistic director at the Road Theater Co., a group that performs at the Lankershim Arts Center. "So we rely on contributions, as well as the money we can make on rentals, donations and classes."

Road Theater is one of the lucky ones. Operating as a non-profit called The Other Side of the Hill Productions Inc., the company has been able to secure a number of grants, including one from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department that allows use of the Lankershim Arts Center rent-free.

But many such grants are available only to companies that operate community outreach programs (Road Theater works with at-risk youth and seniors), and even so, there is not enough money to go around. Theater owners often augment their performance revenues by renting out their space for classes or to independent producers to do casting or rehearsals for television shows or movies.

Dan Hirsch, owner of NoHo Actors Studio in North Hollywood and the White Fire Theater in Sherman Oaks, figures that about 75 percent of his revenue comes from rentals. "It's a business for me as well as an artistic endeavor, but it's much more of a business," Hirsch said. "I realized a long time ago that the economics of running a theater and trying to produce theater, and make money at it and keep a roof over your head, was a difficult proposition in this town."

Hirsch produces about two plays a year, often financed by partnerships that could include friends and other entertainment companies. Under terms of a deal for a current production, Hirsch, who is writing and directing the play, will split box-office receipts with a production company. The hope is to eventually sell television rights.

But that kind of business model is rare. Most companies finance their plays on a shoestring, cajoling friends to chip in time or supplies. Holmes, who recently incorporated his company, the Action/Reaction Theater, as a non-profit in hopes of getting grant financing, said he tries to produce plays that don't require sets or costumes.

David Cox, artistic director for the American Renegade Theatre Co., got a grant last year from the Burbank Church of Religious Science, of which Cox is a member. Funding, he says, "is very difficult. It's all volunteers. And I put in 70 to 80 hours a week on my own."

Why does he do it? Creative fulfillment.

On stage, actors can often find meatier roles than the bit parts in movies or TV. They also get closer to the audience and receive immediate feedback. And there is always the possibility of being discovered. Scan Penn was a member of a NoHo repertory company before he became a star. So was Jennifer Tilley.

Some years back, Chazz Palminteri wrote and performed a one-man show in NoHo called "A Bronx Tale." It became a feature film directed by Robert DeNiro, and Palminteri became a star.

Stories like that fuel the imagination of the players in NoHo, but they're the exception. Lonny Chapman, artistic director and founder of one of the oldest companies in NoHo, Group Repertory Theatre, appeared in "East of Eden" with James Dean and in TV episodes of "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke," among others. But he says it's hard for a theater actor in L.A. to win recognition from Hollywood. "L.A. is a movie town," he said, "It's not really a theater town.'