ARTS COMMUNITY FLOCKING TO NOHO; ALL ARE INVITED TO CHECK IT OUT AT ANNUAL FEST.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Eight days before last Christmas, a 15-year-old boy was killed in a gang-related shooting outside the Deaf West Theatre Company in Hollywood.

Patrons reacted strongly, with urgent phone calls expressing fear and concern, and a sudden drop in attendance.

Though the well-funded 6-year-old company was reluctant to leave its home of the past four years, ``we felt it was incumbent on us to protect our artists and our audience,'' says Beverly Nero, Deaf West's director of marketing and development.

That's how Deaf West became the latest theater company to seek a new life in the NoHo Arts District, a roughly 1.5-square-mile portion of North Hollywood once identified mostly with derelict storefronts, economic downsizing and hopelessness.

Nowadays, NoHo supports a growing colony of used bookstores, ethnic restaurants, an art gallery or two and more than 20 small Equity-waiver playhouses determined to prove that ``over the hill'' is as good a location for live theater as any in town.

``We decided that NoHo was really the place to be,'' says Deaf West's Nero. ``We feel like five years from now, there's really going to be something here. The growth is really exponential''

This weekend, as the fifth annual NoHo Theatre & Arts Festival gets under way, the district has legitimate cause to celebrate. Spread over an area 12 blocks wide and 23 blocks long, NoHo is fast becoming that most elusive of Southern California entities: a coherent neighborhood.

A big production

Created five years ago through an unusual combination of grass-roots initiative and centralized city planning, NoHo is the largest publicly supported arts district in Los Angeles and one of the largest in the country.

But its unassuming, blue-collar appearance doesn't always win the recognition granted to trendier, more glamorous cultural meccas like the downtown Music Center and the Bergamot Station art galleries in Santa Monica. NoHo's patchy mosaic of bungalows, office parks and strip malls still lacks the charisma of, say, Manhattan's bohemian East Village or Chicago's Broadway-Belmont neighborhood.

Yet as new theaters keep coming, the district is piecing together a new identity, one building at a time.

Spurred by generous financial support and technical guidance from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency, NoHo abounds with signs of renewal. Foot traffic has picked up. Damage from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake is slowly being repaired, and structures are being retrofitted.

Last October, the Walt Disney Co. moved 600 employees from its Disney Interactive division to a massive office complex formerly owned by Hewlett-Packard Co. at Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards. Two blocks north, Actors Alley is transforming the historic El Portal movie house from a quake-shocked ruin into a new 380-seat theater plus a smaller theater in the round.

And after months of broken streets and ominous underground rumblings, the district apparently has struck a truce with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is busy routing the new Red Line subway through the heart of NoHo. For the second straight year, MTA is co-sponsoring the arts festival, a gesture that has eased some theater owners' memories of rattling walls and cracked plaster.

``It was a little scary around here for a while,'' says Lila Walters, vice president of the 38-member Valley Theatre League and longtime member of the 26-year-old Actors Alley company, ``but they (the MTA) have been very good about helping to create a push for the district, so I think all is forgiven at this point.''

`A little bit of New York'

``All you have to do is drive around the area and you'll see,'' says theatrical impresario Ed Gaynes, president of the Valley Theatre League and the festival's vice chairman.

``The Lankershim block between Magnolia and Weddington, three, four years ago was desolate. Now you go there, especially in the evening, it's like a little bit of New York. There's people walking around that you're not afraid of. There's restaurants. There's theaters. There's activity every night of the week, not just shows.''

Certainly there'll be no shortage of activity this weekend on Lankershim between Magnolia and Chandler Boulevard.

Twenty-six theaters, including several from ``over the hill,'' will offer free performances of everything from cabaret, children's theater and comic improv to a one-man show about Vince Lombardi, scenes from ``Hamlet'' and ``Yo Soy Un Hombre Sincero,'' billed as ``an electric foray into the world of an arachnophobic.''Tickets to all shows are free and are dispensed on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Valley Theatre League booth.

As in years past, patrons can stroll from theater to theater or hop a shuttle bus if the Valley heat gets too intense. En route, they'll encounter sword swallowers, fire eaters, unicyclists, Turkish belly dancers, puppet shows, jazz bands, a gospel choir and a sculpture exhibition. This year, visitors also can avail themselves of a beer garden and a ``Taste of NoHo'' food court.

There'll also be arts and crafts vendors - high-quality stuff, organizers promise, rather than the usual generic bric-a-bric.

With several large corporate sponsors - including Budweiser, Pacific Bell, the MTA and the Daily News - backing the festival, organizers are predicting that attendance could reach 15,000.

``This year it sort of snowballed on us,'' says Walters. ``This year we had people calling and volunteering. We're having to turn theaters away.''

Creative magnet

Most significant, perhaps, is that an area once regarded as an irrelevant eyesore is luring tenants from Hollywood, downtown and the Westside.

In addition to Deaf West, the widely respected Antaeus Theatre Company recently moved to NoHo after deciding that downtown was too pricey and Hollywood lacked buildings suitable for its classical productions.

``NoHo was sort of natural for us,'' says Dakin Matthews, Antaeus' artistic director. ``The possibility of getting any kind of decent space downtown seemed out of the question, and most of our members are either out of the Valley or in the Hollywood area.''

Sometime next year, Matthews hopes to open a small theater (less than 99 seats) in a remodeled Huston Street warehouse, with Antaeus as its principal tenant (Matthews and his wife, director Anne McNaughton, are paying for the first-phase construction out of their own pockets). The new playhouse would be devoted to productions of commedia dell'arte, medieval mystery plays or whatever else suits Antaeus' ambitious, 70-member ensemble.

Originally developed as a pilot program of the Mark Taper Forum, Antaeus is applying for a $45,000 remodeling grant from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency. Total district ``has been very difficult.''

And there are problems closer to home. Although several major film and TV studios reside within blocks of NoHo, Hollywood thus far has been largely indifferent to the area.

Relations between NoHo and its largest tenant, the mammoth Academy of Television Arts and Sciences building at 5220 Lankershim Blvd., have been strained, though some theater owners hope they may improve now that the building has come under new management.

As the area keeps growing, supporters say, NoHo will become harder to ignore. The more theaters and customers there are, the more NoHo's quality will improve.

``There's 150 theaters in this town, and they obviously can't all be excellent,'' says Gaynes. ``Natural selection is what it should be. That's how it will be in NoHo.''

What's up in NoHo

The following is a list of free events taking place at the fifth annual NoHo Theatre & Arts Festival this weekend.

All shows will take place at one of the three stages in the festival area, on Lankershim Boulevard between Magnolia and Chandler boulevards. Festival hours are 11 a.m to 8 p.m. Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Main Stage

Saturday

11 a.m. - Rainbow Gospel Choir

11:45 - Country Knight Cloggers

12:30 p.m. - Children's Bell Choir

1:15 - The Martin Dancers

2:15 - JPJ Jazz Band

3:15 - Festival Ceremony

4:30 - Maqam (Turkish belly dancers)

5:30 - TGM Band (world beat)

6:30 Community Players (musical performance of ``Jesus Christ Superstar'')

Sunday

Noon - Art of the Dance Academy

1:30 - Joe Tremaine Dance Co.

2:15 - North Hollywood Baptist Church Choir

3 - Spanish Kitchen (rock)

3:45 - Slush (rock)

4:45 - Darcy's Kitchen (rock)

5:45 - Kanary

6:30 - 818 (pop)

7:30 - Home Grown (bluegrass)

Stage Two

Saturday

11 a.m. - RNR Puppets

Noon - South Andes (traditional acoustic)

1 p.m. - Ann Drexler (jazz)

2 - Lorin Salm (mime)

2:30 - Holly Dexter (acoustic)

3:30 - David Lowell (escape artist)

4 - Tracy Thielen (novelty songs from Dr. Demento days)

5 - Michael Starr (vocalist)

6 - Matilda Haywood (blues)

7:30 - Stephanie Stephenson (singer/guitarist)

Sunday

Noon - RNR Puppets

12:30 p.m. - Rebecca M (singer/guitarist)

1:30 - Ann Drexler (jazz)

2:30 - South Andes (traditional acoustic)

3:30 - Saar (vocalist)

4:30 - Holly Dexter (acoustic)

5:30 - Matilda Haywood (blues)

6:30 - Chuck E. Weiss & the Goddamn Liars (rock)

Stage Three

Saturday

11 a.m. - Pyrophilia (fire-eating illusionists, jugglers)

11:45 a.m. - Brian Leader (singer)

12:45 p.m. - RNR Puppets

1:15 - Lorin Salm (mime)

1:45 - Rebecca M (singer/guitar)

2:45 - David Couzens (juggler, unicyclist)

3:30 - Debra DeLiso (dancer)

4 - Peruvian (cultural music)

5 - Lorin Salm (mime)

5:30 - Shaunnevy Steevans (sword swallower)

6 - Debra DeLiso (dancer)

6:30 - Pyrophilia (fire-eating illusionists, jugglers)

Sunday

Noon - Caballero Dance Studio

12:45 p.m. - Debra DeLiso (dancer)

1:15 - RNR Puppets

1:45 - Bella the Clown

2:30 - Pyrophilia (fire-eating illusionists, jugglers)

3:15 - Debra DeLiso (dancer)

4 - Peruvian (cultural music)

5 - Lorin Salm (mime)

5:30 - David Lowell (escape artist)

6 - David Couzens (juggler, unicyclist)

6:45 - Pyrophilia (fire-eating illusionists, jugglers)

For more information, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos, Box

Photo: (1-2--Cover--Color) JUST SAY NoHo: Burgeoning arts district celebrates fifth birthday with free weekend festival

(3) A colorful mural along Lankershim Boulevard emphasizes the creative nature of the NoHo Arts District.

(4) The dancing-celebrity clocks in a NoHo storefront may attract more onlookers as theaters from across the region move to the area.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

Box: What's up in NoHo (See text)