REDCAT INAUGURAL CALARTS OPENS NEW L.A. VENUE.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - CalArts is breaking out of its Valencia shell with the opening of its new performance theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In a corner of the sleek, silver-clad ark designed by architect Frank O. Gehry is the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater - or REDCAT - a performance space and gallery where California Institute of the Arts officials promised to showcase emerging artists' ideas to Los Angeles and the world.

``It's certainly a kind of interdisciplinary and interactive space to foster the creativity of the next generation of artists,'' CalArts President Steven Lavine said last week during a tour of the grounds.

Taking their cue from architect Gehry's vision of the concert hall - home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic - as ``a living room for Los Angeles,'' REDCAT Executive Director Mark Murphy and curator Eungie Joo see their corner of the building as the city's basement laboratory or rec room.

The 25,000-square-foot, $21 million arts complex boasts rotating exhibitions and performances intended to blur boundaries between nations and traditional art disciplines - a sensibility promoted by CalArts. It's also a venue for visiting artists to share their craft with students at the Valencia-based arts college, Lavine said.

The inaugural performance Tuesday will feature the Japanese media and performance collective ``Dumb Type: Memorandum'' - exploring the individual in a technologically driven society through dance, video projection and electronic sound.

The adjacent 3,000-square-foot gallery is scheduled to open Nov. 20 with a retrospective of abstract expressionist painter and CalArts instructor Emerson Woelffer, who died in February.

The theater also improves access for Los Angeles art lovers to the Valencia campus. Founded 40 miles north of the city in 1961 by Walt and Roy Disney, CalArts has served as an incubator, where artists can intently pursue their work without restraints, Lavine said. But it can also make exhibition difficult.

``It's hard sometimes for people to make that drive,'' he said. ``Now we're at a place visitors would be able to find.''

REDCAT's downtown Los Angeles home is carved from the nondescript office blocks and parking lot along the concert hall's southwest corner. Only a wavy, stainless-steel marquee betrays its contents - the gallery and 270-seat multi-use theater, coupled with a bookstore and cafe opened to the public.

``The way you build an arts community is not just with people but through interaction,'' Lavine said.

The theater's gallery is open noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, free of charge. For performance and ticket information, call [phone].

Eugene Tong, [phone]

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, at 2nd and Hope streets in downtown Los Angeles, occupies one corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

(2) Mark Murphy, executive director of the REDCAT theater, says that if the Walt Disney Concert Hall is considered Los Angeles' living room for the arts, REDCAT is its basement lab or rec room.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer