THEATER:An addition to the City of the Arts

Professional theater is certainly no stranger to Costa Mesa, what with South Coast Repertory’s local history of over 40 years and the touring stage productions at the Orange County Performing Arts Center since its opening in the mid-1980s.

This year, the City of the Arts amplifies its identity with the formation of a third professional theater troupe, to be known as American Coast Theater Company.

The base for this new venture will be Vanguard University, where student thespians will form a resident company to be complemented by outside performers. Audiences received a preview of sorts a few months ago when guest artist Baron Kelly, a Chapman University instructor and Equity professional, excelled in the title role of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

That show, in the assessment of this column, was the most impressive offering of the three local college drama departments in 2006. It’s the sort of artistic excellence promised by Vanguard’s theater department chairman Susan K. Berkompas, who also directed “Othello.”

“We are committed to producing professional theater with artistic excellence and high production value,” Berkompas declared. “Our goal will be to produce works primarily from the dramatic canon of American classics, as well as to nurture the development of new American playwrights.”

Berkompas, who has headed the Vanguard theater program for the past decade and was named the Daily Pilot’s 2004 woman of the year in theater, went on to receive the 2005 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival award for excellence in theater education. She’ll be the producing artistic director for the new company.

“We’ve been fortunate to have guest performers work with our Vanguard student productions throughout the past decade,” Berkompas noted. “But this company not only will allow opportunities for student internships and for Vanguard graduates and alumni to work beside our wonderful company of professional actors, they will have added opportunities to work backstage, in the tech booth and behind the scenes in staging ACTC productions.”

Berkompas will be joined on the creative staff by producing director Austin Peay, a 30-year veteran of stage productions as an actor, director, producer and drama teacher. Among the credits on his directorial resume are “Les Miserables,” “Evita,” “The Crucible” and “Much Ado About Nothing.”

The rest of the troupe still is being formed, but its founding members will include Amick Byram, director of several Vanguard musicals; Paul Eggington, the college’s tech director who also played Iago in “Othello”; Vanda Eggington, who directed the recent Vanguard show, “Cleopatra’s Wake”; David Pecoraro, the college’s production manager; costumer Lia Hansen; and director Marianne Savell, whose most recent production was Vanguard’s “Saint Joan.”

The American Coast Theater Company will operate as an independent, nonprofit corporation and will function as a professional summer theater company under the auspices of Vanguard University. Its first production is planned for August in Vanguard’s Lyceum Theater.

“We believe in the examination of the human condition as it is revealed through thought-provoking storytelling,” Berkompas said, adding that the new theater company “will be a wonderful stepping stone for our students and alumni who are pursuing professional careers in theater.”