Costa Mesa High theater ready for first performance

Darkness descended over the small audience, and figures that were teenagers a moment earlier somehow became adults as stage lighting came up and action began to unfold.

The collection of Costa Mesa High School students tapped their imaginations to become other people in a rehearsal for their production of the play “Done to Death.” And for their first performance at 7 p.m. Thursday, the students have a new state-of-the-art performing arts center on campus.

Plans for a new arts facility came to fruition after about three years and $20 million in funding through Measure F, a $282-million bond measure that local voters approved in 2005. The center has a dance studio, a prop-building room, a black box theater, an improved sound system and more than 350 seats facing the main stage.

The new space is part of a grand design to help Costa Mesa to live up to its motto, “City of the Arts.”

“The idea is to be competitive with Orange County School of the Arts and Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts,” said Katrina Foley, a Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee and newly elected Costa Mesa council member. “Our hope is we’ll have families clamoring to move to Costa Mesa so their children can have first priority in these arts programs.”

Costa Mesa High also plans to offer the Academy of Creative Expression, a three-year career-focused program that students may select after their first year of high school.

But the school district’s arts movement isn’t confined to Costa Mesa High. Plans are in motion to build a new theater at Estancia High School in the next few years.

Kathy Paladino, director of Costa Mesa High performing arts for 10 years, has strived to provide an outlet for artistic expression in her after-school program. Now she has new tools to keep that mission going.

“It’s like moving to a new house,” she said of the new theater. “It doesn’t matter how gorgeous it is, you’re going to miss all the other things in your other house, and you’re going to miss the energy of your other house. This doesn’t feel like home yet. It will, but right now it’s kind of overwhelming.”

Paladino has directed productions at several area venues, including the Newport Theatre Arts Center.

Kate Piatti, a junior who plays Jessica Olive in “Done to Death,” said the reality of the new venue has begun to set in.

“I was just a little shell-shocked when I first walked in here. It’s so big, and a wave of gratefulness just washed over me,” she said. “I definitely think more people will be interested in coming to see our shows.”

The grand opening for the performing arts center was held in October, but final preparations and fine-tuning kept students out of most of the space until early November. The building even has a new-paint smell. It replaces the decades-old Lyceum, which officials said was becoming unsafe.

“I think it was literally held together with chewing gum,” Paladino said with a laugh.

But it was the only theater the students had known, and many of them saved bricks from the old building after its demolition in June.

Still, many students were elated when they first walked into the new theater.

“I was just so super-stoked,” said Evan Stechnaur, a senior who plays Whitney Olive in the new play.

The stage has long been a creative outlet for Evan, and he has the honor of speaking the first line in the first production at the new venue.

“I’ll be able to come back here in 20 years and say I performed the very first lines on this stage,” he said.