Historic Hoover Theatre is the new home for the Renegade Theatre Experiment, which will open its fourth season on July 14.

"This is going to allow us to really blossom," says Sean C. Murphy, artistic director for the group and one of the founders.

Whitney Quinn Stebbins, managing director for RTE and another founder, agrees.

"It's a beautiful facility and a huge progression for us to have a home," Stebbins says. "The facility is gorgeous and we want to expand into the Rose Garden area and capture some of the audience there."

Renegade's roots date back to the 1990s when the six founders met one another in the theater arts program at the Santa Clara University. After graduation they ended up working in a variety of jobs unrelated to the theater, including education, high tech and banking.

Their shared love of theater kept them in touch and in May 2001 they started meeting to help each other work on auditions for area theater companies.

"Around June, somebody had the idea, 'Why don't we do our own show?' It was very, very Mickey Rooneyish. We had no clue what it took to do a show, but we dove in and we did it," Murphy says. "In August 2001, we did three nights of one-act comedies in a bar."

Stebbins recalls the performances at the old Fuel 44 and says, "Because that went over so well, we looked around at each other and realized that between the six of us we had the skill set and all the pieces needed to form a business. So we decided to start our own theater company and we've been putting on a full season of shows ever since then."

In March 2002, Renegade Theatre Experiment™ became a nonprofit.

Murphy says he coined the name "because we all agreed we want to do theater that is not necessarily traditional or that everyone else is doing. We want to challenge the norms and do work that is edgy and maybe not as commercial. Other companies are doing Neil Simon and Annie and filling that spot."

Peter Canavese--an artistic associate, a co-founder and a faculty member at Bellarmine College Preparatory--arranged for the group to meet and rehearse on campus. Eventually, it reached a formal agreement with the school to rent the campus theater for two productions each summer, when school was not in session.

Renegade, which did a third production each year, was always looking for another space to perform in.

"We've been nomadic," Stebbins says.

Hoover Historic Theatre now gives them a space and has allowed them to expand their season from three to four productions and to spread it out over a longer period.

It has also given the company stability, allowing the members to work on funding grants. Arts Council Silicon Valley has given them one grant and they are working on two others.

Paula Davis, general manager of the theater, welcomes her new tenants.

"We're real excited about having Renegade Theatre in our facility. They are a wonderful, community-based theater group and they do a lot of nice work in the community. They're our anchor tenant in respect to a theatrical company," Davis says.

Renegade's first production in its 2005-06 season is Lorca in a Green Dress, which previews on July 14.

That this production is the play's premiere in California is in keeping with Renegade's mission and background.

Of the eight productions it's staged in the past three seasons, one was a world premiere and another was the North American premiere.

In the current season, Skyscraper is a Bay Area premiere and Waiting to Dance is another world premiere.

Murphy acknowledges he was surprised to learn Renegade will be the first company in California to perform Lorca in a Green Dress, given author Nilo Cruz won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003, making him the first Cuban-American winner.

As the Pulitzers were being announced, the premiere production of Lorca was scheduled at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland for that summer.

"I was surprised we got the rights," Murphy says. "I would have thought someone bigger than us would have grabbed the script."

Like many other Renegade coups, this one came about when a company member saw the show in Ashland and brought back the script.

"I read it a couple of times and liked it, so I got in touch with Nilo's agent and started working on that relationship, and lo and behold we got it," Murphy says.

Although Murphy has exchanged emails with Cruz, he says it's unlikely the playwright, who lives in New York, will make it out during the show's run, which ends July 30.

As the title implies, Lorca in a Green Dress is about the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was arrested on Aug. 16, 1936 by Nationalist soldiers during the opening days of the Spanish Civil War. He was held prisoner and tortured until Aug. 19 when he was taken into a field, shot and tossed into an unmarked grave in Viznar, near Granada.

Describing the play, Murphy says, "The show is about Federico Garcia Lorca, who is about to be killed by Franco's fascists, and he appears in this bizarre purgatory known as the Lorca Room. He is forced to re-live his life before he faces death and ascends to the next level. He's going to spend 40 days in this room reviewing his life and his choices and the different aspects of his life."

During the course of the play, Lorca encounters five different people representing five different aspects of his life, including his childhood, businessman and his homosexual, passionate and poetic sides.

In looking at this production and the rest of the season, Murphy says, "We picked all four separately, but looking at it from a wide view there is a limbo theme which wasn't intended at all.

"In all these plays the characters are at a point in their life where they are having to evaluate what's going on and waiting for the next shoe to drop."

One aspect of the move to the Historic Hoover Theatre that both Murphy and Stebbins say they hope to take advantage of is the proximity of the arts magnet schools of Hoover Middle and Lincoln High schools.

Stebbins, a graduate of Lincoln, says, "We'd like to provide some of their students with real-time theater experience. By partnering with San Jose Unified, we'll be able to expose them to a professional theater company in their backyard."

The Renegade production most likely to make a good fit with Hoover and Lincoln students is The BFG (Big Friendly [Giant]) set for November 2005.

"I've wanted to do a Renegade family show I could take my daughter to," Murphy says. "A lot of our patrons have kids, but most of our stuff is for high school and older. It's important to build an audience for the theater. I'm looking forward to directing this one."

Renegade's run

The Renegade Theatre Experiment performs its 2005-06 productions at the Historic Hoover Theatre, 1635 Park Ave. Shows are at 8 p.m., Thursdays through Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. on Sundays.

* Lorca in a Green Dress runs July 14-30, 2005.

* Skyscraper runs Sept. 15-Oct. 1, 2005.

* The BFG (Big Friendly [Giant] ) runs Nov. 3-26, 2005.

* Waiting to Dance runs Feb. 2-18, 2006.

Season tickets for Thursday and Sunday performances are $60, and for Fridays and Saturdays are $72. Individual tickets are $18 for Thursdays and Sundays and $20 for Fridays and Saturdays.

For additional information visit www.renegadetheatre.com or call 408.351.4440.