Fort Worth's Pantagleize is growing up and getting its own place this season

After starting life in a carpet warehouse and coping with three years of transience, Pantagleize Theatre Company is lighting the marquee at an intimate new home address.

Beginning this season, Pantagleize, which aspires to be a professional regional theater specializing in original and international plays, will operate from a leased venue at the historic Public Market on Henderson Street in a space that organizers say was originally a restaurant.

The multibuilding complex dates from the 1930s and is getting a $7 million redo, but there's nothing fancy at the black-box theater on the west side of the site. Nonetheless, the volunteers who run Pantagleize are proud of their fresh paint, donated technical gear from the University of Texas at Arlington and 102 seats.

"They are padded steel chairs we got at Sam's," said Violet O'Valle, Pantagleize artistic director and founder. "They are good, comfortable chairs."

O'Valle hopes to plump the company's cash cushion with a gala Friday. The event will feature 10-minute previews of all eight works slated for this season, plus catered dining and gratis bar.

"I'm thinking our budget is going to be about $130,000," said O'Valle, who wrote her dissertation on Irish playwright Sean O'Casey and teaches literature at Tarrant County College Southeast Campus. "We do need money."

That's a given in most arts endeavors. But O'Valle is taking an entrepreneurial approach. Instead of paying for the rights to stage everything, she will in some cases take on new, unproven properties. Pantagleize has three world premieres this season, including the opener, and All His Songs Were Sad ... by Mattie Lennon.

The theater splits proceeds with the playwrights, but it's not a guaranteed gold mine. None of Pantagleize's previously produced original plays has been a big cash cow. Still, there are plenty of writers who need a place to show their stuff.

"Pantagleize has always been known for being outside the box. Word gets around," said managing director Richard Blake. "[O'Valle] gets plays sent to her. All His Songs was sent by a friend in Ireland."

The critical reception to past performances has been encouraging, but with caveats. A 2007 Star-Telegram review of Ted Tally's play Little Footsteps concluded with: "Can't wait until they're all grown up."

Blake and O'Valle believe that having a real home -- there's a three-year lease, with right of first refusal to buy the 4,400-square-foot theater they're in now and the prospect of eventually taking over an even bigger space -- will help the company mature.

And while the startup effort in downtown Fort Worth will inevitably have snafus, things can hardly be worse than when O'Valle's husband, who was the technical expert, died just as they were getting it off the ground in 2004.

Then the Star-Telegram did a story about the new company.

"The city saw the story and closed us down," said O'Valle, who can laugh about it -- a little -- now. "They hadn't inspected us thoroughly enough. We did not open again for another year."

John Austin, 817-390-7874