Now I'm trying to come up with a fitting sobriquet for Saratoga High School's Performing Arts and Lecture Center dominating the skyline at Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road and Herriman Avenue.

If the outside is any indication of what the interior will be, I'd say it'll be up there in the same league with Radio City Music Hall and the Kennedy Center--this place is huge. In one respect, I'd compare it with the Great Pyramid of Cheops, not only in size but in the length of time spent in building it. A recent news story noted that it's almost a year behind schedule.

As to a fitting designation, I'll settle for calling it Saratoga's Acropolis, a true citadel of learning rather than a conventional fortress. But there's another, somewhat negative, angle here, and that's the question of whether this grandeur--or what appears will be grandeur, judging from the outside--is going a little overboard for a high school. Does a conventional pre-college institution rate this kind of facility for use as just a plain old auditorium?

Well, after seeing Saratoga High's most recent dramatic production, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, I'd say that it does, definitely and in a big way. Any group, be it a school or a drama organization, that can stage a show of this magnitude with such finesse deserves the finest that can be provided in the way of a performance area. If I were to describe this production with a single word, that word would be "professional."

The show played to capacity crowds for three night performances, as well as a well-attended matinee, in the improvised theater in the school cafeteria, which served well enough but sharpened one's anticipation of, and desire for, a first-class theater, which I hope will be provided by the new Performing Arts and Lecture Center.

It also called to mind a theme that I have dwelt on in previous columns--namely Saratoga as a community known for nurturing the performing arts. Creativity just naturally comes with the territory, and a show the caliber of the recent Oklahoma! is no surprise. Villa Montalvo, as a center for the arts is one example, with its scenic outdoor amphitheater and utilitarian-garage-turned-playhouse.

Then there are the organizations, which I like to think of as having really gotten started 72 years ago with the late Dorothea Johnston's production of Alice in Wonderland, starring Olivia De Havilland in the title role. I think of this 1933 effort as something of a family event, since I played the part of the duck, my brother was either Tweedledum or Tweedledee, and my mother was the Cheshire Cat.

The following year, Miss Johnston instituted her Theater of the Glade behind the old Saratoga Inn on Saratoga Avenue, with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Olivia in the role of Puck. That same year, the erstwhile Alice and Puck went to Hollywood, where she was in Max Reinhardt's Hollywood Bowl production of that play, portraying Hermia. The following year she was in Reinhardt's movie production of Dream.

The Theater of the Glade lasted through 1941. Meanwhile, in the late 1930s, another local drama group was getting started under the leadership of John and Kay Breeden. Their main venue was the Foothill Clubhouse, where they produced some Noel Coward drawing-room comedies. One of their productions was Elmer Rice's 1927 Street Scene, given in the grammar school's long-gone auditorium, now the media center. This presented a scenery challenge, since the set represented the exterior of a two-story tenement house, with action occurring on both floors.

Other theatrical endeavors with a local tie included the Saratoga Drama Group, which started under church sponsorship as the Federated Drama Group, and the Los Gatos Evening High School Theater Workshop. The latter, though headquartered in Los Gatos, drew heavily on Saratoga for talent, including Mrs. Lilian Fontaine, the director. She, of course, was the mother of Olivia De Havilland and Joan Fontaine.

No description of Saratoga theatrical enterprises should omit the Valley Institute of Theater Arts, or VITA, founded by my son, Bill, and his Saratoga High School teacher, Judith Lyn Sutton. In its 15-year life, VITA became known for its Shakespeare series at the Mountain Winery, and during the 1981 season, Bill, played Romeo to Annette Bening's Juliet. She later went on to Hollywood.

Saratoga High School has a proud tradition to maintain.