GEM’S RISK IS THEATER FANS’ GAIN

The six-production season that opens today at Garden Grove’s Gem Theatre is more auspicious than usual. It is being billed as the most far-reaching yet for the 6-year-old municipal playhouse.

No, the Gem hasn’t abandoned its fare of sure-bet, lightweight box-office entries: “Some Enchanted Evening,” a familiar potpourri of Rodgers & Hammerstein songs, will be offered later this fall, and the regular season will close in the spring with a “comedy classic” still to be announced.

But most of the 1985-86 shows are not the usual crowd-pleasers. They are high-prestige, high-powered dramas: Eugene O’Neill’s anguished “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” Ronald Harwood’s Lear-like “The Dresser” and Beth Henley’s probing “Crimes of the Heart.”

The season opener is yet another off-beat attraction--the Orange County premiere of “Going to See the Elephant,” the story of four 19th-Century women struggling with the realities of life on the American frontier. Directed by Carl Reggiardo, the Gem version opens today at 8 p.m. and runs through Nov. 2. The cast includes co-author Karen Hensel, who directed and appeared in the original production at the DeLacey Street Theater in Pasadena in 1982.

Thomas Bradac, the Gem’s founding artistic director, considers the new season a more-than-worthwhile risk.

“Look, all theater is a risk. But we feel there are more people out there who want more sophisticated, more dramatically meaty works. They want to be challenged,” said Bradac, who also is executive director of the city’s Village Green Cultural Complex, which consists of the 172-seat Gem, the 545-seat Grove Amphitheatre and the Mills House art galleries.

The Gem is best-known for its productions of such tried-and-true musicals as “Anything Goes” and “Man of La Mancha” and such sprightly comedies as “Charley’s Aunt” and “Honestly, Now!”

Yet occasionally the theater has ventured into more demanding works, including “The Elephant Man,” “The Shadow Box, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Company” and two one-act plays by Ray Bradbury, “The Cold Wind and the Warm” and “Pillar of Fire.”

Not surprisingly, the musical “Annie” was the biggest draw in the regular 1984-85 schedule, the Gem’s best box-office season yet (attendance was about 73% of overall seating capacity). But, said Bradac, the surprise hit was John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” a poignant saga about 1930s migrant workers.

The biggest impetus for bringing “serious theater” to the city complex, said Bradac, is Garden Grove’s Shakespeare Festival. Held at the outdoor Grove Amphitheatre and the indoor Gem in the summer, the festival is still the only such theatrical event in Orange County.

According to Bradac, the turnouts, while fluctuating, have been better than expected for this kind of attraction: 65% of overall seating capacity in 1981, 55% in 1982, 60% in 1983, 74% in 1984 and 69% in 1985.

At first, such musicals as “South Pacific” and “Grease” were included in the summer program, but in 1984, the festival went all-classical. Moliere’s “Tartuffe” was presented with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Comedy of Errors.” And last summer the festival staged Sheridan’s “The Rivals” along with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Bradac is already mapping out the next summer festival. “We can’t talk about the schedule yet, but we definitely want to do one of his (Shakespeare’s) historical plays for the first time,” he said, noting that Rancho Santiago College will continue to co-sponsor the festival.

The Gem/Grove’s artistic growth has been paralleled by a move toward financial independence for Garden Grove’s theatrical operation. The city has been phasing out its annual subsidy of the two theaters. In 1980, municipal underwriting accounted for $123,000 of a $190,000 theatrical budget. This year, that budget jumped to $300,000, while the city subsidy dropped to $68,000.

(Initially, the city spent $2 million--most of it federal monies--on the Village Green complex in the Main Street redevelopment corridor. The project included the restoration of the Mills House in 1975, as well as conversion of a movie theater into the Gem playhouse in 1979 and construction of the Grove Amphitheatre in 1981. Still in the works are plans for a new 500-seat indoor theater.)

Now, said Bradac, the theatrical operation has to rely increasingly on ticket revenues (a projected $220,000 for the two theaters in 1985-86) and on finding major private donors. “Previously, we didn’t really seek big funds from the corporate sector. But we’ve hired a full-time (fiscal development) director, and we’re going to really go after those firms,” said Bradac.

Meanwhile, the Village Green complex has won state recognition. Last week, the California Arts Council awarded a first-time, $1,380 administrative grant to the complex. Bradac said that the monies will be used to expand the fund-raising staff of the two theaters and the Mills House.

The Gem/Grove’s increasing emphasis on fund raising is, of course, a key element in the operation’s artistic expansion. Toward that end, Bradac this season is hiring union performers (“guest artists”) in key roles as part of the Gem’s regular season for the first time. (He has used union professionals in lead roles in the Shakespeare Festival since 1980.) Bradac said that he also is building up a “core group” of non-union actors as a further move to upgrade the acting company.

The Gem/Grove operation, Bradac argued, has a very special niche. “We want to fill the (artistic) gap between South Coast Rep and the regular community theaters in Orange County. We believe we are in the process of doing just that, especially with this new season’s program,” he said.

“Artistically speaking, you have to stretch, even if it means overreaching now and then,” Bradac said. “But you have to reach out or you become stagnated. You can’t underrate yourselves--or your audiences--if you want this theater to really grow.”