LYCEUM THEATRE TO OPEN APRIL 12

Another major downtown arts venue moved closer to reality with Monday’s announcement of the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s inaugural season in the new, $7.6-million Lyceum Theatre, a cultural complex with two stages in the underground level of Horton Plaza.

The season in the new structure will open April 12 with “Quilters,” a musical about American pioneer women, “come hell or high water,” a spokesman for the City of San Diego said Monday of the oft-delayed theatrical complex.

At a press conference held in the San Diego Art Center’s temporary gallery near the new theater in Horton Plaza, John McCann, the Rep’s managing director, spoke of “the conclusion of a decade of artistic endeavor” and looked forward to “the dream of ’86 and beyond,” referring to the theater’s 10th anniversary in May.

The two new theater spaces, Rep producing director Sam Woodhouse said, would offer “a phenomenal amount of work for artists . . . 700 professional actor work weeks.” Eighty roles would be cast in the season and 45 designers would be hired, Woodhouse said. The 500- to 550-seat theater, a semi-flexible space capable of thrust or proscenium arch configurations, will be called the Lyceum Stage, Woodhouse said. A 220-seat, 60- by 60-foot flexible area that can be arranged for theater in the round, or thrust or an end-stage configuration, will be called the Lyceum Space.

“Quilters” will open the larger Lyceum Stage. The first production in the Lyceum Space will be the annual, nationally recognized Neofest festival of the arts by Sushi, the downtown visual and performance art gallery.

The new season is representative of the kinds of plays that the theater has built its reputation on--hip, contemporary musicals and plays about the issues of the 20th Century, Woodhouse said. They reflect “where we’ve been and where we’re going,” he added.

The first play to be produced by the Rep in the smaller theater will be Romulus Linney’s “Holy Ghosts,” a 1975 play about Pentecostal faith healers and poisonous snakes, described by Rep artistic director Douglas Jacobs as “very funny” and about “the fear of violence and the redemption of violence.”

A rock ‘n’ roll musical, “Little Shop of Horrors,” written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken in 1982 about horticultural horror, will be the second play on the Lyceum Stage.

Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls” about women moving into the top ranks of management without losing their femininity, is the third show to be in the Lyceum Space. The Rep staged the local debut of Churchill’s “Cloud 9” earlier this year.

Jacobs’ own adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which Jacobs said will focus on “the love/hate relationship we have with ourselves,” will make its world premiere on the Lyceum Stage.

“Master Harold . . . and the Boys,” Athol Fugard’s 1982 dramatic account of the effects of apartheid on the relationship of a young white boy and two grown black servants, will have its San Diego debut under the direction of UC San Diego Prof. Michael Addison, who grew up in South Africa in a similar situation.

Sam Shepard’s 1983 play “Fool for Love” (also being made into a movie), about a contemporary cowboy and the love of his life, will close the season in the small space.

Then, of course, the annual production of “A Christmas Carol” will be produced on the main stage.

As manager of the Lyceum Theatre, the Rep will use its stages only nine months of the year. Twenty weeks are leasable in the smaller theater to performing arts groups. The main stage has 16 weeks that will be available. Additionally, Woodhouse said, the theater’s 6th Avenue Playhouse will be leasable 52 weeks of the year.

The Lyceum Theatre was to have opened in August along with Horton Plaza, but construction difficulties tied to building the theater within an existing structure have caused several delays.