MAKING ROOM FOR CULTURAL TOURISM

Members of the arts community have long said that cultural tourism should be a part of the city’s economic development program. Now the National Conference of State Legislatures has that subject on its agenda in a midwinter conference opening Thursday at the Marriott hotel in University City.

According to Sandy Guettler, a Chicago consultant who will discuss the subject Friday, other cities are using the arts--particularly festivals--increasingly as a tourist draw. Visual and performing arts are major attractions in Santa Fe, N.M. The Seattle Opera has turned one of the repertory’s most formidable works, Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” into a phenomenally popular festival. Charleston, S.C., has Gian Carlo Menotti’s Spoleto Festival.

With its wealth of theater and the symphony’s pops programming, summers in San Diego more or less take on an arts festival atmosphere. But some of these events haven’t been terrifically successful. The San Diego Repertory Theatre once had a three-play summer comedy festival in repertory that became a production burden. San Diego Opera once had a Verdi Festival, which was nipped financially in the bud. The Old Globe Theatre once had a Shakespeare Festival, which now has become a generic theater festival.

While the arts community complains that convention bureaus and chambers of commerce tend to promote climate and scenic wonders, “the arts community has to work with the tourist industry,” Guettler said. Providing firm dates well in advance, group discounts and accessibility to tourists are among the ingredients that make arts events easier to promote.

San Diego was picked for this week’s conference in part because of Horton Plaza, which will be the subject of a panel discussion held at the San Diego Art Center’s temporary quarters in the shopping center. The Art Center’s Sebastian (Lefty) Adler, the Rep’s Sam Woodhouse and Robert Arnhym of COMBO (combined arts funding council) will take part in the conference.

PRODIGAL SHANK: She has been produced in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Louisville, but Adele Edling Shank, an esteemed California playwright, has yet to have a single play staged in San Diego. Ironically, Shank heads the UC San Diego drama department’s playwrite program.

Who will buy her socially provocative plays aimed directly at the middle class? No theater, apparently, in San Diego. “Tumbleweed,” the sixth and final work in her California Suite series, will make its world premiere in the hyperactive Los Angeles Theatre Center’s “7th Festival of Premieres” in March.

Originally known for her “hyper-realism” style of play writing, Shank has shifted to a more conventional technique in her recent plays. Early plays took place on very real-looking freeways, beaches or suburban backyards. Now she’s in a historical mood. “Tumbleweed,” dubbed an “incendiary comedy,” is about disintegration of the middle class in California’s Central Valley.

SYMPHONY SIFTINGS: While some local critics have had a great deal of difficulty with the acoustics of Symphony Hall, at least one visiting fireman rather liked what he heard and saw. The New Yorker’s Andrew Porter, in town last month for the San Diego Opera’s production of his translation of “Le Nozze de Figaro,” dropped by the former Fox Theatre for the local orchestra’s all-Stravinsky program.

In the magazine’s Feb. 10 issue, Porter saw the renewed hall as “an eclectic Xanadu . . . a curious and attractive mixture of gimcrack pretension and real grandeur.” While other musical scribes have complained about the hall’s echo, Porter called the sound “pleasing” but would have preferred a “slightly longer reverberation.” Among those singled out for praise in the “expert” 10-member ensemble in “L’Histoire du soldat” were concertmaster Andres Cardenes and bass Peter Rofe, whose playing was termed “strikingly melodious.”

CONTEMPORARY ARTS: Last month the San Diego Planning Commission rejected a proposal to create a special cultural zone in La Jolla. The proposal was spawned by news that the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art was negotiating with the San Diego Unified Port District to locate a satellite gallery on port land.

That news came out 12 months ago. The matter remains under study by a museum committee. The key, museum Director Hugh Davies says, is Count Giuseppi Panza di Biumo. Panza, who owns an exceptional collection of postwar American art, is considering the La Jolla museum as the final resting place for his collection.

The 550-piece collection of works by artists such as Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Rothko would require the equivalent of an entire museum--as much as 300,000 square feet--for exhibition space. The first step, Davies said, is to prove to the count that the museum has both the desire and ability to house a part of the collection. That’s where a satellite gallery comes in as a temporary exposition space. The count has already said that he likes the La Jolla museum’s style. But he is also looking elsewhere.

ARTBEATS: Phyllis Diller, Robin Williams, Erma Bombeck and Ted Leitner are among the guests yukking it up on a new locally produced radio program about comedy. Begun in January, “The Comedy Spot” on KPBS-FM (89.5) uses a three- to five-minute format to ask comedians and others about comedy: why people laugh and what is funny. The program, which includes local and national comedians, airs at 9:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is produced and hosted by Brian Taylor and Leslie Peters. . . .

The Bowery Theatre’s production of “Gaslight” has been extended through Feb. 23. . . . “The Big Snit” and “Second Class Mail,” two features in “The Festival of Animation” at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art through Feb. 28, were nominated last week for Academy Awards for animated short films. . . .

Two original plays on AIDS will open tonight at San Diego State University. Mark Fairchild’s “Miles to Go” and Robert Stone’s “As a Matter of Fact,” at the Experimental Theatre, touch, respectively, on the fatal disease’s impact on society and the facts about how it is communicated.