FINAL CURTAIN CALL FOR STAGE VETERANS

After 38 years, Henry and Ethel Swanton are calling it quits.

“To tell you the truth, I kind of wanted to make 40, but it’s just not worth the extra two years,” Henry said. “Both my wife and I are in our 70s now. It used to be fun. Now it’s a lot of work.”

No, they’re not giving up their marriage. That’s in great shape. It’s theater they’re throwing over. While they estimate that 500 amateur thespians have helped them over the decades, Henry and Ethel Swanton have been the backbone, heart and soul of The Alpha Omega Players. From acting and directing to set design and publicity, they have done it all. Henry designed and built just about every set until arthritis slowed him down.

They have produced two plays a year in the parish hall of the Swedenborgian Church, 4144 Campus Ave., beginning with “Green Grow the Lilacs.” That was staged in 1948 as an activity for the church’s young adult social program. With each show taking three months, half a year’s weekends were spent on the theater.

“We just got tired of fussing with it,” Swanton said, even though the players usually have sold out every performance.

The Swantons’ swan song will be “The Curious Savage,” a John Patrick comedy about greedy grandchildren that maintains the tradition of the family shows for which Alpha Omega is known. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, April 18 through May 24. Swanton said: “We’re going to do it, and that’ll be it.”

SYMPHONY BUCKS: Hoping to raise a $1-million endowment nest egg, a group of San Diego Symphony supporters have lined up $550,000 in pledges and promises to pledge from more than 22 individuals or couples.

Symphony board member Martha Gafford and her husband, George, dreamed up the scheme during the orchestra’s crash fund-raising drive last month. Initially the plan was designed to provide a safety net, should the fund-raising drive fail to reach its $2-million goal. The idea was to apply any excess amounts toward an endowment. The emergency campaign raised $2.5 million.

Participants, whom the Gaffords have dubbed “Symphony Senators,” give a one-time donation of $25,000. The Gaffords hope to find at least 40 people who prefer that their hard-earned money remain intact in an endowment rather than spent outright. Interest from the endowment would be used for symphony operating expenses.

In the late ‘70s, the symphony spent a $1-million endowment on operations. Gafford said that the principal of the endowment now being created will be protected as a neutral trust like the $13,000 symphony endowment that already exists with the San Diego Community Foundation. The foundation manages $20 million in endowments for a variety of charitable interests.

Symphony development director Ken Overstreet said he is setting up tax incentives as inducements to potential donors to the endowment, which he hopes will grow to $10 million within three years.

PUBLIC RADIO: More than 900 people, representing a range of public radio talent and skills from the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Dr. Demento, the wacky authority on arcane recordings, will convene here this weekend. National Public Radio meets at the Town & Country Hotel in Mission Valley, and American Public Radio’s conference starts Sunday at the Hyatt Islandia hotel on Mission Bay.

Officials of APR and NPR say their conferences will accentuate the positive rather than stress the problems--mainly financial--that have plagued public radio.

Station managers and producers attending the APR convention will learn about its recently announced partnership with CBS. Garrison Keillor of APR’s popular “Prairie Home Companion” will not be here, but the NPR conference will push its folksy programs with such enticements as a chance to see a live broadcast of “The Flea Market,” which features folk music. There will also be a host of more prosaic meetings on such things as innovations in audience development and marketing.

ART WATCHERS: A jury of ranking theater professionals will publicly examine and discuss the work of student designers, actors and directors April 17 and 18 at San Diego State University. Designers including Ming Cho Lee (Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera), Martin Aronstein (Broadway, New York’s Public Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum), Robert Blackman (regional theater including the Old Globe) and Martin Benson, artistic director for South Coast Repertory Theatre, will critique designs for George Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan” and Jean Genet’s “The Balcony.”

After four years of success with design juries, another jury has been impaneled to examine and discuss the work of student directors and actors. This board includes Benson; JoAnne Akalaitis (New York’s Mabou Mines), whose “Green Card” opens next month at the Taper; Des McAnuff, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, and John Hirsch, former artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada.

The juries will meet from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Main Stage Theatre on campus. Those sessions are free and open to the public.

ARTBEATS: Artwalk ‘86, a walking tour of the city’s galleries, will be April 16 and 27. Art lovers can find their own way from gallery to gallery or take a special guided tour. There will also be a guided tour of downtown artists’ studios at 2 p.m. April 18. For information call Diane Maxwell at International Gallery, 643 G St. . . .

The Egomaniacs, a splinter of the once-acclaimed, now-defunct Hot Flashes improvisation troupe, are appearing weekends through April 19 at The Theatre in Old Town. A recent performance revealed that the emphasis on relationships and feminism is similar to the old Flashes, but the treatment, while funny, is shallower. The Egomaniacs include former Flashes Maggie Gillette and Sheri Glaser, with Lawrence Nass. Glaser remains an exceptional improvisational talent. . . .

Composer and University of San Diego music Prof. Henry Kolar was honored earlier this year when his Divertimento for Violin, French Horn and String Bass was played in a chamber music series of the St. Louis Symphony. . . . The first meeting of the Carlsbad Cultural Arts Commission will be at 3:30 p.m. today in the City Council Chambers Conference Room, 1200 Elm Ave., Carlsbad.