Thomas R. Kendrick

Thomas R. Kendrick, 52, is executive director of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, now under construction in Costa Mesa. A former newspaper editor, he spent a decade helping to guide the Kennedy Center in Washington to national prominence before coming to California in January. The Orange County center’s inaugural season begins Sept. 29. Q: What are your goals for the Orange County Performing Arts Center? A: This administration stands for balanced programming, meaning symphony, ballet, opera, musicals, jazz--all the disciplines. Second, to encourage and present regional theater and orchestras and encourage them to flourish. The South Coast Repertory Theatre (which is planning to use the center’s 3,000-seat theater, as well as their own adjacent facility) is a wonderful asset. It’s been in existence 20 years. It’s got a full subscription. It’s got a very fine, top-flight regional--and somewhat of a national--reputation already. The Pacific Symphony is a fine regional orchestra.

We don’t know what kind of audience we have here. It’s not an audience trained to come to ballet, opera and all that we’re presenting. We don’t know whether we’re going to be full or whether we’ll have a problem attracting audiences for the various disciplines.

The main hall, seating 3,000, will be opening in September. Then the next theater to be built is supposed to be a 1,000-seat multipurpose hall, which will be used half the time by South Coast Rep. We also have a black box theater adjacent to the main hall designed for television production that can seat 300. It will serve as a rehearsal facility as well.

The advantage of a multipurpose hall is lower overhead and tighter programming. The disadvantage--and it’s a tremendous one--is that you’re trying to bring in five media into one place. You’re trying to juggle all those companies into one hall instead of four. The scheduling is almost impossible because symphony tours are set. Symphonies come with particular dates set way in advance. Musicals are less set; operas are set.

We’re trying to present the very best in the country. We’re going with what some people, I’m sure, are going to criticize as standard fare versus experimental fare. Changes will occur down the road when we’ve measured the audience. The ticket prices are high to begin with because (our endowment doesn’t come into play for five years and) the symphony requires subsidy, ballet requires subsidy, opera requires subsidy. You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run. Q: What’s a former newspaperman doing in this line of work? A: Twenty years ago you would have stayed in the same place all your life. You know, I started off at the Washington Post as a copy boy and went on to become assistant managing editor of the paper, overseeing the Style section and the Post’s cultural coverage, before going over to the Kennedy Center (as director of operations). I had developed a very strong interest in the performing arts. My experience from the Post was management, plus budget, plus people. That was 10 years ago. There were no people trained as arts institution managers. As a reporter, you’re trained in translating vocabularies. People talk in the language they develop in specialized areas. As a reporter, you discover that if you can translate a particular language, the problems are the same. Q: How does your Washington experience--the political and congressional contacts, the artistic contacts--benefit you here? A: A lot. It’s very, very useful. My first political experience came in survival at the Washington Post, which is no mean trick. I figure if you can survive there, then you can operate as the manager of an institution that is as much of a lightning rod--and in the public eye--as the Kennedy Center. After 30 years, you’ve acquired a lot of political experience.

Obviously, when you’re building a center, raising the money for opening it, there’re all kinds of political problems. But there aren’t many that I haven’t seen before. The first three months (General Manager Judith O’Dea Morr, who was general manager of theaters at the Kennedy Center and accompanied Kendrick to Orange County, and I) were here we had to give most of our attention to the building, especially reviewing the backstage area. The real problem is that it takes about three years to get one of these centers set. We’re trying to do in one year what in most centers is done in at least three. Q: What are the advantages and drawbacks of being within 50 miles of the Music Center? A: We are far enough apart so that there are two distinct audiences. We’re going to be pulling somewhat to our north, but we’re an area of 2 million now and probably 3 million within five years. That’s a very major audience area. It’s a long drive up to Los Angeles from Orange County to see a symphony that might end at 11 p.m. So my feeling is our big pull will be in our immediate area and to the south, all the way to San Diego. There is plenty of room for both centers to have solid population centers without running into each other.

Secondly, we’ll be competitive in the sense that we’ll offer alternative programming. The L.A. Music Center is a constituent-dominated center; they have constituent groups, such as the Philharmonic, which dominate the majority of their time. We’re a presenting center. Most of our time will be spent in presenting visiting symphonies, touring opera, ballet. I don’t think there’ll be direct competition, only competition in the sense that we’re offering two different types of fare. Q: But isn’t it inevitable that critics are going to think of you as a stepchild to the Music Center, in terms of your being a warm-up for artists who will then move up the freeway to L.A.? A: I would not have come here if I had thought it was going to be an adjunct to the L.A. Music Center. That’s the last place I would come to. The Orange County Performing Arts Center has the best shot in this country to be a powerful regional center with real national impact. In 1986 and ‘87, we will be presenting the New York City Opera, which hasn’t been on the West Coast in six years; the New York City Ballet, which hasn’t been here for 12 years; the Chicago Symphony with Sir George Solti, which will be breaking a five years’ absence; the National Orchestra of France; the Warsaw Philharmonic; the Cleveland (Orchestra), and the American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov. We are particularly thrilled to have Leontyne Price, who will honor us with one of her rare appearances this fall. Most of these companies and artists aren’t performing at the L.A. Music Center. Which, then, is the preeminent center? Q: Do you think California weather helps with scheduling, especially in winter? A: Yes. But one of the problems was that not many had heard of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The name was as much a problem as it was an asset. It’s really kind of ironic. This is the first center in the United States to be built entirely with private funds. Over $60 million in construction money has been raised of a projected total of nearly $71 million. Yet, because of the name, major organizations had serious reservations about coming to some place called Orange County. It sounded like a municipal center, and they weren’t even sure whether it was in California or Florida. So, for major companies it was a question of credibility.

We won them over with two major arguments. One, Judy (Morr) and myself are people they knew. If we were here, then maybe there’s something to this facility. And we have the contacts. The second thing is we got them out here to look at the facility and it sold itself. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but companies like the ABT, the New York City Ballet, the New York City Opera aren’t just going to appear at any hall somewhere around the country. They’ve got to know that it’s a major facility operated by professionals. Q: Are you going to have an educational program for children? A: I absolutely believe (that) if you can get them at 5 and through the high school years, then they have an interest in the performing arts for life. If you don’t get to them by then, they’ve gone to television and it’s all over. They may drop out for five or six years because they don’t have the money to buy $30 tickets, but they’re going to come back to you when they’re in their 20s. I don’t think there’s any question that we’ll be bringing schoolkids to concerts in the first year. We’ll be working with the existing (volunteer support) groups initially, but it’s going to take several years before we’ll have the money to do a major education program. Q: How important are critics to the success or failure of getting a new center off the ground? A: He says to the man who used to run critics. I never have figured out critics. When I ran the Washington Post’s Style section, I was aware that there was something unfair about one person’s opinion having such tremendous economic impact. Not that I would want to change that person’s opinion, but the problem is the newspaper is the vehicle that has the impact. I mean, they have tremendous impact. One person’s opinion could make or break a show. Journalists in general sometimes get themselves confused with their medium. Newspapers also tend to underestimate the importance of their reviews. Ticket prices have gone up so high; if the ticket was $10 today, I might say, well, I don’t like the review, but I’m going to go see for myself. But, if the ticket price is $40 and that reviewer said this is a terrible show, the odds are I’m not going to risk my $40.

Sometimes critics can be constructive. If you’re lucky enough to get critics who are constructive and open-minded, they can point out both the good and the bad in the show. If they’re destructive, there’s almost nothing you can do. One of the reasons musicals are in such short supply is the critics have been so harsh. Ten years ago, people could put $250,000 to $400,000 into a musical. If it was a success, they’d get their money back in a few weeks and make a great deal of money. When the price of the musical is $3 million, $4 million, and it can close in one night, the odds of making any money are astronomical. Q: Is it possible to mount a musical more cheaply in Orange County than on Broadway, and attract East Coast as well as local investors? A: We’re going three different ways. We’re talking to the Shuberts, the Nederlanders and particularly Pace Theatrical (New York production companies). Pace is the rising star in traveling, touring road musicals. It’s more likely we would deal with them than the others on a long-term basis, because Pace is capable of supplying road musicals on a short-term basis. A Shubert or a Nederlander show would have to come in for a long time, which might be desirable in economic terms, but it would bar the symphonies, the ballet, the opera and the others. Pace sometimes calls for investment money as well. So we’re also talking to individual producers. We’re talking to the Kennedy Center, the Denver Center, the L.A. Music Center about joint productions. Q: Looking ahead, how is the immediate future shaping up financially for the center? A: There are 18 major centers now around the country. They’re very, very expensive. It’s unlikely in my opinion that many more, if any, are going to get built. The Orange County center is technically advanced beyond any other in the country. It’s in the middle of one of the nation’s major growth areas--an area where there’s a lot of creative ferment. It also has a powerful potential endowment of more than $60 million, which won’t have an impact for at least five years. It’s an endowment far larger than that of any other center, except the one in Denver, by an order of 10. Perhaps I won’t be here, but five years down the line somebody’s going to have a magnificent facility with a powerful endowment to support their programming. That’s what it’s all about. We will get the building built. We will get it open on time. The difficulty will be getting through the first three or four years until our endowment comes into play to support programming.