$500,000 Gets Drive for New UCSD Theater Complex Rolling

The James S. Copley Foundation said Monday it will contribute $500,000 to help finance a $4-million theater complex adjacent to UC San Diego’s Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts, which also houses the La Jolla Playhouse.

The gift, which will be dispensed over the next five years, is contingent upon matching funds from the community. “We view this as the seed that will nurture other giving,” said Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse. Levey said he hopes that the facility, which will include a 300-seat “flexible space” theater, rehearsal space, design and acting studios and offices, will be completed in time for the 1988 summer season--”an ambitious goal, but one we hope to meet.”

Fund raising for the theater complex began in January. The Copley Foundation donation is the first major gift. UCSD Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson called the gift a “splendid contribution to our overall 25th anniversary campaign.”

In l981, the Copley Foundation donated $150,000 to help complete the $5.25-million Mandell Weiss Center. The late James S. Copley, chairman of the Copley Press, was an active board member of the La Jolla Playhouse for many years.

“We see our gift to the Playhouse and UCSD as an investment in San Diego’s future as a major West Coast center for the arts,” said foundation president David C. Copley.

The Mandell Weiss Center, completed in 1982, houses the UCSD Department of Theater during the school year and the La Jolla Playhouse during the summer. Although the complex, with a 500-seat theater, has been successful, limited rehearsal space has posed constraints, with rehearsals being held in empty classrooms and even in rented industrial space in the Sorrento Valley. The theater’s administration office is in a mobile home.

The new, 300-seat theater will allow UCSD and the Playhouse to stage more innovative productions, said Richard Riddell, theater department chairman. “It will be a good space for student productions. It is designed as a large black box, a space that can be transformed for special productions,” said Riddell. “The new facilities will allow us to centralize activities which are now spread throughout the campus, something that is particularly important for a collaborative discipline like theater.”

UCSD has an undergraduate program of 100 students and a graduate theater training program with 60 students.