Mark Taper Forum 20 : TURNING-POINT TIME FOR TAPER

For most 20-year-olds, money is a serious concern. The Mark Taper Forum is no exception.

But while a 20-year-old person can look forward to years of increasing earnings, the 20-year-old theater that’s at the heart of the Music Center may well have passed its financial prime.

In 1985-86, when the Taper’s expenses reached a record $9,088,153, its $890,123 deficit also set a record.

William Wingate, the Center Theatre Group executive managing director who oversees the books for the Taper and the Ahmanson, attributes the losses of that year to three roughly equal factors: a bad year at the box office (for such shows as “The Beautiful Lady,” “Romance Language” and “Green Card”); the Taper’s unexpectedly large loss on its share of the operation of the Doolittle Theatre; a large deficit (shared with the Ahmanson) from the CTG scenery and wardrobe shop--which moved to much larger quarters and “didn’t immediately generate the outside business to cover the downtime.”

The result of those losses was “real belt-tightening,” which reduced the ‘86-’87 budget to around $8 million. Among the cost-cutting moves were wage and hiring freezes, reduction of the total CTG staff from around 115 to 100, scaling back the Taper’s rep season to two relatively less costly plays and cancellation of Taper Media (the film and video wing that was founded with a grant from CBS).

The box office has picked up this year. And the losses from the scenery and wardrobe shop have been reduced to the point that Wingate believes the shop may break even during the next fiscal year. This season the Taper expects to reach its projected goal of a $200,000 deficit.

Yet the Taper still isn’t out of the woods.

Its CTG sister, the Ahmanson--which traditionally supports itself without any subsidy from the Music Center Unified Fund or any other source--is suffering a terrible year at the box office. According to Wingate, “If the CTG is not breaking even (as a result of the Ahmanson losses), there is no way the board will permit the Taper to budget a deficit as we did this year. This could mean that Gordon (Davidson, Taper artistic director) will have fewer resources for the new play development that’s ultimately the lifeblood of the Taper.”

Added Wingate, “Windfalls now don’t exist.” During the last decade the Taper received its share of earlier windfalls: two $1-million challenge grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the matching sums that accompanied them, a $1-million CTG profit from the sale of the Aquarius Theater and profits from the post-Taper lives of “Zoot Suit” ($750,000) and “Children of a Lesser God” ($800,000).

But the state and federal government have cut back support for the arts, existing subsidies haven’t kept pace with rising costs and the Taper hasn’t found its “A Chorus Line” (the New York Shakespeare Festival’s $30-million windfall), which is as likely as “hitting the lottery,” in Wingate’s estimation.

“We said, until we were blue in the face, ‘We’re operating with special one-time-only income,’ ” said Wingate. “But people came to expect us to come up with it.”

When the final endowment grant period ended June 30, 1986, “we immediately had a $1-million hole in our budget. And yet the (Music Center) Unified Fund increased the Taper’s allotment by only $300,000” (from $2.7 million to $3 million).

The Taper audience hasn’t expanded, either. The Taper has 27,000 subscribers this season--more than the 21,500 who signed up 10 years ago but fewer than the 29,800 who subscribed to the first season 20 years ago. High tide for subscriptions was in 1974-75, when 32,000 signed up to see Stacy Keach as Hamlet and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in “Juno and the Paycock”--and in 1979-80, the year of “Talley’s Folly,” “Fifth of July,” “Children of a Lesser God” and Tony Curtis in Neil Simon’s “I Ought to Be in Pictures.”

“The Taper appeals to people of intellect and cultural backgrounds,” said Wingate. “You can cast the net wider when you have Jack Lemmon, but finally those people who just want to be entertained find that this isn’t their cup of tea.”

The Taper’s subscription figures are in “the middle range” of regional theaters, according to Wingate, and not considered a serious financial handicap. However, “our technical expenses are a much greater part of our budget than at most theaters. And that reflects the degree to which we’re unionized. Even my job.” (He belongs to the Assn. of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.)

Some say Taper shows are overproduced. The average cost of a mainstage production is about $475,000 (which doesn’t include overhead and advertising). “We have to bring people into those same seats five or six times a year, year after year,” responded Wingate. “We have to find ways of making each experience different--in a theater with no ability to fly (sets), no traps, two long entrances, and with a pitch of the house that’s always looking down, so the floor has to be as much a work of art as the rest of it. Doing it differently each time is costly.”

A sign of hope on the horizon: The Music Center has relaxed its restrictions on how much individual fund raising each resident company can do. For example, the Taper has been invited to take “Terra Nova” to Japan this summer, but $120,000 must be found to export it. “In the past, the Music Center was trying to spread its net wider in the Asian business community, and those companies would have been off limits to us. Now they’re available for us to solicit gifts for this specific project.”

Under the new rules, one CTG board member has offered a $25,000 challenge grant--if eight other members match it. Wingate predicted increased pressure on board members “to give or get off. There are always exceptions--board members who provide other services and talents. But the bulk of the board just has to give.”