Pasadena Playhouse Protest by Union Goes Largely Unnoticed; : American Center for Music Theater Finds a Temporary Home

Before you enter the Pasadena Playhouse, you’re likely to be handed a flyer, urging calls or letters to protest the theater’s employment of non-union stagehands and proposing a boycott: “Tell the management that in the future you will not patronize their box office.” The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE) has maintained this “informational picket line” for about three months.

The results so far?

“It has not affected our business one iota,” said Susan Dietz, one of the theater’s producing directors. “And the (18) letters we’ve received have been 2 to 1 in favor of not bringing in the union. They say, ‘We don’t want you to have to raise your ticket prices.”’

Robert Trombetta, business representative of IATSE Local 33, contended that “return traffic (Playhouse patrons choosing to return) is down,” citing his sources at the theater. However, he acknowledged that such a decline would not necessarily be attributable to the union’s campaign.

The union clearly hasn’t succeeded in its larger objectives. “We don’t have the money” (to sign with IATSE), said Dietz. “We may talk next year, but now we don’t even want to talk.” Financially, “we’re on the fence. We just don’t have much unearned income.”

For example, the Playhouse’s drive to recruit “co-producers” of specific shows, in return for contributions of at least $10,000, hasn’t turned up any takers. And the second most generous “angel,” listed in the current “Mail” program, is Dietz’s own family.

Trombetta is skeptical of the theater’s pleas of penury. Noting the elaborate staging of “Mail” (as described in reviews; Trombetta obviously wouldn’t pay to see the musical), he asked: “Was this show done on paper, created out of thin air?” A union contract covers the theater’s actors; Trombetta said that stagehands should be treated likewise.

“Mail” uses a turntable that’s rented from the Center Theatre Group. Its motor began to break down during the Saturday night preview, and on Sunday morning several CTG employees--members of Local 33--entered the theater to fix it. Trombetta was not pleased.

It was “a technicality that the informational picket line was down between shows,” he said, and the Local 33 members should have known better. “I’ll speak to them, and if there was serious misconduct, they will be dealt with.”

CTG technical director Robert Routolo, a member of Local 33 himself, defended his staff, saying: “It’s our obligation to stand behind what we rent. I pay union wages; why should they stop me?” He acknowledged, however,that if the picket line had been in place when the crew arrived, “it would have been up to the individual.”

Booted out of the Music Center at the end of last month, the American Center for Music Theater (formerly the Musical Theatre Workshop of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera) has found temporary shelter from the storm at the Guild Opera offices in the Hollywood Pacific Theater building at 6433 Hollywood Blvd.

A third floor site in the same structure may become permanent quarters for the organization, which specializes in the development of young musical theater talent. Artistic director/producer Paul Gleason’s new telephone number is 213-463-6593.

Occidental College’s Summer Drama Festival has a more professional status this year. Six Equity members have been hired as guest artists. Except for the college students who serve as interns and apprentices, the non-Equity actors will also be paid. And they’ll perform on a stage with a newly built permanent facade.

The doubled budget will be supported by ticket prices that have gone up 50%. Individual tickets cost $12 for reserved seating and $9 for general admission to the alfresco Remsen Bird Hillside Theatre (which has a potential capacity of several thousand). Season tickets cost $60.

The six-week season begins July 9 with “I Do! I Do!,” directed by Gary Davis, and also includes “Camelot,” “Arms and the Man,” “Private Lives,” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” By next summer, the festival hopes to add a second space, a 400-seat proscenium theater with a fly tower, currently being built on the campus.

How much can you afford for theater tickets? When La Jolla Playhouse, which has extended its run of “The Matchmaker” by a week (through July 4), threw open its doors for its first “pay what you can” matinee on June 6, the average payment from the 381 customers was $7.50. Although one person chipped in a mere quarter, others paid the regular ticket price of $18. If you’d like to write your own fare for the next Playhouse offering, “Hedda Gabler,” tickets for the July 11 “pay what you can” matinee go on sale July 5. You’ll be limited to four.

Now let’s see if La Jolla will take the next step: “Pay what the show deserves” matinees, with fees to be collected on the way out.

“Burn This,” Lanford Wilson’s hit at the Mark Taper Forum last season, reappears with the same cast in a Steppenwolf Theater production at Chicago’s Royal George Theatre on Sept. 9, and on Broadway at the Plymouth Theater on Oct. 15 (previews Oct. 7). Because the Taper is a co-producer, helping raise the capital and participating in the gross and the profits, “we hope it will have a long run,” understated Taper managing director Stephen Albert.

ODDS AND ENDS: Mark Harmon will star in the Ahmanson production of “Bus Stop,” Feb. 11-April 10 . . . “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” has been extended through Aug. 29 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center . . . South Coast Repertory dedicates its Artists Center Monday. The $1.7-million, 11,000-square-foot addition to the north side of the Costa Mesa structure includes a rehearsal hall, enlarged costume and prop departments and office space.