NEW BID MADE TO SAVE CENTER THEATRE GROUP

High operational costs and growing deficits are causing a financial hemorrhage at the Music Center’s Center Theatre Group, and new measures are being taken to stem the flow, but are they enough and can it be done?

One recent move is the proposal to separate the activities of the 2,071-seat Ahmanson Theatre (budget: $9 million) from those of the 752-seat Mark Taper Forum (budget: $7.5 million). Another is an effort to revamp operational aspects of the Ahmanson’s administration.

As of last Thursday, the four-member, in-house advertising department of CTG/Ahmanson was dismissed with advertising to be jobbed to an outside firm. Last month, Ellen Fay was hired as administrative director while last fall Marcia Lazer came aboard as marketing director.

A potentially more significant step is a proposal made in June to provide separate boards of directors for the Ahmanson and Mark Taper (instead of the single board that governs both). The proposal is currently under evaluation by the Music Center Executive Committee.

This was the brainchild of Lawrence Ramer, president and chief executive officer of the Center Theatre Group, and of Daniel Frost, chairman of the Music Center. It’s designed to cope with the Ahmanson’s 1986-87 deficit--the largest ever, “at least $1.5 million,” said CTG Executive Managing Director William Wingate, adding that final figures aren’t in.

(As a result of the Ahmanson deficit, cuts are also possible at the Mark Taper, though artistic director Gordon Davidson, who acknowledged that “times are tough,” would not say if or what they might be. Wingate saw a chance of “internal trims,” rather than wholesale program deletions.)

“It’s only one of several options,” Ramer said Tuesday of the separate-boards proposal. “It would give us an opportunity to focus more specifically on each theater,” he emphasized, adding that a separation could benefit both operations, which are substantially different in style and artistic intent.

“Another option,” he said, “is to continue as we are, but have a more separate focus internally--specific committees (attending to) one theater or the other. We should have a determination probably around the first of the year.”

Ramer’s solution for the Ahmanson, in his words, is “to have better plays. The last two years,” he said, “have not been good.”

“I didn’t originate the idea, but it’s a good one,” seconded Martin Manulis, who shares the artistic directorship of the Ahmanson with Robert Fryer for the 1987-88 season. (Fryer has announced his resignation as of the end of the coming season, with Manulis succeeding him alone in the post.)

“The Taper was always a funded theater, but the Ahmanson was intended as a self-supporting, nonprofit theater--and was one until two or three years ago. It has no allocated funds. It is expected to live on its receipts and when it does not, money must be found from other sources.”

As new subscriptions and renewals have tumbled in the last few seasons (from an all-time high of about 70,000 in 1980-81 to last year’s 46,000), those “sources,” increasingly, have become one source: the CTG reserve fund shared by both theaters. It was established early on with the help of a Ford Foundation grant and augmented over the years by such one-time windfalls as the sale of the Aquarius Theatre.

While the Taper and Ahmanson are separate entities functioning in distinct ways, they are joined at the hip--some might say saddled--by having a mutual board and shared central services, such as accounting, the costume and scene shops and a data processing function.

In healthier days, the Ahmanson more than shouldered its share of joint costs. On occasion, it even provided cash flow for a needy Taper. But when the economic and artistic climates changed and subscription sales started dwindling, the Ahmanson began running deficits (for reasons that include a lessening of New York product, declining interest rates and poor artistic choices). It started dipping into the CTG reserve fund, prompting the current reassessment and proposal for a separation of powers.

While the dipping is not a one-way street--the Taper has done its share: Its recent tour of Japan with “Terra Nova” cost about $74,000 that had not been prefigured in the budget, but was approved by the board--what has changed are the amounts. The concern on the board’s part is with how deep the erosion of reserves might go with the double-whammy of cost build-ups and diminished income in a theater as expensive to run as the Ahmanson.

Can it survive? Here’s what CTG officials think:

“It would be way, way premature not to think so,” said Wingate. “We’re only halfway through the (subscription) renewal phase. Last year, 82% of our renewals came through, but we were very late with our season announcement and new subscriptions were a catastrophe. I’m optimistic that this year we’ll get into the 50,000s again.”

(Another Ahmanson source, who prefered not to be identified, was less sanguine, placing the rate of renewals at about 20,000--”poor for a halfway point.”)

“It’s a serious situation,” Manulis also acknowledged, but insisted that “nothing’s in jeopardy.”

In a departure from the booking pattern of recent years (and the first real sign of change), Manulis, with Fryer, will be mounting three of the Ahmanson’s four 1987-88 shows: “The Best Man,” “Bus Stop” and “Coastal Disturbances.” Only the fourth show, the national company of Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” will be imported. The hitch? Each locally mounted production, Manulis said, will cost a whopping average of $2.2 million. Why so much?

“The Ahmanson operates on a commercial contract. It pays Broadway salaries,” Wingate explained. “That’s expensive.”

Is it time to renegotiate?

“There’s no room to renegotiate,” he said, explaining that as long as the theater imports Broadway shows, it will be subject to a major commercial contract. “The Ahmanson was self-supporting and it can be again.”

At this time is it wise to spend so many dollars mounting shows?

“When you book someone else’s show, you’re still paying for it,” Wingate said. “By mounting your own you get to keep all of the box office. And if it’s a hit, you have a chance to take it further.”

“I believe in spending the money on the stage, not in giving it to British producers,” echoed Manulis, obliquely referring to the many British imports that have played the Ahmanson and hinting that, as incoming artistic director, he expects to take a different tack.

Given the general economic climate, could it be the day of an unsubsidized Ahmanson is past?

“I don’t think we’ve led from a position of strength in the last few years,” Wingate conceded. “With the season we’ve announced and a strong marketing program, I think we can turn it around. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be here.”

New management certainly affords the opportunity for change, but the problems that plague the Ahmanson are not likely to disappear overnight. Awkward size is another major cause of this theater’s identity crisis, yet the suggested construction of a smaller theater in its upper reaches was discarded--again--this past year.

Whether the proposal for separate boards of directors is approved, the Ahmanson, which perennially has suffered from a fuzzy artistic image, faces one more decision: It--and more specifically its new artistic director--must decide what kind of theater it really wants to be.