OFFICIALS OK WAIVING FEES FOR FEST

After a strong plea by Los Angeles Festival Director Robert Fitzpatrick that the festival belongs to everyone and not just the elite few, a City Council committee, which last week balked at extending special status and waiving certain fees to the September arts event, this week turned around and unanimously recommended approval of city co-sponsorship.

Tuesday afternoon was Fitzpatrick’s first appearance before the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee because as president of the new Euro Disneyland, project to be built outside Paris, he had been in Florida on Disney business. His arrival did a lot to ease concerns, particularly those of committee chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, as to why a festival that is projecting a substantial surplus needs to ask for the city’s help.

After Fitzpatrick’s presentation, which dominated the 40-minute meeting, Yaroslavsky told him he was “glad you’re here, because you--and probably only you--are in a position to speak with authority on the festival.”

Co-sponsorship, involving the festival receiving $25,000 worth of rented equipment from the city as well as not paying various fees for city services, including installation of banners downtown and in Hollywood amounting to $1,500, is expected go before the full council next week.

Fitzpatrick argued that while the festival projects a surplus of $150,000 to $200,000, it is “not there, in fact, yet.” He noted that the $5.8-million festival has sold $1.1 million worth of tickets--$1.4 million is needed to break even--but that another $250,000 is being returned because of over-sold performances.

A surplus “becomes the seed money to create another festival” in 1989 and for successive two year periods after that, Fitzpatrick said, “to give all audiences in this city access to creators in various art forms from around the world.”

“So yes, our request to you the committee, still stands,” Fitzpatrick told the panel. “We feel very strongly we need the help.” And he urged “moving on this as speedily as possible” because “the festival opens Sept. 3 and the first artists begin to arrive this weekend.”

“If we don’t sell more tickets from today on, we’re in deep do-do,” Fitzpatrick warned in response to a question by Yaroslavsky about the extent of projected surpluses. “We won’t have a surplus, we’ll have a deficit . . . If we have one accident, if we have one backstage catastrophe where a piece of equipment is damaged or stolen,” there’ll be no surplus.

Tackling implied criticisms of exclusivity, Fitzpatrick, who directed the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, explained that this year’s festival has already waived more than $130,000 in revenue by providing free or discounted tickets, primarily to disadvantaged youth, as part of the festival’s “strong outreach program--as we have done in Olympic Arts Festival.”

“Even the festival’s programming,” is a form of outreach, Fitzpatrick suggested. “It’s not an accident that we chose to open the festival, not with some fancy black-tie event but with a black T-shirt event . . . We’re opening with a circus (Le Cirque du Soleil, from Quebec), a form that exists in every culture. We’re trying to tell the people of this city that this is about having fun, that this is about discovering the pleasure of being in a multicultural and multiracial city.”

As for concentrating downtown instead of in East Los Angeles or South Central, a point raised last week by Councilman Richard Alatorre who represents the city’s east side, Fitzpatrick mentioned practical matters, such as a lack of concentrated theater spaces almost everywhere else, and philosophical ones.

Downtown, he said, is “the symbolic heart of the city. It is, if you will, neutral territory. It’s not somebody’s backyard, it’s not somebody’s neighborhood. It is a place where we can come together.”

Meanwhile, he noted that there was no “hidden agenda,” that the council itself approved the city Community Redevelopment Agency’s plan for a festival “at locations primarily in the downtown area” a year ago last May.

Although Fitzpatrick pointed out that this was his last festival here, he held out the hope that future events would be held elsewhere in the city.

As for charges of a lack of participation by black community artists voiced the week before by Councilman Robert Farrell, who represents South Central Los Angeles, Fitzpatrick emphasized that “the primary responsibility is to bring international artists, artists from outside this city whether American or foreign . . . “

The festival program, he added, “reflects some strong social concerns as well as giving great pleasure to the audiences. There are black, there are Asian, there are Hispanic participants in that festival, both as companies and as individuals through other organizations.”

And he offered that future festivals would “shift focus from one art form to another, from one geographic region to another.” Last April, he noted, he discussed an Asian and Latino festival for 1989, in preparation for the 500th anniversary in 1992 of Columbus’ discovery of America. “There is very serious consideration of trying to explore African theater, not to satisfy any racial quoata . . . but it is very important to us that the black community feel very welcome to everything.”

Fitzpatrick also made it clear that on the matter of city assistance, the festival in not asking for police or fire support. “We will be hiring off-duty policemen at our expense . . . We will be paying salaries of fire marshals to insure fire safety within our theaters.”

The committee turnaround reflected not only Fitzpatrick’s presence but long-distance phone calls he made last week to Yaroslavsky as well as unnamed other council members. Festival associate directors Leigh Drolet and Tom Schumacher meanwhile met with Alatorre and Farrell rather than with deputies who would trickle up festival positions.

Although the councilman noted that “my mail has run 3 to 1 in support of our (the committee’s initial) complaints from artists--it’s been an eye-opener for me, all three of us want to help in every way we can.”

Morever Yaroslavsky said it was “absolutely ludicrous for anybody to suggest” that because councilmen ask questions they are “anti-festival” or that the “city is backing away from support of the festival. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

However, the meeting also touched on larger issues of the city’s policy toward the arts involving minority communities and grants to arts organizations.

Farrell, noting that he had been “uncomfortable” with the festival because of “a sense of non-involvement,” indicated he was now pleased by “a consideration of yours (Fitzpatrick’s) that there be a representation of African presence and participation.” It was an apparent reference to the Earth Players & Market Theatre from South Africa.

Farrell asserted there was a “high-point” of cultural expression in the black community following the Watts riots in 1965 but now there is a sense that the city has “co-opted” and “ripped off” the best of that era such as the Simon Rodia Jazz Festival. While people still enjoy “the spirit of it, the sense of self-determination . . . has been taken away from us in South Los Angeles and trounced into the ground for the past decade.”

Fitzpatrick, who came to Los Angeles in 1975 as president of CalArts in Valencia, said the real issue was money. He noted that he was named vice chairman of a city task force that year on cultural programming which recommended that “a strong Cultural Affairs Department be established” with substantial grants not only citywide but for “various art groups of various levels in various neighborhoods.

“At some point,” Fitzpatrick told the committee, “you’re going to have to come back and address that question despite budget pressure.”