Surprises and Disappointments : Having Finished With a Surplus, L.A. Festival Looks Ahead to 1989

Los Angeles Festival ended its 24-day run Sunday night in the black, with the size of its surplus awaiting a complete count. But the real boost to the future of Los Angeles festivals came with the surprise announcement that Peter Sellars, former director of the American National Theatre at Kennedy Center in Washington, will replace Robert Fitzpatrick as festival director of the biennial event.

Fitzpatrick told The Times Monday that the festival surpassed its $1.4-million goal in ticket sales sometime last week. Anything beyond that, he said, is surplus for the next festival in 1989.

“From my point of view it went spectacularly,” said Fitzpatrick, who leaves on vacation today before assuming his new position in two weeks as president of Euro Disneyland in Paris. He added that “start-up money” for the ’89 event had always been figured into this festival’s $5.8-million budget--half the size of the 10-week 1984 Olympic Arts Festival that Fitzpatrick, 47, also directed. Meanwhile, a dozen key staff members will stay on at least through the end of the year.

Sellars, 29, whose warm, ebullient, sprite-like style differs markedly from that of the cool, elegant and professorial Fitzpatrick, received a 1983 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” He takes over Dec. 1 after directing “The Electrification of the Soviet Union,” which opens at Glyndebourne, England, on Monday, and “Nixon in China,” which opens Oct. 22 at the Houston Grand Opera.

Asked if there was anything he might have done differently, Fitzpatrick quickly responded: “I would have kept the American dollar from declining.” That prevented him from bringing major theatrical productions from Germany and Japan.

There were other difficulties, including complaints from the City Council that not enough local minority artists were included in the festival and that festival sites did not go beyond downtown and Hollywood. On Labor Day weekend, the sudden illness of British choreographer Michael Clark forced cancellation of the Saturday night performance while this past Saturday night Raleigh Studios in Hollywood was in the black due to a power outage that delayed the “Mahabharata” marathon and Compagnie Maguy Marin for 90 minutes.

“Even this weekend when ‘Mahabharata’ meant an hour-and-a-half wait,” said Fitzpatrick, “my principal source of satisfaction from the festival was the response from the audience. People were in remarkable good form and good humor, and in a sense almost enjoyed the time chatting.”

Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick pledged continued involvement as a member of the festival’s board and called Sellars’ appointment “a fantastic choice.”

At an unusual Saturday morning press conference at the Biltmore Hotel, Mayor Tom Bradley declared that this year’s festival has “ensured the success of this continuum that I expect will run as long as I’m mayor.

“And that,” added Bradley who in 1989 will be seeking his fifth term, “is going to be a long time.”

With a burst of energy as he rushed to the microphone, Sellars provided a glimpse of his vision for the future, and talked about long-range planning for festivals through the end of the century and beyond.

“While the festival has brought the best in the world to Los Angeles,” said Sellars who had flown in from England for the announcement, “now we’re going to make the best right here, and let everybody else get a whiff so that they can really see that it’s not just that we can afford things, but actually right here is the crucible.”

At the same time he said he intends to focus on a Latino and Asian festival for 1989 as Fitzpatrick had intended--”Oh, in a big way, you’ll see a lot of that; that’s where the interesting work is happening as well”--and to seek works from the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe.

“We can really take a leap,” Sellars said. “We can really move beyond the political boundaries and the propaganda of it all, and share what people have to share. The next decade is the crucial one as those countries come in out of the cold, and we here wise up.”

While bringing in works from abroad, Sellars is focusing on local artists as well, and said he intends to spread the festival throughout the city. “We’re going to be expanding the way the festival happens,” Sellars said, “so that we’re really placing events in neighborhoods across the entire scope of the city . . . I really look forward to spreading the thing geographically, and planting seeds all over the place.”

Key festival staff said it would take about two weeks before they had a detailed accounting of this year’s surplus, the percentage of sellout performances and the actual number of ticket-buyers as opposed to repeat festival-goers. While the ‘Mahabharata” was clearly the hottest ticket, the event that apparently sold the least, according to Fitzpatrick, was the final John Cage music event at Japan America Theatre.

“One of the key points of difference (between Sellars and himself),” said Fitzpatrick comparing their individual approaches, “is that Peter is talking about co-productions with Los Angeles--and foreign--theaters.” (In this year’s festival, only “Mahabharata,” Peter Brook’s epic based on ancient legends from India, was set as a co-production with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and with Australia, which is celebrating its bicentennial next year.)

Sellars named three major arts leaders in Los Angeles and indicated he wants to work closely with them. “Ernest Fleischmann (executive director, Los Angeles Philharmonic) first brought me to Los Angeles five years ago doing a project for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and now we can make good on that,” Sellars said. “Gordon Davidson (artistic producing director of the Mark Taper Forum) and Richard Koshalek (director of the Museum of Contemporary Art) are old-time friends. Finally, we can get down to work.”

He also praised the festival’s “built-in” staff and indicated he wants to keep most, if not all of them. “I inherited a staff that’s top of the line, the best in the business.”

Sellars called Los Angeles as “adventurous” artistically as any city in America, “and it’s not just the public relations force field around the thing, but the fact that the audiences are there. And when you look at the events that are selling out, it’s not the bust-and-thrust version of ‘Chorus Line’ it’s really wild stuff . . .

“American culture basically was created by a bunch of European immigrants who came to New York and slugged it out on the Lower East Side. That gave rise to Carnegie Hall and the rest of it, but that’s basically over with, and a new thing has to happen. The next 200 years is about a Hispanic situation, an Asian situation and a Third World situation which begins to assert itself in Los Angeles.”

Sellars pledged to involve the film community in the festival both as a source for funding and as participants. He also wants to have a visual arts component in 1989.

He indicated that the Fringe Festival, which this year operated under separate auspices, would come under the larger festival umbrella. “We’re going to rename the Fringe Festival because I don’t think it’s the fringe,” he said. “I don’t believe in inside-outside, upstairs-downstairs. It will all be part of the same mix.”

The more obvious difference between Fitzpatrick and Sellars is that Fitzpatrick is an impresario, a producer, a taste-setter rather than a working artist, who says that while he can’t paint, he can be the “ombudsman” for the audience. Meanwhile, Sellars intends to play to his strength--directing.

Asked whether he would do any directing during the festival, Sellars grinned broadly. “Oh yes, I’m afraid I will” but he declined to disclose what he had in mind. “The suspense is terrific.”

In response to a question about whether he would involve himself in fund raising, he said, “inevitably, of course . . . If you’re interested in doing ambitious work, you’ve got to learn how to raise money, and that’s that.”

Sellars’ appointment also appeared to push to the backburner certain complaints that had been voiced about this year’s event.

One of the main criticisms has been that events weren’t extended long enough so that by the time someone read or heard about a particular production it was over--or, that they were sold out so far in advance it didn’t matter.

“That’s the nature of festivals,” Fitzpatrick said. He also pointed out that during the Olympic festival the longest period of a company’s presence in town was Theatre du Soleil’s two-week stay, followed by Pina Bausch’s dance troupe from West Germany, which was at Pasadena Civic Auditorium for a week.

Fitzpatrick also dismissed complaints about the hard foam-rubber seats at the Raleigh soundstages, where purses and programs continually fell through the cracks. “I found (the seats) comfortable,” he said.

As for reviews suggesting that the French dance companies would have been better served at places like Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Fitzpatrick rejected that. “On the contrary. (Maguy Marin’s) ‘Babel Babel’ requires almost an outdoor amphitheater,” he said.

Asked about the high cost of ticket prices, “every single ticket was subsidized to a very heavy degree--that’s why they were as low as they were.” “Mahabharata” went for $90; the average top ticket was between $25 and $30.

As for parking lots such as those near Raleigh that charged $5 per car, Fitzpatrick said that the lots weren’t “owned or controlled by us.”

Like Fitzpatrick, who for a time held three jobs--president of CalArts, president of Euro Disneyland and festival director--Sellars said he would not confine himself solely to running the festival. Noting that the two-year spread is a big advantage to a director, he added: “The great thing about the way this festival is put together, it’s done after midnight in a hotel in Sweden. That’s where the actual deal takes place.”

Meanwhile, Sellars said he wants to make the festival a pacesetter of sorts.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “What’s happening in the last part of our century is that theater doesn’t exist anymore, video doesn’t exist anymore, concerts don’t exist anymore. Something’s happening that’s a mixture of all those things. It’s this new hybrid art form in which a whole bunch of people who haven’t previously met each other are suddenly in the room working together.

“And that new energy, a new art form, is really going to happen in bthe last part of our century. Why not have it happen in Los Angeles?”