An Appreciative Audience

The Los Angeles Theatre Center is working energetically to survive in a tough venue--downtown’s Spring Street. The theater is both a linchpin of the hoped-for rejuvenation of Spring Street and, when it is doing its best work, a source of rejuvenation for drama in the city as well. Because the theater’s survival is so important, the public can only applaud moves by its chief financial “angel,” the Community Redevelopment Agency, designed to put the center on firmer footing.

The theater’s current budget is $6.5 million a year, about one-fourth of which comes from the redevelopment agency. A little more than half the budget comes from ticket sales, concessions and theater rentals. The remainder is contributions. CRA subsidized the construction of the theater at 514 S. Spring, and plans to provide it with about $5 million over five years, reducing the amount each year until the theater becomes self-sufficient.

Bill Bushnell, the theater’s artistic director, asked CRA last week for $1.87 million to cover the budget from May 1 to April 30 of next year and $731,000 for bills between now and the end of April. CRA granted $500,000, and will take a fresh look at next year’s budget, with the help of the theater’s board, next month.

The theater staff argues that the center can become self-sustaining faster if it gets a larger CRA contribution now than it has been receiving for building maintenance, better security, improved ticket services and fund-raising. The theater is, frankly, in a crummy part of town, and the people who have the money to make contributions or to renew subscriptions so far are not doing so in droves.

To this request for money the redevelopment agency replies that it does not have bottomless pockets. It has asked the theater’s board to set priorities and to see where money might be saved.

The theater’s board does need to get more involved in financial matters. The center has made a giant managerial leap from what was essentially a small barn in Hollywood, where there was little to maintain, to a vast old bank building (you can still see the vault downstairs) with fancy electronic gear, air conditioning and heavy security needs. It deserves special attention, and the people to oversee a theater are the theater’s board members--not government redevelopment specialists.

The city should pay as much attention to what is going on outside the theater as it does to the management inside. The theater staff has beefed up its security, but until the nearby parking garages pay more attention to safety, until theatergoers don’t have to step over winos on the sidewalk and until the area is more attractive, many people won’t attend the theater, no matter how good the show.

As important as the Los Angeles Theatre Center is to anchoring this Spring Street redevelopment, it is also important to people--Latino actors getting breaks in new plays, poets conveying their imagery to audiences downtown, women and young playwrights learning a craft. Take Josephina Lopez, for example. A participant last year in the Young Playwrights’ Lab, her work, “Simply Maria or the American Dream,” won the competition at a recent New York festival and has been produced in San Diego. Lopez, a student at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, has just won a scholarship to New York University. That’s community development in the best sense.