Theater Design, Management at Top of Conference Agenda

About 2,500 theater professionals and educators are meeting in Orange County this week to discuss the nationwide status of theatrical design, facilities and management.

Most of the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology’s 28th annual national conference is closed to the public, but there are two public exhibits, both at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, and both free.

One is the sprawling, 238-booth “Stage Expo ‘88,” a display of the latest in staging, lighting and sound systems as designed not only for theaters but for convention centers and theme parks as well.

Hours: today and Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The other is “Design Expo,” a showcase of 68 scenic, lighting and costume renderings.

Some of these designs have earned Oscars, Tonys and Emmys. Work is featured by scenic artist Mark Donnelly, who won a 1983 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for “Playboy of the Western World” at South Coast Repertory.

And there is a tribute to the artists who worked on Cecil B. DeMille’s movies, from the 1927 “King of Kings” to the 1956 “The Ten Commandments” (the storyboard drawings for the Red Sea parting are especially intriguing).

Hours: Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The conference opened Tuesday morning with a speech by Robert Fitzpatrick, organizer of the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival and the 1987 Los Angeles Festival, on the role of performing arts in society.

Subsequent panel discussions deal with everything from set design (speakers include the internationally known Freddy Wittop and Ming Cho Lee ) to computerization, labor relations, and performer and administrator “burn out.”

Facilities building is “the overriding issue for many groups,” according to conference chairman Willard Bellman, a theater arts professor at Cal State Northridge.

Especially interesting these days, he said, are such multipurpose theaters as the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which will be visited.

“I’m not sure I like that (multipurpose) concept,” Bellman said, “but that’s the one we’re stuck with since it’s the only one that’s economically feasible today.”

The separate-facilities complexes of the 1960s, such as New York’s Lincoln Center or the Los Angeles Music Center, are “no longer possible for any groups starting to build now,” he said.

Various sites in Los Angeles also will be visited, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and ABC Television Studio.

Founded in 1960, the institute has held a national conference in Southern California only once before, at the Anaheim Convention Center in 1975.