East County Arts Center Cancels Events

Faced with a $50,000 operating deficit and a critically needed $500,000 re-roofing job, the East County Performing Arts Center has scotched 11 of the 14 dance, theater and music acts planned for next year, including appearances by Sid Caesar, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the Alley Theatre’s Moscow-bound production of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge.”

Instead of presenting professional acts, the arts center will take a one-year hiatus to raise money and start an endowment fund, said David Feldman, a vice president of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, which operates the center.

The district will present only one of next season’s previously scheduled acts: the New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra. The Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Constanza Orchestra of Romania--also scheduled--may appear at the arts center, but not under the auspices of the college district, Feldman said.

The Curtain Raisers, a volunteer support organization for the center, will vote Monday on shouldering the responsibility of presenting the two orchestras, including their $25,000 price tag. The Curtain Raisers underwrote five orchestral performances this year for $15,000.

The arts center incurred its operating debt presenting 10 cultural performances, ranging from the Georgian Chamber Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra to the Mark Morris Dance Group and jazz singer Mel Torme. The district had budgeted a $106,000 subsidy to bridge an anticipated gap between ticket sales and the cost of operations, Feldman said.

“This year we went over that by over $50,000,” he said. “What happened is we lost money. We knew we’d lose money, but we hoped we’d generate an endowment fund.”

“As you know, ticket sales are never enough to cover the costs of . . . any event,” said Dorene Bauman, the center’s general manager. “We are taking a year’s hiatus to try to alert the community to the need we have for underwriters, donors, supporters--to help us create an endowment for budget purposes. Unfortunately, when the theater was being built (in 1978), they did not have an endowment campaign under way.”

The college district is creating a staff position specifically to raise money for the center, including creating an endowment, Feldman said. The interest from a “pure endowment” of $500,000 would pay most of the costs of the presentations, he said.

Attendance figures for the 10 arts series were about 60% to 65% of the 1,200-seat theater’s capacity, but the average loss was $3,800 per performance, according to Bauman.

She said that this year she will try to expand the number of days the theater is rented out. Although the arts center was rented 150 days and used by the college district for educational purposes 100 days, the 10 professional presentations were clearly the highlights of East County’s cultural year.

Warren Foster, president of Curtain Raisers, underscored the importance of having such cultural performances in East County.

“To me it’s a matter of breadth of experience,” he said. “That music had emotional and psychological impact upon our European forefathers, and, as a result, it impacted our entire culture. This music offers us the opportunity to witness and feel that impact upon us as individuals.”

Other acts that have been canceled for next season include the Shih Sisters, three teen-age Chinese piano and violin virtuosos; the Montana Repertory Theatre’s double bill of “The Rainmaker” and “True West”, and the Back Alley Theatre of Los Angeles’ production of “The Fox.”

Also canceled were a concert of classical dance repertory by the North Carolina Dance Theatre, “Gizelle” by the Oakland Ballet, the American Indian Dance Theatre, the Glenn Miller Band, and an appearance of Sid Caesar with the Buddy Greco Quartet.