SCR Gets Arts Council Funding ‘Without a Peep’

South Coast Repertory Theatre on Friday won partial funding for its new California Playwrights Festival “without a peep” of objection from the California Arts Council.

But, as expected, four other Orange County groups received nothing from the council’s new California Challenge Program, in which winning applicants are required to more than match the state awards with donations from new private sources. The council followed the recommendations of an advisory committee which in May approved only SCR among Orange County applicants for funding.

The $42,500 grant will help the Costa Mesa theater company stage a statewide competition for new plays that will “affirm the vitality of playwriting in California,” according to David Emmes, SCR’s producing artistic director.

Three new plays will receive full productions in SCR’s Spring 1989 season, Emmes said, and $10,000 in prize money will be awarded.

One of the three, a play with sufficient “scope and sweep,” will be produced on the company’s Mainstage, while the other two will appear on the smaller Second Stage, he said.

For the Mainstage, Emmes said, “we hope we’ll be able to chose a play that isn’t just a family play or takes place in a kitchen. We hope it addresses a broader canvas, or has a large cast,” he added.

Intended to help mark SCR’s 25th anniversary, the play competition “will have interest that goes beyond our region,” he said. “It has statewide significance, and I daresay I think it will have some national interest.

“Our work in developing new American plays is part of the reason we won the Tony,” Emmes said.

SCR won this year’s Tony award for achievement as a regional theater company.

To receive the CAC funds, SCR must raise three times the award amount, or $127,500 on its own from new donors. Emmes said he is confident the company can find the funds.

The grant program’s interim manager, Gloria Woodlock said SCR’s request “went through without a peep.

“They do high-quality programs in general, and we have every expectation this will also be a high-quality program,” she said.

The rejected Orange County groups include the Grove Theatre Company, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, the Pacific Symphony and the South Coast Symphony. All but one said they would be able to find other funds for their projects.

South Coast Symphony, however, said it was canceling plans to produce a 30-minute television program intended to introduce children to the orchestra.

“We are temporarily abandoning that project till we can find funding for it,” said the symphony’s general manager, Doreen Hardy.

Thirty-four out of 117 applicants statewide received funding under the challenge grant program, Woodlock said. The three top awards--for $75,000--went to groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, she said.

The California Challenge program, begun this year, is one of several funding awards made by the Arts Council. The bulk of council money is awarded through its organizational grant program, and several Orange County groups are expected to receive funding when those awards are announced in August.