Shakespeare Festival at Risk After Garden Grove’s Move

The Garden Grove City Council’s vote to withhold its subsidy of the Grove Theatre Company has imperiled the annual Grove Shakespeare Festival and placed in doubt the drama troupe’s future, Grove officials said Tuesday.

The council rejected Monday the troupe’s request for a $53,000 advance on its $83,000 subsidy from Garden Grove, in what has been termed a “philosophical dispute” over the direction of the city-owned Festival Amphitheatre and Gem Theatre on Main Street.

A majority of the five-member body, led by Councilman Raymond T. Littrell, has complained that the troupe’s offerings are too sophisticated for the residents of Garden Grove and that city money is subsidizing tickets for the theater’s out-of-town audience.

Thomas F. Bradac, the troupe’s artistic director, said Tuesday that the council’s action has left his company scrambling for money to run its summer Shakespeare festival, which is scheduled to open Friday with “Richard II.”

“Our concern right now is for the next 60 to 90 days,” Bradac said. “I’m optimistic we’ll find an immediate solution for the next few months. Beyond that, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

The troupe’s officers are scheduled to meet with the council tonight at City Hall to discuss the theater’s immediate money problems.

Bradac’s company has operated the two theaters on the redeveloped Main Street for 10 years. Bradac predicted that the council’s position will harm the company’s efforts to raise money from the private sector: “I don’t think any corporation is going to want to give us money if we are losing money from our major support sources--in this case the city.”

He said Littrell “has been concerned about the types of plays we’re presenting, feeling that they are possibly too sophisticated for the community.” The Gem Theatre’s present offering is a country-music revue, “Pump Boys and Dinettes.”

“When the council is interested in how we program the plays, there becomes a kind of philosophical difference, and it has put us at odds,” Bradac said.

Littrell declined to comment Tuesday, except to say that “keeping (the issue) stirring in the paper doesn’t help.”

However, Councilman Robert F. Dinsen, who also voted against the theater’s request, said he is opposed to public support of the performing arts.

“There’s no logical reason why a theater shouldn’t be self supporting,” he said. “Why should my next-door neighbor who never goes to any of these plays have to put in money towards them?”

Dinsen said he would seek to have the company lose its professional status and resume using volunteer actors.

“I think the best play I ever saw there was done completely with volunteers with an overall budget of $3,000,” he said. “And I don’t even remember the name of it.”

The councilman said that he surveyed his constituents some years ago and that “it appeared the people aren’t too much in favor of their tax dollars going for things of this nature. Basically, we have a pretty conservative city, and the majority of (residents) are not too strong in the arts.”

However, some community leaders and residents disagreed.

“It’s kind of a libel on the citizens of Garden Grove to suggest that their community is not sophisticated enough to accept Shakespeare,” said John Dowden, a trustee of the Rancho Santiago Community College District, which co-sponsors the Grove Shakespeare Festival.

Nonetheless, Dowden said the college district plans to cut its support of the Shakespeare festival next year because of its own money problems.

Councilman Milton Krieger, who voted for a continued subsidy, said: “The community supports the image-building function of the theater, whether or not they actually go to it. This may be a hard-hat community, but I know some hard hats who wouldn’t miss a ballet.”

Martin Benson, artistic director of South Coast Repertory, called the City Council’s action “absolutely impossible to fathom. I can’t think of a single entity that has done as much as that theater to upgrade that community.”

Benson, whose Costa Mesa-based troupe won this year’s Tony award for regional theater, said the Grove company has gained recognition in national theater circles as an emerging regional company.

“I look for the (Grove) to be garnering eventually the kind of acclaim that we have been fortunate to receive,” he said.

On Main Street, the heart of Garden Grove’s downtown redevelopment area, some merchants near the theater bemoaned the council’s vote.

The theater “is about the only thing we have in Garden Grove in the way of culture,” said Helen Kanzler, the owner of Yogurt & More and a 15-year resident.

If the theater were to leave the city, Kanzler said, “it will affect my business, and it will affect our cultural growth. I’d just pull my business out of Garden Grove and put it near the Performing Arts Center (in Costa Mesa),” she said.

Susan Tehrani, a clerk at the Main Street Dolls & Bears store, said: “It wasn’t too long ago that Garden Grove was called ‘Garbage Grove,’ and anything that (can) be done to change the image of being a cultural wasteland should be done.”