Garden Grove Withholds Subsidy . . . There’s the Rub

Declaring that their “hard-hat” constituents have little use for the plays of William Shakespeare and would be better served by dinner-theater productions, the Garden Grove City Council has withheld a subsidy from the Grove Theatre Company on the eve of the 10th annual Grove Shakespeare Festival, scheduled to open tonight with “Richard II.”

“This community is a hard-hat community, and very few hard hats take in Shakespeare,” said Councilman Raymond T. Littrell, who led the 3-2 majority in denying the subsidy earlier this week. “They’re more ‘Oklahoma!’ types. I’d like to see (the Grove do) more things that the citizens of Garden Grove would come out to.”

Littrell has further cast the issue as one of amenities versus necessities by saying the city’s money should go to a proposed expansion of the Garden Grove police force. But a councilman who supports the Grove charges that Littrell is using the police as “a smokescreen.”

The council’s vote earlier this week was the first in eight years to reject the Grove’s request for city money to help underwrite its annual Shakespeare Festival and other plays produced year-round in two city-owned theaters.

The company applied for a $53,000 advance on its 1988-89 grant request of $83,000. More than just a budgetary issue, the Grove is caught in what has been termed “a philosophical dispute” over the direction of the city-owned Festival Amphitheatre and Gem Theatre.

At a subsequent meeting Wednesday night, when the Grove issue was hastily reconsidered, the council voted 4 to 1 to extend the company $20,000, at least half of which would go for the facilities’ insurance premiums due July 1.

Councilman Milton Krieger, a Grove supporter, characterized the Wednesday meeting as “another disaster.” Krieger said the city may have “legal exposure” if it does not fund the Grove through the fall season. “We may find ourselves in litigation if we do not meet our (contractual) obligations.”

The next step comes Monday when the council will vote whether to grant any additional funds to the Grove. If the request is denied, Grove officials said the Shakespeare festival could close prematurely.

The Grove’s board will meet Wednesday to consider its options. Among the long-range possibilities will be leaving Garden Grove for more hospitable environs. “It appears to the board that the city still has serious questions about philosophical issues as well as management operations of the theaters,” Robert C. Dunek, president of the board, said Thursday.

Krieger said that council members who oppose subsidizing the Grove “are holding the theater hostage and using the police force as a battering ram. But it’s a shadow, a smokescreen. Everybody knows we have a marvelous police force. To bat it around in the press every time somebody doesn’t want to spend money is an abuse of the police department.”

The Grove company has operated the theaters on city contracts for 10 years, drawing most of its $562,000 budget from ticket sales and grants from corporations. Over the decade, the troupe has evolved from an amateur group into a professional company, one of only two in Orange County. Since the company began requesting city money eight years ago, the council has approved--usually by a narrow margin--those requests.

This year, however, a council majority led by 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.

Mayor J. Tilman Williams agreed, proposing that the city lease its cultural facilities to a private dinner theater that would turn its profits over to the municipal treasury. “As a businessman myself, I know there are outfits that would be more than happy to come in there and run the place,” he said. “Like they do at the (Anaheim) Grand Hotel, maybe a dinner and a show too.”

Councilman Robert F. Dinsen said he surveyed his constituents some years ago and “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.”

Describing the Grove as a “middle-of-the-road” company, artistic director Thomas F. Bradac said he was astonished that the works being produced were considered “too sophisticated” for Garden Grove residents. The present offering at the Gem is a country-music revue, “Pump Boys and Dinettes.”

Ironically, the Grove recently was denied a $15,000 grant from the California Arts Council, in part because the Council felt the theater’s offerings were too conventional.

“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 district plans to cut its support of the festival next year because of its own money problems.

Martin Benson, director of South Coast Repertory in nearby Costa Mesa, 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.”

On Main Street, the heart of Garden Grove’s downtown redevelopment area, some merchants 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, 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,” she said.

Other Garden Grove residents took offense when told of their councilmen’s opinion of their cultural sophistication.

“Garden Grove don’t need no more cops,” said another Grove aficionado, construction worker Stephen Gale, 22: “I got a hard hat, and I like Shakespeare. You’re seeing it like you’re there in the 1500s,” he said. “It’s history, it’s cool.”