An End in Sight to 99-Seat Theater Wars?; NEA Theatre Program to Take Stock of Itself

It has taken some doing, but there may be a resolution coming on the 99-seat theater front--and what a war front it has been.

Representatives of Actors’ Equity Assn. and theater operators met Wednesday to review a new set of Equity proposals that, for the first time, would alter the union’s controversial 99-seat theater plan.

“The revisions that (Equity’s) Western Advisory Board has approved reflect a great deal of thought,” said Laura Zucker, speaking for the theaters, “and substantially improve the plan in my view. We hope that discussions will continue now towards a speedy resolution acceptable to everyone.”

Equity’s revisions are reported to address some of the concerns that have had the acting community in an uproar for the past eight months, and that have been specifically articulated by members of ATLAS (the Associated Theatres of Los Angeles, representing the operators of about 60 theaters of 99 seats or fewer).

In a carefully worded statement to The Times Tuesday, Edward Weston, Equity’s Western regional director, said that the Western Advisory Board had devoted three meetings to a consideration of proposals submitted three weeks ago by ATLAS for modifications of the plan. It is now prepared, Weston said, to recommend these revisions to Equity’s council in New York, which has to approve them. But Weston was not prepared to give out details of the revisions.

“The Western Advisory Board will also be setting up a negotiation committee to begin the collective bargaining process with ATLAS for a contract that can be used for productions which will move up from the 99-Seat plan to an Equity contract,” he said. “(ATLAS members) believe there is no contract now they can move up to. I don’t really agree, because I feel the Hollywood Area contract is the perfect contract, but we’ve agreed to examine this.”

The most hotly debated issue in Equity’s plan in recent months has been the matter of pay scales for actors. Equity had proposed a schedule of flat fees based on theater size; ATLAS wants those fees predicated on a percentage of the box-office gross.

Another issue is the length of time a production can run before it must go to an Equity contract. Also in dispute is the jurisdiction of the plan itself. Equity has always assumed the plan to be an internal union matter and its own to govern, while ATLAS wants an arrangement that would offer producers protections from unilateral change.

Reached Wednesday after she had seen the modified plan, Zucker said she was pleased by the progress it reflected, but also declined to offer details.

When might one expect some?

“It depends on how soon we can meet with Equity to discuss them.”

CONDITIONAL FREEDOMS: Dissident Czech playwright Vaclav Havel (whose plays, “A Private View” and “Largo Desolato” have been seen at the Taper, Too) was arrested in Prague over the weekend, along with 20 others, after the opening of “Czechoslovakia 88,” an independent seminar on the country’s history and future held at a Prague hotel.

The occasion marked the 70th anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence. Havel and his brother, Ivan, were subsequently released on Monday.

According to the Associated Press, the Communist Party daily Rude Pravo said the dissidents tried to use the symposium as a “form of provocation, making use of it for the cooperation of NATO countries for psychological warfare.” But Havel, whose plays are banned in Czechoslovakia and who has never seen any of them on stage, is not so easy to arrest.

The staging and endorsement of his plays abroad has led to such growing visibility for Havel that any infringement of his freedom arouses international protest. Case in point: the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which was meeting with Czech emigres in Vienna on Sunday and Monday, denounced the detentions.

TAKING STOCK: The National Endowment for the Arts’ Theatre Program, nearing the end of the first five years of its grant program for ongoing theater ensembles, has decided to evaluate the program’s impact before opening it up to new applicants. This is not a phase-out but an assessment of the program, insisted Jessica L. Andrews, assistant director of the endowment’s theatre program.

“We’re in the fifth year of this program and we felt this was the right time to examine its impact,” Andrews said, explaining that the program is a non-renewable, five-year matching grant and that the 11 companies currently funded will not be affected by this decision.

During the course of the coming year, Andrews said, the theater program staff will do field studies and report its findings to various appropriate panels in June. There should be a decision by October on how best to proceed.

When you consider that the endowment’s overall theater program’s annual fiscal allocation is slightly under $11 million, you can quickly see the significance of the ensemble grants that have distributed $7 million to 11 companies in the past five years.

TAPER TRAVELS: The Mark Taper Forum has been invited to Poznan, Poland, Monday through Dec. 11. as part of the U.S. Information Agency’s “American Theatre Today” program. Artistic director Gordon Davidson is leading a contingent of artists and technicians on the journey. The Taper will present its literary cabaret hit “A Christmas Memory,” and excerpts from “Tintypes” and Jude Narita’s “Coming Into Passion / Song for a Sansei” (originally not a Taper show). Last spring, the Taper was invited to present three one-acts in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, under the same USIA sponsorship.

And here’s an idea: Beginning with “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” opening tonight, the Taper will offer Frequent Playgoer Cards (emulating frequent flyer plans) to single ticket buyers. The card will be stamped every time its owner attends a Taper play, with rewards to follow--ticket discounts and free gifts.