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Grove Theatre Says It Will Turn Pro, Shorten Its Season

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Times Staff Writer

The Grove Theatre Company in Garden Grove unveiled sweeping plans Thursday to go professional and to consolidate its 12-month season into 7 months, from June through December, with classical fare to be offered at both the indoor Gem Theatre and the outdoor Festival Amphitheatre.

Currently, the 10-year-old troupe offers a five-play amateur season of middle-brow programming featuring professional guest artists at the 172-seat Gem from October through May and, under the banner of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, a separately subscribed, semi-professional season of three Shakespeare plays at the 550-seat amphitheater during the summer.

The changes, which will take effect this June, “will allow us to pool our production resources for both theaters, maximize our strengths artistically and financially and unify our marketing campaigns,” Grove founder and artistic director Thomas F. Bradac said in an interview earlier this week.

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Bradac said the consolidated season, despite being shorter, will present the same number of productions and performances as it currently does because “we will take a festival approach,” mounting shows simultaneously rather than one at a time.

In a press conference at the Gem, Grove officials announced the productions that will commence in June: “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Athol Fugard’s “A Lesson from Aloes,” “The Scoundrel” (an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist”), a play to be announced and the annual production of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” (See schedule on Page 26.)

“By putting ourselves off-stride with the rest of the theaters in the county,” Bradac said, “we will play to the strength we have already established in the summer. But it also enables us to get talented personnel without having to compete head-on for it because other theaters will be on hiatus when we’re gearing up.”

A major change will be the implementation of an Actors Equity contract at the Gem, Bradac said. Under the provision for Small Professional Theaters, this would require that half the cast, and the stage manager, be union. Cast salaries, now under negotiation, have been recommended at $175 for a 5-performance week. (The amphitheater would continue to operate under a current letter of agreement with Equity requiring five professional actors at $350 a week.)

Grove managing director Richard A. Stein said the theater will underwrite this and other changes by increasing its annual budget to $660,000 in fiscal 1989-90--up 16% from this year’s $570,000. The theater will institute a modest rise in ticket prices and a new flexible subscription policy and will solicit private donations as well as public grants, Stein said.

Officials said the company also will reap considerable fiscal benefits from the upcoming changes, principally by making its marketing and advertising more cost-effective in the effort to draw season subscribers.

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The other changes include:

--A new alliance with Cal State Fullerton. The college’s drama department will provide rehearsal space and scenic and costume shop facilities that Grove lacks. In return, the theater will provide drama students with an internship program, utilizing them in non-Equity roles on stage and in technical jobs.

The Grove used to receive financial and technical support from Rancho Santiago College. But that was withdrawn last year when the college decided to institute a semi-professional theater program of its own.

--A Gem Theatre Youth Production Workshop to stage two plays from February through April, during the new season’s “dark” months. A director will be hired to run the workshop, which will give hands-on experience for community actors and technicians ages 12 to 19. One of the plays will be chosen from the California Young Playwrights Program, operated by the Gas Lamp Quarter Theater in San Diego.

“Basically the consolidation means we can run a single, coordinated (marketing) campaign that will be more concentrated,” Stein said earlier this week.

Until now, he said, the theater planned the indoor and outdoor seasons at different times of year and drew different audiences for each season, despite an overlap of about 600 subscribers. Thus, the theater had to prepare separate promotional literature and make separate mailings.

“Doing everything twice was not only costly,” Stein said, “it made no sense. Now we can also advertise in a way we couldn’t do earlier. We can promote two plays at the same time. And our advertising dollars will stretch further.”

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New ticket prices--from $10 to $20 at the Gem and $10 to $23 at the amphitheater--should not be prohibitive, Stein said. “Because we want to have as broad an audience as possible and do not want to disenfranchise anybody who can’t afford tickets, we will maintain as low a bottom as we feel we can. And we will not increase preview prices.”

Single tickets currently run $10 to $17 at the Gem (including previews) and have run $15 to $18 at the amphitheater.

The projected budget, to be financed by $467,000 in earned income and $193,000 in contributed income, would allow for a decrease of 1,000 single ticket sales from last season’s total of 13,500, he said, and would require an increase of only 200 season subscribers.

There were 1,800 Shakespeare subscribers last year, and 1,600 Gem subscribers currently.

Patrons will have a wide array of subscription choices: full season, indoor or outdoor, and a newly conceived “flexpass” providing admission to any of the plays in various combinations. “As Tom likes to say, we’re going to make it very difficult for people not to subscribe,” Stein said.

Partial subscriptions will run as low as $30; a full-season subscription will cost from $70 to $149, and an eight-admission flexpass will cost $175.

The consolidation of the season also will help the theater solicit donations by forging an image that is comprehensible to audiences and grant-making organizations alike, Stein said. He noted that fund-raising efforts already have gotten under way with substantial results.

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In 1987, the Grove had “only a handful of corporate contributors,” he said, with total corporate contributions of $8,500. Last year that grew to $87,000 in corporate gifts.

A much-publicized funding crisis, resulting from the Garden Grove City Council’s phase-out of a partial subsidy, spurred private contributions in 1988. They soared to $180,000 from $47,000 the previous year, Stein said.

Long-range changes still being contemplated include touring productions around the county, Southern California and beyond, Bradac said. “But they will not happen this year.

” . . . We’re taking things one step at a time.”

THE GROVE THEATRE COMPANY’S SCHEDULE FOR JUNE-DECEMBER, 1989

“Romeo and Juliet,” June 22 to July 15, at the Festival Amphitheatre.

Play to be announced, July 5 to Aug. 5, at the Gem Theatre.

“Cyrano de Bergerac,” July 29 to Aug. 19, at the amphitheater.

“A Lesson From Aloes” by Athol Fugard, Aug. 6 to Sept. 16, at the Gem.

“The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Aug. 24 to Sept. 16, at the amphitheater.

“The Scoundrel,” an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist” by Gregory Mortensen, Oct. 4 to Nov.4, at the Gem.

“Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” Nov. 21 to Dec. 23, at the Gem.

“A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” adapted from the Dylan Thomas work, dates and location to be announced.

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