Troubled La Jolla Playhouse Launches Fund-Raising Bid

The La Jolla Playhouse has announced that its 1990 theater season is in jeopardy and that $500,000 must be raised by the end of the year to save it.

The playhouse released the statement detailing a $1-million fund-raising program in the wake of rumors of wobbly finances and an unfavorable financial report from the California Arts Council.

Playhouse managing director Allan Levey said late Monday that the 1990 season cannot happen unless that initial $500,000 is raised.

“It would not be prudent,” Levey said, “which is why we want to broaden the base of our contributed income by going to the community at large.”

Widely considered a major theatrical force in Southern California and nationally since its rebirth in 1983 under artistic director Des McAnuff, the playhouse has suffered financially from short seasons that have made high running and production costs difficult to offset. The plan is to raise $500,000 by Dec. 31 and another $500,000 by June 30, 1990, as a cash reserve to offset an accumulated deficit of $703,000.

“I fully expect we’ll raise the money,” McAnuff added. “It’s our obsession and our focus at the moment,” he said, acknowledging, however, that, if they don’t, “there will have to be a backup plan.”

Levey said, “We have the shortest playing time and smallest number of seats of any LORT (League of Resident Theaters) theater,” adding that, because of the playhouse’s tie-in with UC San Diego, on whose campus it resides, “we have a fixed move-out date every year. It can’t change because the university needs the theater.”

The deficit, which began in the third season, increased drastically in 1987 by $500,000. In fiscal 1988 it grew by $200,000. This was due, Levey said, to a shortfall in contributed income and poor single-ticket sales--a condition that appears to have persisted.

According to Levey, McAnuff and board president Mason Phelps, the situation will be alleviated once two new projected on-campus theaters are completed: the $5-million, 400-seat Weiss Forum (expected to be ready in May, 1991), and a 400-seat flexible-seating theater to be built within the next three years.

“Those will allow us to expand to a nine-month season and to generate more funds,” Levey said.

Money for the Forum is in place, but, according to Phelps and Levey, construction bids came in over budget, forcing the university to redesign the theater and reopen the bidding, in compliance with state procedure. This has delayed completion by a year.

The third theater, which Phelps and Levey say represents “the full solution to the problem,” will be funded by a $6.8-million capital campaign, to be kicked off by the current fund-raising effort.

“When the Forum is complete,” Levey said, “we’ll be able to earn an additional $300,000 a year, based on the income potential of 150 seats more than we now have at the Warren Theatre (the playhouse’s current second space). In addition, he said, “there will be no accumulated deficit in 1989. We’ll end this season with a balanced budget.”

“Without that third theater,” McAnuff said, “we can’t have the access we need. That access will enable us to operate year-round. It will give us the ability to extend hit productions, something we don’t have at the moment.”

Levey and McAnuff insist that producing fewer plays a year will not solve the problem. “Administrative overhead remains the same,” Levey said. “We can’t hire staff seasonally.”

The new money raised by the playhouse will be used to match a three-year, $250,000 National Endowment for the Arts challenge grant awarded the playhouse in February for the specific purpose of stabilizing its base.