Soviet Arts Fest Is Ready to Bow in San Diego

It’s just three weeks before the start of San Diego’s Soviet Arts Festival, the much-ballyhooed and much-maligned $6-million, three-week celebration of art in the age of glasnost , but artistic coordinator Bruce Joseph is amazingly calm.

According to Joseph, all is going well: ticket sales, visas for the performers, all the myriad logistics of presenting “Treasures of the Soviet Union,” which runs from Oct. 21 to Nov. 11. If Joseph is feeling any pressure, he’s not showing it.

Maybe there isn’t any pressure to be felt.

After all, unlike Peter Sellars’ Los Angeles Festival or Gian Carlo Menotti’s Spoleto Festival, this isn’t Bruce Joseph’s Soviet Arts Festival. It’s Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s festival.

Joseph, who was festival coordinator for “UK/LA ‘88,” was hired in December, a couple of months after the festival’s budget was approved and long after O’Connor first conceived of the festival while attending the 1987 Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

O’Connor had an active hand in the programming. By the time Joseph was hired, commitments had already been made for exhibits of Faberge eggs, Russian folk art and religious icons, and various music, dance and theater performances.

The mayor even took care of the financial end, persuading the City Council to approve an increase in the city’s hotel-motel tax and to dedicate the resulting $3 million to the festival. Adding major gifts from the Kroc (McDonald’s) and Copley (newspaper publishing) family fortunes, the mayor has single-handedly raised almost enough money to cover the budgeted $6.25 million in expenditures. And that’s not counting the more than $1 million in tickets already sold.

So what was left for Joseph, who has been associated with a series of high-profile arts events in Los Angeles?

“I think my role as artistic coordinator is to offer suggestions and work with the other members of this team,” said Joseph, whose diplomatic skills have surely helped in dealing with the Soviets, the mayor and San Diego’s arts community.

“My attitude in other events I’ve been involved with has been to be earnest, honest and low-key. My chief concern tends to be getting the job done.” Getting attention, he said, “is not my style.”

So given his modesty and the situation he inherited, Joseph will probably not be credited for any critical acclaim the festival may garner, but at least he isn’t responsible for taking the heat the festival has generated--and there’s been plenty.

Conservative taxpayers and politicians have complained about tax dollars going to communists; the mayor’s opponents have alleged she is using the festival to fuel her political ambitions; artists and administrators first worried about a drain on local arts dollars and then complained about not having enough input into the festival’s planning, and independent promoters have complained about being blackballed from participating.

The last complaint has been settled . . . sort of.

Last month, the mayor announced an end to a dispute over two San Diego performances by the Red Army Choir, which is currently on a U.S. tour. Promoter Donald Hughes, president of La Jolla-based International Attractions Inc., and James A. Doolittle, president of the Los Angeles-based, nonprofit Southern California Theatre Assn., signed a contract with the tour’s national organizer, Alex Cooley, to present the 200-plus member choir in Los Angeles at the Shrine Auditorium Nov. 2-5 and in San Diego Nov. 8-9.

However, the San Diego dates occur during the Soviet Arts Festival and festival officials threatened to block the choir’s performances, citing a verbal agreement with the Soviets that festival officials said gives them authority to approve all Soviet acts in the city during the three-week event. The mayor, who is president of the nonprofit corporation governing the festival, said at a festival board meeting that she didn’t want commercial promoters “riding the coattails” of the festival’s advertising efforts.

The dispute has been settled, with the national tour organizer agreeing to make a $10,000 “donation” to the festival, and adding free performances of the choir for San Diego naval personnel.

But another promoter, figuratively speaking, has been sent to Siberia--left out in the cold.

Scott Pedersen, a young music promoter, wanted to bring Russian rockers Vladimir Kuzmin & Dinamik to San Diego during the festival. He met with festival officials, who said nothing to discourage him and even gave him names of contacts in the Soviet Union.

Pedersen went to the Soviet Union and reached a tentative agreement with the Soviet booking agency Gosconcert for Kuzmin’s appearance. Shortly after his return, Pedersen received a telex from the Soviets--acting on a request from festival organizers--instructing him to cancel all plans for the appearance.

The mayor has said she doesn’t think a Soviet rock band would be a popular attraction here and festival officials have cited their exclusivity agreement with the Soviets in thwarting Pedersen’s efforts.

With O’Connor running interference, Joseph has been able to concentrate on refining and marketing the festival’s schedule.

“Early on we took hits about the lack of contemporary works on the program, but I think we’ve addressed that area,” said Joseph, referring to an exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts; an exhibit by artists Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin at San Diego State University; the world premiere of a new play, “Slingshot,” directed by Roman Viktyuk at the San Diego Repertory Theater, and the collaboration of Georgian muralist Nikolai Ignatov with Los Angeles artist Barbara Carrasco, who has worked in the Soviet Union.

The artistic highlight of the festival may be the U.S. premiere of “Brothers and Sisters,” a six-hour production by the Maly Theater at the Old Globe, directed by Lev Dodin and featuring the Maly’s 40-member cast in what is referred to as the Russian “Nicholas Nickleby.” The epic, based on novels by Fyodor Abramov, can be seen either on consecutive weeknights, or in two three-hour sessions (with a two-hour intermission) on weekends. The play will be performed in Russian with a simultaneous English translation via headphones.

The San Diego Opera is presenting “Boris Godunov,” with soloists from the Kirov Opera and the Tbilisi State Theatre; the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra will perform alone and with the San Diego Symphony, and 1989 Van Cliburn gold medalist Aleksei Sultanov will perform a recital.

Festival officials are expecting the most popular events to include the Museum of Art’s exhibit of the largest collection of Faberge eggs ever assembled for public viewing, the “Masterworks in Metal” exhibit of icon art from the Art Museum of Georgia, and the folk art exhibit from Leningrad’s Museum of Ethnography. The latter two exhibits will be presented in a specially constructed temporary exhibit space at the B Street Pier Cruise Ship Terminal. All three exhibits will remain on display until Jan. 7.

Also receiving considerable attention from ticket buyers are performances by the Georgian State Singing and Dancing Ensemble and the Tbilisi State Marionette Theatre.