A ‘Lesson’ in Financing for Broadway; Latest Scenario on Gordon Davidson Moves

When August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” comes to the Doolittle Jan. 18, it will bring with it another kind of lesson--in potential new ways of financing shows for an ailing Broadway.

The Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson, which has booked the original Yale Repertory Theatre production of “Lesson” for a 10-week run, will be a co-producer of the show on Broadway with Yale Rep and Jujamcyn Theaters.

In an arrangement unprecedented for CTG, it will guarantee Yale all costs for the show’s run at the Doolittle, plus $300,000 in cash toward the Broadway run.

In return, Yale and CTG/Ahmanson will each have a $150,000 interest in the production. Jujamcyn is putting up the theater (the Walter Kerr, formerly the Ritz), plus $100,000 in cash and another $100,000 in a reserve fund.

“What we’re trying to do,” explained Mark Taper Forum managing director Stephen Albert, who is putting this together with Doolittle general manager Veronica Claypool, “is insulate ourselves against critical response. We want to create a way to guarantee that the morning the review comes out, the journey of the play is not given a back seat to investors’ priorities.”

Albert was voicing growing concerns about the fate of serious plays on Broadway, made particularly acute since, of Wilson’s three previous Broadway outings (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Fences” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”), only “Fences,” with its Pulitzer Prize, turned a profit.

This financing scheme by the theaters, Albert said, would guarantee the show 10 to 12 weeks on Broadway, no matter what the critics say. An additional cushion for the run that starts April 16 is being provided by Off Broadway’s Manhattan Theatre Club, which has made “Piano Lesson” a part of its subscription (about $250,000 in ticket sales).

“We’re constructing a scenario with low operating costs,” Albert said, “aided by a $400,000 advance and an elaborate royalty pool that will keep costs controlled.”

According to this game plan, if the show’s a hit, it would continue and presumably enrich the producing not-for-profit theaters that are always in search of new sources of revenue. If it’s not, it will close, “but,” Albert said, “after having secured a respectable run.”

“The money we are using,” he continued, “is coming from a combination of sources.” Initial costs are less, he explained, because the physical production already exists; the subscribed run at the Doolittle, preceded by the one that just closed at the Kennedy Center (in which CTG/Ahmanson had a stake) ensures a certain level of income. “Rather than incurring a producer’s profit that we would be paying to someone else (potentially as much as $25,000 a week, which would include some amortization of pre-production costs), we have created this arrangement to build the financing for New York.”

As for the other groups that contributed to the show’s development--the Huntington Theatre of Boston, San Diego’s Old Globe, the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the O’Neill Theatre Center--”That group,” Albert said, “is being recognized by billing, a royalty and a profit share. And if the show’s a hit, all participants in its development, down to designers and actors, will share in its success.”

Sounds good, but will it work? Albert sighed. “At least on paper.”

DAVIDSON TO DC?: Is Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson, being paged to take over the leadership of the Kennedy Center?

In this latest edition of a recurrent scenario, it seems to be a rumor behind a rumor.

It goes like this: James D. Wolfensohn, chairman of Carnegie Hall since 1980, was reported Friday in the New York Times as having been approached by two members of the Kennedy Center search committee as a possible successor to Ralph Davidson, current chairman of the center, whose contract expires in February.

The report alleged that Wolfensohn, who had not officially been offered the job, said he would take it on two conditions: If the Kennedy Center clears up a $15 million deficit (stemming in part from a debt it assumed when the National Symphony Orchestra came under the Kennedy Center aegis three years ago) and if Gordon Davidson became the artistic director.

It was all news to Davidson--and Wolfensohn.

Reached Wednesday at his New York office, Wolfensohn denied he had ever made Davidson a “condition” for accepting a job he had not been offered in the first place.

“The position has not been offered to me and I have never met Gordon Davidson,” he said, acknowledging that he only knew of Davidson as a name in theatrical circles and was not sure he had ever seen his work. “I mean no disrespect, but I did not make him a condition of anything. I have been talking to the (people at) the Kennedy Center in an effort to help them because of my experience with cultural institutions.”

And the $15 million deficit?

“I did bring it to their attention,” he said, as a major stumbling block for any potential candidate.

Davidson, who is apparently not that candidate, could scarcely conceal a chuckle when he said: “I don’t know (Wolfensohn). There’s been nothing official and I don’t know that there will be. I was in Washington over the weekend to see ‘The Piano Lesson’ (opening at the Doolittle Theatre in January) and no one from the Kennedy Center approached me, nor did I talk to anybody.”

ANOTHER “BROADWAY”: And speaking of . . . CTG/Ahmanson subscribers are finally going to get some options to make up for the paid for and postponed production of “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” abruptly yanked from the Shubert Theatre this year in a schedule shuffle due to problematic costs. It is now promised for May, 1991.

“We’re asking subscribers to take the option of leaving the money and rolling it over to next season,” said artistic director Davidson. “Another option is the Music Center Opera’s production of “Oklahoma!” next summer. And the third option is a refund,” he said, adding: “A cheerful refund.”