Theater Survival in the ‘90s Will Depend on Change

Theater has been booming in San Diego for the past half-dozen years. But will the boom extend into the next decade, or will it bust?

The answer, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in the theaters themselves, which must prove they are not underlings.

It will take careful, clever, even inspired, management.

The theaters that will survive to the year 2000 will mix conservative or classical fare with the new and daring. Organizations such as Sledgehammer Theatre can afford--not without struggle of course--to taunt and challenge audiences for a three-hour “Endgame” with no intermission because they depend on a modest budget where less is at stake.

Theaters that depend on a healthy subscription base, however, need to assure audiences of something they know they will like, while still offering the risky, innovative fare that is rewarded by government grants and funding by independent producers.

The subscription base will become increasingly important as money from the National Endowment for the Arts and other government agencies continues to shrink. It is from passionate and numerous subscribers that donations, volunteers and lobbyists for corporation, foundation and government money ultimately come.

The Old Globe Theatre, San Diego’s oldest, has the largest subscription base of any San Diego theater because it has its finger on the pulse of the city’s tastes. That is not to say it doesn’t miscalculate; the 1989 season began bleakly with a soulless “Blood Wedding” and went downhill with an underbaked “Romance, Romance” and an over-baked “Up in Saratoga.”

But the tide began to turn for the better with a stirring “Driving Miss Daisy,” an amusing “Breaking Legs,” a solid “School for Scandal” and a triumphant Maly State Drama Theatre production of “Brothers and Sisters.”

I predict that the theater will grow more daring in the next decade. There will always be Shakespeare--but it may be less surprising to see the Globe update the Bard as it did so successfully with “Coriolanus,” under the direction of the late John Hirsch.

There will probably always be at least one world premiere (Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women” fills that slot in March), always at least one play by a less commercial but important contemporary playwright (the West Coast premiere of Lee Blessing’s “Cobb” is set for the summer), an increasing emphasis on cross-cultural voices (expect more August Wilson down the line and more Latino plays) and more international work on the scale of “Brothers and Sisters” (the Globe is already planning to present the sequel to the Soviet play in 1990 or 1991).

The financially strapped La Jolla Playhouse, a theater of adventure still fighting to save its 1990 season, will get a tad more conservative.

I predict that the playhouse, which has always described itself as a national organization based in La Jolla, will try to dig its roots more deeply into the community, whose support it desperately needs.

The playhouse has big plans, which include the building of a three-theater complex, incorporating the present Mandell Weiss Theatre. But can an organization that has alternately shocked and delighted staid San Diego audiences fill all those seats?

It would be hard to imagine work by Neil Simon on the La Jolla stage, but the theater has proved it can fill seats with “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Macbeth” this year. I predict we will see more plays with name recognition to balance out seasons with perhaps one new play and/or musical per season.

Like the playhouse, the San Diego Repertory Theatre must find a more conservative middle ground if it is to survive. The theater took its hard-won financial stability in the beginning of 1989 and gambled it on a risky premiere-laden season.

It was exciting--especially for the critics who love to see something new--but audiences thinned out considerably between acts of “Albanian Softshoe” and the still-running “Animal Nation.”

I predict that the Rep, which has yet to announce its 1990 season, will woo back some of its subscription audience by tackling some hard-hitting contemporary plays with name recognition, perhaps David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” and August Wilson’s “Fences,” two plays under consideration for the coming season.

If the Rep gets its hoped-for funding for “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” with jazz score by Max Roach, that should be a show to catch.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s 1990 season reflects a lesson painfully learned from the disappointing 1989 season: The theater needs to go after top writers at any cost. Scantily attended shows such as “Solid Oak” and “The Melody Sisters” just can’t pay the bills.

Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” Christopher Durang’s “Laughing Wild,” Alan Ayckbourn’s “Woman in Mind” and Hugh Whitemore’s “Breaking the Code” all seem like promising choices for 1990; the premiere of the independently produced “The Debutante,” a Pygmalion story set in turn-of-the-century black Philadelphia society, is the wild card that may bring the theater the national attention and its turning point.

Some smaller theaters will struggle while others will flourish. I predict that the Bowery Theatre, now assured of a stable, rent-free home at the Kingston Playhouse for the next three years, will continue to please with high-level programming. I predict that the North Coast Repertory Theatre will probably go Equity within the decade; but unless it invests in a development director who will keep it from being dependent on the box office, quality will fluctuate as the theater continues to live hand-to-mouth.

Smaller theaters without homes will find space or fade away; arrangements such as the one the Bowery has with the Kingston Hotel, which give it free space, would be beneficial for both homeless theaters and the hotels, which get free publicity and foot traffic from such tenants. Organizations such as the Progressive Stage Company and the Marquis Public Theatre may find they will benefit from forming partnerships with other theater groups to share space, ideas and financial responsibilities.

I predict that the theater with the greatest growing pains in the next decade will be Starlight Musical Theatre. Not only is the theater facing an identity crisis as it tries to work its way toward offering more contemporary musical fare, but it will increasingly face a crisis of venue as the plane noise from Lindbergh Field over the Starlight Bowl worsens.

Putting Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” on the summer schedule was a good idea. But will Starlight find the funding to develop new material? Even if the season works, it will not answer the question of whether Starlight will stay at the bowl, move to a new outdoor site or find an indoor venue for a winter season. As other theaters grow and blossom around Starlight, San Diego’s premiere musical theater will find that it must evolve or go the way of the dinosaurs.

But the big warning of the ‘80s that must be carried into the ‘90s is that for all theaters--regardless of size, patron base or box-office sales--financial failure is waiting in the wings.

Predictions for the Decade:

- The Old Globe will grow more daring.

- The La Jolla Playhouse, which has always described itself as a national organization based in La Jolla, will try to dig its roots more deeply into the community, whose support it needs.

- The San Diego Rep will woo back some of its subscription audience by tackling hard-hitting contemporary plays with name recognition.