Yaroslavsky Raps Theatre Center Subsidy; Cast Director Benefit; Playhouse Playlist

To Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the continuation of major city subsidies for the Los Angeles Theatre Center would be “absolutely ridiculous.”

“Of all the cultural activities in this city,” he told a council committee meeting earlier this week, “year in and year out, there isn’t one that has ever gotten a fraction of this amount of money from the City of Los Angeles or any of its agencies.” He was referring to some $19 million that the city has spent, buying and renovating the LATC building on Spring Street and maintaining the theater since it opened in 1985.

“We just keep pouring money here,” he continued. “This is throwing good money after bad . . . This is the kind of thing that I believe we should not be spending money on, when you’ve got people sitting sleeping in the streets at night . . . . $19 million could have built a lot of housing in this town.”

Yaroslavsky’s blunt talk was at a meeting of the council’s Community Redevelopment and Housing committee, which was considering a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) request to grant another $350,000 to LATC.

The city agency had agreed in June to request the additional money if LATC reduced its deficit from $1.04 million to $500,000 by Dec. 31. Agency auditors reported this week that the theater’s short-term operating deficit had reached $494,000 by the end of the year, after $716,198 was raised in what LATC managing director Robert Lear called “an unprecedented” December fund-raising effort.

The committee ended its discussion by forwarding the request to the council without a recommendation--the result of a deadlock between Yaroslavsky and Councilwoman Gloria Molina, an LATC defender. The third committee member, Councilman Richard Alatorre, was absent but would have voted for the funding request, an Alatorre aide said. The council is expected to consider the request within two weeks.

The session was more notable for what was said than for what was accomplished. Questioned by Yaroslavsky, Lear acknowledged that LATC probably will ask the redevelopment agency for at least an additional $250,000 for the next fiscal year. Yet he also held out hope that the city’s subsidy for LATC could be diversified beyond the agency to include larger programming amounts from the Cultural Affairs Department.

When Yaroslavsky posed the question: “What’s so special about this particular place?” Molina replied: “I think it is special.” She cited LATC’s productions of plays that aren’t done elsewhere, minority participation at LATC and relatively low ticket prices.

Yaroslavsky said he wasn’t questioning the value of what is done at LATC, or the intentions behind it. But “we’ve set aside some $10 million-$15 million in the new (Los Angeles Arts) Endowment,” he said, “and it’s as though that doesn’t matter anymore.”

When he later remarked that “we are subsidizing, to the tune of $19 million, somebody’s toy,” it drew forth from Lear a litany of other descriptions of what the redevelopment agency has been subsidizing: “You are subsidizing a theater that since 1985 has brought over a million people down to a war zone for theater. . . . You are subsidizing the only theater west of New York . . . that is genuinely multicultural. . . . You are subsidizing the theater that employs more professional actors than any other theater in this city, and you are subsidizing a theater that has brought, over the past five years, 25,000 Los Angeles students to their first experience of professional theater.”

Yaroslavsky noted that LATC’s weekend single ticket price of $22-$26 is “not quite the price tag of ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ but it’s getting up there. It’s more than I can afford . . . $22-$26 per ticket, to this working stiff, is a lot of money.”

Yaroslavsky, who makes $61,522 a year as a council member, has attended LATC productions “many times,” said an aide, once with complimentary tickets, but usually paying his own way.

TED SCHMITT, founder and director of the Cast Theatre, has been diagnosed with the HIV virus. He underwent two lengthy hospital stays last fall.

To help pay his medical expenses, Theatre LA and Catalina Productions are sponsoring a Jan. 21 benefit performance of Catalina’s production of “Child’s Play” at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood. Tickets are $50. Information: (213) 462-0265.

PASADENA PLAYHOUSE has scheduled the L.A. premiere of “Love Letters,” A.R. Gurney’s New York hit, in which a different actor and actress perform the roles each week, for Feb. 12. Sunday and Monday performances through April 16 will alternate between the mainstage and the smaller Balcony Theatre.

It’s part of a three-show Balcony Theatre package that also includes “The Baby Dance,” an adoption story by Jane Anderson, starring Linda Purl and Stephanie Zimbalist (Feb. 9-April 11), and “The World of Judith Viorst,” a musical featuring Bonnie Franklin, Lainie Kazan and Gretchen Wyler (May 25-June 24).

LITTLE MONEY: You can name your own ticket price for this Saturday’s matinee preview of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” at the Doolittle Theatre. Information: (213) 972-7373.

When Wilson spoke Sunday at Kinsey Auditorium in Exposition Park, his subject wasn’t just his previously reported dispute with Paramount Pictures over hiring a black director for the film version of “Fences.” Among his other comments, as reported by Ray Loynd:

On the playwriting process: “I start with a line of dialogue, making discoveries,” Wilson said. “Half the time when I start out I don’t know who is talking. In my new play, ‘Two Trains Running,’ a guy says (and here Wilson humorously enacted the role), ‘I gave her everything I had and I couldn’t even shake her hand.’

“My next play is called ‘Moon Going Down.’ It’s set in Turpentine, Ga., in 1940. Now as soon as I find out what Turpentine is . . . .”

On rap music: “Rap is a vital sign of black American culture. And it’s a direct result of the rise of conservative power in America.

“I salute rap.”