STAGE : Manager of Dance Award Gala Doing Double-Time for Opening

Kit Goldman, the managing director of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, never gives up.

Wednesday, in the throes of frenzied last-minute preparations for tonight’s gala at the new San Diego Convention Center, Goldman managed to find time for three calls to The Times to impart information that might have any chance of making it to print and stimulating a few final ticket sales for the party’s showcase event, America’s Dance Honors, a dance awards presentation to be taped for airing on ABC-TV in July. The show stars the likes of Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley MacLaine, Chita Rivera, Betty Ford, Ann-Margret, Debbie Reynolds, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, Juliet Prowse, Paula Abdul, Tommy Tune, the Nicholas Brothers, Patrick Swayze and Kenny Ortega, the choreographer for “Dirty Dancing.”

As of Wednesday, Goldman said she was in the black after selling 3,300 out of a possible 5,000 tickets (ranging in price from $75 to $5,000), but she had no intentions of slowing down. After all, she counted on selling closer to all 5,000 of those tickets when she projected a resolution of her theater’s budget deficit problems this year.

“It’s been like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” she said in between interruptions from the vice president of American Express, the organization sponsoring the event and other gala-related calls.

“Just picture throwing a party for 4,000 people, 1,000 of whom are VIPs who need special attention and a whole television production company and raising the money and dealing with the finances of the whole thing, the publicity, the press, the promotion, the volunteer coordination, the traffic,” Goldman said.

The six best reasons she gives for managing the event (which Greg Willenborg is producing) are the beneficiaries of the show: five groups situated south of Broadway near the Convention Center--Goldman’s own Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, Sushi Performance Gallery, San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts and the Bowery Theatre--and a scholarship to be awarded to an underprivileged high school student who aspires to a career in the performing arts.

Initial sales fell below expectations because of some early negative publicity, Goldman acknowledged. Some reporters wondered if the show would actually air on national television (that’s since been confirmed). Others questioned the very concept of competition between dance companies in a national award arena. No classical or modern dance companies have agreed to attend, but the Dance Theater of Harlem, in town after its local performances were canceled, may send someone to accept the classical dance honor, said a gala representative.

“One of the challenges was just convincing the community that it was all going to happen,” said Goldman. “There were some really dark moments when it looked like things weren’t going to come together. It made the ticket sales and the underwriting slow up a bit. We knew we were on track, but the negative press made some people pull back from us. I think one of the problems was that we were doing it for the first time. You don’t know what you need to get it to work.”

Knowing what she does now about the frustrations and pitfalls of the project, would she do it again?

“You better believe it,” she said. “This is going to be an annual event.”

One thing Goldman won’t get is time for a breather after the gala. Immediately afterwards, she goes to work on “The Debutante,” the new musical she has commissioned for a 1990 presentation at the Hahn Cosmopolitan; rehearsals for the role of the mother in the San Diego Opera production of “The Daughter of the Regiment,” and the opening of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre season Feb. 21 with “Broadway Bound.”

Ensemble Arts Theatre, the theater that sent “Angel City” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, is planning a second trip to Edinburgh. Top on its list for plays to take to the festival is a new work, “On Earth as It Is in Heaven” by Terry Dodd.

The company will test the play Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. as part of a free staged reading series at Words and Music gallery in Hillcrest, where the company presented the play in a private reading Wednesday for the visiting lord provost of Edinburgh, the Rt. Hon. Eleanor McLaughlin. The readings will continue on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month.

“We want to create an environment where we feel safe to try out new actors, new directors and new scripts,” said Ron Lang, an associate producer and actor with Ensemble Arts Theatre. “Hopefully it will become a hotbed of creativity.”

Ensemble Arts Theatre is also planning a full production of “Water Music,” by UC San Diego playwright Michael Erickson at a date to be announced. The show will feature Ensemble Arts Theatre actors Tim West, Duke Windsor, R. J. Bonds and Lang. In the meantime, Ensemble actors continue to work elsewhere. Lang will perform in the San Diego Actors Theatre production of “The Perfect Party” at The Elizabeth North Theatre Feb. 2, and artistic director Ginny-Lynn Safford has the part of Gertrude in Sledgehammer Theatre’s “Hamlet,” opening in April.

PROGRAM NOTES: Got a few questions about that puzzling “Animal Nation” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre? Co-founders Doug Jacobs and Sam Woodhouse will be holding a second forum in as many months for subscribers who want to talk about the past and upcoming seasons Monday night at 7 p.m. at the Lyceum stage. Meanwhile Jon Matthews, one of the stars of “Slingshot,” the Rep’s contribution for the Soviet Arts Festival, has sent a copy of the script to producer Joseph Papp at Papp’s request, for a possible New York production. . . . Some of the shows scheduled for the Old Globe Theatre’s summer season should bring back memories for old Old Globe subscribers. “As You Like It” is the play that inaugurated the new Old Globe building, rebuilt in 1982 after the 1978 fire; “Hamlet,” was initially directed by Jack O’Brien in 1977, four years before he became the Old Globe’s artistic director, with Mark Lamos (now artistic director of the Hartford Stage Company) in the title role; and “Our Town,” was initially directed by O’Brien in 1975 with none other than Craig Noel, the executive producer of the theater, playing the role of the stage manager. . . . Is North Coast Repertory Theatre artistic director Olive Blakistone psychic? First she picked Vaclav Havel’s “The Memorandum,” opening tonight, months before Czechoslovak politics went upside down and Havel, a dissident, became president. Next she selected “Emily,” by the hot and getting hotter playwright Stephen Metcalfe for the March 9 slot, months before the Old Globe put him on the summer schedule with a brand new play, “White Man Dancing.” And finally, playwright Jon Robin Baitz, author of “The Film Society,” on tap for April 27, was just named the winner of Newsday’s 11th Oppenheimer Award, a prize given annually to the writer judged best new American playwright to have a work produced in New York City. The play itself is a recipient of a $5,000 prize from Theatre Communications Group’s New Plays USA. . . . The La Jolla Playhouse let slip one new production for the 1990 season: a baby for artistic director Des McAnuff and his wife, actress Susan Berman, their first. McAnuff leaves Monday for Lithuania, where he is directing “A Walk in the Woods” at the Drama Theater of Vilnius. . . . Looking ahead to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ American vacation: Gerardo Navarro’s performance piece, “It’s 1992 and America Hasn’t Discovered Itself,” will be featured at WATCHA! Stage Cafe at the Centro Cultural de la Raza tonight and Saturday.