‘Chocolate’ Goes Too Soon for Young S.D. Audiences

Teri Solomon Mitze doesn’t like it when people refer to young audiences as the audiences of the future.

“I see them as audiences of the present,” said the founder and producer of the Milwaukee-based Great American Children’s Theatre Company. “They are our audience. They are sitting in our seats now .”

And they are filling up those seats in Symphony Hall, where “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” opened Wednesday and will end its sold-out run today at 9:45 and 11:45 a.m. The story of the little boy who wins a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory travels to Los Angeles Feb. 12-15 at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.

A dozen youthful critics caught outside Symphony Hall were uniformly enthusiastic about the hour-long show they had just seen.

“It was so awesome,” said John Franklin, a 7-year-old student at Rincon Elementary in Escondido. “I loved it. I want to see it again.”

“I loved it too,” said his classmate, 7-year-old Byron Perry. “I want to marry it.”

It has been a successful tour for Mitze, who sold out the San Diego tickets in October, just a week after she announced the tour. She sells out in most cities, she said. In fact, if you can’t catch the show here, the only place you might have luck is in Kansas City, Mo., the one place where she has yet to sell more than half of a house.

Mitze had no answer for why San Diego doesn’t have a professional children’s theater company other than the emerging Del Mar Theatre Ensemble, which is now seeking to fill that vacuum. (The Del Mar Theatre Ensemble’s next show is “Telling Wilde Tales,” a series of Oscar Wilde fairy tales that it will present March 3-April 8 at the Del Mar Plaza.)

Nationally recognized children’s theater companies exist in only about a dozen states, she said in a coffee shop across the street from Symphony Hall. And that marks a great increase from the handful that existed 15 years ago when she founded the company, which features adults.

One could imagine a natural partnership between adult theaters and children’s theaters such as the one that exists with Theatreworks USA in New York, which presented “The Secret Garden” during the day at the Promenade Theatre, the Off-Broadway venue that featured “The Cocktail Hour” sometimes less than an hour after Theatreworks USA dismantled its set.

“The Secret Garden” journeys to the Mandeville Auditorium at UC San Diego April 20.

But such partnerships aren’t simple, Mitze said. Many directors of adult theaters aren’t interested, artistically, in children’s programming. And financially, producing professional children’s theater is as expensive as presenting any other kind of theater. The annual budget for her Equity company is $1.2 million. She depends on ticket sales for 95% of that budget and she sets ticket prices at a mere $1.75-$4.75 so that the shows will be accessible to all children. She has to play to large audiences to keep in the black, and she does; she has sold 16,000 tickets in San Diego alone and when she is home, works out of the 1,400-seat Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee.

She has had two major deficit battles that almost closed her theater over the years, one for about $40,000 and the other for about $70,000. One of her reasons for touring--which she started doing last year--was to amortize the cost of her shows. She is now seeking National Endowment for the Arts funding to provide a financial cushion.

“I keep thinking that a grant of $100,000 would put us on easy street,” she said with a sigh.

While Mitze, 39, doesn’t have children of her own, she has the highest respect for her audience, whose respect she very much wants to keep.

“The idea is to be subtle for these children who have seen ‘Star Wars’ and every trick available. We have to show them honest performances. We get the kids who can’t afford the ticket and the kids in wheelchairs and the kids from Beverly Hills, and they are all challenging us to show them a good time. And what I’m trying to do is give them an experience that gives them something to ponder.”

During her tour of Southern California Mitze has been doing some pondering of her own. She is considering starting a branch of the Great American Children’s Theatre Company in Los Angeles and possibly in San Diego.

Her more immediate plans, however, involve returning here next year, possibly with an adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows” that she commissioned, and staying for a week-long run.

PROGRAM NOTES: Casting has been set for Mark Lee’s “Rebel Armies Deep Into Chad,” to be presented at Old Globe Theatre March 3-April 15: Richard Kneeland, Jim Phipps, Rose Weaver and Cheryl Francis Harrington. . . .

The Bowery Theatre will present “Forecast,” a futuristic parable by Elizabeth Wray beginning Feb. 20 at the Kingston Playhouse, along with the monologue “Coyotes,” by San Diego State University professor Mack Owen. The double bill will run Tuesdays and Wednesdays for four weeks through March 14, concurrently with “Teibele and her Demon,” which runs Thursdays-Sundays. Erin Kelly, who stars in “Teibele” will also star in “Coyotes.” . . .

“Where’s Oscar?,” a new play by local playwright Mark Melden, opens at the Progressive Stage Company this week and continues through March 1. . . .

The world premiere of “Some of These Days,” a story about the golden years of singer Sophie Tucker, has been selling out and has been extended through April 7 at the 60-seat Little Fox Theater at La Casa Del Zorro desert resort. Written by Gayle Dunne-Davis and directed by D. Larry Steckling, the show runs at 8:30 p.m. Fridays and 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturdays. . . .

Diversionary Theatre has a new space (the Golden Hill Center at 23rd Street and Broadway), a new show (“Untold Decades,” opening Feb. 23) and a new number (232-2333). . . .

You only need a few minutes to try out for “A Few Hours in Hell,” a co-production of NeitherWorld Productions and the Progressive Stage Company, holding open auditions noon Saturday and Sunday at the Progressive. . . .

Terrence McNally, whose last work here was “Up in Saratoga” at the Old Globe, has written “Andre’s Mother,” a teleplay for American Playhouse about the mother and the lover a young AIDS victim leaves behind. The show airs on KPBS-TV on March 14 at 10:30 p.m. and repeats March 18 at 1 p.m.