16 Orange County Artists and Groups Rejected So Far

Of the first 16 Orange County artists and arts groups to apply for slots in the portion of the Los Angeles Festival that will pay artists to take part, none have been accepted.

They are hardly alone: More than 600 applicants from throughout Southern California have contacted the festival, which runs from Sept. 1 to 17, and only a handful have been accepted. The others now must join the Orange County contingent in deciding whether to take part in the connected Open Festival, in which artists pay to produce themselves.

Some local artists have already made up their minds: Count them in, they say, and they’ll find their own funding. But with about six months before the festival begins, at least one artist already has found the money an insurmountable obstacle.

Rosemary Taggart, artistic director of the Taggart Ballet Theater Company in Tustin, said Wednesday that she can’t afford the expenses of festival involvement. The troupe performs full-length classical ballets, and “without funding, it’s just not feasible for us to do it, because of the cost of transporting sets and the use of costumes.”

Corona del Mar playwright Sherilyn Beard has asked for $2,500 from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department to produce a play. But she won’t be notified about the grant for two months, “so it’s up in the air,” she said.

Representatives of the Gloria Newman Dance Theater and Dance Kaleidoscope in Orange also say they won’t be able to decide until they know more about funding.

But officials from other local groups, some of which would be making their public debuts, aren’t daunted. While they, too, don’t have the cash in hand, they feel confident that it will come.

“I don’t see it as a problem,” said Roy Conboy of Garden Grove, a playwright and artistic director of Cucucuevez theater ensemble. Conboy, whose play “Happy Birthday, Angel” tours local elementary schools in a South Coast Repertory production, said he needs about $4,500 to produce a new play about the Toltec Indian deity Quetzacoatl with a 10 member troupe.

He is also confident that he can find a small theater where he can stage his play.

Unlike several Los Angeles artists, Conboy isn’t worried about competing for audiences. Open Festival officials expect about 500 groups or independent artists (a total of about 10,000 individuals) to participate; the Los Angeles Festival itself already has announced 72 programs. “I’m sure we’re going to have to spend a good deal of time getting an audience,” Conboy said. “But that’s something you always have to do.”

Ramya Harishankar, artistic director of the Arpana Dance Group of Irvine, which performs East Indian classical dance, is similarly optimistic. She wants her troupe to perform at the Center Theater of the Long Beach Convention Center and believes she can raise enough to pay a nightly fee of $2,500 to $3,000. “We think this would expand our audiences and be good for our visibility,” Harishankar said.

Applications continue to come into the festival at a rate of about 20 a day. At least two independent visual artists from Orange County will take part in the subsidized portion of the Los Angeles Festival. They did not apply, but were sought out by festival officials.