Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company Halting Productions : Money Woes Leave No Recourse

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company will sublease its facilities for concerts and to other theater companies over the summer months while it regroups and redoubles its fund-raising efforts.

Beleaguered by mounting debts and a poor 1989 season, the 10-year-old company announced the austerity measures Wednesday, which also included discontinuing its tradition of year-round theater productions for at least this year.

The run of “Blithe Spirit,” which had been scheduled to play through May 27, will be shortened to May 20, and the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre--completed in 1986 at a cost of $3.3 million--will be offered for concerts, and for productions by touring companies and local groups without a theater during June, July and August, said Kit Goldman, the theater’s managing producer.

The opening of “The Best of Sex and Violence” scheduled for May 23 at The Elizabeth North Theatre has been postponed, and the Hahn’s fall season will begin in September with “Oil City Symphony,” Goldman said. Subscribers will be offered several options because of the changes.

Staffing over the summer months will be reduced to a contingent composed of herself, the development department and a small, clerical staff, Goldman said.

In the interim, “I’ll be dealing with the artistic issues,” she said.

James Strait, the company’s producing director who left March 31, may return to co-produce some of the company’s productions, she said. But it is unlikely that artistic director Will Simpson, who cofounded the company with Goldman, or Robert Earl, set designer since 1980, will return.

The reasons are not strictly financial, she said without elaborating. “So much has happened.”

Goldman said that, by fall, “we will have trimmed down massively and become very streamlined.”

The changes, including the addition of new trustees on the board, are necessitated by a debt that has been mounting because of unexpected setbacks, Goldman said. Ted Considine, the theater’s financial committee chairman, confirmed that $800,000 is a “ballpark figure” for the debt.

Chronicling the theater’s setbacks, Goldman noted the San Diego Convention Center, which was expected to draw more businesses and people to the redeveloping Gaslamp Quarter, did not open as expected in 1987 and a major donor backed out, forcing the theater to borrow money to pay off its construction debt, she said. Looking for some good news, Goldman said that Southern California Edison has promised a $100,000 gift to the theater to kick off its fund raising.

Also, Ronald Hahn, whose family has contributed to the theater and for whom the theater is now named, will join the board along with others to be announced next week.

Besides the $500,000 the theater traditionally raises for operations, the company is planning a $1-million campaign over the next year to reduce its debts and restructure its operations, said George Saadeh, president of the board in a prepared statement Wednesday.

The theater has an immediate need of $350,000 by the end of July to pay pressing debts, and a series of fund-raising events is planned, Saadeh said. The campaign will start with the theater’s annual Slumber Party on May 18 at the U.S. Grant Hotel.

The theater also is working to put together a five-year business plan, said Goldman.

“We don’t ever want ourselves to be in this mode again,” she said. “What we created was a theater. We don’t want to see it be converted into a hotel conference room.”