STAGE : Even in a Budget Crisis . . . You Gotta Have Art

The proposed budget cuts for the arts didn’t frighten me until I appeared on the KPBS television show San Diego Week last Friday to talk about the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s financial woes.

I went into the taping thinking of City Manager John Lockwood’s proposed slashings as a political move designed for a political counterproposal. Surely no one could be serious about stripping the entire $4.9 million that came from TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) in fiscal 1990 to fund San Diego’s major and minor arts institutions, including the Old Globe Theatre, the La Jolla Playhouse, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, Starlight Musical Theatre, San Diego Opera and San Diego Symphony. And the list goes on: zip for Sushi, zip for the Bowery Theatre, zip for Sledgehammer Theatre, zip for Diversionary Theatre, zip for San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company, zip for Southeast San Diego Community Theatre, zip for all the San Diego museums.

But, when I was asked questions about whether the La Jolla Playhouse is elitist, or whether public money is really needed to buy more costumes for the Old Globe, or why the city should support a theater such as the Gaslamp when it fails to draw enough patrons, I began to realize that the arts really are in trouble.

When writers from the San Diego Union and the Tribune and United Press International compare nonprofit arts organizations to businesses that should rise and fall on their own popularity and profitability, I began to think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of arts organizations in the nation’s sixth-largest city.

There is a temptation to answer business questions with business answers. After all, TOT money was designed--from the time the tax was imposed after a 1965 referendum--to be used strictly as a means for promoting San Diego.

Examine the wording: “It is the purpose and intent of the Council that there be imposed on transient occupants of hotel rooms in the City of San Diego a tax, the proceeds of which are to be used solely for promoting the City of San Diego.” Lockwood told The Times that his proposal to use TOT funds to finance general services is legal and generally in keeping with city council’s past directives.

That decision seems to bring about the situation that opponents feared would come about in 1965: That the tax would eventually evolve into “a slush fund for bureaucrats to spend as they choose.”

The San Diego Arts and Cultural Coalition, which is planning a rally for all San Diego arts and cultural organizations at noon Thursday at the Civic Theatre concourse, is questioning whether Lockwood has the right to make such a proposal.

“We are exploring the question of legality of diverting all TOT funds into general operating funds,” said Adrian Stewart, founder and president of the San Diego Arts and Cultural Coalition as well as managing director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre. “This was not what it was supposed to be for.”

Stewart also points out that promoting the arts not only promotes the city of San Diego, it pumps far more into the city economy than it takes out. As a recent survey by his organization shows, the arts returned $54 million to the city economy, with an overall economic impact of $270 million from public and private contributions of $27 million, or about $10 for each $1 contributed. That results in jobs, restaurant and business patronage and tourism--not to mention outreach programs for children, for the handicapped, for the disadvantaged and the elderly. City funds are also a catalyst for state, federal and foundation funding, which eventually means more money pumped into the city’s economy.

Robert McDaniel, managing director of the Kingston Hotel, also believes that the arts make the city safer. When he managed the Westgate Hotel in 1974, he said he was afraid to walk down the street. Today he credits arts organizations for making downtown safer and more attractive to hotel and restaurant patrons.

But, to get back to the TV questions, maybe it’s time to stop answering business questions with business answers and instead pose a new set of arguments. Maybe it’s time to ask what price you place on the heart and soul of a city.

It is in theaters and galleries and music halls that artists put up the mirrors that enable us to examine ourselves and the world around us. It is in these venues that we examine our collective conscience and imagine ourselves in another’s shoes. It is in these worlds that we learn and laugh and are given things to think about.

Theaters are not businesses. They are staffed by the most underpaid and overworked members of our community, along with scores of volunteers. If these people cared about making a buck, they wouldn’t be here. They would be peddling their movie scripts and resumes in Los Angeles, where soldiers in the entertainment industry can earn $1,000 a day instead of $200 a week.

So, why do they do it? They stay because they believe Chekhov can put us in touch with memory and longing, that Shakespeare can teach us how to live, that August Wilson opens a door on the African-American story that needs desperately to be told and understood if the races are ever to build a bridge between them.

Today, right at this moment, San Diego offers:

* A stirring production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer and Tony-award winning “Fences,” produced by the Southeast Community Theatre in the Lyceum Space at Horton Plaza.

* An electric re-creation of Billie Holiday singing in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” at the Old Globe Theatre.

* Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” a Russian tale of extravagance and loss, at the La Jolla Playhouse.

* One of the wildest and and most daring versions of “Hamlet” you may ever see, produced by Sledgehammer Theatre at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse.

* Oscar Wilde dishing out witty observations on love, blackmail and insider trading in “An Ideal Husband” at Lamb’s Players Theatre.

Not every show produced by every theater works. But does that mean the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, which has played such an important role in bringing culture and life to the Gaslamp Quarter, deserves capital punishment for having a bad year? That is what the cessation of TOT funding may mean to the Gaslamp, which is closing its doors Sunday with the hope of reopening in September just when next year’s TOT funding money would have come in. Stewart said that collapse may also come to 80% of the city’s smaller and emerging arts organizations if TOT funds are cut.

Today, when we speak of Ancient Greece, we talk glowingly of its theater, its sculpture, its art, its music, its contribution to humankind. We think of New York and Paris and Rome as cultural centers. With the renaissance of the San Diego Symphony and the popularity of the San Diego Opera, and New York producers flying into town to check out offerings at the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, our city has begun to see itself, and be seen by others, as a cultural center on the rise.

But the arts to those of us who know them, are not just here to bring in visitors, although they do that pretty well. Art is not just dessert for its citizens; arts organizations deserve more than to be the last ones funded and first ones to be cut. It’s through the arts that a city gets in touch with its dreams. Art makes our lives worth living because it teaches us how to live.