Kabuki Gala Heads for a Rare Party Spot

What posh Costa Mesa sanctum costs $100,000 to join, has dues of $1,000 per year, and allows only cocktails, wrapped mints and salted nuts to be served to members?

Five hundred Social I.Q. points if you know the answer: the 2,500-square-foot Center Room at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Here, arts lovers who’ve pledged a minimum of $100,000 (payable over a five-year period) gather before performances and during intermissions to sip libations out of gleaming German crystal. Here, members mingle against a backdrop of priceless 3rd-Century Syrian mosaics loaned from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Here, they prove that giving well is the best revenge. And it will be here, on June 30, that a reception--with food--will honor the opening-night performance of the Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan.

Parties of this sort are rare for the room of the spotless plump sofas and silver-glinted marble tables. Only on a few occasions has it mixed members with non-members. There was the night that Rudolf Nureyev was feted at a reception when he appeared with the Paris Opera Ballet. And there was the night Beverly Sills breezed in to hobnob with representatives of the Steele Foundation. Recently, the room was the site of the formal announcement that Carl St. Clair was the new music director of the Pacific Symphony.

(For arts-loving trivia buffs, the Center Room is open one hour before each performance. It has 150 active members, about 50 less than it had three years ago. It’s not available for rental, but the Center is considering it. And each member is allowed to bring only six guests per performance.)

Among those on the invitation list for the Kabuki reception, underwritten by Tiffany & Co., are Renee and Henry Segerstrom--recently retired Center board chairman--and members of the local Japanese community such as Mazda Motors Co. President Yoshinori Taura; Geors Sakioka, owner of Sakioka Farms, and Onoe Kuroeman II, a UC Irvine professor and former Kabuki actor who has been honored by his country with the title, “Intangible Cultural Asset of Japan.”

A special guest will be New York’s Faubion Bowers, aide-de-camp to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in postwar Japan and one of America’s foremost authorities on Kabuki. Bowers, credited by the Japanese people with making a central contribution to the survival of the Grand Kabuki, will speak about the art form at South Coast Repertory on Monday.

Tiffany & Co. was approached by the Center to underwrite the bash, which will include Japanese-themed fare catered by K.P. of Costa Mesa. Up for sampling: oodles of sushi, shrimp wrapped in pea pods, and breast of duck on cranberry bread with cranberry chutney--presented on flared fans and black lacquer trays. Up for sipping: A Tiffany favorite, Chandon Brut.

“This is an intriguing opportunity for us,” says Tiffany Vice President Jo Qualls. “The Kabuki is such an unusual art form, a real Japanese national treasure.”

Following the performance, the Center board will stage a dessert reception for Kabuki supporters in its roomy Black Box Theatre, backstage.

Partying at Casa Pacifica: Once President Richard M. Nixon’s Western White House, Casa Pacifica in San Clemente will be the site of an Italian gala, “Una Bella Notte,” on July 21. Party host will be Gavin Herbert, chairman of Allergan Inc. and a member of the Doheny Eye Institute, the gala’s beneficiary. (Tidbit: Herbert, an owner of Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach, is helping to landscape the Richard Nixon Library and birthplace in Yorba Linda.)

Singer John Raitt, father of Grammy Award winner Bonnie Raitt, will perform at the benefit. Pennington will cater and feature classic Italian delicacies. The gala is being underwritten by George and Judie Argyros of Newport Beach.

There’ll always be an England!: Maura Eggan, former marketing director of South Coast Plaza and new marketing director for the Carroll Group of Companies in London, went flat-hunting recently in Jolly Old. She saw many outlandish sights when she hiked in and out of a variety of flats, mostly in the form of rooms that seemed to have no rhyme or reason.

But it was a note left by a proprietor that caught her eye and made her double up with the giggles. Herewith: “I have today installed Chubb fire extinguishers to the building,” states Anne Morley-Lubar. “Rather than spoil the entrance door to each flat, I have located the equipment on the half landings between each floor . . . They are somewhat heavy to carry, but I feel the excitement of a fire would generate the necessary adrenalin to handle them.”

“There’ll always be an England!” says Eggan, ecstatic about her move to Europe.