Fund Raising Paying Off for L.A. Festival : Arts: Several new programs are introduced at a press conference. Now the call is out for the estimated 1,200 volunteers needed for the event.

The Los Angeles Festival held one of its first major pep rallies Thursday in preparation for its September arrival, in which a total of 1,400 artists from 21 nations are now slated to participate in 230 different programs of theater, music, visual art, dance, poetry readings and film.

In a press conference held at City Hall in Mayor Tom Bradley’s office, executives of the arts festival--which will take place Sept. 1-16 in 68 locations throughout the L.A. area--discussed several new festival programs, introduced their long-awaited logo and ticket brochure, and put out a call for the estimated 1,200 volunteers needed for the effort. But the big announcement of the day was that the festival’s long-struggling fund-raising efforts are finally starting to pay off.

“We’ve had a tremendous increase in fund-raising during the last week,” said Maureen A. Kindel, chairwoman of the festival’s board, as she announced a $500,000 grant by the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theater Inc., $485,000 of which will be used to underwrite the festival’s entire theater component (the additional $15,000 will go toward the festival’s planned Feb. 1991 international arts conference).

The grant, which is equalled only by an earlier $500,000 Ledler Foundation grant being used to fund the screening of numerous documentary films, brings the festival’s fund-raising total to “about 90%” of its $4.5 million goal, according to Development Director Allison Sampson. Also announced Thursday was a $108,488 grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund which will be used to support programming of Native American groups.

After declaring the Skirball-Kenis grant-supported theater component “One of the most fantastic theater programs anywhere,” and discussing programs such as the the West Coast premiere of the acclaimed Wooster Group’s “Temptation of St. Anthony” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and three performances of the six-hour version of Theatre Repere’s “Dragons’ Trilogy” at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, festival Director Peter Sellars discussed several previously unannounced programs. Premiere among those is the restoration by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Friends of Mexico of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ 20-foot-by-98-foot mural “Tropic America,” which was commissioned for Olvera Street in 1932 but literally whitewashed from public view in 1934 because of its political overtones. Sellars said the festival plans to unveil the mural, which depicts a crucified Mexican man surrounded by American soldiers, during the festival’s second week.

Other programs announced Thursday included an AIDS-related multimedia installation by David Wojnarowicz at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and a one-night reunion Sept. 7 at the Orpheum Theater of jazzman Ornette Coleman’s quartet featuring trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins. In addition, Sellars said he will “probably” replace his own previously planned film “Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez”--which will not be completed in time for the festival--with a screening of the 1919 original “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” accompanied by the music of John Adams at the Hollywood Bowl.

“We hope that this festival will give another sense of what we’re doing here on the face of the earth,” Sellars said, as he discussed his largely unknown, Pacific-oriented multicultural programming. “We want people to see that an event at the Hollywood Bowl is just as important as an event at a very small gallery. . . . (Through the festival) you’re going to see a lot of things that you couldn’t see any other way--I just encourage people to take the plunge. . . . We’re in a period of tremendous national cultural retrenchment, and it’s important that we put forward a large-scale advance, that we say here in Los Angeles that we’re moving forward.”

But it was Festival Executive Director Judith Luther who on Thursday addressed the most uncertain of the festival’s programs, four planned Embassy Theatre performances of the 32-member Cambodian Classical Dance Troupe.

While the festival announced the performances as confirmed and included the Cambodians in their ticket brochure, Luther acknowledged that the U.S. State Department--which does not recognize Cambodia or its current leader, the Vietnamese-installed Hun Sen--has not yet approved visas for the dancers.

“We have been encouraged, in very significant ways, to believe that this will happen, and we fully expect that it will happen,” said Luther, who added that if the Cambodians were not allowed to enter the U.S., the festival could refund ticket-holders money or go with an option such as assembling a group of U.S. performers led by the renowned Seattle-based performer San Ang Sam.

In addition to the curated portion of the L.A. Festival, an additional 500 or so non-curated, self-produced events will be held in the connected Open Festival, a sampling of which were announced Thursday.

The L.A. Festival’s ticket brochure is now available through the festival’s office: (213) 689-8800.