Budget Deficit May Necessitate L.A. Festival Cuts

Los Angeles Festival may cut some of its 230 scheduled programs by the end of next week if its $4.7-million budget for the Sept. 1-16 arts extravaganza is not met, executive director Judith Luther said Tuesday.

“It’s possible,” Luther said when asked of the cuts. She added, however, “I think it’s very likely that the money could come in. We’ve got a lot of things pending that could come in very quickly. If (all the funding requests) we’ve got out came in, we’d be home free.”

Festival board members contacted Tuesday confirmed that they had issued a mandate that there be “absolutely no deficit” from the upcoming event, which is still approximately $200,000 short of its $4.7 million goal. In addition to that shortfall--which takes into account a projected $600,000 in ticket revenue--the board is considering whether to reject a $30,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant that has been figured into the gala’s budget for several months.

“The decisions on all of these things will have to be made by next week at the latest,” Luther said, noting that not all board members had cast their votes on the NEA grant yet. But, she said, “right now, it seems to me that people are leaning toward signing (the NEA-required anti-obscenity oath) and accepting the money.”

Although Luther had previously said that any program cuts would come from groups whose contracts were not yet finalized, she said the festival would now look to “making incremental cuts” such as canceling one or two performances by groups that were scheduled to do several shows. She would not speculate, however, on which groups might be affected and whether free or ticketed events would be dropped.

The cuts would be decided by the festival’s staff and would not require approval by the board, she said. But two board members interviewed thought they would be consulted.

“If we could do it another way, we would do it another way,” Luther said. “But we’re pretty far along now with most of our contracts. It makes more sense to go in with fewer programs (for each group). But there are probably about a dozen questions that we would have to consider in deciding which events (to cut).”

Festival general manager Michael Vargas said this week that he does not yet have signed contracts from “about 10 groups” but he would not identify all of them. Both Luther and Vargas, however, acknowledged that the participation of one group--the Wallis and Futuna Music and Dance troupe--was up in the air because of visa problems.

“There could be a glitch there,” Vargas said, explaining that negotiations were difficult because of the Polynesian group’s remote island location. “They might not be able to get their visas in time,” he said, referring to Luther’s deadline to book reduced advance airline tickets.

The Wallisians are scheduled for several free performances at various locations as well as a Sept. 5 ticketed program at UCLA.

Another group that has yet to sign its contract is the 32-member Cambodian Classical Dance Troupe, which has not received U.S. State Department approval to visit because the U.S. government does not recognize the current Cambodian government. Luther said earlier that her staff will consider canceling the Cambodians’ scheduled Sept. 13-16 performances if they are not granted visas by Friday.