O.C. THEATER : Grove Facing Worst Money Troubles Yet

The Grove Shakespeare Festival is in financial trouble--again. The latest turn of events at Orange County’s second-largest professional theater company has the ominous sound of a ship that is truly sinking this time, partly because of developments since the last crisis and partly because the waters are deeper than ever.

The Grove’s immediate need is for $50,000 for the next six weeks to carry it past a cash shortage that already has forced its chief executive to forgo her salary. The troupe was expected to ask the City Council for the money Monday night at a meeting of the city Redevelopment Agency.

Without that emergency funding, managing director Barbara G. Hammerman says, the Grove will consider staff layoffs and cancellation of the rest of the season. Hammerman, however, was told that because the issue was not on the agenda, the city could not consider taking any action. The Grove board of trustees was planning a closed-door meeting over personnel decisions after making its appeal to the city.

“Othello,” the Grove’s current offering at outdoor Festival Amphitheatre, could run until its scheduled closing Sept. 22, Hammerman notes. But “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” both announced to open at the indoor Gem Theatre later this year, may be called off.

“We made the payroll last week, but it was very close,” says Hammerman, who has not taken pay checks on her $33,000 annual salary for the last two pay periods.

The Grove currently employs about 40 people, including four administrative staffers and the cast and crew for “Othello.” Rehearsals of “Earnest” are supposed to commence today for the scheduled Oct. 4 opening. But Hammerman says the Grove board of trustees will not sign contracts for the performers--thus forcing a postponement at the very least--unless it has some guarantee of obtaining the $50,000.

Hammerman traces the current cash crisis largely to a $45,000 deficit with which the Grove began the season in May, and not to a shortfall in either ticket revenue or contributions.

The first play, “The Miser,” earned slightly more income than anticipated, she notes, although she could not provide figures. “Much Ado About Nothing” fell about $5,000 short of projections, she says, but “As You Like It” did about $3,000 more, and “Othello” is running even with projected ticket sales.

A ballyhooed fund-raiser in July starring Kelly McGillis netted about $18,000, Hammerman says, but that amount has already been accounted for in the budget and cannot help fill the gap.

The 12-year-old Grove, which is operating this year on a budget projected at $721,000, runs the amphitheater and the Gem under a contract with the city. Two years ago the city gave the theater company an $85,000 cash grant. But in 1988, after a bitter dispute, the council decided to scale back its contributions to the Grove so that they would be completely phased out by next year.

The city appropriation declined to $35,000 for 1989 and $23,000 for this year, and it is expected to drop to $15,700 for next year. That coupled with the cutoff of more than $150,000 in grants from Rancho Santiago College--also in 1988--has created a funding void.

Nor is it likely to overcome that problem in the near future. Not with artistic director Thomas F. Bradac going on a year’s sabbatical this month to teach full time at Chapman College and Hammerman dividing her time between the Grove and the Tustin-based Community Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, where she also has an executive position.