Shakespeare Festival Will Complete Season Despite Cash Crisis, Officials Say

The Grove Shakespeare Festival has decided not to cancel its season, despite its current cash crisis.

The theater’s board of trustees agreed that it would sign Equity contracts Wednesday so that director Jules Aaron and his cast can begin rehearsals for “The Importance of Being Earnest,” which is scheduled to open Oct. 4.

On Tuesday, the City Council came to the partial rescue of the Orange County’s second largest professional troupe by providing $7,248 to carry the theater through Friday. Faced with a cash shortage over the next six weeks, theater officials had asked for $50,000 to help cover basic expenses, such as salaries. Without those emergency funds, they said, the two remaining shows would be canceled and staff laid off.

The council voted 4 to 1 to give the partial emergency funds. Councilman Raymond T. Littrell dissented because he said the measure did not solve the long-term problem. The council, claiming that it did not want to see the season canceled, said it would take up the issue again Monday.

After the council vote, the theater’s board of trustees decided in a closed-door meeting not to let the financial crisis halt the season.

“We’re going to take things day by day,” Managing Director Barbara G. Hammerman said after the meeting. “But we’ve agreed that we are going to complete the season. We’re going to find some way not to cancel.”

The Grove’s general manager, Tony Maggi, had told the council earlier in the evening during a lengthy presentation that unless it obtains $32,157 by Oct. 5, the Grove “won’t be able to maintain our operations.”

Bart E. Blakesley, a Garden Grove resident not officially connected with the Grove, also told the council that Orange County Supervisors Roger R. Stanton and Harriett M. Wieder had asked him to transmit a message that they are planning to give the theater “an outright grant” of emergency funds. Blakesley said the amount and the timing had yet to be determined. But when Stanton, who represents part of Garden Grove, was asked Wednesday to confirm the message and provide details, he denied that he had offered anything more than his best wishes. “I certainly never made a promise of money,” Stanton said. “I offered moral support. But there was no extension of financial assistance that I’m aware of. I do not know what he was talking about.”

Wieder, who also represents part of Garden Grove, did not return phone calls and could not be reached for comment.

Blakesley conceded Wednesday that he had not spoken with Stanton personally but with his executive assistant, Barbara Brown. He said he had been told that Stanton and Wieder would take the money from their discretionary funds but no amount was ever stipulated.

Blakesley also said that when he passed his “message” along at the City Council meeting Tuesday he did not reveal that he is an announced candidate for councilman in the November election because he didn’t want his remarks to be perceived as being politically motivated. Meanwhile, Hammerman claimed that a group of 14 local organizations, which met last weekend to drum up support for the Grove, is conducting a fund-raising campaign to bring in as much as $15,000 within the next few days.

The 12-year-old nonprofit troupe operates the indoor, 178-seat Gem Theatre and the outdoor 550-seat Festival Amphi

theatre under a municipal contract. Both theaters are city-owned.

The troupe produces a six-play season running from May to December. The operating budget for the 1990 season was projected at $699,000 before the season began, at $721,000 during the season and--in the latest Grove estimate on Tuesday--at $626,739.

According to figures filed with the California Arts Council in April, the Grove believed most expenditures would be met from two major sources: admissions (subscription and single-ticket sales) of $450,556 and contributions (foundation and government grants and private donations) of $223,056.

On Tuesday, however, Maggi provided figures indicating that total admissions are now projected to bring in $378,519, a shortfall of $71,977 due primarily to fewer subscriptions. He traced the current cash crisis to a combination of that and a $42,000 deficit from last season. Single ticket sales are running at 2% above projections, he said.

The current cash crisis is not the Grove’s first. In the summer of 1988, the Grove nearly canceled its season when the City Council did not renew a customary subsidy, at that time of about $85,000. After a bitter dispute, the council relented and gave $53,000. That, coupled with an outpouring of community support, notably $30,000 from the Strawberry Festival Assn., kept the Grove open.

But the theater paid for the 1988 victory with a promise that it would not come back to the city for more money. Moreover, the theater signed an agreement that the subsidy would be phased out by 1991. It declined from $35,000 in 1989, to $23,000 this year and is supposed to drop to $15,700 next year for the final amount.

The curtailment of the municipal subsidy and the loss in 1989 of grants from Rancho Santiago College--which had totaled $415,000 over three years--are cited by Grove officials as the key factors in their fiscal tailspin.

In their bid to persuade the City Council that they are seriously seeking new revenues to balance their budget, theater representatives outlined plans for fresh Grove enterprises to be added during this and future seasons. Among them were:

* Children’s productions to be staged at the Gem through an alliance with the Westminster-based Children’s Theatre Ensemble, which would also institute acting children’s classes at the Gem. The first production, “The Everyday Adventures of Harriet Handleman, Supergenius,” has been scheduled for Sept. 21 to 23.

* An annual summer musical to be produced at the Gem for a long-running engagement designed to provide both entertainment and box office success on the order of its annual winter offering, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”

* Increased rentals of the Gem to outside troupes with an emphasis on ethnic and other special interests, such as the Orange County Black Actors Theatre.

* An educational partnership with a “consortium” of local schools and an effort to renew its old tie to Rancho Santiago College, which Hammerman described as promising.