The L.A. Festival: Thumbs Up or Down? : Arts: Nearly 75% of the performances sold out, with ticket sales totaling $725,000, about $125,000 more than projected, organizers said. They called the 17-day event ‘a smash.’

The Los Angeles Festival--a hit or a miss? There’s no doubt what answer you’ll hear from organizers of the multicultural event that ended Sunday, and from such major supporters as Mayor Tom Bradley. They praise the 17-day festival as being successful enough, financially and critically, to mark a new beginning for local multicultural events.

“In the mayor’s view, the festival was a tremendous success,” said Mark Fabiani, Los Angeles deputy mayor and chief of staff. “It opened up areas of the city that have never been able to experience a public arts festival. It brought ambitious, eclectic performances to the people of L.A.”

But other observers, ranging from city officials to audience members who attended several performances, questioned whether the Pacific-oriented festival achieved its goal of attracting and exposing a large, mainstream audience to its exotic fare.

Criticism of the event ranged from the festival’s difficult-to-read program to a significant lack of grass-roots publicity. Some observers said the event lacked the urgency and excitement of previous L.A. festivals.

Councilman Nate Holden, who represents the mid- and southwestern district of Los Angeles, said of the organizers, “I think they have growing pains, a lot to learn about how to disseminate the information to the public. The thing that I took notice of, especially when it came to the closing day, was that the publicity obviously was not wide-reaching. It did not reach all segments of the population.”

Despite the criticism and the small crowds at some of the festival’s free shows in large parks and at the Santa Monica Pier, officials insisted the event was a smash beyond even their greatest hopes. Most of the ticketed performances sold out, and crowds had to be turned away from several shows. They said the warmth and affection that audiences showered upon some of the performers was unprecedented.

Nearly 75% of the performances were sellouts, and 48,000 tickets were sold, festival officials said. Revenue from ticket sales amounted to $725,000, about $125,000 more than early projections.

“It was thrilling beyond all expectations,” said Peter Sellars, the festival’s director. “The atmosphere was buoyant and generous. You could feel the energy of the audience and see the diversity of the audience. There was the genuine surprise of people who didn’t understand what they were looking at and had no way of figuring it out. All they could do was look.”

Sellars said the festival overcame the financial strain and organizational chaos that plagued it during its planning stages. “Next time, it would be wonderful to have more lead time for publicity and organization,” he said. “It would be nice to not be working on so tight a budget. But on the other hand, every festival is this way.

“What’s important is that this got people talking to each other. That hardly happens in this town. Introductions were made, and people who should know each other, artists who need to know each other, got in touch. This is the beginning of something, not the end of something.”

Judith Luther, the festival’s executive director, said the event also triumphed over its logistical difficulties. More than 1,400 artists, including 800 from Los Angeles, performed and displayed their works at 100 locations throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

“I think it went extraordinarily well, given the complexity of the design,” Luther said. “It took place in so many different parts of the city. You saw thousands of people of all ages. For us, that’s a great measure of success. People did get out of their neighborhoods. They also got into their neighborhoods.”

Park-and-ride lots and bus transportation to some of the festival locations worked well in easing traffic congestion, Fabiani said. “It was really planned well, and it clicked,” he said.

It will be a few weeks before festival officials are able to determine how much of a profit the festival made, and how much “seed money” will be carried over to the next festival, which is scheduled for 1993.

“We won’t know what all the revenue means until we take care of all the bills,” Luther said. “Still, I’m guardedly optimistic.”

Much of the optimism is based on sold-out performances by the Grover, Vt.-based Bread and Puppet Theater, the Cambodian Classical Dance Troupe, the Court Performers of Java and several dance groups appearing at the Sunset Canyon Amphitheater at UCLA.

In fact, a mob scene almost erupted at the end of Santa Monica Pier on Friday, where El Gran Circo Teatro de Chile was about to stage the last performance of its highly acclaimed “La Negra Ester.” Word-of-mouth and rave reviews triggered the big turnout, but limited bleacher seating forced a big turnaway as well. Those with and without tickets were jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, and a legion of security guards tried to keep order over the teeming crowd. However, no injuries or incidents were reported.

A number of films in the festival’s film series, which played at several theaters, including the Los Feliz in Hollywood and the Warner Grand in San Pedro, also drew capacity crowds.

Spectators packed Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge during the festival’s closing weekend last Saturday and Sunday to take in performances by such far-flung groups as the BIBAK Cultural Dance Ensemble, from the hills of the northern Philippines, and the Chinese Traditional Music Ensemble.

At the same time, only a sparse crowd of around 2,900 came Sunday for the festival’s closing at Santa Monica Pier. Organizers had expected around 100,000 people to attend the free two-day event. Audiences at the three-day opening weekend in San Pedro’s Angel’s Gate/Point Fermin Park (estimated by rangers at about 50,000) and the following weekend at Griffith Park (estimated by police at less than 5,000 per day) numbered less than half of what organizers predicted.

Luther bristled when questioned about the low attendance at the free events. “Sometimes you have to go beyond the numbers,” she said. “Sometimes you have to measure success in strictly human terms. We’ve gotten all these letters from parents who said they could not afford to take their children to the arts, thanking us for bringing the arts to them. We’re happy with the numbers of people who did come and who had a good time.”

Sellars said, “I’m not disappointed. I thought it was perfect. More people at those places would have been annoying. If there had been more people, I don’t think it would have been as relaxed. There was no sense of claustrophobia.”

Still, some festival watchers said organizers could have done a better job in publicizing the offerings.

“The only flaw . . . was that more people in the region weren’t aware that the events were going on or they had not been anticipating the festival,” said Paul Apodaca, folk art curator at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum, who emceed the opening ceremonies and helped organize the opener’s American Indian portion.

Though “extremely appreciative,” audiences were smaller than Apodaca had hoped for at every event he attended, except for the Pacific Connections dance presentation at UCLA Sept. 5, where, he estimated, 95% of a 500-seat venue was filled.

One of the most criticized aspects of the festival was its 33-page brochure, which even Sellars admitted was not easy to decipher. Some observers said the complex program may have scared off or discouraged potential festival-goers.

Councilman Michael Woo, who was happy overall with the festival, said he “enjoyed looking at the brochure,” but would have recommended another designer to festival officials.

The publicity and public relations for the festival should have been handled better, said Woo, who added that media projections about large crowds may have also kept spectators away.

“What was inherently a confusing experience was aggravated by the publicity and public relations,” he said. “I don’t think the mystery was ever unlocked about how to explain this to people. To some extent, there has to be a shared responsibility between festival organizers and the news media about how to clarify what is confusing.”

Still, Woo said he was pleased with the project. “I agree with Peter Sellars’ vision about what the festival was supposed to be about, and I enjoyed seeing the combination of groups from around the Pacific Rim. I was also impressed with the diversity of people I saw at the different events.”

Sellars had confidence that problems would be ironed out in future festivals. He has a 10-year commitment to putting on L.A. festivals.

“We’re definitely going to do it again,” he said.

Contributing to this article were drama writer Sylvie Drake and staff writers Zan Dubin, Diane Haithman, Ray Loynd, Robert Koehler and Kevin Baxter.

HOW FESTIVE WAS THE L.A. FESTIVAL?

Arts and media personalities had varying reactions to the just-ended Los Angeles Festival. Some felt festival officials fulfilled their goal of presenting a wide variety of Pacific Rim-oriented performances to a general public, and they praised the organizers’ ambition. Others had doubts on whether the festival succeeded in attracting a mainstream audience. Most said they enjoyed aspects of the festival.

James A. Doolittle, producer: “It was remarkable. A great stimulus. It was sometimes hard to follow where they were, and to get centered on it when it was in a facility you were not familiar with in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But the free outdoor events, the pageants and such, were particularly successful because they were designed for the outdoors.”

William Kobin, president and chief executive officer of PBS station KCET-Channel 28: “I think Peter Sellars has pulled off an absolute miracle. Out of 100, I give it a 99.”

Ron Sossi, artistic director of the Odyssey Theatre: “I’ve been rather disinclined to attend. I kept reading the brochure and saw nothing very compelling. . . . Oddly enough, nobody I’ve talked to was extremely turned on by what was there.”

Roberto Bedoya, executive director, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions: “For me it’s been pretty successful. I mean I’ve heard about the problems and all the complaints. But the actual events, once you got to them, were great.”

Steven Bell, senior vice president and general manager of KTLA-Channel 5: “The 1984 Olympic Festival is the only one I really acknowledge as a major arts festival. . . . I think the principle of a Pacific Rim Festival is very important to the city and its people, but I’m not sure what was accomplished made a broad enough impact.”

Paul Mazursky, film director: “I only went to one event, the Ornette Coleman concert. I really enjoyed it. It was very invigorating.”

David Alan Miller, associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic: “The festival is perhaps the single most important cultural event in Los Angeles in my lifetime, if only because it’s opening the door to a vast assortment of incredible arts from other parts of the world.”

Ruth Hirschman, general manager of KCRW-FM (89.9): “I’ve been delighted. . . . I think what Peter Sellars has done is to turn us on to the beauty of classical culture and to the energies of the diverse cultures that are available today along the Pacific Rim.”

Ben Caldwell, Los Angeles film and video artist: “I was one of the nine artists chosen to shoot an artistic vantage point on the festival (on video, for the festival committee). I know people were frustrated in that it seemed like it was so vast . . . how would you be able to see any of those things? I was a little bit frustrated at first. But I went to the opening ceremonies, and I was really pretty touched.”

Carl Stone, composer and director of Meet-the-Composer, Calif.: “I think that the festival’s main value is that we have re-examined what is here amongst us. We have gotten out of our insular arts and geographic borders. It is also laudable to finally put to rest the distinction between what we call ‘high’ art and ‘folk’ art--or any other kind of art.”

Al Nodal, general manager, L.A. Cultural Affairs Department: “I thought everything was great. The quality level was very high overall. It remapped the whole city in the way we see culture.”

John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum: “I found it kind of amazing and bizarre. And I’d been a little skeptical because it seemed maybe a little too disorganized. But symbolically and every way it was just thrilling. It was like no experience I’ve ever had before.”