Act II: A Comeback Try : Theater: The new managing director finds the challenge he was seeking in trying to keep the head of San Diego’s financially troubled Gaslamp Quarter Theater above water.

Steve Bevans came to San Diego in January 1989 looking for a challenge.

He hadn’t found what he was looking for at the Stamford Center for the Arts in Connecticut, and he didn’t find it as the general manager at Starlight Musical Theatre, a job he decided to leave at the end of July.

But as the new managing director of the struggling Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, a position in which he started Sept. 1, it looks as if challenge is exactly what he is going to be getting.

After 10 years of continuous operation, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company suspended operations last May under an ever darkening cloud. The board forced out two of the theater’s co-founders, artistic director Will Simpson and resident designer Robert Earl, along with longtime producing director James A. Strait. Ticket sales hovered at a 50% low during the course of the season and accusations of fiscal and artistic mismanagement swirled madly. The highly touted Gala at the Convention Center, a fund-raiser that the company hoped would return as much as $25,000, ended up losing $85,000 which became part of a deficit that even now totals from $850,000 to $1 million by Bevans’ accounts. Four shows were canceled, and subscribers were entreated to hang in there until the theater could reopen and honor the tickets they had already bought.

Then, just when things seemed at their nadir, patron Elizabeth North, for whom the smaller of the Gaslamp’s two theaters is named, reneged on the final $35,000 installment on the $75,000 pledge that put her name on the theater.

Many wondered if the company would ever open again.

Friday, just a month and a half after Bevans came on board, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company will reopen at the Elizabeth North Theatre with “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset,” a co-production with the Ensemble Arts Theatre. And casting is already set for the San Diego premiere of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which will open Nov. 29 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan.

“Frankie and Johnny” is a play from the Gaslamp’s originally announced 1990 season. But “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset,” a new play that Ensemble Arts showcased at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh this

summer, began as a possible rental by Ensemble Arts and will now benefit both theaters as a co-production. Ensemble Arts, which pays its own mounting costs, gets access to the Gaslamp’s subscriber base, costume and prop facilities, marketing and administrative resources. The Gaslamp gets to offer its subscribers what it sees as a quality production--one that was highly praised at the festival--at minimal costs, which in turn cuts the debt to subscribers who are still owed shows.

Kit Goldman, the producing director of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, is the last remaining founder and the one in whose hands the artistic decisions now rest. She credits Bevans with the know-how that put the deal together. If he had come on board earlier, both agree, the San Diego Actors Theatre production of “Eleemosynary” might have been a co-production as well.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre situation is still critical, said Bevans in a conference room at the Hahn Cosmopolitan. At least $100,000 needs to be raised to get the 1991 season under way. The deficit is still on everyone’s minds. But Bevans, who turned 30 yesterday, exudes confidence about the future of this theater.

“If I didn’t think there would be a 1991 season, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

But the challenge for Bevans is not just in putting on a 1991 season. It is putting on a 1991 season he believes in.

“When I started talking to Kit, I expressed my feelings very strongly that I can’t work in the business of theater if I don’t believe in the product we sell. Otherwise, why would I come in on a Monday morning?”

Goldman herself was rethinking the product at the theater at that time. The Gaslamp, which had become known for its refined productions of Noel Coward and Harold Pinter, was going to head in a new, contemporary direction, she decided. The company’s new artistic mission calls for “a diversity of colors, cultures and issues that shape contemporary life.”

Bevans and Goldman are already negotiating for rights to present plays for next year’s season. Alan Ayckbourne’s “A Woman in Mind,” which was canceled from this year’s season, will be made available to subscribers next year. The much talked about “Debutante,” the new African-American Pygmalion musical commissioned by Goldman under the aegis of an independent company, will not be on the season schedule, but may appear as a workshop production.

Goldman and Bevans plan to encourage more multicultural casting.

“Frankie and Johnny” has been cast interracially, with African-American film actress Pam Grier co-starring with white actor William Anton; it’s the first time the play has been cast this way.

Goldman has also recently applied for a grant for an outreach program that would allow her to bring homeless youth into the theater, both to see shows and to work on a show of their own about their own experiences. Goldman said the project was inspired by Elizabeth Swados’ “Runaways,” which was written and performed by largely homeless youngsters in New York.

The shape of the season will also look different next year.

Some critics have fingered the 250-seat Hahn Cosmopolitan, the venue the Gaslamp added in 1987 as part of the problem. The rent was an astronomical $10,000 per month, and, with just a few exceptions, the Gaslamp never seemed to master the space artistically.

But Bevans and Goldman see the venue as part of the solution.

They plan a six-play season at the Hahn next year. The rent has been pared down to $5,000 a month; the pair express hopes of someday buying the space and eliminating the rent problem altogether. The 99-seat Elizabeth North Theatre, which costs $1,888 a month, may be used as a sometime cabaret, a stand-up comedy venue, a rental space and a place to continue extended hits--of which Bevans and Goldman hope to have their share next year.

Most of all, what Bevans seems to like about his new job is the chance to show that he can make a difference here. Some might not understand his choice to move from a large, stable organization like Starlight, with a subscription base of 15,000 to one at the Gaslamp of barely 3,400-3,500. But to him the decision was one he would make again without any hesitation.

“The deficit didn’t attract me,” he acknowledged. “But it’s a challenge and opportunity. You can look at it as going from a large budget to a small budget. Or you can look at is going from a relatively safe product of ‘Peter Pans’ to something a little more challenging and non-musical.

“More than anything else, it was a personal decision not be at Starlight and to be here instead. The opportunity for me to build a team of people that I could believe in and to help produce the kind of theater that I believe in. Musicals are not my favorite form of entertainment. My taste runs more to drama. I like ‘Prelude to a Kiss’ better than ‘Les Miz.’ ”

Goldman said she is relieved to have Bevans at the Gaslamp.

Goldman, the former managing producer of the Gaslamp, used to be responsible for the business end of the theater. Originally an actress who dreamed of having a theater of her own, Goldman struggled for years to master the financial aspects of running the organization. It was easier when the theater was young and small. But, as the theater and the job grew bigger, the job grew increasingly daunting, she conceded.

“I did not have the training and the education,” she explained. “I applied common sense, and I learned a lot, but it isn’t my calling. I don’t have a flow-chart mind, and I did the best that I could. But I didn’t understand how overwhelmed I was until I stopped. I couldn’t allow myself to understand how overwhelmed I was because I didn’t have a solution, and I was not willing to admit to not having a solution.

“Finally I realized that the solution didn’t lay with me. It lay with bringing someone in.”

“Right after (Bevans) came on board, I left a note in his box in which I apologized and said I’m sorry everything is such a mess. He said, ‘Don’t ever apologize for this. This happens to every theater I know. You did the best you could. Suddenly I realized I’d been apologizing to everybody: to the Board, to the subscribers, to my family, to the world. It was such a relief to know I didn’t have to apologize to him.

“It set the tone for the partnership. And it’s been a very healthy one.”