Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse Win Grants

In a nationwide competition in which 35 theaters proposed entries for the funding of new plays, San Diego theaters have been awarded two of the four grants provided by AT&T.; The announcement was made Monday at press conferences in New York and San Diego.

The La Jolla Playhouse will receive $40,000 and the Old Globe Theatre $50,000. Each theater will also receive a national publicity campaign and marketing support as part of the year-old “The AT&T; New Plays for the Nineties Project.”

The winning project picked for the La Jolla Playhouse was “The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin,” a new Eric Overmyer play about ragtime artists Joplin and Chauvin, slated for August, 1991. The Center Stage in Baltimore also received $40,000 to produce the play.

Stan Wojewodski Jr., artistic director of the Center Stage, will direct the show with his company Feb. 20, 1991, and at the Playhouse in August.

The La Jolla show is planned for the new 400-seat Mandell Weiss Forum, which is under construction.

Lillian Garrett’s “The White Rose,” based on the true story of German students who agitated against Adolf Hitler during the Nazi era, will have its world premiere at the Old Globe on Jan. 17, 1991. Craig Noel, executive director of the theater, will direct the show on its 581-seat main stage.

The third play, “Back to the Blanket,” by Gary Leon Hill, examines the impact of the 1890 massacre of American Indians at Wounded Knee, S.D., on four people. It will be presented at the Denver Center Theatre Company on May 17, 1991.

Three new adaptations of classical plays also will be supported under AT&T;’s 5-year-old OnStage Classics:

Henrik Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken,” adapted by Robert Brustein and designed and directed by Robert Wilson at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., in February, and at the Alley Theatre in Houston in May.

A modern music-theater version of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” adapted by the Cornerstone Theatre Company, that will tour 12 states and the District of Columbia in the summer and fall.

And the program’s first internationally sponsored event, John Dryden’s “All For Love,” starring Diana Rigg, at the Almeida Theatre in London in April, 1991.

Although the gifts will pay for only a fraction of actual production costs--the average Old Globe production of a play runs as much as $250,000 to $300,000, for example--both Des McAnuff, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, and Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre, said the amount will make a critical difference in their companies’ ability to mount these plays.

“We would have had to find some kind of special funding to do it,” McAnuff said.

In addition, officials at both the La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe said the awards may carry long-term benefits in attracting new sources of funding from corporations and charitable foundations.

The gift from AT&T; can have a decisive impact at a time when regional theaters “are becoming much more dependent on national resources,” said Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe and president of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), a national organization of regional theaters.

Recession is hitting regional theaters nationwide, Hall said. Most regional theaters are reporting a drop in corporate contributions and subscription ticket sales.

In San Diego, where few national corporations are based and theaters are competitive for what appears to be a shrinking pool of donor dollars, executives say it’s increasingly difficult to survive strictly through local funding.

Although AT&T; has a four-season history of funding the La Jolla Playhouse, beginning with “Shout Up a Morning” in 1986, the Old Globe received its first funding from AT&T; for “Cobb” last June.

O’Brien noted that, despite the Old Globe’s national reputation, this is the first time it has been funded by a national corporation as part of a national program, rather than a program local to San Diego. The earlier grant was provided by the San Diego offices of AT&T.;

“We’re jubilant. This has to have reverberations in the corporate community. Instead of working from the inside out, we’re working from the outside in,” O’Brien said.

“AT&T; brings a tremendous amount of recognition within the corporate community,” Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse, said. “So, when you solicit other companies for their support and you say one of the world’s largest multinational corporations supports you, that brings along a very significant stamp of approval, of endorsement.”

“It’s not only important in terms of shrinking funds, but it’s very helpful in terms of attracting new artists and writers,” Hall said. “It keeps people throughout the country aware of the fact there are strong ongoing programs here. I think the fact that there are two theaters within 10 miles of each other is also important.”

Mary Lou Floyd, cultural programs marketing manager for AT&T;, speaking from AT&T; headquarters in New York, said an AT&T; OnStage sponsorship also means continuing support from AT&T; itself.

“It’s not a one-time deal for us,” said Floyd. “When you work with us on an AT&T; OnStage partnership, you become part of the AT&T; alumni. We invite them to talk once a year about corporate sponsorship of the arts. If we can help some of these theaters get funding elsewhere, we do. It’s definitely a long-term relationship.”

For some, the double award may confirm San Diego’s growing reputation as a theater boom town.

Floyd noted that the selection of two plays from San Diego “says something about what’s going on in your area. . . . For promotion reasons, it wouldn’t make any sense to be picking two in one city. But the advisory committee just thought some of the best theater this year was going to be happening in this area.”

Ironically, the city’s reputation for quality theater coexists with a fragile financial support for the arts that last year found the La Jolla Playhouse in a crisis campaign.

The Playhouse, reportedly successful in its campaign, has yet to officially announce that the crisis is over. Meanwhile, the San Diego Repertory Theatre has just begun a crisis campaign, saying that it may not be able to finish its 1990 season. The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company also is struggling to raise money to assure a 1991 season.