Financially Touchy Times Making Theaters Nervous

The San Diego Repertory Theatre, which announced a scant month ago that the four remaining shows of its 1990/1991 season might be canceled for lack of funds, will complete at least the two shows it has scheduled through December.

The company has raised $96,000, enough to proceed with productions of “Cymbeline,” now running in the Lyceum Space, and “A Christmas Carol,” scheduled to open at the Lyceum Stage on Nov. 29.

Meanwhile, casting continues for the season’s remaining productions of “Man of the Flesh” and “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” but those openings, scheduled for January, remain in doubt.

To mount the shows, the Rep needs to raise an additional $254,000 by Dec. 31, Managing Director Adrian Stewart said.

“The situation is challenging. We hope we manage to solve it in 60 days,” he said.

Stewart described the Rep’s annual fund-raising gala, which will take place Dec. 1 this year at the San Diego Design Center, as “an important part of the fund-raising campaign.”

So far, the money that has been donated has come from corporations, foundations and individual donors. Mervyn’s kicked in $20,000 for “A Christmas Carol,” an amount which Stewart said made that play possible.

One revenue source that proved a disappointment was the Rep’s much-anticipated remounting of “Burn This,” which failed to repeat the box office magic of its first Rep staging a few months ago. The show just broke even.

Even if the money to assure this year’s season is raised, $500,000 will be needed for next year’s season, Stewart said.

One of the company’s chief goals for stabilization lies in rebuilding its subscription base to its 1989 figure of 6,500, a figure that dropped to 3,800 as a result of last year’s controversial, premiere-laden season. A 6,500 base would mean the theaters would be 50% subscribed with the rest of the attendance to come from single-ticket sales.

Also under consideration is a September/October starting date for the company’s next season, which usually starts in June. A separate spring production also remains a possibility.

Stewart said changes in season scheduling are premature at this point, but acknowledged the Rep has been feeling the competitive pinch reported by many San Diego theaters with summer programming.

Among the popular groups that launch seasons in the summer are the La Jolla Playhouse, Starlight Musical Theatre and the Old Globe, which uses a third venue, the Lowell Davies Festival Stage, in the summer. That’s in addition to San Diego Playgoers, which this coming summer will offer “Meet Me in St. Louis” in June, “Les Miserables” in July, and “Grand Hotel” (which has yet to be officially announced) in August. And then, too, there is the popular San Diego Symphony’s SummerPops and the Del Mar Fair.

The financial crises at the Rep, the La Jolla Playhouse and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, are making even more-secure theaters nervous.

Some of the financial problems faced by these theaters are unique to the companies. But other problems may also be due to an economic recession hurting regional theaters nationwide. Another factor is the increased competition for corporate and individual donor dollars--money which may be increasingly hard to come by if a recession develops.

Still another problem is a falling number of season subscriptions due to a younger, more spontaneous audience that doesn’t want to be locked into a season.

Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe Theatre, said he is concerned about the financial situation of theater in a “general sense,” even though the Old Globe itself, which maintains a basic subscription level of 50,000--one of the highest in the country--”is doing fine.”

Subscription sales were down slightly for the summer, he said, but single-ticket sales have been up. Winter season subscription sales are way above what they were last year.

Hall’s solution in these tense times? Hold tight and keep doing what the Globe has always been doing.

“I think everyone is a little unsettled. There is an unsettled sense in the world around us right now and so we have to be prepared for any eventuality. But this would be the last moment in time I would make any major changes. If our audience is unsettled, we want to be a very strong, stable influence. This would be the last time I would make a change of play choices and timing.”

The Starlight Musical Theatre’s co-artistic directors, Don and Bonnie Ward, are also watchful. Don Ward said it is natural for “a conservative nature” to set in “when your group says, “Oh my God, is it going to happen to us next?”

Ward and Starlight Managing Director Al Dillon said Starlight is marginally in the red right now in “a touch-and-go situation,” but said they could not be pinned down to figures until early December.

Starlight’s subscription base is dropping, Dillon said. It is currently at 13,000.

Still, Dillon said that he thinks that if Starlight’s contributed income comes in as expected, the company could actually turn a small profit by the end of the year.

Lower subscription bases mean less money in the bank at the start of the season and more dependence on individual shows to sell large numbers of single tickets. That would seem to encourage conservative choices in shows calculated to lure those single ticket buyers in.

But Dillon cited Starlight’s planned world premiere musical, “For My Country--the USO Musical,” as proof that the company is still willing to take risks.

More “Love Letters”: Harold Gould and Barbara Rush are the latest couple signed by the Old Globe Theatre for its hit run of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters.” The two will read the parts of longtime correspondents Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner Nov. 27-Dec. 2. Gould, a four-time Emmy-award nominee, was last seen at the Old Globe in “The Skin of Our Teeth,” which was televised live for “American Playhouse.” Rush, who will make her Old Globe debut with “Love Letters,” was last seen in San Diego at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre in her one-woman show, “A Woman of Independent Means.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The San Diego Repertory Theatre plans to continue its Magic Christmas program in which it asks patrons to donate gifts for needy families and toys for children. In addition, there will be a special free performance of “A Christmas Carol” Dec. 19 for disadvantaged children and families . . . .