Sowing Seeds of Glasnost : Pasadena Producer’s Work Coming Up Roses as L.A. Plans Salute to Leningrad in Float

For the last five years, producer-director Mikel Pippi has been beating a path toward Soviet-U.S. cohesion. The fruits of his bilateral adventure in glasnost will begin to be seen in Pasadena in the 1992 Tournament of Roses Parade.

Due in part to Pippi’s efforts, the city of Los Angeles will dedicate its float, “A Salute to Leningrad,” to its 17th sister city. The 1992 parade theme is “Voyages of Discovery.”

Pippi, the president and founding director of the Pasadena-based American Musical Theater Festival Inc., was recently appointed chairman of Los Angeles-Leningrad Cultural Affairs, a subcommittee of the Los Angeles-Leningrad Sister Cities Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the float.

Between now and Jan. 1, Pippi will act as liaison and coordinator among the sister-cities group and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Tournament of Roses officials and such business groups as float manufacturer C. E. Bent & Son Inc. of Pasadena.

The road to the Rose Parade hasn’t been an easy one for Pippi, 44, the mover and shaker of other international networking ventures. At times he felt like he was playing musical chairs on the fragile tightropes of international diplomacy.

“It’s been an odyssey,” he said.

Pippi became a Russophile during his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1985, when the Soviet Peace Committee invited 40 Americans to meet their counterparts in the entertainment industry.

“The Russians are the mirror image of Americans,” he said. “They’re hard to get to know in the beginning, but once you do, friendship goes very deep. The people there have nothing. But if they like you, they’ll give you the shirts off their backs.”

The seeds of his involvement with the float were sown in 1986, when Pippi signed an agreement with Soviet officials to co-produce a Broadway show--Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”--in the Soviet Union.

“It was to be a large production, and we needed to raise $2 million,” he said. “I rapidly saw that corporate sponsors would want an extra degree of international visibility in return for funds.”

So he came up with the idea of a floral float with an “Oklahoma!” theme to promote the production in the annual Communist workers’ May Day celebration in Moscow in 1989. But international copyright problems delayed the production, and the “Oklahoma!” performance was put on hold.

Pippi turned his attention to the May Day celebration and thought of an exchange. In the United States, he worked with the International Festival Assn., an alliance of worldwide festivals and parades, to try to take the float to Moscow.

It was all signed, sealed and delivered, Pippi said. But on his last night in the Soviet Union, in March, 1990, Soviet troops were sent into Lithuania. “Overnight, communism began to fall,” he said, “and May Day became out of favor.”

As Pippi watched his work float away, all he could do was say, “do svadanya,” or “so long.”

“It was like building castles on quicksand,” he said.

But Pippi had already won the necessary Soviet approvals and a commitment of 3 million rubles (about $150,000) to sponsor a float and delegation for the Rose Parade in Pasadena, provided that Tournament of Roses officials take the unusual step of extending an invitation for Soviet officials to participate.

On Aug. 15, 1990, Mayor Tom Bradley declared Leningrad the 17th sister city to Los Angeles and plans for the Rose Parade float were set into motion.

Because of his efforts, Pippi was named a representative of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Russia, as well as the exclusive U.S. partner of the Leningrad State Art Center of Festivals and the Russian Managing Co. Festival.

This time, Pippi hopes his castles rest on stone.

This isn’t Pippi’s first adventure in glasnost.

In the summer of 1987, he was instrumental in bringing 20 Soviet children to a school he was running in Carmel. They learned musical theater and lived with Carmel residents. At the end of their seven-week stay, the students and the 130 American children at the school put on a play called “Peace Child,” Pippi said.

“It was wonderful,” he said. “It was a learning experience that transformed the lives of everyone who participated.”

Pippi says he thinks his current venture will also create bonds. And he has plans for the future as well.

He has proposed to the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Leningrad city government a co-production of a “White Snow Nights” international music and art festival in June.

“The White Nights,” Pippi explained, “are a two-week period in June when the sun never sets in Leningrad.”

If it comes off, the Leningrad festival would include a U.S. float.

Pippi hopes his efforts on both sides of the Atlantic will mature into annual events.

“I really believe the arts are a healing thing--a way of bringing people together,” he said. “They open people up and touch the soul.”