Less Wealth to Share This Year from NEA

In a year when the National Endowment for the Arts cut funding for professional theater groups and most theaters expected funding cuts, the La Jolla Playhouse was among the few to buck the trend and get more money.

The Playhouse received $80,000, up from last year’s $76,500. The funding figures for fiscal 1992 were announced Tuesday by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer.

The Old Globe Theatre’s grant dropped from $180,000 to $177,500, and San Diego Repertory Theatre’s slipped from $60,000 to $52,800. Nontheater grants included $87,000 for the San Diego Symphony and $87,500 for the San Diego Opera.

The Old Globe’s $177,500 still leaves it as the recipient of the second-largest theater grant in California, behind only the $230,000 that went to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The largest grant in the country went to the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, which received $275,000.

Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse, said he was especially pleased to be singled out as one of the few organizations meriting an increase in funding.

“I think it’s a recognition of our work artistically and what we’ve accomplished,” Levey said. “It’s also a recognition that the level of funding that we have been receiving needs to be increased where possible.”

The Globe’s grant reduction was viewed as an increase of sorts in light of what could have been cut.

Because the total allotment of theater program money was reduced this year (from $7.8 million to $7.2 million), all theaters took an automatic 12% cut before deliberations began on this year’s applications.

“We’d been alerted that they were going to have a cut on an average of 12%,” said Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe. “So any theater company that receives a cut of less than that--and in our case it was significantly less than that--it is an endorsement of the work that we’re doing, and obviously we’re delighted.”

A 12% cut for the Globe would have meant a drop of $21,600 rather than the actual $2,500.

Adrian Stewart, managing director of the San Diego Repertory, which suffered a straight 12% reduction, said he appreciates the principle behind pooling money from the cuts and awarding it to new organizations and those that show special merit.

“I obviously feel the impact of the reduction of those funds, but I applaud that it will go to new applicants and the applauding of artistic merit,” Stewart said. “I wish the local Commission for Arts and Culture would consider pooling 5% of (its) grants to address the same problem.”

Les Smith, the San Diego Symphony’s public relations director, said his organization’s $87,000 was not as much as last year’s $95,000, but that the cut was expected.

“Everything is status quo. We were advised of and anticipating this reduction. The funding is very helpful, particularly since we’re putting it into musicians’ salaries and young people’s concerts.”

Smith said the money will be used for “operating support, for musicians’ salaries for what we call our main subscription concerts and also for our young people’s concerts.”

The symphony’s annual budget is about $7.25 million.

The San Diego Opera received $87,500, about the same amount as last year, said Donna Lawrence, the opera’s public relations assistant.

“It’s been roughly the same for the last several years,” she said, adding that the grant has been earmarked to help cover the artistic and production costs for the January, 1992, opera “Der Rosenkavalier.”

Although the grant is a very small percentage of the opera’s $6.7-million budget, Lawrence said opera directors are “very pleased that the NEA is continuing to recognize our artistic achievement by continuing its support.”

Also getting grants were the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, $100,000; the Museum of Photograph Arts, $20,000; and the Centro Cultural de la Raza, $28,000.