It Looks Like a Great Year for Women in the Theater

It is beginning to shape up as the Year of the Woman in San Diego theater, especially the next few months. Chalk it up to women coming of age as creators and designers . . . or credit it to the fact that women are making a lot of the choices about what tickets to buy.

This week alone, two plays stand out. “The Heidi Chronicles,” opening tonight at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, is a Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play written about a woman by a woman (Wendy Wasserstein). And “Abingdon Square,” which opened Wednesday at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, is about a woman and written by a woman who is also directing (Maria Irene Fornes).

At Lamb’s Players Theatre, “Quilters,” an all-woman musical reopens Tuesday. Sweetooth Comedy Theatre opens a female-version of “The Odd Couple” on Jan. 31 at the Maryland Hotel, and “Beehive” (a six-woman revue) has its San Diego premiere at the Theatre in Old Town on Feb. 1. “Steel Magnolias,” another all-woman show opens at Lamb’s Players Theatre on Feb. 21, and a one-woman show, “Shirley Valentine,” opens at the Old Globe on March 14.

At the San Diego Rep, managing director Adrian Stewart said Tuesday that he had only just realized that the remaining four plays in the San Diego Rep 1991-1992 season all had strong female elements.

“It was unintentional that the last four plays in the theater for this season would be all about women,” he said. “It just occurred to us a couple of days ago that we could sell it as a women’s subscription package.”

After the Rep’s current “Abingdon Square” comes:

* “Ruby’s Bucket of Blood,” a world premiere Cajun play about two women, with music written by a woman (Julie Hebert), opening in February.

* “Mirandolina,” an 18th-Century comedy about a woman, opening in March.

* “The Women,” written by a woman (Clare Boothe Luce) and directed by a woman (Anne Bogart), opening in May.

Stewart has more than the usual interest in finding a new way to promote ticket sales at the Rep.

He sees subscription sales as the answer to the company’s financially precarious situation.

According to the Rep’s latest financial update, released Tuesday, the company failed to raise the final $100,000 of its $850,000 “Keep the Lights On” public campaign.

Although the company is determined to keep producing, the rest of the season could be canceled if the money doesn’t turn up.

The problem, Stewart explained, is not the deficit, which is down to $175,000, but the small subscriber base, which hovers around 4,000. A small subscriber base means little up-front money for the productions, leaving the company cash-poor. The subscription base took a nose-dive from an 8,000 high after a premiere-laden 1989-1990 season.

“It’s an age-old lesson we’ve learned: It’s very easy to lose subscribers and very hard to win them back. . . . We don’t have a ‘Forever Plaid,’ we don’t have an endowment, we don’t have a cash reserve. We very much don’t want to go the way of LATC (the Los Angeles Theatre Center, which closed last year), and I think that there is a real sense that their situation was considerably worse than ours.

“The promise here is that the balance of the season holds some of the most exciting work the Rep has in store. Our big hope is that we will be able to have a strong renewal for the 1992-1993 season.” That season has yet to be announced.

Just because a show is about a woman and by a woman does not mean it’s meant for women only. Will Roberson, who is directing “The Heidi Chronicles” at the Gaslamp, said he has identified with Heidi ever since he saw the show in New York.

” I relate to Heidi on a huge scale, and of course I relate to Peter,” the San Diego resident said last Friday while baking a “fabulous” cheese challah for the cast.

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein takes audiences through decades in the life of Heidi, a bright girl who becomes an art historian and, along the way, has her share of troubles navigating the waters of friendship and true love.

“It’s not a play about women’s lib, it’s a play about relationships and the last 30 years,” Roberson said. “Here’s a woman and the story of what made her what she is and the people who laughed at her and what you have to give up to get somewhere. Heidi is very much a female Hamlet. She never makes up her mind.”

Roberson is a successful director locally, having directed smash hits for the Old Globe--”Suds” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill”--and for the Gaslamp--”Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” The author of an interactive murder mystery, “Knock ‘Em Dead,” set to reopen (after a brief hiatus) at the Reuben E. Fleet Dinner Theatre on Jan. 30, he also has another mystery theater project in the works with Julia Holladay, the producer of the local Mystery Cafe at the Imperial House Restaurant.

But, like Heidi, he has been feeling at a crossroads lately.

“I’ll be 33 at the end of November--not a kid anymore. I’m not sure I want to run a theater, but you get tired of running around and doing a play here and there and everywhere. Also, it’s not a good time for theater. There will probably be fewer jobs and less money so you wonder what you are doing and you have to figure out how you’re going to keep going. I think that’s why I relate to Heidi, because of wondering if the choices I made are valid still.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The Tony-award winning “The Will Rogers Follies” is beginning a national tour in the fall that will include San Diego. And Hughes Moss Casting is looking for replacements for “The New Ziegfeld Girls” for both the Broadway company and the upcoming tour. Women 5-foot-8 or taller, of all ethnic backgrounds, can send pictures and resumes to Hughes Moss Casting, 311 West 43 St., No. 700, New York City 10036. . . .

Got any questions for Steve Allen? The comedian-composer-entertainer-musician-performer-book writer will appear with piano on stage in “An Evening With Steve Allen” at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre on Monday. It’s a fund-raiser for the theater, at $50 a ticket, and he has promised to be open to questions from the audience. . . .

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company received a $75,000 grant Jan. 6 from the James Irvine Foundation that must be matched, 2 to 1, over the next two years. The San Diego Repertory Theatre also just received an Irvine gift of $65,000 for a two-year marketing plan to rebuild the company’s subscriber base. This grant, however, does not need to be matched.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

CHECK OUT ‘HIGH JOHN DA CONQUEROR’,-2

To celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., check out the African American Drama Company’s presentation of “High John da Conqueror” at 8 p.m. Friday at the Carlsbad Cultural Arts Center.

This show, which concludes a three-day residency by the company, is a musical fantasy by Obie-award winning playwright Ed Bullins. It celebrates the exploits of a traveling trickster named “High John” who, as folklore has it, roamed the plantations of the old South, bringing trouble to the “massas” and laughter to the slaves.

The center is at 2557 Monroe Ave. Call 434-2920.