Laguna Playhouse Negotiating With Fullerton

The Laguna Playhouse is negotiating with the city of Fullerton to produce an outdoor subscription season this summer at the city-owned Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

If the talks succeed, the project would revive the Muckenthaler’s Theater on the Green, which offered two comedies and a musical each summer from 1980 to 1989.

Playhouse executive director Richard A. Stein approached the Muckenthaler about doing the series in 1990, after it was discontinued by the most recent producer, Fullerton College. He said Judith Peterson, the director of the Muckenthaler, asked last fall if the Playhouse was still interested.

“We definitely were and we still are,” Stein said Wednesday. “But since our preliminary discussions, they’ve run into construction delays. There’s also some question of whether the Fullerton (city) budget will affect their ability to equip the theater. So the plans are essentially on hold now, depending on whether the theater will be ready in time.”

Peterson confirmed late Wednesday that neogiations are ongoing but “very informal.”

Even if completion of the outdoor stage renovations and basic lighting installations come too late to meet the Playhouse deadline for mounting any shows by summer, Stein said, “we would be interested” in producing a season there in 1993.

“We’re flexible,” he added, “but obviously we can’t wait too long to put things in process for this summer. We would need a decision by April.”

Stein said it’s possible that someone else might get productions ready with less advance notice.

Assuming the Muckenthaler can provide enough lead time, however, Stein said the Playhouse would revive three productions from its 1990-91 season at the Moulton Theatre, which included the musicals “Big River” and “Quilters” and the comedies “Broadway Bound” and “Painting Churches,” as well as “Caesar and Cleopatra” and “A Walk in the Woods.”

The Playhouse currently has 8,000 subscribers. The Theater on the Green had about 2,000 subscribers and overall attendance of about 10,000 playgoers during the early ‘80s, he said.

The chance for the Playhouse to expand its base to the northern part of the county during summers would not only improve its revenue and lower the average cost of productions, Stein said, but “would underscore the value of the Playhouse to the Orange County region as a whole and advance our fund-raising opportunities.”

Meanwhile, royalty negotiations between the Playhouse and Samuel French Inc., the nation’s major play-licensing agency, have resulted in a compromise.

“Beginning with the 1992-93 season, we’ll be paying $150 per performance instead of $50,” Stein said. “So it won’t affect our current budget. And we won’t have to pay a percentage of our box office revenues.”

With about 28 performances usually scheduled for each production, the increase means the Playhouse will have to pay about $2,800 more for those plays licensed by French. But it won’t be anything close to the huge hike that would have accompanied French’s original demand of a 5% royalty on total ticket sales.