Theaters Manage to Work Around Feud With Guild

Theatrical seasons without new plays. Theatrical seasons without any plays by living writers.

So far that hasn’t happened, but that was the threat the Dramatists Guild held over the head of the League of Resident Theatres two years ago when the guild vowed a boycott of the LORT members that wouldn’t sign a standard minimum contract. About 35 of the 64 LORT theaters have signed, including the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, according to the guild’s newsletter.

But judging from the plays by Dramatist Guild members on the rosters of both of San Diego’s LORT theaters--the Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse, neither of which has signed a guild pact--a cease-fire of sorts seems to be in place.

The guild represents 7,000 American and British playwrights and has long had minimum stipulations regarding authors’ royalties and the playwrights’ right to approve actors and directors in Broadway productions or first-class touring shows. But the guild’s venture into regional theater is relatively new and reflects the guild’s awareness that plays are increasingly being created and developed in regional theaters rather than on Broadway.

“LORT for their part and we for ours have resolved that we would resolve our differences quietly without airing them in the press,” David LeVine, executive director of the Dramatists Guild, said Tuesday. Quite a change from the fireworks of the past two years in which the Dramatists Guild and A. R. Gurney severed ties when Gurney decided to have his play “The Snow Ball” produced at the Old Globe in May, 1991, and when Jon Robin Baitz pulled his play “The Substance of Fire” from the Globe’s 1992 season because the theater would not sign an agreement with the guild. Most recently, Jack Heifner, who wrote the Globe’s currently running “Bargains,” sent a letter to the Dramatists Guild telling it he was going to have his play done at the Globe even if that meant leaving the guild. As of Tuesday, Heifner was still on the membership list.

Playwrights can be paid $35 to $40 weekly for amateur productions or as much as $25,000 weekly for a large first-class production, LeVine said. He wouldn’t comment on the range for LORT theaters.

The guild has been insisting for six years that LORT sign the minimum contract. LORT, in turn, insists that it continue to negotiate individual contracts with individual writers.

Money isn’t the sticking point; future rights are. When a nonprofit theater invests half a million dollars in a play, the company wants to retain some say in the play’s future, with the hope of getting back some of that money back. This week, Thomas Hall, the Old Globe’s managing director, said the guild’s formula for new works is still unsatisfactory.

Writers have been caught in the cross-fire between loyalty to the guild and wanting to get their works produced. For agent Scott Hudson, who represents Heifner, it was a relatively easy call.

“We didn’t want to not participate with the Dramatists Guild, but we didn’t want to lose a production to make a point,” Hudson said. “It would be different if the Old Globe sent me a contract that was unreasonable, but that was not the case. The Old Globe contracts are as good as any regional theater contract.”

But that doesn’t mean the Globe will not negotiate contracts with the guild on a case-by-case basis if a writer insists on it, said Hall, who is also LORT’s president.

So far, that hasn’t been necessary for the Globe. Heifner and Ed Schmidt, who wrote “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” did not ask for a Dramatists Guild contract. Stuart Ross’ “Forever Plaid” and “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice,” by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd, don’t come under guild jurisdiction because they are in revue formats. And the Globe already has agreements with Michael Cristofer (“Breaking Up”) and William Hamilton (“Interior Decorating”), Hall said.

The La Jolla Playhouse, however, plans to negotiate its first contract with the Dramatists Guild this year.

The reason is Athol Fugard, whose latest work, “Playland” is scheduled to run Aug. 30 to Oct. 4 at the Mandell Weiss Theatre.

“Athol Fugard feels strongly about his membership with the guild,” said Abigail Evans, interim managing director at the playhouse. “We will be working with the guild for a compromise. (Fugard) has made his wishes known to us, and we are committed to doing it for Athol.”

As for the one play that got away from the Old Globe, Hall said he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of getting “The Substance of Fire” into a season--eventually.

“It will depend on when and if there’s a resolution and Robby Baitz’s position on it,” Hall said. “That was a case in which the guild was successful in getting a writer to go way out of his way to create a situation that was problematic.”

The North Coast Repertory Theatre will present the local premieres of Larry Gelbart’s “Mastergate,” Tom Dudzick’s “Greetings!” Mark Harelik’s “The Immigrant” and Richard Nelson’s “Some Americans Abroad” in its 1992-93 season.

The seven-play season begins with two shows that were hits for other local theaters: Neil Simon’s “Rumors” and Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.”

“Rumors,” a 1988 world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre that went on to play Broadway, will be presented at North Coast’s Solana Beach space June 6-18. “Frankie and Johnny,” a 1990 hit for the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, will run Aug. 8-Sept. 12.

“Mastergate,” a political satire, will run Sept. 26-Oct. 31, followed by “Greetings!” a comedy about a young Catholic man who brings his Jewish fiancee home to meet the family, Nov. 21-Dec. 26.

“The Immigrant,” Harelik’s autobiographical tale of his Jewish immigrant grandfather’s life in Texas, runs Jan. 9-Feb. 13, 1993. Gerald Moon’s comic thriller “Corpse!” will play Feb. 27-April 3. “Some Americans Abroad,” a dark satire about a group of American professors and their students touring England, will conclude the season April 17-May 22.

PROGRAM NOTES: The late San Diego playwright Philip-Dimitri Galas will be remembered in “Avante Vaudeville: Philip-Dimitri Galas,” co-produced by KPBS-TV and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, airing at 10 p.m. Wednesday. Excerpts of his plays, including “The Bearded Lady’s Manifesto” and “Mona Rogers in Person” will be featured. . . .

The locally based National Theater for Children will present “The Wizard of Oz” at the Spreckels Theatre on Tuesday at 10 a.m. and 12:15 a.m., 1-800-245-4603. . . . The San Diego Actors Theatre will present a staged reading of David Williamson’s “Emerald City” at 8 p.m. Monday at the Athens Market Restaurant downtown, 268-4494.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

HEROES REMEMBERED AT READING

Why would people risk their own lives to save others? In his play, “Rescuers Speaking,” Wilfred Harrison dramatized reminiscences from “The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe,” a 1988 book by Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner. Nonnie Vishner will direct a staged reading of the work as part of the Fourth Annual Streisand Festival Monday at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, 444 4th Ave., San Diego, 234-9583.