STAGE NOTES : New Grove Artistic Director Takes the Reins

W. Stuart McDowell’s arrival this week at the Grove Shakespeare Festival to take the reins as artistic director was a big event, but not the only recent managerial development there.

McDowell said Tuesday that Grove managing director Barbara G. Hammerman, until now a part-time employee of the theater, became a full-time staffer on April 1, when his own appointment took effect.

Hammerman, however, won’t get a raise until her contract comes up for renegotiation at the end of this year, Grove Treasurer Larry Capalbo said in a separate interview. She received a part-time salary of $33,000 in 1991. Come January, McDowell said, he fully expects the board to approve a contract for Hammerman commensurate with his “because we are co-equals.”

McDowell also confirmed that his annual salary comes to $45,000, not the $30,000 previously reported. In addition, Capalbo noted that McDowell’s three-year contract calls for $5,000 pay raises in both 1993 and 1994 “provided he earns them and the theater can afford them.”

Capalbo said the Grove paid $5,000 toward moving expenses for McDowell and his family, who are relocating from New Jersey.

YEA OR NAY?: Actors Equity has set April 29 as the date for a special meeting in Los Angeles of its Western Regional Advisory Board to decide whether to extend the union’s 99-seat plan to three small amateur theater companies in Orange County on a one-year trial basis.

If approved, the extension would allow the Backstage Theatre in Costa Mesa and the Alternative Repertory Theatre and the Way Off Broadway Playhouse, both in Santa Ana, to hire union actors for their performances at $5 to $14 per performance.

BYE BYE REINKING: When the touring revival of “Bye Bye Birdie” opens May 12 for a six-day run at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, Ann Reinking will not be in the cast opposite Tommy Tune, Center officials have announced. Lenora Nemetz will replace her.

“Reinking actually left the show in September,” Center spokesman Greg Patterson said Monday. “Her contract went until then with an option to renew, and she chose not to.” Also in the cast, Patterson said, will be Susan Egan, an Irvine graduate of the Orange County High School of the Arts. She will play a key role as Kim, the lucky girl who never gets kissed.