Buyers Give Bargain Ticket Sale Rave Reviews

The San Diego Theatre League held up its torch Wednesday morning and asked the city to send its tired, hungry and poor.

To those tired of TV nights, hungry for culture and perhaps too poor to afford the climbing price of theater tickets, the offer went: Here’s 5,200 tickets. You set the price.

“Is a dollar apiece OK?” asked Shelley Sabren, 43, a poet who wondered out loud if two bucks would cover two $17 tickets to “No, No, Nanette” at the Starlight Bowl Amphitheatre in Balboa Park.

Yes, Yes, Shelley.

“I really do love the theater,” Sabren said, clutching a $5 bill she expected to put toward two chits to the Starlight and two more to the Old Globe Theatre’s “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice.” With the leftover dollar, she hoped to buy two passbooks to Balboa Park’s museums. “I would take my daughter to these cultural events all the time if I could afford it,” she said.

Sabren watched ticket window transactions eagerly as a line snaked around the fountain in Horton Plaza Wednesday morning. She arrived half an hour before sales started at 10 a.m. The wait to get to the front, she said, took just under two hours.

Nearly 1,000 people converged on the Times Arts Tix kiosk to buy tickets on a pay-what-you-can-or-care-to basis. The performance selection ranged from Shakespeare in the park, to the California Ballet production of “Giselle,” to the cultural deconstructionist one-man play “Terminal Hip” at the Sledgehammer Theatre downtown.

Eight local museums and 26 theaters citywide participated in this year’s Bargain Arts Day Sale, said Todd Sivard, operations manager at the Theatre League. The original arts bargain sale was held in July, 1990, when lines stretched for several blocks from Horton Plaza, down 4th Street. About 1,200 tickets were sold, said Alan Ziter, Theatre League executive director.

This year, the number of tickets sold nearly tripled, Sivard said, the result of faster processing and an increase in the number of theaters donating to the sale. He estimated the value of the tickets at $100,000.

The bargain day sale rewards veteran theatergoers with a chance at low-priced summer shows, Sivard said. For the uninitiated, the sale encourages an interest in the arts, free from concerns about cost.

For retired advertisement writer Lois Doran-Thomas, the biggest outlay was time. At noon, Doran-Thomas, 70, stood at the end of the line and was in for at least a 90-minute wait.

Not that she minded, though, she said, “I’ve got the time.”

The pace was not as slow as some expected, said Stuart Vasques, who was saving a place in line for his ex-wife, Rosemarie. Although Vasques cradled a portable radio in one hand and dragged a beach chair in the other, the line crept forward just fast enough to interrupt his sitting.

Tom, a 50-year-old downtown accountant who asked that his last name not be published, said several colleagues were scared off by reports of long lines.

“I’m on my lunch hour,” he said, due back in his office in 30 minutes. “Hope it’s not going to be much longer.”

Wells Fargo Bank donated about $20,000 to help underwrite the sale, said Wells Fargo spokesman Dan Conway. Ticket proceeds and donations will be divided among the participating theaters and museums, Sivard said.

Sabren called the sale a good deal all the way around: “The way I see it, theaters are building audiences this way. It’s worth the investment. People who buy theater tickets today may like what they see. And maybe next time they’ll pay $20.”