It’s Summer And a Theater’s Fancy Turns to . . . Grants

It’s grant season in nonprofit theater circles, and this year’s crop is surprisingly healthy.

Despite a shrinking pool of money for the theater program of the National Endowment for the Arts, most of the major Southern California theaters fared well in the recently announced rounds of NEA grants.

Which is to say, they got roughly the same amount as last year, rather than taking steep cuts.

As usual, Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum led the local pack, retaining its $230,000 financing level of last year. The Old Globe Theatre maintained its $177,500 level, and South Coast Repertory actually inched up slightly, from $115,000 to $117,500.

La Jolla Playhouse took a slight cut, from $80,000 to $75,000. So did San Diego Repertory, from $52,800 to $50,000 (but the group also got a separate $5,300 grant from the opera/musical theater program.)

Of course, one of the major local players in this game, Los Angeles Theatre Center, is no longer around. It won $75,000 last year from the NEA. Pasadena Playhouse and Grove Shakespeare didn’t apply last year.

But another big theater company, Long Beach Civic Light Opera, took a big step forward. It won two separate $20,000 NEA grants from the opera/musical theater program: one for general expenses and one for the development of Jeff Sheppard and Michael Wright’s “Ghost Dance,” a musical on American Indian themes that was read in the group’s new-work festival last year. The plan is to present three fully staged performances of “Ghost Dance” next summer in the Long Beach Center Theater and then send it on a school tour. Last year LBCLO won only $9,500 from the NEA.

Likewise, Starlight Musical Theatre in San Diego got a big boost: its NEA grant jumped from $5,000 to $20,000. And Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera got its first NEA grant: $5,000.

Among L.A.’s smaller theaters, Inner City Cultural Center stayed at the $50,000 level, the Odyssey dipped from $27,700 to $24,930 and Stages dropped from $7,500 to $6,750.

The Cornerstone Theatre Company, which recently moved to Santa Monica but previously toured to small towns throughout the country, won $12,000. Also in Santa Monica, Highways took $15,000 for a new piece called “The Warriors’ Council” and $17,500 for another piece called “A Grain of Sand,” which also won a $22,000 NEA grant for Great Leap Inc.

A couple of minor-league winners from last year got nothing this year: Padua Hills Playwrights Festival and East West Players, where “staff turmoil” earlier in the year resulted in a missed deadline for the NEA application, according to an East West spokeswoman.

But East West could console itself with the notification last week of a $50,000 grant from the Arts Organization Stabilization Initiative, a state/county/city/private program administered by the Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission.

AND LOCALLY: East West Players also could point to a hefty increase in its grant from the L.A. Cultural Affairs Department this year: from $4,775 to $16,500.

Generally, this year’s Cultural Affairs grants didn’t result in quite the same level of grumbling as last year’s. For example, Shakespeare Festival/LA and Stages, two companies that received grants last year only on appeal, after initially being told they weren’t multicultural enough, probably won’t appeal this year. The Shakespeare Festival got $15,000, up from last year’s $7,000. Stages stayed at the $5,000 level.

Padua Hills Playwrights Festival received $7,500, though it has canceled its season this summer, partially in reaction to not getting a city grant last year.

Taking one of the biggest dives in Cultural Affairs support was the Odyssey Theatre, which fell from last year’s $35,000 to $17,000. Odyssey artistic director Ron Sossi said he was “very concerned” about the drop, for which he had no explanation.

Of the remnants of the Los Angeles Theatre Center company, only one--the Latino Lab--received a Cultural Affairs grant, and it was awarded through the “festivals” program rather than the regular grants program. The $20,000 is “a one-time-only contract to help them institutionalize,” said Cultural Affairs general manager Adolfo Nodal.

“REDWOOD” EN ROUTE?: Much of Lanford Wilson’s work has been seen at the Mark Taper Forum prior to New York. But his latest, “Redwood Curtain,” appears headed for the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in January, prior to a Broadway production next spring, pending completion of negotiations.

“Redwood” co-producer Robert Cole said the Taper was ruled out from consideration for this play only because the show’s intricate set wouldn’t fit well on the sharp thrust of the Taper stage.

The play, which has already been seen in Seattle and Philadelphia, is about an Amerasian girl’s search for her lost father in Northern California.