Gaslamp Announces New Season : Stage: Despite loss of key staff members and financial woes, the San Diego company will mount an ambitious five-play season.

Despite the departure of its managing director, marketing director and house manager, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company on Monday announced a five-play season opening Sept. 15 amid promises that business will continue as usual in the troupe’s 12th year.

The shows, all San Diego premieres, will include the West Coast premiere of Terrence McNally’s Off Broadway hit, “Lips Together, Teeth Apart.” In addition, there will be a sixth show, Nehemiah Persoff’s one-man “Sholom Aleichem,” which will be offered outside the subscription package.

The new season begins with “Molly and Maze,” a show about a daughter preparing to leave for college, co-produced by Lynda Sterns and starring playwright and stand-up comedian Lotus Weinstock and her real daughter, violin virtuoso Lili Haydn, Sept. 15-Oct. 25. David Sanger will direct.

Terrence McNally’s latest Off Broadway hit, “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” (running Nov. 3-Dec. 6), touches on AIDS in the ‘90s, and will be directed by Will Roberson, who directed McNally’s successful “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” for the Gaslamp.

Next up is a show described as “an American classic.” The title and dates will be announced. Then, Adleane Hunter will direct Samm-Art Williams’ “A Woman From the Town,” a story about a woman who returns to her hometown for revenge, March 23-April 25. The company has tentative plans to conclude the season with Craig Lucas’ “Prelude to a Kiss,” May 4-June 6. An additional production, Nehemiah Persoff’s one-man show, “Sholom Aleichem,” will be presented Dec. 10-20.

The season announcement comes as Steve Bevans, managing director of the company since 1990, has resigned from the company, effective July 24, in order to move to the East Coast, where he plans to be married. In addition, the Gaslamp’s marketing director, Veronica Baker, had already left to take another job, and house manager Lorenzo Montoya has been laid off. The company’s current staff includes a comptroller, box office manager, production manager, group sales director and marketing assistant.

Terry Hughes, the new Gaslamp board president, said the board is already reviewing applications for managing director of the company, and the position is expected to be filled within 30-45 days.

The company will continue to present as it had under Bevans, Hughes said. The incoming managing director will work with an artistic roundtable of directors, who will continue to be Roberson, Rosina Widdowson-Reynolds, Hunter, Gaslamp co-founder and board member Kit Goldman.

Shows will continue to be produced at the company’s 250-seat Hahn Cosmopolitan. The company relinquished its lease on its smaller facility late last year.

The Gaslamp, whose financial struggles have been public since 1990 when the company suspended operations for six months, continues to battle a deficit of roughly $850,000, Bevans said Monday. The just-approved annual budget, which in past years has been as high as $1.2 million, is now $850,000, Bevans said.

Hughes said the company, the city’s only nonprofit professional theater to pay high commercial rental rates for its venue, still hopes one day to own the facility. It currently rents it from a limited partnership headed by Goldman’s husband, Dan Pearson, that is in Chapter 11.

Bevans took on the post of managing director two years ago with a mandate to reopen the theater and to keep it going. He said he has “no regrets” about the time he spent at the Gaslamp: “I won’t ever say it’s been easy. It’s taken a lot of hard work and a lot of courage on a lot of people--particularly on the part of the board--to open this place and keep it viable.”

He said he believes the company will continue.

Hughes echoes the sentiment. He runs a planning and development firm with clients in the Gaslamp Quarter and sees the theater as an asset to the Gaslamp, which he believes is a growing community.

“The role the Board has to play is the part of stewards for this facility. We can do nothing less than fight the good fight and offer good theater.”

The next show at the Hahn, which is not part of the new season, is “Memory Tricks,” a one-woman show written and performed by San Francisco comic Marga Gomez. Presented by the Gaslamp and produced by Sterns in association with Fresh Dish, it opens July 23 and runs through Aug. 30.