Cooperation Is Now Key LATC Word

It’s not a “consortium” any longer. According to the latest plan for the municipal theater complex on Spring Street, the arts groups who will use it will be part of a “cooperative.”

The new word “is more to the point,” said Al Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department and landlord of the four-theater complex that housed the now-defunct Los Angeles Theatre Center company.

“A consortium presupposes that it’s put together before they come in,” explained Nodal. But the cooperative he has in mind is still wide open--in fact, his office is distributing application forms to 1,400 arts groups and individuals. That includes such high-profile names as George C. Wolfe, Luis Valdez, Danny Glover, David Henry Hwang and Edward James Olmos, all of whom have been publicly mentioned as potential participants in the cooperative in recent weeks.

Deadline for returning the applications is July 31. And by mid-September, Nodal hopes to present a completed proposal to the mayor and city council.

The groups or individuals will be expected to meet criteria relating to artistic qualifications, community/cultural diversity, administrative capability and soundness of plan. But Nodal said there is technically no limit on the number of groups that might qualify. Asked to predict, he said it might be as few as four or as many as 10.

The users will have to pay all production costs and chip in fees based on the costs of whatever they do inside the building. But these fees will be “significantly lower than the structure we’re using now (for rentals),” said Nodal. Once organized and financed, the cooperative would form a board that would iron out scheduling or other conflicts that might arise.

As always, financing remains the biggest hurdle in this process. Nodal’s notion of asking for $750,000 in city funds to maintain the building for the cooperative was greeted primarily with silence, and even some hostility, from city officials when it was unveiled last month.

But now there are signs that political support for the plan may arise, when and if a credible cooperative is formed. According to Nodal’s plan, his department would come up with $400,000 and the balance--$350,000--would come from the LATC’s longtime angel, the Community Redevelopment Agency. CRA Chairman Jim Wood is open to the idea--assuming it can be shown that the activity inside the building will support the redevelopment of the Spring Street neighborhood.

“The agency’s interest in Spring Street keeps us interested in the building,” said Wood. “We have never said we were walking away from Spring Street.” But he said he would have to see the results of Nodal’s search for members of the cooperative before he offers comment on the specific request for $350,000.

As for Mayor Tom Bradley, “he is supporting Al’s request for the $350,000 from the CRA,” said Valerie Fields, Bradley’s arts deputy.

In public comments in late May, Bradley swore that the Spring Street facility is “still alive . . . we are going to see that that theater remains a part of the civic life.”

LONG BEACH WATCH: For the next month, at least, Long Beach has acquired its own tryout town--Winston-Salem, N.C.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “State Fair,” scheduled to play at Long Beach Civic Light Opera in October, opened Friday in Winston-Salem. It’s an LBCLO co-production with the North Carolina School of the Arts, which operates a “Broadway preview” series at the Stevens Center there, where it will play through Aug. 16.

LBCLO producer Barry Brown, speaking from North Carolina, said he hopes the production will have a longer life after Long Beach, but that will depend on the reaction of the representatives of the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate, who plan to see the show early in August.

The cost to mount it is between $600,000 and $700,000, he said, though he wouldn’t say how much of that is being provided by each co-producer. “State Fair” is a new stage version of the 1945 movie.

If the Winston-Salem/Long Beach axis doesn’t pan out, how about Long Beach/Tokyo?

A Japanese producer whom Brown declined to identify has approached the company with the notion of taking its current “Little Shop of Horrors” to Tokyo and Osaka next winter. The Japanese producer will take a gander at the show next week.

In other Long Beach news, Leslie Uggams will star as the Witch in next season’s “Into the Woods,” Carol Burnett’s show in the Center Theater next spring has been dubbed “From the Top!,” and “Dreamgirls” has replaced “The Wiz” as next summer’s show.

Brown said a number of subscribers complained that “The Wiz” was too similar to “The Wizard of Oz,” which was presented by the group in 1988, and “my obligation is to respond to my subscribers.”

Yet LBCLO presented “Dreamgirls” in the same season as “The Wizard of Oz.” So haven’t the same subscribers complained again?

Not nearly as many, said Brown. Another LBCLO source spoke of another reason for the switch: “Dreamgirls” is somewhat similar to “Chicago” in its presentational style, and last spring’s “Chicago” was a big hit that the company wants to emulate.