Grove Finances Go From Bard to Worse

Capping a month that saw the surprise resignation of its top administrator and the loss of a key benefactor’s support, Grove-Shakespeare officials reported Thursday that the troupe ended 1992 with a $100,000 deficit, the largest in its 13-year history.

The deficit resulted from a drop in contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations: only $250,000 out of a budgeted $400,000 was raised, board president David Krebs said.

Box-office and other earned income for 1992, however, came in on target at about $450,000, Krebs said. The deficit will not affect programming planned for 1993, he added.

“We have not had as much success with contributed income due to recessionary times and lack of discretionary dollars that individuals and corporations have had to put toward charitable organizations,” Krebs said.

The Anaheim-based Leo Freedman Foundation, which had come to the rescue last December with a $250,000 grant that was the troupe’s largest ever, gave Grove-Shakespeare no new money in the latest round of grants announced early in December. Foundation officials cited a lack of community support for the troupe, a charge company officials disputed.

They also said financial problems were not behind the unexpected resignation on Dec. 17 of Barbara G. Hammerman, the Grove’s managing director and executive vice president, whose responsibilities included fund-raising. She cited personal and professional obligations.

But asked if Hammerman knew about the deficit when she resigned, Krebs said, “The deficit is not a surprise to us. We’ve known all along . . . that we are accumulating a deficit.”

A decision has not been made whether to hire a new managing director to replace Hammerman, Krebs said.

A countywide fund-raising effort, dubbed the Shakespeare 400 Club and aimed at eliminating the deficit, is scheduled to begin early this year, Krebs said. In the meantime, Krebs said the troupe also would seek bank loans to help make ends meet (despite the advice of the troupe’s namesake who wrote, in “Hamlet”: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”).

The Freedman Foundation’s initial grant to GroveShakespeare had arrived in 1991 as welcome news at the end of a particularly difficult year. Reeling at the time from the forced departure, reportedly orchestrated by Hammerman, of Grove founding artistic director Thomas A. Bradac, the theater had also reached the end of a three-year phase-out of city funding.