Now You Can Ring Up the Discount Ticket Booth

Los Angelenos need no longer envy those cities with same-day half-price ticket booths. Now we have our own discount-ticket charge line.

The Ticket Outlet is an attempt “to serve the unique geographical demands of L.A.,” said Stacy Brightman of the sponsoring service organization, Theatre LA--and as such, the project got $10,000 from the city’s Cultural Affairs Department and $25,000 from the Irvine Foundation.

“We don’t have one theater district”--where a half-price booth might be expected to do a booming business. “But Los Angelenos seem to be perfectly comfortable using their telephones.”

And their charge cards. Here’s how the service works: Call (213) 688-ARTS between noon and 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Cut through the recorded pep talk by a celebrity (last week, Corbin Bernsen) by pushing 1. You’ll hear a list of the day’s discounted shows and prices. Then, with another push of your 1 key, you’ll be switched to a real person, who will take your order, fax it to the theater and charge your credit card. Your ticket will be waiting for you that night at Will Call.

The discount is at least 50% for tickets normally priced at $20 or more, and at least 40% for cheaper tickets. A $1.50 service charge per ticket is added (and included in the quoted price). The biggest discount since the Ticket Outlet went on line, on Dec. 15, was 75%.

The number of offered shows varies. Last Tuesday or Wednesday, only three were on line, but relatively few productions are open on those days. Weekends are busier. The highest number of shows available so far on any one day: 12. Sunday tickets may be ordered on Saturdays.

Don’t try to buy “Phantom” tickets this way. Most of the participating shows are in sub-100-seat theaters. Though Center Theatre Group shows (Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson-at-the-Doolittle) aren’t on line, a mention of CTG’s own discount programs (the daily $10 Public Rush, the periodic Pay What You Can) is expected to be added to the Ticket Outlet’s recorded information sometime soon.

Robert Schlosser, the Taper’s director of audience development, said that half-price would be too low “for us to do that earlier in the day,” as opposed to the Public Rush tickets, available 10 minutes before showtime on a cash-only basis. “We’ll continue to look at it,” he added, but he thinks the primary value of the Ticket Outlet is “to stimulate attention for smaller, lesser-known theaters.”

Theatre LA certainly doesn’t want to pressure theaters to participate, said Brightman; “if they can sell out (at the regular price), that’s great.”

So far a daily average of only 20-30 ticket orders has been placed through 688-ARTS--an admittedly slow pace, perhaps affected by the holidays and the newness of the service. Of course, there’s one radical step that could be taken to make 688-ARTS even further reflective of L.A.: Boast that it’s an unlisted number. “Then it would be really chi chi,” quipped Brightman.

FIRST GLIMPSES: Free public rehearsals will be presented as part of the Taper’s fifth New Work Festival. For reservations, call (213) 972-7392 between 3 and 5 p.m., beginning Wednesday.

The festival includes eight two-day play workshops, four two-day performance art workshops, and six one-time readings--all at Taper, Too, plus a three-day workshop of “PH*reaks” at UCLA’S MacGowan Hall.

The workshop playwrights include Han Ong, Charles L. Mee Jr., Kelly Stuart, Octavio Solis, Rosanna Staffa, Michael Weller, Lisa Loomer, Luis Valdez, Doris Baizley and Victoria-Ann Lewis. Ong is also one of the performance artists, with John Fleck, Wolfe Bowart and Yehuda Hyman.

Writers whose works will receive readings include Philip Kan Gotanda, Y York, Adelaide Mackenzie, August Baker, David Lee Lindsey and Georges Feydeau.

Feydeau in a New Work festival? It’s a new version of the 19th-Century master’s “Les Fiances de Loches,” called “A Flaw in the Ointment,” adapted by Lillian Garrett-Groag and William Gray.

CUTBACKS IN LA JOLLA: The 1993 La Jolla Playhouse season announced last week is reduced from last year’s, with only six productions instead of eight. And the board-approved budget for the coming season is $4.5 million, down from last year’s expenses of approximately $5.5 million.

“With the state of the economy,” said managing director Terrence Dwyer, “we thought it would be prudent to be more cautious financially so we can continue to be adventurous artistically in the work we’re doing.”

Actually, Dwyer added, last year’s eight-play season was considered merely a one-year expansion; in the three previous seasons, the theater had done six shows. And last year’s basic subscription packages offered only six shows out of the eight, so the subscription season--as opposed to the season as a whole--has not shrunk. In fact, there will be a small increase in the price of subscriptions this season.

The theater’s accumulated deficit at the end of 1991 was $1.1 million, but Dwyer said auditing has not yet been completed on the 1992 fiscal year.