Shakespeare Fest Adds A Second Summer Show

Shakespeare Festival/LA is starting to look like a real festival. This summer the organization will present two alfresco plays instead of just one.

Following the run of Kristoffer Tabori’s staging of “Romeo and Juliet,” at the Ford Amphitheatre July 7-25, the company will mount a production of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” directed by Deborah Nitzberg. “Verona” will play two venues: South Coast Botanic Garden in Rolling Hills Estates, July 29-Aug. 8, and downtown Los Angeles’ Citicorp Plaza Aug. 11-22. Shakespeare Festival/LA has performed at both places before, but in the past it brought the same production it had staged at the Ford to the other two locations as well.

“The festival needs to grow,” said Artistic Director Ben Donenberg. He cited practical as well as artistic motivations. The festival will be able to apply for grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts if it expands programming beyond one major show a year. And by presenting “Romeo and Juliet” in only one venue instead of three, Donenberg hopes “the visibility of the festival will be enhanced” by attracting well-known actors whose TV or movie schedules would prohibit them from going on to all three sites.

The two shows will share the same set. Mounting them will take $100,000--no more than it would cost to take just “Romeo” on the road, Donenberg said. “Verona” will use a smaller cast with fewer Actors’ Equity contracts--7 instead of 13. And Donenberg might save even more money if he can cast a few actors in both shows, according to the terms of an agreement with Equity. His board still has to raise the $100,000, but Donenberg said both shows are proceeding anyway, at full speed.

Admission is free except at South Coast Botanic Garden, where the ticket price range is $5-$12. The garden’s foundation gets 15% of the gross but will pay for some of the company’s expenses while there. Donenberg hopes to develop “a substantial ongoing audience” from the relatively affluent neighborhoods around the South Coast Garden that could help offset the cost of doing free Shakespeare at the other two sites. Use of the company’s contributed funding is limited to the task of presenting accessible productions within L.A.

The company also will present a one-hour version of “Romeo” at Citicorp Plaza in August, during afternoons or early evenings preceding “Verona,” using youths from the Nickerson Gardens housing project instead of the professionals.

AT CERRITOS: In the first season at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, theater offerings were the weakest link. Non-union bus-and-truck musicals predominated.

But with the second season, the theater bookings are beginning to move up the ladder of professionalism. Cerritos plans to present an Equity-contract tour of “Breaking Legs,” Tom Dulack’s comedy that was first seen at the Old Globe in San Diego, Oct. 5-10. Later musicals will include the same touring company of “Cats” that recently played the Shubert--it’ll cost Cerritos twice as much as any single theater production last season--and an Equity company in “The World Goes ‘Round.” The only non-Equity production expected on the schedule is a touring “City of Angels.”

“It was difficult to enter the market as the new kid on the block,” said Cerritos general manager Victor Gotesman. But with one season under its belt, Cerritos is in a better position to compete.

“CHARMING”: Among the critics who praised “Alone Together” in the Pasadena Playhouse ad last Sunday was Travis Michael Holder of Entertainment Today. He found three performances “charming.”

By day, Holder works for Rick Miramontez, the publicist who promotes the Pasadena Playhouse.

It was “clearly a conflict of interest,” said Miramontez. But he said the problem was that the Playhouse marketer who culls the reviews for quotes was unaware that Holder works for Miramontez; Holder hasn’t handled the Playhouse account. Holder won’t be writing for Entertainment Today for long anyway, said Miramontez; he agreed to “wean himself” from it when Miramontez hired him.