THEATER NOTES : NEA Has a Friend in Theatre LA

The L.A. theater community has joined the fight for the survival of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Theatre LA, the organization that represents most L.A. companies and many individual producers, recently sent packets to its 115 members with suggestions on how to enlist audience and board members, donors and vendors in pro-NEA lobbying efforts. William Freimuth, executive director of Theatre LA, said that at least half the membership appears to be doing some of the activities suggested in the packets.

The packet recommends making a special effort to reach Republican donors. Art Manke, one of the artistic directors of Glendale-based A Noise Within, said that there are “probably a lot of Republicans” on his board, given the relative strength of the GOP in Glendale. The pro-NEA campaign was brought up at a recent board retreat, Manke said, and there was “no resistance” from any of the board members.

Only 14 Theatre LA members appear on the list of 1994 L.A. NEA grant recipients that was included in the packets. However, Freimuth contends that the group’s other 101 members also have a big stake in the outcome of the NEA fight.

“Should the NEA go away,” Freimuth said, the recipients of the larger NEA grants, such as Center Theatre Group, “will probably find the money somewhere else. They have the staff and the influence.” But if the larger groups turn to foundations that had previously been supporting some of the smaller theaters, “those foundations might cut back from those smaller theaters.”

A similar ripple effect might be felt in the depletion of NEA money that now goes to state and local arts agencies, Freimuth said. Some theaters, including A Noise Within, receive NEA money only indirectly, through grants from the state, county or city, or grants to organizations that present touring shows.

Some NEA critics have suggested that all arts money should go directly to state and local agencies, bypassing Washington. But Freimuth doubts that the money would be split fairly under that scenario. He fears that a large and relatively arts-intensive state such as California might suffer, while “if you wanted to open a theater in Wyoming, you’d get a lot of money.”

He also contends that such a distribution would tilt grants even further in the direction of “culturally oriented social programs” rather than professional artists. “The NEA hasn’t gone as far as the city of L.A. Cultural Affairs Department or the (private) Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest grants in looking for ‘two birds with one grant’ programs,” Freimuth said. “The smaller the grant-giving entity, the more likely they’ll want to cover more than one base for each dollar spent.”

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WEST END LOOKS EAST: The West End Artists Theatre Co., which had scheduled a season of productions at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, recently withdrew from the Lobero but now has cast its eye on Palm Springs.

The company, previously based at the West End Theatre in Van Nuys, had entered Santa Barbara last year in the wake of the abrupt withdrawal by the Theatre Corp. of America, which had been bringing its Pasadena Playhouse shows to the Lobero.

Last summer West End presented one show at the Lobero, a revival of its long-running L.A. hit, “Crazy Words, Crazy Tunes.” Artistic director Edmund Gaynes offered twofer tickets to “Crazy Words” to all the Lobero subscribers who had been left high and dry by the cancellation of the Theatre Corp. series.

Gaynes said “Crazy Words” went well enough to encourage him to offer a 1995 season at the Lobero, which would have consisted of “Bein’ With Behan,” “Lovesong,” “Tin Pan Alley” and “Broadway Sings Out!”

But the idea of a Lobero subscription series didn’t fly with the Santa Barbara residents who felt they had been burned by the Theatre Corp. The initial mailings elicited “hostile reactions” from people who apparently didn’t understand that there was no connection between the two production companies. Gaynes said he sold only about 50 subscriptions in two months of trying.

In retrospect, Gaynes said, it will take a long time for any would-be Lobero subscription series to overcome the damage done by the Theatre Corp. cancellation. Throw in reports of other recent canceled series--at the Alex in Glendale or the California Music Theatre in Pasadena--and “you wonder why anyone would buy a ticket more than 30 minutes before curtain time,” Gaynes said.

With his original West End Playhouse earthquake-damaged, Gaynes has now set his sights on two sites. One is the 48-seat Two Roads Theatre in Studio City, where he has resumed producing under the Actors’ Equity 99-Seat Theater Plan--which he also used at the West End. The other is the 140-seat Starlight in Palm Springs, where he’ll present “Bein’ With Behan” next month under an Equity contract--as he would have done at the Lobero.