Victory Theatre Doing Its Best to Break Even

Theater always has its ups and downs. That’s particularly true among the small professional theaters in Los Angeles.

A few years ago there were the “Equity-waiver wars,” brought about by a small group of actors who objected to working in Equity-waiver theaters for little or no pay while the producers were getting rich.

So a new Equity 99-Seat Plan was developed to establish a minimal stipend for any actor working in a 99-seat theater.

Now another small group of actors, still unhappy with the low pay, is making the same waves within Actors’ Equity Assn. But it looks as though theater owners are going to win this fight. Several theaters, including Burbank’s Victory Theatre, are prepared to open their checkbooks for Equity scrutiny to prove that the producers, far from getting rich, are usually just able to break even.

Maria Gobetti and Tom Ormeny, co-artistic directors of the Victory, readily admit that they are retrenching in spite of the large success of their recent production of Lee Murphy’s “Catch a Falling Star.” They have been renting out their main stage theater, the Victory, and are producing under the banner Bare Bones Ensemble in the adjacent Little Victory Theatre.

“Well,” Gobetti says, philosophically, “we were able to finance them [smaller productions] in the Little Victory. We’ve been renting out to get enough money to keep going, and to be able to be free to do the Bare Bones productions. The actors have raised a good portion of the money, so it is a company effort. But the only way to sustain it all was to rent out the larger theater until Lee Murphy gets her next play written.”

Bare Bones began a few months ago with a revival of “Eastern Standard,” which did fairly well, Gobetti says. But the main thrust of the theater is the development and production of new plays and Los Angeles premieres.

Bare Bones’ second production, opening tonight at the Little Victory, is a comedy by George F. Walker called “Escape From Happiness.”

Both Gobetti, who is directing, and Ormeny, who is appearing in the play, are specific about calling it a comedy, in spite of the title. Seriocomic is closer, they say.

“It’s an extraordinary play,” Gobetti says, “very risky, and theatrically pretty dangerous. It’s very funny, but the characters are very dark. They’re the articulate poor, working-class people who are having trouble living.”

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Ormeny says he likes to think of the play as almost American Chekhov, because of the intertwined themes and the many plot reversals. It concerns the return of a father to his family.

“Walker is talking about family dynamics,” Gobetti says, in which the father of the play is important not only to his three daughters, but to a wife who refuses to acknowledge that he is her husband.

“Thematically,” Ormeny adds, “Walker wants to talk about a redefinition of love in a very complex world. We think of love as sort of the nice things that we experience with people. It may not really be just that.”

So until they can take back their main stage, the kind of theater Gobetti and Ormeny want to do can be found on the Little Victory stage. And it isn’t nearly as bare bones as the name implies, judging from the set for “Escape,” an elaborate kitchen.

In spite of diminishing arts grants, and the impracticality of going after subscription audiences for a new-play milieu, Gobetti and Ormeny are smiling and optimistic. And Ormeny, in particular, thinks current trends are positive.

“What’s happening in Los Angeles is unprecedented,” he says. “We have a theater community larger than any place on the planet. I heard on a radio program that there are 250,000 people in the Greater Los Angeles area who defined themselves as actors in the last census. That’s a talent pool that’s unheard of.”

And they all need a place to act.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Escape From Happiness.”

* WHERE: Little Victory Theatre, 3324 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Indefinitely.

* HOW MUCH: $17.

* CALL: (818) 841-5421.