Fledgling Performing Arts Center Is Still a Star Attraction

The honeymoon is over, and the uneasy slump that fledgling performing arts centers usually go through--reality, as the more cynical impresarios call it--should be setting in.

That’s not the case for the Civic Arts Plaza.

Nearly midway through its second year of operation, attendance at the $64-million monolith is on pace to match inaugural season numbers--a remarkable achievement, theater director Tom Mitze said.

Between October 1994 and January 1995--the first four months the Civic Arts Plaza’s two theaters were open--the center attracted 121,000 people.

During the same stretch a year later, it drew about 117,000, with popular musicals such as “Les Miserables” and “Cats” luring the masses. In all, more than 420,000 people have attended about 600 shows at the plaza to date.

Like the inaugural season, the second year is also expected to be a financial success, as celebrity acts have packed the Charles E. Probst Center’s 1,800-seat concert hall.

Because Thousand Oaks has pledged not to subsidize operating costs at the nonprofit arts complex, breaking even is critical.

“Look at Simi,” said Virginia Davis, chairwoman of the Civic Arts Plaza’s administrative board, during its monthly meeting last week. “They [Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center] have only been open a year, and they are already having problems. We should be proud of what we have accomplished here.”

So far, business has been good. But as Mitze and others quickly point out, it will take at least three years to determine the financial stability of the theaters. And even if the Civic Arts Plaza is a commercial success, Mitze said there is still much to achieve: Business is not the bottom line when it comes to running a top-rung arts center.

“You build it to be a cultural resource,” he said. “The challenge is to fulfill the cultural needs of the community while paying the bills. And it’s going to take a few years to see if we have accomplished that.”

Critics of the Civic Arts Plaza say by focusing on acts such as Barry Manilow and Liza Minelli--older stars that many teenagers and young adults consider hopelessly unhip--the center has neglected a potential audience.

Highbrow critics say the facility has taken few chances with the avant-garde, only putting on the safest and most established jazz, dance and classical music works. Mitze concedes it has been too conservative. He and the center’s board of governors plan to change that--albeit at a careful pace.

“We’ve been very middle-of-the road,” he said. “We have not done much cutting-edge stuff, and the reason is money. We’re not at the point where we can risk a lot of money on avant-garde programming.”

A former director of the La Mirada Theater and employee at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Mitze said he has followed a safe, three-pronged programming formula gleaned from 25 years of experience. The Civic Arts Plaza has largely booked big productions of well-known former Broadway plays and musicals; good--if past their prime--celebrity artists such as John Denver and Peter, Paul and Mary, and accessible family shows such as “The Nutcracker.”

The approach has worked. The facility has been a huge hit with schoolteachers and parents, who have taken advantage of daytime performances at the Civic Arts Plaza to give kids more cultural experiences.