Robbins Stops Bankrolling Actors’ Gang

‘If you know your dad will give you the dough, you have no reason to get a job,” said actor-director Tim Robbins. “It’s crippling.”

And so Robbins has stepped down as the Actors’ Gang artistic director and chief financial benefactor (if not its dad).

The group is now being run by a board committee of six company members: Ned Bellamy, Brian Brophy, V.J. Foster, Dean Robinson, Clare Wren and Tracy Young, with managing director Mark Seldis and production manager Don Luce remaining in their administrative positions.

“As far as direct cash out of [Robbins’] pocket, those days are gone,” Seldis said. However, on his way out the door Robbins did arrange a $100,000 three-year grant from PolyGram to the Gang as part of his own deal with the company. And he’ll probably return to the Gang to executive-produce projects in which he has a particular interest.

Robbins co-founded the Gang in the early ‘80s with fellow ex-UCLA theater students and soon became its artistic director and the director of many of its shows, en route to achieving greater fame as a movie star and director.

In the late ‘80s, Robbins returned to New York, where he had grown up. His personal involvement in individual shows declined; the last full production he staged was “The Good Woman of Setzuan” in 1990, followed only by his radio play “Mayhem” (presented by L.A. Theatre Works) in 1992.

However, Robbins remained the Gang’s artistic director, and his movie earnings were the group’s main source of revenue.

He put up most of the $250,000 that paid for the 1993-1994 renovation of the Gang’s new space, Seldis said. In 1992, Robbins had challenged others to come forward with donations by offering to match whatever anyone else contributed. But Robbins recalled that his own donations “exceeded three or four times what we raised.” He declined to say how much he has invested in the Gang over the years, but his donations made up between 60% and 90% of the Gang’s annual contributed income, Seldis said.

At a Gang meeting late last year, Robbins finally “got honest with the geographic limitations” of his position, he said. “It’s difficult to give my notes long-distance, or to be hands-on when I came in only once a month. . . . I don’t need to be a figurehead any more.”

He remains a board member and retains the title “Founding Artistic Director.” He hopes to produce a couple of plays at the Gang’s theater sometime next year. “I’ll be involved as much as they want me to,” he said. “But my checkbook isn’t bottomless. They have to know they can write their own grants. It’s great that they’re kicking ass on running things themselves.”

At least for now, no one person will replace Robbins, and he doesn’t think the Gang needs “a central voice.” If there is any theater that can function without an artistic director, it’s the Gang, Robbins said: “We have a common vocabulary, a common ground.” Members of the group “wouldn’t put up with an outsider,” he cautioned.

Seldis, however, said he expects the Gang will have an artistic director again, perhaps even next year, “but not until we set up a proper structure for fund-raising.”

“We don’t have a proper operating board,” Seldis said. “We didn’t take the same care in casting board members as we did in casting our shows.”

The Gang did increase earned income by renting the mainstage in the past two years, and the rest of 1997 has been devoted to this task, although a few Gang members will present workshop productions in the group’s smaller second space. Meanwhile, grant applications are going out, and benefit parties are scheduled for June 21 and Dec. 31.

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WEEKLY WINNERS: Speaking of the Actors’ Gang, it co-hosted the recent LA Weekly theater awards ceremony at the Alex Theatre and won the musical of the year award for “Euphoria.” Other top production awards went to “I Am a Man” at the Fountain Theatre for production of the year and Buffalo Nights Theatre Company’s “Modigliani” for revival of the year. Director Ron Link won a career achievement award.