Lights Out for Director in Redondo

Redondo Beach’s Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, the dominant musical theater production company in the southwestern half of Los Angeles County, has begun 1998 without an artistic director. Irv Kimber, the producing artistic director since he co-founded the group in 1991, is out.

“My position was officially eliminated, according to the party line,” Kimber said. But Kimber believes he was ousted at the behest of the group’s executive producer and fellow co-founder James Blackman--though he professed not to know why.

It was because Kimber’s tastes were too expensive, Blackman said. When planning budgets for individual shows, “Irv flies in a $300,000 to $320,000 stratosphere,” Blackman said. “We are a $225,000 to $250,000 company . . . He’s a B-1 bomber.”

“No one ever said a word to me about that,” responded Kimber after hearing Blackman’s explanation. “No reason was given in the separation agreement.”

David Serena, an attorney who recently resigned from the board after a two-year stint as chairman of the executive committee, said Kimber had been willing to be flexible when the board made specific requests to cut back. “The final cost of the show was always less than the approved budget,” Serena said.

Serena said he tried unsuccessfully to resolve the differences between Blackman and Kimber. “James wouldn’t talk to Irv for the last 1 1/2 years except through me,” Serena said. “And when he talked to me about Irv, it was only in derogatory terms.”

Kimber agreed that the two hadn’t spoken in a long time, but Blackman denied it. “We spoke to each other,” he said. Serena “just didn’t like how we spoke.”

Speaking to The Times about Kimber, Blackman praised him as “a good guy who does brilliant work. He’s very creative.” Yet Blackman believes the company doesn’t need an artistic director.

“Businesses that are successful are run as dictatorships, not as democracies,” Blackman said. “I will be in charge of quality control.” Two other staff members also will assume various duties that previously belonged to Kimber.

As a nonprofit, the organization has a board of directors, but board chairman Patrick Rhodes declined to comment. Blackman, however, said that Rhodes backs him up.

The group has a $580,000 deficit, down from a high point of $1.8 million, Blackman said, “but we need to pay it off. The money was going to underwrite bloated budgets.” For example, Blackman said that Kimber wanted to use more than the required number of Actors’ Equity members per show. According to Equity’s contract with the group, 10 are required; Blackman plans not to exceed that number.

Blackman objected to the fact that Kimber flew in a New York actor to play Scrooge in the group’s recent “A Christmas Carol.” “There wasn’t anyone on this coast I trusted with the role,” Kimber told The Times.

“We’ll cut corners where they won’t be noticed by the audience,” Blackman said. He said that many of the same directors, designers and technicians will continue to work for the group, and he’s confident that “the audience won’t perceive any difference at all.”

South Bay was founded by Blackman, Kimber, Douglas McPherson and Patty Ewing. McPherson is still with the company, but, like Kimber, Ewing was dismissed at the end of the year.

A high school friend of Blackman’s in Redondo Beach, Ewing had handled publicity, though only on a freelance basis in recent years. Ewing said she “wasn’t happy to be shoved aside,” but she credited both Blackman’s enthusiasm and Kimber’s expertise for the group’s success. Of the two men’s recent dispute, she said that “Irv wanted to spend more money in production, and James wanted to spend it in advertising.” She’s confident the group will survive: “It’s bigger than just four people.”

EAST WEST CONTRACT: When East West Players opens its new mid-sized theater with “Pacific Overtures” in Little Tokyo on March 12, the production will use an Actors’ Equity contract based on a contract normally used in the Bay Area, Equity announced last week.

That means only five performances a week, as opposed to the eight required under more advanced Equity contracts.

The production will employ 13 Equity members and seven non-Equity members--more Equity actors than the contract required, said Tim Dang, East West artistic director and the director of “Pacific Overtures.” In return, Equity allowed a concession in the weekly wage scale. Equity members will get $180 a week instead of the $235 that would normally be used under this contract, Dang said. That’s in addition to health and pension benefits and a possible raise if the show is successful enough to extend.

However, contracts for the rest of the group’s initial season in the new space have yet to be negotiated.