Alternative Repertory Short on Time

Hopes of keeping the Alternative Repertory Theatre alive without its two founding leaders are all but dead after the abrupt resignation of the theater’s entire board of directors.

Nancy Lutz, board president, said Monday she and the five other members decided they lack the time and money to make a go of ART after the departure of producer Gary Christensen and artistic director Patricia L. Terry, the husband and wife who had run the Santa Ana theater throughout its 13-year history. Less than two weeks ago Lutz had said the board would recruit new artistic leadership and keep the theater going without its founders.

But on further consideration, Lutz said, “the financial situation and time commitment was more than any of us could [deal with]. . . . ART was a part of many of our lives for a long, long time. Not to have it will open up a big void.”

Lutz said emergency donations the theater raised two months ago have virtually been spent, including the first quarterly installment of a $50,000 sponsorship grant from BMC Software.

Christensen said he learned Monday that BMC was withdrawing the rest of its grant because of the turmoil.

“I think it’s totally understandable. The ART they initially were willing to support is not the ART that exists at the moment.”

ART is the dean of grass-roots theaters in Orange County that take as their mission the staging of classics and artistically challenging contemporary plays. Other local theaters, including the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble in Fullerton and the now-homeless Theatre District, formerly in Costa Mesa, modeled themselves after ART.

For the time being, control over the theater has reverted to Christensen, whose resignation goes into effect June 30. He said he and Terry do not see the board’s abdication as an opening to jump back in and rescue the theater on their terms. The couple announced their resignation May 25, citing frustrations that the business demands of keeping the theater afloat had diverted them from the creative work they relished most, and that in the face of flat attendance they were putting in too much effort for too little return.

“I am really not interested at this point in picking up the ball and running with it,” Christensen said Monday. The board e-mailed him its letter of resignation Friday; Christensen asked Terry whether she wanted to step back in as artistic director and form a new board. “She did not have to think long about it,” he said.

ART’s apparent demise comes just two months after the theater seemingly had triumphed over adversity. Early this year it was financially strapped because of high expenses and flat attendance at the Grand Central Art Center in the downtown Artists Village, where ART moved in January 1999.

Christensen and Terry put out an appeal in February, and the theater’s supporters responded by April with $15,500. Then BMC, a Houston-based company with a branch in Irvine, came through with its grant--half the theater’s annual budget of about $100,000--to ensure ART’s survival for at least another season.

But equally important for a small theater’s survival is the sweat equity of its artistic and business staff, who typically work for love, not money. And in ART’s case, that crucial asset had worn away and could not be replaced.

Barring an unlikely infusion of new blood and new money, all that is left is legally to dissolve the theater, Christensen said.

ART’s bylaws as a nonprofit organization do not allow him to do that by himself; he said he will appoint two additional board members, the minimum required, and they will make all decisions. Christensen said a former ART board member and a woman who has worked for the theater “from the beginning” have agreed to serve; he would not name them because they have not formally joined.

“I’m not trying to just bring in puppet people” to rubber-stamp the theater’s demise, Christensen said. “If they were to say ART should continue, fine. If [the others] are interested in doing that work, then replace me as a board member and do that work. But that’s asking an awful lot. Obviously at this point there isn’t a lot of interest in keeping this organization going.”

The far more probable outcome, Christensen said, is that the rump board will dissolve ART. By law, he said, any assets and money left after all debts are paid must be donated to another nonprofit theater. He said ART has enough money on hand to pay its bills through the end of the season, scheduled to conclude June 24 with the closing of the light comedy “Psychopathia Sexualis.”

Christensen said ART pays $1,000 a month rent to Cal State Fullerton, which owns the Grand Central Art Center--home to satellite studios, galleries and residences for university graduate art students. The theater’s 82 seats and sound and lighting system belong to ART.

Christensen said that selling all fixtures to Cal State Fullerton would be “the easiest and quickest way” to liquidate ART’s assets. “They would have a fully operating theater and it seems they would have a very high potential to find a theater company” to replace ART as a tenant.

Mike McGee, the Cal State faculty member in charge of operations at Grand Central, said Monday that any moves would be made in consultation with the university’s theater department.

“There are a number of theaters out there” that might be interested in the space, McGee said. “One way or another, we’ll be able to work something out.”