$19-Million Addition Set for South Coast Repertory

South Coast Repertory officials announced Friday that groundbreaking will take place July 25 for a $19-million addition that will include a 336-seat theater to be named the Judie Argyros Stage.

Judie Argyros is the wife of Orange County developer George Argyros. The couple has donated $5 million to the Costa Mesa theater, the largest in South Coast’s 37-year history. The money has been in hand since September, but the Newport Beach couple decided not to announce the donation until now.

The new theater, which is slated to open in the fall of 2002, will augment the existing 507-seat Mainstage and the 161-capacity Second Stage. Production limitations on the Second Stage, which will be remodeled as a 99-seat studio theater, prompted the drive for a new, balconied proscenium theater that will allow South Coast to expand its offerings and produce them on a grander scale.

South Coast’s $40-million fund-raising campaign also aims to net an additional $11 million to boost the theater’s endowment, as well as $2 million a year to help meet operating expenses through the 2001-02 season.

“We’re on target, we’re making progress,” said David Emmes, the theater’s co-founder and producing artistic director

To date, South Coast has announced $22.6 million in campaign donations.

As philanthropists, the Argyroses are known chiefly for giving millions to Chapman University in Orange. But they also have supported South Coast for more than 20 years. George Argyros is a leading figure in Orange County politics; he raised more than $1 million for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign.

“This theater stole my heart from the very beginning,” Judie Argyros said Friday.

The Argyroses said they were especially interested in fostering children’s theater programs at South Coast.

The South Coast gift arrives on the heels of Pasadena Playhouse’s announcement of a $2-million donation from former Vons Chief Executive Roger E. Stangeland and his wife, Lilah. The theater’s general operating fund will receive $500,000 over the next four years, while $1.5 million will be left to the playhouse’s fledgling endowment as part of the Stangelands’ estate.

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Pasadena Playhouse is offering two “naming opportunities” similar to the South Coast gift--though slightly higher-priced. Although the entire historic structure will keep the name Pasadena Playhouse, the main auditorium could be named after a donor for $5 million, while the playhouse’s proposed second-stage theater, which may be built at a yet-to-be-determined site in Old Town Pasadena, could bear a donor’s name for $3 million.

When told that South Coast’s new second stage was being named in response to the recent gift, Pasadena’s artistic director Sheldon Epps said the $3 million was somewhat negotiable. However, he noted that while naming opportunities are “a great way to honor people, I don’t think that’s why someone would give that much money.”

Epps said that the Stangelands’ gift is important because after a theater is named, “you’ve got to produce in it”--and the interest from an endowment will “allow a greater degree of artistic freedom, with slightly less of a constant eye on the box office.” The Stangeland donation is “a tremendous vote of confidence in the artistic renaissance of the theater,” Epps said.