Where the Red Ink Flows Slower

The Pasadena Playhouse box office did well in 2001. Three of the playhouse’s five top-grossing shows, since the theater was reopened in 1986, played last year. The holiday edition of “Forever Plaid” is in third place, “Do I Hear a Waltz?” in fourth and “Side Man” in fifth--the best-selling nonmusical in playhouse history. (“Sisterella” and “Play On!” are in first and second place.)

So the playhouse bottom line looks great, right?

Not quite. Because of drops in contributed income related to the recession and Sept. 11, the playhouse had a 5% operating deficit last year--not an unusual performance for resident theaters of comparable budgets but perhaps surprising in light of the box office figures.

Still, the playhouse has made great strides toward erasing its debt in recent years, according to recent figures provided by the company. Between the end of 1997 and the end of 2001, the playhouse’s total debt dropped to $405,376 from $1,661,827. In total assets and debits, the playhouse ended 1998 more than $3 million in the red; it ended 2001 $812,296 in the red.

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BARRIERS MOVED: Police barricades that were blocking direct access to the David Henry Hwang Theatre, the Little Tokyo home of East West Players, have been moved half a block north on Judge John Aiso Street.

Theater employees and patrons can now turn north from 1st Street to Judge John Aiso Street and approach the theater and its adjacent parking lot with no impediments. But access to Judge John Aiso Street and the theater is still blocked from Temple Street, on the north end of the block.

The barricades went up in October in response to the possibility of terrorist attacks against Police Department headquarters, across the street from the theater. Automobiles had to go through a police checkpoint before they were allowed on the block, and theater officials feared the barricades deterred some of their customers.

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LA JOLLA LARGESS: La Jolla Playhouse recently announced $5.2 million in new gifts, topped by $2 million from Joel and Rosanne Holliday. Joel Holliday was the former chief financial officers of Applied Micro Circuits. The money is going toward a campaign to raise $36 million, of which $27 million has already been raised since 1997, led by a 1999 gift of $5 million from Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan.

Some of that money will go toward a new building, to be named after the Jacobses, that will house the company’s offices, its educational and outreach programs, rehearsal and shop space, and a black box theater. It was originally slated to cost about $7.5 million, with the black box seating only about 200.

But the capacity has moved up to 500 since the return of Des McAnuff to his previous job as artistic director, and a new projected price tag is expected within a month. Groundbreaking is scheduled for next fall, with an opening in 2004.

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WILL THEY BUY IT?: Santa Monica Playhouse is trying to raise $450,000 in the next 16 months to buy half of the building it has rented for 40 years. Otherwise, the rent will rise to the prohibitive level of $13,000 a month, said Evelyn Rudie, one of the artistic directors of the company, which operates two sub-100-seat theaters in downtown Santa Monica.

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REPRISE LINE-UP: The next Reprise! season will open with “Follies” (June 16-23) at the Wadsworth Theater, followed by three shows at the group’s usual home base, UCLA’s Freud Playhouse: “Anything Goes” (Sept. 18-29), “On the Twentieth Century” (Jan. 22-Feb. 2, 2003) and a 50th-anniversary production of “Kismet” (March 19-30, 2003).

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24 HOURS: Remember what it was like to pull an all-nighter in order to turn in a paper on time? A group of playwrights will revisit that experience next weekend--on behalf of the New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund, not for the benefit of a better grade.

For “The 24 Hour Plays,” Beth Henley, Neil LaBute, Bruce Vilanch, John Belluso, Matthew Carnahan, Raven Metzner and Stu Zicherman will spend next Saturday night and Sunday morning at Moxie Films in Hollywood writing 10-minute plays that will be rehearsed Sunday and presented to audiences at the Henry Fonda Theatre that night.

The casts will include Christine Lahti, Mary Steenburgen, John Ritter, Ione Skye, Jeffrey Jones, Donovan Leitch, Bob Balaban and many more.

The actors will report Saturday evening, briefly describe themselves to the writers, and pose for a photo that the writers can use as they create during the night. Each actor also will bring along a prop and a costume that may or may not be used.

At 7 a.m. Sunday, the writers will turn in scripts and the actors will memorize lines and rehearse. There will be a one-hour technical rehearsal for all six plays just prior to the 8 p.m. curtain.

Tickets cost $50, $75 or $100. Information: (213) 365-3500 or (714) 740-7878.

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GEFFEN GRANT: Geffen Playhouse has received its first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts: $15,000 to commission and develop a new play by Donald Margulies, whose “Collected Stories” and “Dinner With Friends” have already played the Geffen.

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TOPANGA TIME: Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s summer season will include Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” (June 2-Sept. 29); Peter Hall’s adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” with music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell (June 29-Sept. 29); Jean Giraudoux’s “The Madwoman of Chaillot” (July 27-Oct. 19); and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Sept. 2-Oct. 20).

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Don Shirley is a Times staff writer.