No Bard for Pershing Square

Shakespeare Festival/LA is scrambling to find the money to pay for a new venue for its free downtown performances this summer, in the wake of a decision by the Department of Recreation and Parks to withdraw city funding for the use of Pershing Square, the organization’s venue since 2000.

The festival’s producing artistic director, Ben Donenberg, said that finding a venue is less a problem than finding the money to pay the show’s running costs. Five years ago, Recreation and Parks had provided $66,000, but that amount had diminished to last year’s $22,000.

The department’s general manager, Jon Kirk Mukri, decided to eliminate all funding this year for “purely budgetary” reasons, he said, citing additional indirect costs to his department, much of it for overtime, beyond the cash outlay.

The decision does not affect the festival’s summer performances at South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes.