Grove Shies From Strings Attached to Subsidy

The Grove Theatre Company has yet to receive $33,000 of the $53,000 subsidy that the Garden Grove City Council approved in July. The funds are waiting to be picked up, artistic director Thomas F. Bradac said, but the theater’s board is objecting to a key clause in the city contract prohibiting it from ever reapplying for a subsidy after 1991.

Under the terms of the grant, the city will phase out support for the theater over the next 3 years. That condition was agreed to by the two Grove advocates on the five-member City Council as the only way to get the current subsidy for the theater.

In the meantime, the recent election of Walter E. Donovan as mayor of Garden Grove may strengthen the theater’s hand. As a councilman, Donovan was one of the Grove’s supporters and proved to be particularly eloquent in his defense of culture.

It is too soon to tell whether newly elected councilman, Francis R. Kessler (who replaces Milton Krieger, the other Grove supporter) will side with Donovan. But because the three Grove opponents--Councilmen Raymond T. Littrell, Robert F. Dinsen and former Mayor J. Tilman Williams--still constitute a majority, the theater cannot count on winning a showdown.

A 15-member arts panel created by the City Council (as a result of last summer’s so-called “Shakespeare debates”) is expected to make policy recommendations on cultural institutions in January, when the Grove’s own plans are to be unveiled.