Dramatists Could Lower Curtain on San Diego Plays

As financial troubles threaten the La Jolla Playhouse’s 1990 season, LORT (League of Resident Theaters) president Thomas R. Hall, managing director of the Old Globe Theatre, is battling a contract that may threaten the financial and artistic future of all LORT theaters.

The battleground is a conflict between the Dramatists Guild and LORT theaters over whether the guild has a right to insist on a standard minimum contract between its members and LORT theaters.

The Dramatists Guild, which represents 7,000 American and British playwrights, demands an author’s royalty of at least 5% of the gross and an advance payment equal to the author’s royalty for one week of performances calculated at 90% of the theater’s capacity. Playwrights would be given the right to approve the actors and directors chosen to work on their projects. LORT, which represents 67 theaters, objects to all these stipulations imposed across the board on theaters that have traditionally negotiated contracts on an individual basis between theater and playwright.

But the unkindest cut of all as far as the Old Globe is concerned is the restriction proposed on a theater’s rights to participate in, and profit from, future productions on Broadway, said Hall.

“The Dramatists Guild is saying ‘We want you to put up the same resources, but we are limiting your part in the future,’ ” said Hall. “They are limiting our rights to produce in a Broadway or Off-Broadway production. We’re not going to put up that money without some kind of recovery down the road.”

It is no coincidence that the guild’s proposed contract comes along at a time when more new plays are being produced by regional theaters than by commercial houses in New York, Hall said. More theater artists are now being employed by LORT theaters than by commercial houses in New York. Consequently the Dramatists Guild turned its attention from commercial theater producers, with whom they have a contract, to LORT producers, with whom they have none.

The point Hall feels the playwrights are missing is that commercial houses are comparable in size and earning capacity, but LORT theaters vary widely. Nonprofit theaters may see returns from works that move to commercial theaters like “The Cocktail Hour,” “Into the Woods,” “Rumors” (all from the Old Globe) and “Dangerous Games,” “Grapes of Wrath,” “Two Rooms” (from the Playhouse), but tend to earmark money from profitable shows to counter the deficits incurred from new work that doesn’t fare as well--like the Playhouse’s “80 Days” or the Globe’s “Up in Saratoga.”

For an example of how shaky life can be in regional theater, one need look no further than the La Jolla Playhouse’s recent declaration that, if it doesn’t raise $500,000 by the end of December, it will cancel the 1990 season.

The playhouse’s plight is by no means an exception in the local theater community. In 1987, the San Diego Repertory Theatre needed to raise $750,000, half of it in six months, to survive. The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, a non-LORT theater that will present plays next season by two of the playwrights who helped craft the Guild contract, Christopher Durang and Terrence McNally, has a deficit of $250,000. After the fire that destroyed the Old Globe in 1978, it took the theater years to lower its deficit to manageable proportions and bring its average attendance up from 65-70% to its current level of 85-90%.

Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse, projects a worst-case scenario in which the only plays regional theaters might be able to afford under the proposed contract would be classics and revivals in the public domain. But that is not a viable alternative for the playhouse, which sees the generation of new work as part of its mission, Levey said. Des McAnuff, artistic director of the playhouse, is already working on a new musical that he hopes to premiere in 1990 if the season goes on.

Hall said the Globe, at this point, is willing to drop any playwright that insists on adhering to the Guild contract. A. R. Gurney, whose work the Globe has produced on three occasions, told the Times he would “have trouble getting together again” with the Globe if the theater remains “adamant.” Hall doesn’t want to see that happen. But the question may hang in the air until October when the LORT has its next general meeting.

“If we all work as artists together, instead of with the classic adversarial employer-employee relationship, we have a chance of creating high quality theater for the long term,” said Hall. “Our job is to create a body of work of art, entertainment and education. It requires a different train of thought than that which created the healthy Broadway. Our job is to stabilize the institutions over a long period of time so artists can look for better conditions over a long period of time. Part of the fight is for theaters like the Playhouse. If the Playhouse were not able to continue its work we would all suffer, but especially the artists. We want to protect those in the least good shape.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The La Jolla Playhouse is exploring new strategies for fund raising, according to public relations director Constance Harvey. She kiddingly described one approach: the staff at the playhouse is contributing to a LOTTO pool.. . . . For the record: It was not the La Jolla Playhouse production of “Silent Edward” that the California Arts Council criticized in its negative appraisal of the Playhouse’s Performance Outreach Project, but “The Man Who Had No Story”. . . . The latest word on “The Debutante,” the all-black reworking of the Pygmalion myth, commissioned by Kit Goldman, managing director of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, is that it will be a musical. San Diego-born Cleavon Little, who is set to star in the show in June, 1990 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan is “not a singer,” said Goldman, “but neither is Rex Harrison.” Little will be starring in “All God’s Dangers” in October on Broadway. Goldman said she wishes him “all the luck in the world” and hopes he will be back in time for “The Debutante”. . . . Geoff Hoyle will take a regional detour with “The Fool Show,” a La Jolla Playhouse production that was scheduled to open on or Off-Broadway next month. His next stop is Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco in Thanksgiving, to be followed by a run at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in January. . . . Sledgehammer Theatre moved into the late-night theater scene for the last two weekends of “Pre-Paradise Sorry Now,” with 11 p.m. shows Fridays and Saturdays. The reason? The lead actor and dramaturge on the show, Bruce McKenzie, is doing double duty in Mac Wellman’s “Albanian Softshoe” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.