LATC Names New Managing Director; Ahmanson Subscribers Still in the Dark

The Los Angeles Theatre Center has raided Wall Street in an attempt to restore the financial health of the downtown theater complex.

Robert N. Lear, formerly director of international communications at the New York Stock Exchange, assumed the title of managing director at LATC on Monday.

His position there is equal--on paper, at least--to those of the theater’s founders, Bill Bushnell and Diane White. Their titles have changed slightly as part of the new arrangement: Bushnell’s from “artistic producing director” to “artistic director” and White’s from “artistic producer” to “producing director.”

Lear is responsible for marketing, development, public relations, facilities, administrative services and finance. He will contribute “input” on artistic decisions, he said, but “the administrative side will not drive the artistic direction. We will help to stabilize it.”

If disagreements arise among the triumvirate of directors, and they can’t negotiate them away, the executive committee of the theater’s board of directors will serve as the arbiter.

This sharing of powers will set a precedent for theaters in the ‘90s, claimed Bushnell, adding that “there is more than enough work and ego gratification to go around” among the three of them.

Lear faces severe financial challenges at the four-theater complex. In an agreement reached last June with the theater’s primary creditor, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, LATC is required to reduce its deficit from a little over $1 million to $500,000 by Dec. 31 and to $250,000 by April 30.

“So far, we’ve met every single benchmark” in that campaign, Lear said on Tuesday. Asked specifically about the goal to increase contributions, Bushnell said that “promising discussions” have been held with the Irvine Foundation and with “a major international brokerage house” that might underwrite the theater’s festival of new plays. He added that it’s too early to report on the campaign to raise money from the entertainment industry. That effort was initiated by movie director Steven Spielberg’s offer to donate $100,000--if six other Hollywood donors match it.

Lear worked at the New York Stock Exchange from 1985 until he resigned to take his new job. He declined to compare his compensation from the two institutions, saying only that “any trade-offs I made, I made knowingly.”

Asked what was the reaction at the stock exchange when he announced his plans, Lear joked, “The market fell 40 points.” But he said his decision was “not terribly surprising” to those who knew his background.

That background includes, from 1973-75, the creation and direction of the Foundation for Urban Cultural Development, which was designed to help institutions like LATC. He also was managing director of the Colonnades Theatre Lab in New York from 1975-80 and, since 1986, the part-time associate director of Theatre International Exchange Service, an organization that arranges exchanges of directors and productions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Lear left full-time theater work for the business world in 1980, thinking that he might return some day, but with sharpened skills. “In the ‘70s,” he said, “we did it (theater management) by osmosis. I thought it was time to learn from the inside.” His education included a year as general manager of training on a $1-billion industrial development project for a petrochemical company, for which he supervised a $12-million budget.

He met Bushnell and White during “a long weekend” at the PepsiCo Summerfare festival in New York last summer. Talking with them, he sensed “a resonance with what I wanted to do.” Though Lear visited the Los Angeles Festival in 1987, he had never been to LATC. Following a “five-day immersion” there in August, he signed up.

Asked what was so appealing about Lear, White noted “the fact that he was interested in the same kind of theater that we were.”

Bushnell added: “He’s smart. I can’t stand to work with stupid people. The complexities of this institution didn’t frighten him.”

Asked whether Bushnell will really share his previously dominant position at LATC with White and Lear, one former employee observed: “He has given them the power. Whether he can take it back--if he decides he wants to--is something else. He’s always going to pick up cigarette butts on the sidewalk in front of the theater. But if he can put his left brain to some use other than playing with numbers, it’ll be good for everybody.”

A VERY LONG MONTH: When the Los Angeles production of “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” was postponed from next April to 1991, Ahmanson Theatre producing director Gordon Davidson asked Ahmanson subscribers for a month to come up with a suitable substitute before worrying about getting refunds.

A month has now passed.

An Ahmanson representative said only that Davidson is even now in London (where else?) shopping for a show to take the place of “Robbins,” and that he will return in a couple of weeks.

CALREP, a new professional theater affiliated with Cal State Long Beach, opens its first season Friday with the West Coast premiere of “Lucy’s Play” by John Clifford. The American premiere of “Breaker Morant” will join the repertory Oct. 27. Information: (213) 985-5526.

ITCHEY FOOT: Edit Villarreal’s adaptation of “Love Medicine,” a Louise Erdrich novel set on an Indian reservation, will open the Mark Taper Forum’s “Sundays at the Itchey Foot” series Oct. 22. Roberta Levitow will direct.

NOT OUR BAG: “We freely admit that here at CMT heavy drama is not our bag, and that avant-garde soul-searching is not for us!” So wrote California Music Theatre artistic director Gary Davis in this season’s subscription brochure.

So that explains why Robert Wilson didn’t direct “The Pajama Game.”