Another Deadline Nears for L.A. Theatre Center

Another opening, another show . . . another fund-raising deadline.

Los Angeles Theatre Center is up against its second deadline in its campaign to stay alive. Even though “Bogeyman” just opened at the downtown complex, the company will suspend operations on Tuesday if $250,000 hasn’t been raised since the last deadline three weeks ago, theater officials say.

As of the middle of last week, the company was still $68,000 short of the goal.

At the same time, however, the planning goes on at LATC. Free readings of new plays (by Robert Alexander, Kelly Stuart, Tania Zobel and Bernardo Solano) and a new translation of a Marivaux classic, plus a performance of the late-night political cabaret “The Platform,” have been slated for Saturday and next Sunday, dubbed “the Little Big Weekend.” In addition, a gala benefit is penciled in for Oct. 7.

On Tuesday, LATC officials are scheduled to announce either the closing of the theater or, more likely, the details of the gala.

The deadline for raising this latest $250,000 was initially announced as the end of August. But in fact, money contributed today or on Labor Day will also count. This follows the sequence of three weeks ago, when the Aug. 11 deadline for raising the first $250,000 wasn’t met until late on Aug. 12, just before an Aug. 13 press conference.

That Aug. 13 announcement of the last-minute $100,000 that allowed LATC to meet its first deadline was accompanied by artistic director Bill Bushnell’s insistence that the anonymous benefactor was not Diane White, the LATC producing director who has previously drawn on her inheritance to help the theater.

That stipulation was not widely publicized, however, and rumors continue to circulate that White was the mystery donor. Bushnell said this week that White had given $100,000 to the theater a couple of years ago and that she has “gone into her checkbook” on other occasions (including the current “Bogeyman”), but he repeated that the latest $100,000 was not from White--and he doesn’t want people to think “the theater is internally funding itself.”

The rumors “are absolutely not true,” White said. “If I were to give the theater $100,000 at this point in time, I would definitely say it was me”--because such a gift might spur her fellow board members to match or top her contribution.

ALL FOR THE CAUSE: Which performer created the most buzz in the lobby after Monday night’s star-studded benefit for LATC?

Jonelle Allen. It wasn’t that her act was necessarily the best. It was her grace under . . . pressure.

While Allen was being lifted during a dance with Mel Johnson, the top of her skimpy, skintight outfit came unclasped, temporarily rendering her topless.

She gasped and quickly covered up with a free hand, as she gamely tried to finish the number. But as the audience at the fund-raiser laughed and whooped in response to the unintended incident, Allen mustered enough poise to declare:

“We’re gonna get some money now!”

As the laughter mounted, she added, “Well, darling, Josephine Baker did it (performed topless).” Then, referring to the award Lynn Whitfield just won for her portrayal of Baker, Allen exclaimed, “Where’s my Emmy?”

The benefit, which raised the relatively small amount of just over $10,000, also featured a less spontaneous “surprise”--the brief return of Edward James Olmos to his famous role as El Pachuco in “Zoot Suit,” which he created at the Mark Taper Forum in 1978.

Olmos entered the stage while the comedy trio Culture Clash was making fun of him in their sketch “Stand and Deliver Pizza,” from their current LATC show “A Bowl of Beings.”

“Don’t try to out- pachuco me!,” snarled Olmos, repeating a line from the Culture Clash script. The comics froze in feigned fear, leading Olmos to inquire, “Cat got your lengua? “ Then, accompanied by four dancers who emerged from the wings, Olmos launched into a rendition of “Vamos a Bailar” from “Zoot Suit,” followed by his testimony about the importance of LATC’s predecessor, Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre, in his career.

The benefit also had a more somber highlight, in Roscoe Lee Browne’s reading of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Moriturus,” about one’s desperate attempts to stave off death. In his remarks, Browne compared LATC to the speaker in the poem, who vows:

Withstanding Death

Till Life be gone

I shall treasure my breath

I shall linger on.

RADIO DAYS: KCRW-FM is also pitching in to help LATC. Starting Friday, the Santa Monica-based public radio station plans to broadcast six promotional spots for the LATC fund-raising campaign each day for two weeks.

“They don’t have a voice; we do,” said KCRW general manager Ruth Hirschman. “I think they’re very special.” Translation: KCRW won’t do a campaign like this for every strapped nonprofit organization in town.

“If they’re allowed to live long enough, something great will come out of it,” Hirschman predicted.

The promotional spots will feature actors who performed at the LATC benefit on Monday.