NEW LEADS AT PASADENA PLAYHOUSE

Susan Dietz, an artistic co-director of Public Stage/L.A., and Stephen Rothman, who two years ago left the executive directorship of the Pasadena Playhouse to help run two Florida theaters, are the new producing co-directors of the Pasadena Playhouse effective immediately.

The announcement was made at a press conference Wednesday on the Playhouse stage by developer David Houk (whose Historical Restoration Associates owns the Playhouse and guarantees the operation of the theater under a complex lease-back arrangement with the City of Pasadena and the nonprofit Pasadena Playhouse State Theatre of California Inc.).

Dietz and Rothman, who were selected from a field of 50 applicants, had approached Houk independently. It was his suggestion that they team up.

The new co-directors, who have known each other professionally for about seven years (“We met when I staged ‘Uncommon Women’ at the Callboard,” said Dietz), are expected to make all decisions jointly and start the Playhouse’s next season sometime next spring.

“We’re both doing everything,” Rothman said: “choosing the season, raising the funds, hiring the staff,” which he said would be small to start. “Because we’ve known each other for so long, it makes the give-and-take easier.”

“Not only are Steve and I collaborating,” said Dietz, “but I see more collaboration down the line.”

This includes the possibility of moving hit shows from the Playhouse to either the Canon or the Coronet theaters, both of which are in Beverly Hills and are operated by Public Stage/L.A., the organization jointly run by Dietz and partner Peg Yorkin.

Yorkin’s video company--Peg Yorkin Productions--will tape Playhouse shows and both Rothman and Dietz also hope to network with other regional theaters, such as the Berkeley Rep, San Diego Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse.

In the administrative shuffle, Bob Siner, who served as executive director with recently departed artistic director Jessica Myerson in the renovated Playhouse’s first season last year, has been named managing director. In addition, Dietz and Rothman are putting in place an Actors’ Advisory Board, with James Whitmore as honorary chairman. The desire, Dietz said, “is to make the Playhouse an actors’ theater, as it once was.”

Members of this board currently include Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach, Richard Dreyfuss, Estelle Parsons, William Daniels, Karl Malden, Lynn Redgrave, Martin Sheen, Karl Malden, Christina Pickles, Judith Ivey and Sally Struthers.

Few of the actors are Playhouse alums, but the idea, Dietz emphasized, was “to get actors who are committed to theater and who have the future of the Playhouse at heart.” The expectation is that some of these actors may want to bring projects to the theater.

“Their involvement will be artistic rather than financial,” Rothman added. “We’d like to have them work here for the (limited) dollars we can afford to pay.”

Any ideas for the season? “We’re all over the map,” Dietz said. “David (Houk) is contractually bound to produce four plays starting some time before May 31,” she said, acknowledging that so far no plays, projects or performers have been selected.

“What we want, beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Rothman underlined, “is to make a statement.”

Because they also want to kick off a subscription renewal campaign by Jan. 5, “We’ve made a commitment to ourselves to have a season picked by mid-December,” Dietz said. “Those 8,300 subscribers (from last season) deserve a crack at the same or better seats.”

Financially, the season will take some fast footwork. Dietz and Rothman are shooting for a subscription base of 10,000 (new and old, and including the greater Los Angeles market) and a projected operating budget of $1.3 million, yet to be approved by the board.

This allows four weeks of performance and four of rehearsal for each show (short rehearsals were a problem last season). “I’ve never mounted a show in less,” Dietz said, “and don’t intend to start now.”

As of Jan. 1, they will receive $175,000 from the $400,000 remaining from the $1 million Houk donated last year to the Pasadena Foundation for the operation of the theater. That million was and is designed to stretch, in preset increments, over a five-year period.

“The theater is totally paid for,” Houk emphasized. “There is no debt on the building behind the lease, and no debt on the lease.”

Can they make it?

Said Rothman: “It’s a tough one. I’m not sure we’d have done it without each other.” Said Dietz: “Tomorrow we get started.”

BRAVO BRAVO: The League of Producers and Theatres of Greater Los Angeles, in cooperation with Ticketron, has put the finishing touches on a wide-ranging program of day-of-performance/half-price ticket discounts.

The new service, to be called Bravo Tickets, becomes available in January at six strategically located Southland Ticketron outlets.

Final details will be announced at a Jan. 12 press conference, with initiation of the new service to follow immediately. Theaters large and small--and Equity Waiver--are expected to participate.

POSTPONED: “Tom and Viv” will not open at the Odyssey Theatre Saturday as planned. Bill Ball, former artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre, who was staging this play about T. S. Eliot and his first wife, has left the show, with artistic differences cited. Robert Goldsby (who, ironically, once was fired by Ball) is taking over the direction. At least one cast member will have to be replaced and the play’s opening has been tentatively reset for Dec. 6. Odyssey artistic director Ron Sossi declined further comment, saying only that “we’re deeply disappointed.”