A Revolutionary Idea : Theater: Long Beach Civic Light Opera tries to reach a new ethnic audience with a free, flag-waving musical.

LONG BEACH —  An estimated 1,900 Cambodians showed up at the Terrace Theater last week for the Long Beach Civic Light Opera’s production of “1776,” a musical comedy celebrating the birth of the nation.

Only a portion of them, however, actually saw the play.

Walking freely in and out of the auditorium during the performance, many noisily tended their crying babies and chattering children. Several hundred spent most of the first act lounging in the lobby eating Cambodian egg rolls and visiting with friends. And by the beginning of the second act, nearly half of the audience had gone home.

“I know it must be good,” said one man, speaking through an interpreter in the lobby, “but I don’t understand it.”

Such was the tenor of an unusual experiment in community relations and the theater company’s latest sojourn into a marketing technique that it helped pioneer: tailoring artistic productions for specific ethnic audiences.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” said Pegge Logefeil, managing director, adding that last Sunday’s special performance was the company’s first major attempt to woo Asians.

What happened initially caused some alarm. Distracted and confused by the audience’s apparent inattention, some cast members temporarily lost their composure, at several points they even laughed aloud on stage. At a hastily called backstage meeting during intermission, they decided to cut major portions of dialogue out of the final act.

“We couldn’t hear ourselves think, let alone speak,” said Franc Luz, who portrays Thomas Jefferson. “It was like nothing I’ve ever done.”

In his dressing room after the performance, Dean Jones, who headlines the production as John Adams, made a startling confession. “I just lost it,” he said. “It was the least professional performance you’ll ever see out of this cast.”

Yet LBCLO organizers consider the event a success. If there was a shortcoming, they said later, it was theirs for not acquainting the Cambodians with American theater etiquette beforehand and for inviting them to a production requiring a fairly sophisticated command of English. Next time the company decides to entertain the city’s large Cambodian population, Logefeil said, it will choose a more accessible production that will be of interest to children as well as adults.

There will definitely be a next time, she stressed. For reaching out to the area’s diverse ethnic communities is part of what the company is all about.

The approach was “discovered” almost by accident five years ago, Logefeil said, at a time when the civic light opera, like almost every other artistic organization in town, was experiencing major financial difficulties. Facing a deficit of about $950,000, she said, “we were trying everything we could to market tickets and sell the show.”

One of the shows that season was “Song of Norway,” a musical based on the life of Norwegian songwriter Edvard Grieg. Someone--Logefeil does not remember who--suggested targeting the large Norwegian community that had settled over the years in nearby San Pedro. Unsure of where to begin, the company’s marketing experts approached the owner of a popular Norwegian bakery there and the rest, as they say, is history.

He provided an extensive mailing list and other contacts in the community. And by offering discounted tickets to Norwegians, the company not only experienced one of its biggest-ever box office hits, but generated lots of financial support from Norwegian businesses and community organizations.

“It was one of the turning points of the LBCLO,” Logefeil said. “We realized that there was a whole community of people out there that we weren’t aware of who were willing to support a show. It gave us the lift that we needed; what we found was that communities stick together.”

In the ensuing years, the company used the same technique to successfully market “The Sound of Music” to Germans and Austrians; “Evita” to Argentines and other Latin Americans; and “Dream Girls” to members of the local black community.

While initially the strategy involved only marketing what had already been scheduled, Logefeil said, recently it has begun to effect decisions on what to produce. Earlier this season, for instance, the company put on “Sophisticated Ladies,” a show aimed specifically at black audiences that garnered several awards from the NAACP. Next year it plans to produce “Pearly” and “Porgy and Bess,” both of which are expected to draw blacks.

And producers say they are actively seeking productions of particular interest to the region’s large Latino community.

Targeting the city’s estimated 40,000 Cambodians was a relatively recent idea, Logefeil said. Because there were no shows on the schedule aimed specifically at Asians, she said, promoters decided to put on a special performance of “1776” for the Cambodians, many of whom are refugees relatively new to the United States. Among other things, they hoped, the show might impart some knowledge of American history.

Than Pok, executive director of the United Cambodian Community that helped publicize the event, thought the idea was excellent. “For many,” he said, “this is the first exposure to the cultural life here. They feel that the community is giving them a welcome. Although they live in Long Beach, (many) never knew this existed.”

Unlike other ethnic audiences for which tickets were merely discounted, Logefeil said, the Cambodians were admitted free. Besides providing a public service, she said, the theater company hopes that some of them will grow enamored enough of American musicals to eventually become subscribers.

To ease that transition, however, the LBCLO took several steps to make the theatergoers comfortable. Cambodian egg rolls and paper-wrapped chicken were served in the lobby while the crowd was entertained by a pre-show concert of traditional Cambodian music. Each person who entered the theater was given a small American flag. And each was handed a program containing a Khmer-language synopsis of the show, as well as a translation of the Bill of Rights and portions of the Declaration of Independence.

The cost, Logefeil said, came to about $20,000, three-fourths of which was paid for by grants from American Express and General Telephone. Despite its shaky start, most of those involved said the program ultimately did what it was supposed to.

“It turned out to be a difficult but strangely moving experience,” actor Luz said. “We all felt good about it.”

The task was made easier during the second act by the fact that those remaining in the audience finally seemed more attuned to what was happening on stage than to the tumult in the lobby, he said. As a result, the actors reversed their earlier decision to cut the script and ended by giving the Cambodians a nearly complete, “impassioned as ever” final act, he said.

But the real coup de theatre, according to Jones, came after the last line was spoken and the last song was sung. Then, in an unexpected gesture of appreciation, almost all of those remaining in the audience stood at their seats and proudly waved their tiny American flags while the cast, outfitted from backstage with their own patriotic banners, responded in kind.

At that moment, Jones said, audience and actors were one. “We were simply American actors,” he said, “and they were new Americans.”