Money Woes Threaten S.D. Rep’s 1990 Season : Theater: Officials plead for $350,000 to prevent financial collapse. An additional $500,000 is needed for the 1991-92 season.

SAN DIEGO —  The San Diego Repertory Theatre may cancel the rest of its 1990 season, which runs through January, if the organization can’t raise $100,000 in 30 days and $250,000 more by Dec. 31, theater officials announced at a press conference Tuesday.

An additional $500,000 will be needed to open the 1991-92 season as well, they said.

“We don’t have any money. We’ve run out of cash,” managing director Adrian Stewart said. The organization, which manages the Lyceum Stage and Space in Horton Plaza for the city of San Diego, produces about eight plays annually there during its six-month season.

Rep artistic director Douglas Jacobs and producing director Sam Woodhouse appeared very distraught as the announcement was made.

“I was born in San Diego and I remember when San Diego was a cultural wasteland. I feel that we have been a major player in this city’s cultural renaissance, and I’m personally asking people who care about multicultural theater to support us,” Woodhouse said. Woodhouse and Jacobs founded the Rep in 1976.

At risk are shows scheduled for the remainder of 1990 including “Cymbeline” scheduled to open on Nov. 7 and “A Christmas Carol” on Nov. 30.

The shows at greatest risk of cancellation, perhaps, are the Teatro Sin Frontera’s production of “Man of the Flesh” and the company’s world premiere musical, “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson.” Both open in January.

The one sure show is a remounting of the San Diego Rep’s successful production of “Burn This,” that has just been announced for Oct. 19-Nov. 4. The show will be underwritten by Sheri L. Kelts, a San Diego philanthropist.

The announcement of financial crisis does not come as a complete surprise. Stewart has talked about the possibility of financial crisis at the Rep over the past several months. Despite positive critical and public response to the first three shows of the 1990-91 season, the company has not been able to compensate for the drastic drop in its subscription base that followed last year’s highly experimental season.

When the season opened in June, subscription levels had dropped from last

year’s high of 6,500 to a low of 3,500. The base has since inched back up to 3,800, but is still shy of the 6,000 it needs to meet operating costs, Stewart said.

Stewart said the subscription drop created a $150,000 shortfall in budgeted subscription revenue and that sum, combined with a shortfall in contributed income, has exacerbated the current cash-flow problem.

The theater’s 1990 $2.2-million budget calls for $1.46 million in earned income and $726,000 in contributed income. Stewart said the 1990 budget is $300,000 less than the 1989 budget.

The San Diego Repertory Theatre is the third San Diego theater to announce a financial crisis during the past year. The La Jolla Playhouse was the first, when it announced a crisis campaign in September, 1989, that is scheduled to continue through this month. In announcing the crisis, Playhouse officials said that if $500,000 of a $1 million goal was not raised before Jan. 1, 1990, the 1990 season would be canceled. Sufficient money was raised and the season went on. It now approaches conclusion with the opening of “Twelfth Night” on Sunday, and a statement on the Playhouse’s current financial status is due in early November.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, which remains in crisis, suspended its 1990 season last May. The season is scheduled to resume--and conclude--with the opening of “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset” on Oct. 19 and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” in mid-November. Gaslamp officials have not yet announced the prospects for a 1991 season.

Financial crisis is not new to the San Diego Repertory Theatre. The theater took a whopping 33% nose dive in subscriptions in 1983, following a sudden growth spurt in San Diego theater companies that was combined with a lukewarm reception to the Rep’s eclectic season of little-known modern plays that year.

The next crisis came within a year after the San Diego Rep moved from the Sixth Avenue Playhouse to the Lyceum Stage and Space in Horton Plaza. The company, in its race to keep up with rapid financial and artistic expansion and round the clock activities, could not keep up with the demands of meeting its own budget.

But in 1988, thanks to the success of a benefit by San Diego Rep alum Whoopi Goldberg and the long-running success of “Six Women With Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know,” the San Diego Rep found itself back on a successful financial track. And despite the negative critical reception of the 1989 season, it began the 1990 fiscal year with a small surplus. During 1990, however, the drop in subscription base and contributed income began to take its toll.

It is a rough time for a regional theater to have a rough time.

Recession is hitting regional theaters nationwide, according to Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe Theatre and president of the League of Resident Theaters.

Most regional theaters are reporting a drop in corporate contributions. Subscription bases are dwindling across the country as younger subscribers resist getting locked into specific seats on specific dates months in advance. The trend is true even for the Old Globe, where the subscription base is one of the highest and strongest in the country, Hall said.

Hall has predicted that it will become increasingly common to see theaters advertise for the single ticket-buyer. It will become more common to see companies offer co-productions with other theaters as a way of sharing costs and increasing the audience size: the La Jolla Playhouse’s production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” was a co-production with the Orange County Performing Arts Center; the Old Globe’s upcoming production of A.R. Gurney’s “The Snow Ball” will be produced with the Hartford Stage Company.

It may also become common to see budget cuts--in props, costumes and in rehearsal time. The $300,000 the San Diego Rep cut from last year’s budget may be part of the wave of the future.

“No arts group can take its existence for granted today,” Jacobs said Tuesday.