SCR Wins NEA Grant of $115,000 : Funding: Award is the third largest in the state. In its first try at grant, the Irvine Fine Arts Center gets one for $15,000.

South Coast Repertory on Tuesday won the third-largest grant to be awarded in California during this year’s third and final round of National Endowment for the Arts awards. NEA grants also were announced Tuesday for the Irvine Fine Arts Center and the Laguna Art Museum.

SCR received $115,000 to support its 1991-92 season, with emphasis on new play development, projects generated by actors and directors, and education and outreach efforts, for which the troupe was criticized two years ago by the California Arts Council. The largest grant in California this round, $230,000, went to Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum; the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego came in second with $177,500.

“SCR’s production quality is very strong,” said Ben Cameron, director of the NEA’s theater program. “But the group’s real value has been through contributions to the field in developing new plays and writers, particularly those derived from a variety of cultures.”

In addition to developing plays by whites, SCR has supported Latino playwrights--its annual Hispanic Playwrights Project begins today (story, F3)--and it has commissioned a play by Asian-American David Henry Hwang, who wrote the musical “M. Butterfly.”

SCR’s 1991 grant is slightly larger than the $112,500 it received last year--an increase that NEA spokesman Josh Dare called “unusual, because all (NEA grant) programs endured a 12% budget cut (this year), and most grants decreased.”

In all three rounds this year, Orange County groups won a total of $263,139, down from $525,000 last year, Dare said. The NEA awarded $31.6 million in this round to more than 1,100 artists and organizations nationwide.

SCR ranked 14th nationwide, Dare said. The largest grant, $275,000, went to the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.

In its first try for an NEA grant, the Irvine Fine Arts Center won $15,000 to fund an exhibition addressing cross-cultural influence, with work by American artists Richard Turner, who is a professor of art at Chapman College, and William Short of Cambridge; and Hoang Vu and Viet Nguyen, Vietnamese artists working in Orange County.

The Laguna Art Museum, awarded $7,500 to support an exhibition of paintings by John McLaughlin, already has won two 1991 NEA grants totaling $22,500 in earlier rounds this year. Last year it won six grants totaling $222,500.