Tickets Sell Fast for Art Center’s Inaugural Season : Theater: Sales totaled $767,000 in the first two weeks--and that’s before tickets were offered outside the city.

CERRITOS —  In two weeks, people have snapped up $767,000 worth of tickets for coming events at the new Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

The total is 20% of the $3.8 million that would be generated if every ticket for all of the inaugural season’s 34 performances were sold. In all, 23,876 tickets were sold in the two-week period, according to a center sales report.

The center mailed 17,177 season brochures to Cerritos residents, who were given the first priority at tickets as a thank-you for supporting the project, city officials said. General ticket sales began last week.

Officials said the response shows that the $60-million, city-owned complex will attract an audience despite the poor economy and competition from theaters in Orange County, Long Beach and the South Bay.

“We knew we would get a good volume of tickets from residents but it has been overwhelmingly successful,” said Walter Morlock, the center’s marketing director. “They have responded and shown this theater was needed.”

One attraction, the Peking Acrobats, is sold out. Center Manager Victor Gotesman attributed the group’s popularity to previous Southern California appearances and to Cerritos’ large Asian-American population. The 1990 census shows that 45% of the city’s 53,240 people are of Asian descent.

If every ticket for the upcoming season, from January through May, were sold it would generate $3.8 million in revenue, Morlock said. Most tickets cost $17 to $51. However, ticket prices are in the $70 range for Frank Sinatra--who will open the theater Jan. 13--and $82 to $90 for dancers Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Children’s tickets are lower some performances.

The theater, which plans to pay $3.1 million to the scheduled performers, will require a $2-million city subsidy to operate the first year, Gotesman said.

The initial response for tickets was strong, said Lynn Komadina, marketing and public relations director for the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center. She said she was surprised by Cerritos’ response because of the economy and because direct mail campaigns generally produce a 10% return.

“They do have some quality acts, and people are still spending money for quality,” she said.

She said the center benefited from being a new venue and by offering 10% to 20% discounts for multiple-ticket purchases.

Roger Quadhamer, who directs a similar program at El Camino College near Torrance, also called the demand for tickets strong. He added that the challenge is to retain an audience after the first season.

Morlock said the Cerritos response is a good base for wider ticket sales, which began after the theater mailed 520,000 season brochures last week to a targeted audience in large areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

He said the distribution stretched from Laguna Niguel to Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley and from the Pacific Ocean to Burbank, Covina and Yorba Linda. He said the mailing was sent to theatergoers who can afford to buy tickets to four or more events, but he declined to disclose the sources of the mailing lists or prospective buyers’ income levels.

According to the sales report, strong sellers among Cerritos residents included singers Kenny Rogers and Ray Charles, comedians George Burns and Joan Rivers, the country group Alabama, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, singers Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Blackstone Magic Show.

Cerritos residents bought 366 of the 397 tickets put on sale for the Jan. 13 opening and the remainder sold last week. Officials said the rest of the 1,894 tickets are being held for celebrity and political guests and members of the media. More tickets may go on sale after guests respond to invitations in early December.

Gotesman said the guest invitation list will range from the President of the United States to the president of the Cerritos Chamber of Commerce and will include a wide range of local, county and state officials, former U.S. presidents, movie and television stars, entertainment media representatives and the art center’s design team.

“We want to make it a big event,” Morlock said.