SCR Wins New-Works Funding : Grants: The $30,000 gift will help the Costa Mesa troupe develop material for young audiences.

South Coast Repertory has won $30,000 as its share of more than $400,000in new grants awarded nine U.S. theater companies to develop works for young people and their families.

The Costa Mesa troupe is the only California company chosen in the first round in the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund’s New Works for Young Audiences pilot program.

The fund will provide selected theaters with a total of up to $2 million through 1994 to support works-in-progress, full productions and the commissioning of new plays.

“The philosophy of the fund is that art enriches your life,” said M. Christine DeVita, president of the New York City-based fund. “Since it is the fund’s mission to try to create connections between artists and audiences and to help create vibrant communities of which the arts are an integral part, exposing children who will be our future audiences to theater and other art forms is a self-interested strategy.”

SCR’s grant will commission a new musical by playwright Octavio Solis and composer Marcos Loya. “The Great Buenaventura Christmas Party,” as Solis has titled it, is to be a contemporary play with music, steeped in Latin American mythology.

“We did not specify subject matter except that it be oriented to Christmas,” said John Glore, literary manager at South Coast Repertory.

“We knew from the get-go that we wanted to create a Christmas show for the Second Stage that would come from the Latino culture,” Glore said. “This is something that (SCR founders) David Emmes and Martin Benson have wanted to do for a long time.

“This is a family show as opposed to a children’s show,” Glore added. “We’re hoping we’ll come up with something to appeal to all ages, just as our production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ does on the Mainstage each year, and that it will appeal to everyone, even though it is rooted in the Latino culture.

“We really do hope we can premiere this piece in December of ‘93, which will make it a highlight of our 30th season.”

South Coast has six months in which to prepare a draft of the play. If SCR meets the grant’s deadline, the company will “seek further support (for the play) under the fund’s development/production category,” Glore said.

Theaters submitted applications based on the fund’s published guidelines and were screened by its staff and an advisory panel of “experts in the theater field,” DeVita said. “Our board made the final decisions.

“Works specifically focused for children are often not very good,” she said. “One of the needs that was identified as we did our research for the program was the real dearth of quality material out there--we often tend to talk down to young children, but they are actually more sophisticated than we give them credit for.

“We looked for proposals that recognize the need to strengthen overall artistry in addition to the actual script--the actors, the directors and the designers,” DeVita said.

Another requirement was to “Expand and deepen the audience reach, especially to economically and ethnically diverse populations,” she said.

Also chosen by the fund for its new program is Maurice Sendak’s The Night Kitchen/A National Children’s Theater in New York, which will receive $75,000 over three months for a work-in-progress by Bill Irwin and Arthur Yorinks.

In addition, $70,750 will go to the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis for play development, Theatre IV in Virginia will have $60,000 for the creation of a new musical, the Seattle Children’s Theatre will receive $55,000 to commission a new script, Honolulu Theatre for Youth’s $50,000 will help stage a new play and Pittsburgh’s City Theatre Company will use its $45,000 for a new piece by playwright John Henry Redwood and video artist Ulysses Jenkins.

The Metro Theater Company of St. Louis and Childsplay, Inc. of Tempe, Arizona will share $37,000 for a one-year collaboration on a new musical by James Still and composer Michael Keck.

The fund was established in 1956 and provides more than $30 million annually to programs in the arts, adult literacy and urban parks.

In addition to its young-audience component, the theater program focuses on resident and community-centered theaters, DeVita said.