The Ford Finally Has Its Season : Venues: L.A.’s oldest new stage will spend $350,000 this summer as it promotes music, dance, theater and opera ‘under the moon.’

Salvation is coming . . . again . . . for the 73-year-old storied and stumbling Pilgrimage Theater.

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No stage in Los Angeles has gone through the agonies of that unheralded open-air place (renamed the John Anson Ford but now the Ford Amphitheatre), stepchild of the Hollywood Bowl, poor relative on the east side of Cahuenga, abused and unused, shot down in the ‘60s in church-state cross-fire over its religious drama “The Pilgrimage Play,” then a latter-day shelter for homeless jazz groups, actors and musicians.

Shakespeare has been spoken there. Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky played there.

And now Christopher Nance.

The Channel 4 weatherman gets his turn as part of an otherwise serious and determined effort at programming a season at Los Angeles’ oldest new venue, despite hard times generally at the box office for arts groups and despite cutbacks in budgets and schedules almost everywhere.

The Ford, finally, has a season.

It’s ready to spend $350,000 this summer as it promotes music, dance, theater and opera “under the moon,” matching the Hollywood Bowl’s boast of being “under the stars.”

It’s an unprecedented, pioneering 15-week season, slickly packaged as “Summer Nights at the Ford,” running from Monday night through Sept. 12, enough to fill 33 summer nights and one Saturday morning at the 1,200-seat amphitheater.

The season is made up of locals only, 14 L.A. County-based organizations and artists in works designed just for this inaugural season. No reruns here.

The only group slightly resembling a traveling company is the Long Beach Opera, which will cart its “Carmen” 25 miles east to the Ford in August, hoping to repeat the success of its first visit to the Ford last summer with “Bluebeard,” while the Los Angeles Philharmonic has only to walk across the street from the Hollywood Bowl for its established chamber music programs at the Ford.

The Philharmonic and the Long Beach Opera are the major anchors for the season, with their histories at the Ford and their long lists of subscribers and ticket buyers.

They are not alone.

Other groups hoping to establish a new history but, more importantly, ticket sales are these L.A. regulars: Jazz Tap Ensemble, Dance Kaleidoscope, Stages Theatre Center, L.A. Chamber Ballet, CAMPA, Collage Dance Theatre, Danza Floricanto/USA, Debussy Trio (narration by weatherman Nance), Euterpe Opera Theatre, Huayucaltia, Ima Concerts and the International Assn. of Jazz Appreciation.

Saving the Ford has become almost a mission to Ed Edelman, the county supervisor whose district includes what he calls “the neglected and under-utilized theater.” Edelman has been pushing for a dressing up of the place since he succeeded former Supervisor John Anson Ford, talking up chamber groups (he’s a wanna-be cellist), getting a sound shell built there six years ago. When experienced arts executive Laura Zucker was named executive director of the smallish County Music and Performing Arts Commission last year, Edelman set a priority: Do something about the Ford and its future.

A chancy time? “It’s a perfect time,” she says. “First, the arts organizations in this county are in terrible peril, many are disappearing. This kind of support and how it’s achieved will make sure these organizations live. Secondly, when things are bad it’s the best time to focus on the positive things we can offer in the community.

“We can’t ignore important parts of our lives because things are tough now.”

Why had the Ford/Pilgrimage floundered after losing its four decades of religion? Zucker began asking by talking with people who had produced programs there, especially Michael Milenski, general director of the Long Beach Opera.

The consensus answer: like Oakland, according to Gertrude Stein, there is no there there:

* No centralized management.

* No box-office organization to sell tickets, let alone a season.

* No house staff, no ushers.

* No sound or lighting system.

* And for many in Los Angeles, no sense of the place other than as a parking lot near the Hollywood Bowl.

Zucker also found something else--tucked away in the massive county budget was something called the Ford Theatre Trust Fund, $420,000 accumulated over the years from rental fees, earned income just for the Ford, not general fund money.

“Would this money be the best way to assure the long-term health of the facility?” Zucker said. “My answer was yes. Our next step was to put together a specific plan and then convince Supervisor Edelman.”

Invitations went out to most arts organizations in Los Angeles County to submit proposals for what they might do at the Ford if there was a planned, coordinated season. Thirty-two proposals came back. From them, 14 were chosen by Zucker’s staff, largely based on each group’s track record, economic and administrative stability, and whether the group would be “appropriate for the Ford,” represent diversity and be able to work with other groups.

The new season is a unique arrangement:

* Performing groups pay no rent to the Ford, an obvious savings in hard as well as good times.

* The Ford gets 5% of all single-ticket sales and 20% of season subscriptions, funds that would go back into the Ford Trust Fund for the hoped-for succeeding seasons.

* The groups pay their own usual fixed overhead expenses--salaries, transportation, sets, programs, costumes, supplementary sound and lighting equipment.

* The Ford maintains a central ticket-selling arrangement, house manager, ushers, accommodations such as concessions and food and a centralized promotion and advertising campaign.

* The groups do their own programming without any government input.

* The Ford provides dates “under the moon.”

Ticket sales, according to Zucker, have been averaging $2,000 a day. A good sign? “We don’t know what good is yet,” she says.

Advance ticket sales for August’s “Carmen,” says Long Beach’s Milenski, “have been good, pleasantly surprising even before our publicity campaign. It looks promising.”

It has to be.

The Long Beach company has budgeted $150,000 on this English-language “Carmen,” and ticket prices for its three nights at the Ford are the theater’s most expensive, $60 tops. Most other Ford tickets sell for $15 each. A few groups will charge up to $25 while the June 5 children’s morning show by the Jazz Tap Ensemble has a $7 price tag. Series tickets come in seven configurations, from chamber music only to world music, dance, opera/theater.

Of the $350,000 first-season budget, Zucker has $250,000 allocated. The remaining $100,000 she hopes to get the hard way, by earning it, from ticket and subscription sales, concessions and theater rentals in the post-season.

“Since our brochure went out we’ve gotten up to five calls a week about renting the theater. We have every night during the summer committed to our season, either performances or setting up or closing down. We could, however, rent the outdoor theater from mid-September through October.”

The theater received an unsolicited $10,000 grant from the private Plum Foundation for chamber music programs and if there is a second season, Zucker hopes to go after other grants organizations and sponsors.

One potential source of future funds would be the $4 parking fees, a concession operated through a 99-year lease by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“We’d like to negotiate that,” says Zucker, “since our shows will be bringing the people in to our place.”

To avoid Cahuenga gridlock on nights when the Ford and Hollywood Bowl go head to head, the Ford will go first with an 8 p.m. start and an early-evening picnic basket deal, with the Bowl following at its established 8:30 start. The earlier half-hour also allows the opera to finish before the neighborhood curfew sets in at 11 p.m., something unofficially fudged last year.

One thing the Long Beach Opera learned when it tried out the Ford was that when a Hollywood Bowl program ends, the warning airplane searchlights go off, leaving its lingering singers sonically unprotected.

This year will be different.

For the Ford, they’ll leave the lights on.

The Ford’s Pilgrimage: A Chronology

* 1920--First staging of “Christine Wetheril Stevenson’s Pilgrimage Play” at the open-air Pilgrimage Playhouse.

* 1929--Fire destroys theater.

* 1931--Theater rebuilt as concrete structure in “Judaic style,” according to The Times.

* 1940--Building used for armed service dormitories.

* 1943--Theater was deeded to Los Angeles County under a 99-year lease to the Hollywood Bowl Assn.

* 1946--County improves theater with two lighting and sound towers.

* 1964--County stops its underwriting of the “Pilgrimage Play” because of lawsuit over separation of church/state.

* 1965--Under a lease arrangement, Sunday afternoon jazz concerts begin.

* 1973--The Free Shakespeare Festival starts under a 3-year contract, lasting only one season. Center Theatre Group/Taper begins its series of experimental plays at the theater.

* 1974--County appropriates $1.5 million for rehabilitation and cosmetic improvements.

* 1976--Theater renamed after former Supervisor John Anson Ford.

* 1987--Acoustical shell added to theater for chamber music concerts.

* 1993--Start of 15-week “Summer Nights” series.