Year-Old Arts Center Struggles to Cultivate Culture

SIMI VALLEY —  The Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center opened one year ago tonight--all plush new upholstery and bright stained glass, brilliant spotlights and slick brass rails--amid promises that it would bring this bedroom town a sense of artistic community.

Tonight, the refurbished Methodist church is just another used theater--in the richest sense of the word.

When Shirley Jones sings at a $100-a-ticket black-tie anniversary celebration this evening, she will retrace the footsteps of sitar players and bluegrass guitarists, character actors and sax-blowing jazzmen.

And the audience will include those who have personally breathed life and money into the place in fervent hopes that the combination theater and art gallery will continue to grow toward profitability.

“It ranges between a challenge, frustration and a pleasure,” General Manager David Ralphe said about the strain of making the arts center work. “It’s been like pushing a rope up the sidewalk, instead of pulling it.

“But we are changing people’s pattern of behavior,” said Ralphe, recently appointed the full-time general manager after serving the year as the center’s acting manager. “We have more and more [artists] calling us, wanting to use the facility, not only community and regional requests, but also more of the national virtuosos are calling us. . . . And the mailing list is growing rapidly, so we’re on the right path.”

The city spent $3.6 million to resurrect the musty, quake-cracked husk of the old Methodist church, which had already done duty as a synagogue, funeral home and haunted house.

Contractors stretched the main floor’s 11,100 square feet to 12,615, replaced cracked plaster bas-relief columns, refinished the old oak-trimmed pews and rewired the place for a computerized light system.

The theater opened Nov. 3, 1995, amid doubts it could fill its 292 seats, let alone pull enough of its own weight to raise a $2-million operating endowment and function free of financial aid from the city.

Indeed, ticket sales still average a lukewarm 65%. The hall is booked full time on weekends on a monthly basis only from May through August.

And the endowment has barely reached $800,000.

But on Friday, janitors polished the last of the brass. Riggers prepared to adjust the lighting for tonight’s show.

And members of the Cultural Arts Center Foundation began affixing bronze plaques bearing donors’ names to parts of the building they have endowed--everything from windows and doors to pews and columns--as evidence of the growing support for the theater.

Councilman Bill Davis, who fought hard to get the place opened, said the center is still fighting for recognition.

“I think we all knew, the council did, that this place wasn’t going to make money for five years,” Davis said Friday. “These are the decisions you need to make. But we felt the community needed it.”

And Davis said of the center’s progress on its first anniversary: “I truly am very pleased. . . . I think it’s a gorgeous theater. How great it is to preserve a historic building while at the same time making it useful for something the community needs. I’m not anywhere near disappointed in what we’ve done.”

Unlike last year’s two-night opening shows by Rita Moreno--which lost money due to lackluster ticket sales on the second night--the Shirley Jones show has already paid for itself with ticket sales, Davis said.

The theater is reaching out wherever it can to attract new patrons.

The box office began handing out 500 discount coupons to Simi Valley high schools, offering cut-rate admission to students under a program called Student Rush.

Coupon holders can show up at the box office starting 15 minutes before show time and gain admission to any show (with still-unsold seats) for only $5.

The city is slipping theater brochures in with Simi residents’ water bills.

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The theater’s managers are working to increase rentals of the hall, inviting church groups, family gatherings and business organizations to rent it, and sending out new four-color brochures to the 3,000 patrons on the growing mailing list.

And they are struggling to expand the repertoire, filling the calendar as much as possible to make the theater begin paying for itself.

“This coming year we have four jazz concerts; the Westlake Chamber Orchestra; the [Santa Susana] Symphony is doing six evenings; we have seven plays coming in between now and next August,” Ralphe said. “We are starting to develop a very attractive and fine mix of community-oriented material, with a lot of children’s programming.”

Some have criticized the theater for being short on community programming, and certain first-season shows did not draw the crowds the managers hoped for--such as a film series, some dance recitals and a concert of Indian sitar music.

But that should soon change, said Assistant Manager Fred Helsel.

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Royal High School plans to produce two plays next year. In addition, the center has started a series of school tours of its gallery, and clinics with artists such as children’s book author Mary Ann Fraser, who recently showed 100 Simi Valley pupils how she works.

Some Simi residents still tell him, “I didn’t even know you were open yet,” Helsel said.

But as the center ages, the new niche it is carving in Simi Valley’s cultural consciousness will deepen, he said.

“Usually, it takes three to five years to create a strong patronage,” Helsel said. “I think we’re starting to realize what shows work best here, and what doesn’t work, where we need to develop an audience more.”