Funds Crisis Stymies East West

East West Players is going through “growing pains,” artistic director Tim Dang acknowledged.

Dang should know. He’s been the only paid, permanent staffer at East West since six others were laid off earlier this summer, due primarily to a financial shortfall. Workers on contract and volunteers are helping, he said, but generally, “we’re operating at a skeletal level.”

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that a pledge of $1 million from Malaysian entrepreneur Vinod Sekhar has, so far, resulted in nothing for L.A.’s 32-year-old Asian American theater company.

It’s a critical moment in East West’s history. The company is scheduled to leave its small quarters on Santa Monica Boulevard in October and move to its new and larger home at the old Union Church facility in Little Tokyo. If all goes as planned, the mid-sized theater will be launched in January with “Pacific Overtures.”

But getting there is going to be more difficult than many of the theater’s supporters realize. This year, donations to the annual operating campaign for the theater dropped from an average of around $150,000 to “about half that,” Dang reported, because many donors instead gave their money to the $1.5-million campaign to build and equip the new theater and begin an endowment. And this occurred on the eve of a move that was expected to raise the theater’s annual operating budget from $529,000 to $950,000.

As a result, the entire staff, except for Dang, was laid off in mid-July. Not only would this save money through the summer months when productions weren’t taking place, but it was also seen as an opportunity to professionalize the operation in anticipation of the move, Dang said.

“In a 99-seat theater, you don’t necessarily even have contracts,” Dang said. But in the larger space, “there has to be a more professional approach. We didn’t know whether the current staff could make that leap.” Staff members were invited to reapply for their former jobs, but so far no one has even been interviewed for the positions, which Dang hopes will be filled by October.

Former managing director Luisa Cariaga, who resigned in June--as soon as she heard about the impending layoffs--said that when she and other staffers were hired, they were promised that they would be able to make the move to the larger space “as a reward for working so hard for so little money.” Dang denied that promises were made, though he acknowledged that the move “was certainly an attractive aspect of the job.”

It isn’t just the staff that will be replaced, Dang said. The theater’s current board “realizes that they’ll eventually have to replace themselves too”--with board members who are more capable of raising the money that will be needed in the bigger space.

“The board and the staff were both grass-roots operations,” Dang said. “How much of our family culture can we keep as we grow? That’s the question.”

Some of the pain might have been averted if money pledged earlier this year by Sekhar had been received. But Sekhar, who had never attended an East West production when he made his gesture, has yet to make good on his pledge, at least in part because of serious health problems.

Reached in Malaysia last week by telephone, Sekhar said, “I’m still going to give them something, but I’ve got to sort myself out first.” Because of several hospitalizations, “I’ve been out of the loop.”

When the company realized that his contribution wasn’t forthcoming, the decision to name the building after him and the forecourt after his daughter was reversed. The forecourt now will be called the George and Sakaye Aritani Court, in honor of a couple who gave $175,000 to the building fund. The lobby had previously been named after the Aritanis, but it’s again open for naming, as is the building itself.

Because of the cash-flow crisis, a new fund-raising campaign will begin soon, focusing on operational needs. The company may also borrow from the money raised for its own endowment during the building fund, although Dang acknowledged that the board raised only about $100,000 of the $500,000 endowment goal. Other revenue is expected from a subscription campaign that will begin with brochures going out next month. Dang hopes that excitement generated by the new facility will at least the double the number of subscribers from the current 450.

The first season in the new space will include, after “Pacific Overtures”: a new play by Thai American writer Prince Gomilvilas, “Big Hunka Burnin’ Love,” in April; new musicals--”Angel Island” in May and “Maid of Orleans” in June; and a Hawaiian-set play by Edward Sakamoto, “Lava,” in August.

Meanwhile, the company will bid farewell to its old home with a benefit performance of Alec Mapa’s “I Remember Mapa” on Sept. 28, capping a two-week engagement of Mapa’s monologue, which was seen earlier this year at Taper, Too.