Taking His Chances

IRVINE —  The longtime credo of Irvine Barclay Theatre President Douglas Rankin--the right artist in the right hall--met one of its more memorable tests a couple of years ago with Eric Bogosian.

Rankin had booked the famously angry New York writer-performer at the 756-seat theater on the hope that Bogosian’s downtown wit, hip nonconformity and big-city angst would appeal to a laid-back Southern California audience that lives in just the sort of square, middle-class suburbia least likely to welcome him.

“The house sold out,” Rankin said, recalling that even Bogosian, a savvy entertainer with a gambler’s instinct for risk-taking, was surprised.

Says Bogosian: “I never know what to expect. A guy like me popping up in a clean-cut place like that? It’s funny.”

For Rankin, necessity is the mother of imaginative booking because the 7-year-old Irvine Barclay has had to carve a niche in the marketplace among such larger venues as the Orange County and Cerritos performing arts centers. And in Orange County, matching the artist to the hall depends not only on bold ideas but on overcoming the area’s image among agents and managers.

When it comes to offbeat acts, the county is regarded as “a tough sell,” Rankin says, “especially by talent reps on the East Coast.” He sees the image as partly based on “condescending attitudes” and partly as the inevitable result of “30 years of political and cultural baggage.”

The county’s conservative reputation “may be unfair because it’s not as monolithic as everybody thinks,” he says, “but that’s the image out there. Audiences here are regarded as not adventurous and not informed as to what’s current.”

The Irvine Barclay, which opened under Rankin in 1990, became an aggressive presenter of the offbeat for the first time four years ago, when it launched a contemporary dance series with a gritty New York troupe, the Bebe Miller Company.

“Bebe did her Jimi Hendrix piece,” Rankin recalled. “We had about 100 subscribers and half a house. I can remember standing in the aisle, thinking, ‘This is either going to be very cool or a very long season.’ ”

The Irvine Barclay, which offers eclectic programming in all the arts, has since become one of Southern California’s two leading contemporary dance presenters. (The other is the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts.) Rankin, who received an appointment Friday to the dance panel of the California Arts Council, was the first to bring in such dancers as Stephen Petronio, the bad boy of New York choreography.

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This season the theater will be the only one in the region to present Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her Belgian company, Rosas (Oct. 14), which then heads to the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

“I love to see what’s on in Irvine,” says Celesta Billeci, programming coordinator and marketing director for the UCLA center. “Just the fact that they’re bringing Rosas in shows what an extraordinary job they’re doing. Keersmaeker is one of today’s great European choreographers.”

But putting the right artist in the right hall doesn’t always mean playing the longshots. Sometimes it means taking a risk on a sure thing, like a television star.

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When Rankin wanted to book Bill Cosby, who is scheduled to perform at the Irvine Barclay in February, there was no doubt Cosby could fill the place. The question was: Could the Irvine Barclay, with only 756 seats, afford to pay his fee?

Cosby, one of the highest-paid entertainers in show business, commands roughly $100,000 per night, Rankin said. A star of that magnitude in a theater that small meant high-priced tickets. “And Cosby prefers not to have a high ticket price,” Rankin said.

The star’s agency, William Morris, agreed to consider the engagement, however, because of its previous dealings with the theater.

To avoid cutting his fee, “Cosby said he’d be willing to do two shows in one night,” Rankin said. “We did the deal within 18 hours. Usually it takes weeks at best with a big star.”

Two shows meant Rankin could keep price tickets at $70 to $90--steep, he admits, but no steeper than “big events” at the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center, where one-man shows--notwithstanding Marcel Marceau, Hal Holbrook and George Burns--have seemed lost on its huge stage.

With 70% of the Cosby seats already sold, Rankin believes he has not only booked the right artist for the right hall but the right artist for the right day and date. “We’ve got him for Valentine’s Day,” he says, which falls this season on a Saturday.

Moreover, the Irvine Barclay has become the hall of choice for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and other regional presenters for major music and dance programs that require special handling, either because of their intimate scale, adventurous material or relatively narrow audience. For example, “Umabatha: The Zulu Macbeth,” the South African dance drama that will be at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles later this week, opens the Irvine Barclay season Oct. 6 in a Philharmonic Society presentation.

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“We’re finding our niche in the market,” Rankin said, pointing out that for the past three seasons the Irvine Barclay has done remarkably well, with its own presentations “averaging 88% to 90% paid attendance.” (Nationally, comparable theaters draw 65% to 70% attendance on average.)

He added that the dance series is instructive because of what it teaches not just about matching the artist to the hall but about audience cultivation.

One rule of thumb is to bring artists back from previous seasons “instead of just running them through and always moving on to the next batch.” It keeps audience interest in the artist alive over the long term.

Another rule is to focus the marketing of an artist so he or she becomes identifiable with a place as well as a face.

Rankin cites contemporary choreographer Mark Morris as the prime instance of a major artist whose work has not connected with county audiences largely because of diffuse handling.

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“Elsewhere you say ‘Mark Morris’ and the performances are sold out. “That’s not true here. We introduced him; then the Philharmonic Society showed him at the center, and then he was seen at the center under another presenter.

“The net result is that for the brilliance of his work and the amount of exposure he’s had, Mark Morris just does not have the following in the county that he ought to have.”

The whole idea of presenting any artist, Rankin said, should be “to create an aesthetic experience, not a product-consumer relationship.”

That’s why he’s bringing Morris back, in May.