Extended Family Helps in Crisis

Thanks to the kindness of friends and fans--not strangers--Alternative Repertory Theatre will survive for another season.

An emergency appeal went out in February as founders Patricia L. Terry and Gary Christensen announced that rising costs and flat attendance had left the theater virtually broke, especially after a poorly attended run of Eugene O’Neill’s somber classic “Long Day’s Journey into Night.”

ART’s extended family of actors and audience members responded with $14,500 as of last weekend, Terry said. That’s enough to cover the $8,000 budget for “Psychopathia Sexualis,” the Santa Ana theater’s next production, and give ART an additional boost toward next season.

“We can guarantee the season next year; that’s definitely going to happen,” Terry said. “It’s so humbling, the fact that people were so willing to dig in their pockets and say, ‘Here, we really want you guys to stay around.’ It’s rejuvenating, too.”

Terry said that 60 donors contributed after longtime ART actor Sally Leonard and her husband, Jack, staked a $4,000 challenge grant--a donation designed to generate at least a match from other givers. Of the donors, Terry said, 50 are season subscribers and the other 10 are patrons who come to ART at least some of the time.

The challenge now is to build a strong base of season ticket holders that could put the theater on sound footing well into the future. The subscriber list had fallen to about 300, and Terry hopes to double that for next season.

A big turnout for this season’s closing play, “Psychopathia Sexualis,” would help greatly. If ART can draw what Terry terms a “not unreasonable” average of 50 theatergoers--about 70% of capacity--to each of the 40 or so performances, that would generate about $40,000. That would provide a fairly ample war chest for a nonprofit company with an annual budget last year of about $90,000.

Terry says ART aims to expand its audience base with a 25% discount for people who buy 2000-01 subscriptions before June.

Of course, they won’t know what plays they’re getting. The next crucial phase for ART’s leaders will be figuring out how to develop an audience-friendly slate of plays without sacrificing their mandate to present classics and artistically valuable contemporary works.