Groveshakespeare

An actor who was to have been a part of GroveShakespeare's "King Lear" cast called last week. He had the luck at the very last minute to sign on with Shakespeare Santa Cruz and was driving north the next morning. As we discussed the cancellation of GroveShakespeare's current season, he said, "Everyone's a loser." In the weeks since the cancellation of the 1993 season of GroveShakespeare, the tenor of the many phone calls I have received mirrors the coverage in the press.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity," says the Duke in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" after being exiled to the Forest of Arden by his usurping brother. We could say the same thing about Thomas Bradac. A few years ago, ousted by the board of directors of GroveShakespeare in a surprise power play, Bradac was exiled from a company he had founded and that he had kept going for several years. Almost immediately, he started a new company, Shakespeare Orange County, in which he made use of many of the actors from GroveShakespeare and also of the Waltmar Theatre on the campus of Chapman University, where he teaches acting and directing.

Say good night, Jules. That is the message GroveShakespeare's acting artistic director Jules Aaron has gotten so far to an appeal for funds to keep the county's second-largest professional theater company from closing.

The financially beleaguered GroveShakespeare, once the county's second-largest professional theater troupe, has taken its last breath. Jerry O'Brien, an attorney for the company, said Tuesday that "GroveShakespeare is ceasing operations" with outstanding debts of "close to $300,000." The 15-year-old company had folded in all but name in June, when it canceled its 1993 season due to a lack of funds. All but three members of its board of directors resigned shortly afterward.

In the latest indication that the county's second-largest professional theater company is about to fold, the entire administrative staff of the cash-starved GroveShakespeare has been laid off. "We're all gone," Don Hayes, a 12-year employee, said Friday. "I'm still here at the box office because I know people will be picking up tickets for tonight's show. But the board of trustees is nowhere to be found."

W. Stuart McDowell might have received a clue of the uphill climb he has as artistic director of GroveShakespeare when he learned that none of the baby-sitters for his 4-year-old daughter had heard of GroveShakespeare. "And one of them," he adds, pointing out the window of the upstairs lobby in the company's Gem Theatre, "lives four blocks from here." He adds, with a little understatement, "We have some audience development to do."

The financially beleaguered GroveShakespeare, once the county's second-largest professional theater troupe, has taken its last breath. Jerry O'Brien, an attorney for the company, said Tuesday that "GroveShakespeare is ceasing operations" with outstanding debts of "close to $300,000." The 15-year-old company had folded in all but name in June, when it canceled its 1993 season due to a lack of funds. All but three members of its board of directors resigned shortly afterward.

GroveShakespeare board president David Krebs denied Monday that the troupe lacks community support--an assertion that officials of the Leo Freedman Foundation made last week when they failed to renew their own financial support of the struggling theater company. Krebs said tickets sales have been up this year. But he also acknowledged that donations from individuals and corporations are down. "I wouldn't say we have a lack of community support," he said.

In an increasingly desperate effort to gain a new lease on life, GroveShakespeare intends to shift the focus of its programming away from Shakespeare and to change its name to the Grove Pacific Theatre Co. But its director concedes that whatever the company does or calls itself, the prospects for a 1994 season appear dimmer than ever.

GroveShakespeare, Orange County's second-largest professional theater company, has come apart at its tattered seams. Both the acting artistic director and the president of the board of trustees resigned Monday after disbanding the cast of "King Lear," which was to have opened June 26. The administrative staff was laid off last week. Only one of the nine board members could be found for comment. Meanwhile, the company is carrying a deficit of roughly $200,000, its highest ever.

In an increasingly desperate effort to gain a new lease on life, GroveShakespeare intends to shift the focus of its programming away from Shakespeare and to change its name to the Grove Pacific Theatre Co. But its director concedes that whatever the company does or calls itself, the prospects for a 1994 season appear dimmer than ever.

A Christmas theater tradition in Orange County has taken another beating. High Octane Productions, the Laguna Beach entertainment company that earlier this year wrested control of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" from GroveShakespeare here, has canceled its announced production at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates. "They backed out," Peter Lesnick, managing director of the Norris, said Monday. "They were renting the theater for two weeks in mid-December. That's prime time.

With the future of GroveShakespeare so uncertain, it's hard to know what, if any, shows will be staged at the troupe's Gem Theatre or Festival Amphitheatre. If the troupe can't get it together, it would make sense for the powers that be to keep making the venues available to other local groups--such as the fledgling, Orange-based New Mission Ensemble, whose version of "The Elephant Man" opened at the Gem last weekend.

Second thoughts on first nights . . . It was hard to tell who was worse off, those who remembered the original production of "My Fair Lady" and wanted to rekindle their love affair with the show, or those who never saw it on stage before, except perhaps in an amateur or bus-and-truck-stop revival.

An actor who was to have been a part of GroveShakespeare's "King Lear" cast called last week. He had the luck at the very last minute to sign on with Shakespeare Santa Cruz and was driving north the next morning. As we discussed the cancellation of GroveShakespeare's current season, he said, "Everyone's a loser." In the weeks since the cancellation of the 1993 season of GroveShakespeare, the tenor of the many phone calls I have received mirrors the coverage in the press.

GroveShakespeare, which canceled its 1993 season and collapsed in all but name last month, has proposed that it continue managing the city-owned Gem Theatre and Festival Amphitheatre. But the proposal makes no provision for the company to produce its own shows, offer rebates to its subscribers or pay its creditors.

Barbara Hammerman has resigned unexpectedly as managing director and executive vice president of GroveShakespeare after a sometimes stormy 2 1/2-year tenure, the troupe announced Friday. Hammerman presided over a bitter power struggle that led in 1991 to the ouster of Grove founder and artistic director Thomas F. Bradac, who went on to form his own classical repertory company, Shakespeare Orange County (see review, this page).

"Sweet are the uses of adversity," says the Duke in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" after being exiled to the Forest of Arden by his usurping brother. We could say the same thing about Thomas Bradac. A few years ago, ousted by the board of directors of GroveShakespeare in a surprise power play, Bradac was exiled from a company he had founded and that he had kept going for several years. Almost immediately, he started a new company, Shakespeare Orange County, in which he made use of many of the actors from GroveShakespeare and also of the Waltmar Theatre on the campus of Chapman University, where he teaches acting and directing.

Amid new indications that GroveShakespeare's liabilities are even greater than previously revealed, actors associated with the company have charged that it misappropriated an AIDS charity's share of box office receipts from a benefit performance and spent the money on theater operations despite repeated assurances to the contrary. The amount involved was only $384, half the proceeds from a performance of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" at the Gem Theatre in December, 1992.

I am deeply upset by the Garden Grove City Council's decision to give GroveShakespeare $11,000. Giving that money to a board of trustees that has proven itself incompetent is an outrage. Shakespeare was for the people. What the council has done has nothing to do with the people. It was hoodwinked into thinking this theater can survive. The theater's board shouldn't even be allowed to try. Somebody else ought to get the chances it has squandered.