Theater Budget

The $4-billion annual budget released Friday by Mayor Richard Riordan provides a generous investment in the San Fernando Valley, including money to build a new firehouse and police station and funding to renovate 13 existing libraries. Funding for the libraries and police station, however, depends upon two bond measures that voters would have to approve by a two-thirds majority--an uncertain prospect, considering a similar bond was rejected last year.

Los Angeles Theatre Center officials have instituted rigorous new measures to cut the theater company's budget by $1 million--to approximately $6.6 million--and to increase earned revenue by 9% during the upcoming year. At the same time, a $5 million, three-year LATC fund-raising campaign that Mayor Tom Bradley was slated to co-chair has "not come to fruition," said LATC artistic director Bill Bushnell. "This is not to say that it can't jell in the next 60 to 120 days. . . .

When the Laguna Playhouse's current season draws to a close in two weeks, it will mark the end of Andrew Barnicle's third year as artistic director of the county's oldest and second-largest theater company. During that time, he and executive director Richard Stein have made significant strides toward professionalizing the institution. And they've presided over some astonishing, if little noticed, changes in programming and attendance. This season, for example, despite a 12.

There's a newcomer in the NoHo Arts District called Theatre Unlimited, and it looks as though the group might be around for a while. Its home was once called the Wild Side, a sketch comedy and improv venue next door to the Iguana Cafe on Camarillo Street. The Iguana is long gone, and its former home has been combined with the theater space. Elizabeth Wells, Theatre Unlimited's executive director, says the company is settling in.

The California Arts Council annually gives Sushi, San Diego's chief performance art presenter, a top rating in its Organizational Grants Program. But Lynn Schuette, Sushi's director, finds that the high marks only fuel the frustration she feels. This year, Schuette saw her grant decrease, even though production costs rose. "It's been a continual frustration to get perfect scores and see your (state funding) drop going into your ninth season," Schuette said.

Recently, actress and solo performer Susan Van Allen was embroiled in that hallowed ritual of actresses and solo performers everywhere--updating the resume. "All of a sudden, I paused," Van Allen recalls, talking by phone from her San Francisco home. "I looked over what I'd done. My God, I sure hadn't planned things this way." The latest entry on her resume lists "Jersey Girls," a solo portrait of a quintet of New Jersey females, written by Van Allen in collaboration with director David Ford.

The husband-and-wife team that led the Alternative Repertory Theatre since its founding in 1987 has resigned, citing the toll of too many financial struggles for too long with too little reward. Members of ART's board of directors said Thursday that the Santa Ana theater will go on without producer Gary Christensen and artistic director Patricia L. Terry.

Two plays drawn from dark moments of 19th-Century American history have won South Coast Repertory's third annual California Playwrights Competition. First prize of $5,000 has gone to "Custer's Last Band" by Abe Polsky, 50, a little-known, veteran playwright and screenwriter who describes his work as "high theatrical drama" about "what is right, ethical and honorable, and what isn't" for a group of Army musicians hoping to survive on the eve of the battle at Little Big Horn in 1876.