UNDER THE BIG TOP OF L.A. FESTIVAL

The poster on Robert J. Fitzpatrick’s wall says it all. A clown called Chocolat smiles out at him, one hand tossing a ball in the air, the other hand pointing to a big top.

The big top’s real. Los Angeles Festival director Fitzpatrick plans to kick off three weeks of international theater, dance and music next September with Quebec’s “Le Cirque du Soleil.”

The Canadian circus, tentatively scheduled for a tent in downtown’s Pershing Square, is just the start. The $5.5.-million lineup that Fitzpatrick outlined in an interview, also includes director Peter Brook’s “The Mahabharata,” a 12-hour dramatization, in English, of India’s 4,000-year-old sacred books, and the American stage directorial debut of Ingmar Bergman, who will direct August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” in Swedish.

CalArts president Fitzpatrick, who said he looked at 107 performances in six cities and four countries during 35 days this summer while selecting performers, has thus far assembled 30 companies from at least 10 different countries. Set for next Sept. 4-27, the successor to the popular Olympic Arts Festival will emphasize theater and dance programs and will be held entirely in downtown and Hollywood sites. Ticket prices will average $15, Fitzpatrick said. None of the companies that appeared in the Olympic Arts Festival will be repeated in 1987, Fitzpatrick said.

What else is on the schedule? Fitzpatrick promised a “substantial” number of U.S. and world premieres and of U.S. and Los Angeles debuts. Already in place are three French dance companies, including the Maguy Marin Company (which Fitzpatrick called “as startlingly original, although totally different from” the 1984 festival opener Pina Bausch). Scheduled from England is new-wave choreographer Michael Clark. Several events will celebrate the 75th birthday of Los Angeles-born composer John Cage, whom the impresario considers “the grandfather of the avant-garde in all the arts.”

The festival still needs to raise funds in order to present Berlin’s Schaubuhne performing Marivaux’s “Triumph of Love” and Japan’s Toho Company, which would stage the Greek tragedy “Medea.” The Schaubuhne production requires an 18-foot high hedge that surrounds the stage and a 38-foot wide pool that is four feet deep and must be emptied entirely between the first and second acts. (Fitzpatrick said he has requested that U.S. military planes be used to transport sets from Germany to Los Angeles.)

Premieres include “a major electronic opera,” new works from Bella Lewitzky, the Los Angeles Theatre Center and “hopefully” the Mark Taper Forum. The Music Center Opera will present three operas, including Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel,” under auspices of the festival, Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick estimated the festival budget at about $5.5 million and said there is nearly $4.3 million “in the bank, earning interest.” That sum includes a $2-million grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, which oversees a major portion of Olympics-generated funds, and additional funds from the Community Redevelopment Agency and several corporate sponsors.

Excluded from that budget are the German and Japanese blockbusters. Saying that “the decline in the U.S. dollar has cut more than 20% from our purchasing power,” Fitzpatrick said the board is seeking corporate sponsorship for those two events, estimated to cost an additional $600,000. “We have a brilliant festival, even without these companies, but the work is so good and so original, that our board and I are doing everything we can to raise the additional funds,” he said.

“I was not choosing between good and bad, but looking for pieces that play off each other,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview at Festival offices in the Embassy Hotel & Theatre building downtown. “You start from the base of what do we see regularly in Los Angeles, and how can I supplement and complement that. I’m trying to find unique voices who take us in another direction, artists who have had a unique impact in their own countries but have never been to Los Angeles and, in most cases, never been to the United States.”

Fitzpatrick hopes the Cirque du Soleil, which includes acrobatics as well as broad, physical farce, will set the mood. “It’s downtown, fun and accessible to every element of the community. I felt after the black-tie opening bash (for the Orange County Performing Arts Center Sept. 29) in Orange County that I wanted a black sweatshirt opening, and that it was the best way to say to the public that there are lots of exotic things--theater in Swedish, French dance companies, electronic operas--but the festival is about having fun, pure and simple. It’s a way of saying don’t be afraid of what follows.”

Following the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, a panel of civic and cultural leaders studied the possibility of future arts festivals here and created a biennial festival. Fitzpatrick is already lining up possibilities for the 1989 and 1991 events.

Festival sites include the Embassy Theatre, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Mark Taper Forum, Japan America Theatre, City Hall steps, the plaza in front of the Children’s Museum and, if renovation is completed in time, Pershing Square. Hollywood sites include the Doolittle Theatre and “hopefully” two sound stages currently under construction at Raleigh Film and Television Studios. The latter are “the only stages in California” capable of holding the Mahabharata or Schaubuhne productions, Fitzpatrick said.

Talking of two or three openings each evening, he predicted that no one person could attend all events and said he expected to have 90% of the contracts signed by the end of the year. Other participating groups will be announced in a ticket brochure available next spring.

Asked why the festival will not have a visual arts component, Fitzpatrick said that such events require more advance preparations than were feasible, and both the County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art were already booked during the festival period.

Several participating companies are expected to travel to other U.S. cities after appearing here, as happened following the Olympic Arts Festival. Brook’s “Mahabharata,” which Fitzpatrick says will run $2 million in pre-production costs alone, is being jointly sponsored by the festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Australian Bicentennial Authority and the Berlin Festival. Its world tour will be coordinated by England’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Fitzpatrick said.

A fringe festival, similar to that which occurs each year at the 40-year-old Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, is also being planned, Fitzpatrick said. His organization will make a grant to assist the fledgling fringe group, he said. “The main job of (this) festival is to bring works to Los Angeles of a scale and complexity that nobody else could do. The fringe (will provide) an opportunity for artists in this community and eventually around the country to come here and show their work. You can’t do everything.”