The Grove Extends Season for Schedule Adjustments

The Grove Shakespeare Festival, which is facing a revenue shortage, will extend its current season by two months, through mid-February, to accommodate a change of venue for its annual production of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and the cancellation of a planned outdoor Winter Festival.

Artistic Director Thomas F. Bradac said Thursday that the programming changes at the county’s second-largest professional theater company reflect “prudent management” and were decided well before the revenue shortage developed.

He denied, moreover, that staff layoffs are under consideration and labeled as “totally erroneous” a report to that effect in the Orange County Register on Thursday. That report also claimed that no scheduling changes were being contemplated.

The Grove had planned to stage “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” at the outdoor, 550-seat Festival Amphitheatre in Garden Grove from Dec. 1 to 24 as the highlight of an experimental Winter Festival. The adaptation of the Dylan Thomas story has been staged indoors since 1986 at the adjacent 172-seat Gem Theatre.

Bradac hoped to increase single-ticket sales by capitalizing on the non-subscription show’s popularity, in addition to accommodating theatergoers who have had to be turned away from sold-out performances each Christmas at the Gem.

“We decided to move the show back indoors because we do not want to take a chance on the weather,” Bradac said. “It has nothing to do with our cash problems.”

The scheduling change has caused the postponement of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” which had been planned to run at the Gem while “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” was at the amphitheater. Instead of running Nov. 21 to Dec. 23 at the Gem, as previously announced, “Twelfth Night” will run there from Jan. 19 to Feb. 17. “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” will be at the Gem from Dec. 1 to 24.

Meanwhile, Bradac said the theater’s cash-flow problems have resulted chiefly from a shortfall of “about $40,000” in season subscriptions and not from a decline in overall single-ticket sales, which have come “within $300” of projections.

The revenue crisis has been compounded, however, by a loss over the past two years of nearly $150,000 in contributed income from two major sources: Rancho Santiago College, which withdrew an annual grant of $105,000 to invest that money in its own theater program, and the Garden Grove City Council, which is phasing out its annual appropriation.

“It’s hard to take a hit like that,” Bradac said. “We’re still reacting to that shortfall, even though our budget tried to take it into account.”

The Grove’s annual budget leaped to $850,000 for fiscal 1989-90 from $570,000 the previous year. The increase came from sweeping changes connected with the theater’s continuing professionalization and its maiden effort to consolidate separately subscribed indoor-outdoor seasons into a shorter, more concentrated season of subscription offerings in a single repertory setting.