Arts Council’s Answers: Maybe, No SCR Clears Funds Hurdle, Grove Theatre Doesn’t

One thumbs up, one thumbs down. That is the signal the California Arts Council is sending Orange County’s two largest theater companies in the first round of eliminations for a new program of challenge grants.

An advisory panel to the state arts agency has approved giving $43,500 to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa to help finance a proposed California Plays Festival next year. SCR hopes to do a festival production of a contemporary “Gone With the Wind” drama about Vietnam by David Henry Hwang (of “M. Butterfly” fame), according to the grant application.

The same panel turned down a $15,000 request from the Grove Theatre Company to help underwrite its annual Shakespeare Festival in Garden Grove. This summer the company plans to present “Richard II,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “King Lear.”

“The panel felt Grove’s request was not compelling,” Gloria Woodlock, who manages the challenge grant program, said Thursday. She hastened to add that the panel’s recommendations were preliminary and that the 11-member council would announce its final decisions June 2.

The arts council will award $930,000 worth of challenge grants in two categories. Half will go to arts institutions with annual budgets of more than $1 million. They must match their challenge grants with $3 in new private funding for every $1 of grant money. The second category, for institutions with budgets of less than $1 million but more than $200,000, requires a 2-1 match.

SCR, which has a current annual budget of $4.6 million, would have to raise $130,500 to accept the grant if it gets final approval. Grove, with a current annual budget of $465,000, would have had to raise $30,000 in private funds.

The council received a total of 117 applications asking for $1.8 million in each category. Woodlock said the advisory panel “put together a pool of 40 grants worthy of funding,” but the council “may end up giving only 25 grants” because of its limited resources.

“The situation is very fluid,” she said. “Just because South Coast Rep is in the pool doesn’t mean it is assured of a grant. They have cleared a significant hurdle, but it’s not guaranteed.”

Grove managing director Richard Stein said Thursday that failure to get the challenge grant “will eliminate a major point of leverage, which we feel we need to establish our corporate fund campaign in the county.”

Stein said that he hadn’t been notified by the arts council of the preliminary decision and that a phone call from a state agency staffer about the application several weeks ago had “seemed to be very favorable.”

Grove has been trying to make up for a reduction in funding of the Shakespeare Festival by co-sponsor Rancho Santiago College from $155,000 to $105,000.

SCR spokesman Cristofer Gross declined to comment about the challenge grant or the proposed play festival.

Three other arts organizations in the county have been turned down by the advisory panel for challenge grants. They are: Pacific Symphony, Orange County Philharmonic Society and South Coast Symphony.