Rep Loses a Leader, and a Fund-Raiser : Stage: Adrian Stewart helped bring in $2.9 million for struggling company during past two years.

By NANCY CHURNIN

Aug. 1, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

SAN DIEGO — Adrian Stewart, who served as managing director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre from July 4, 1988, until Monday, left a legacy of multicultural leadership for the financially struggling company. He founded the Rep’s Teatro Sin Fronteras Council, the African American Council, Project Discovery, which brought thousands of schoolchildren into the theater at subsidized costs and the San Diego Coalition for Arts and Culture.

Stewart left when the position of managing director was eliminated at the company.

The San Diego Rep’s co-founders, producing director Sam Woodhouse and artistic director Douglas Jacobs, will take over responsibility for all executive operations at the 560-seat Lyceum Stage and the 250-seat Lyceum Space at Horton Plaza.

The seven-play 1992-93 season will continue as announced with “Spunk” opening at the Lyceum Stage Oct. 14.

Jeffrey M. Shohet, president of the board of trustees, said in a prepared statement that the position was eliminated as “an example of frugality at the executive management level.” But, by eliminating Stewart’s annual $52,000 annual salary, they also eliminated his role as fund-raiser--through which he brought in $2.9 million in the last 24 months, according to Stewart’s calculations.

“The fund-raising activities of the organization,” Woodhouse said, “were under his direction and leadership but, as in any arts organization, many members of the board and the staff participated in the activities that led to the organization receiving those contributions and grants. And that will continue.” Stewart, Woodhouse and Shohet all maintain that the split is amicable. But tensions are palpable in the 17-year-old company that has been cash-poor for at least two years and is heading into the upcoming season with a $400,000 deficit.

“I think that the particular position of managing director is the most brutal position in the company when things get bad,” Stewart said on the phone Friday from his home. “Every morning I thought I should put on a bullet-proof jacket because that’s how it was minute by minute.”

It’s not unlike the way Alan Levey described his job. Levey, the managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse until Dec. 31, used to have a painting on his office wall that his father had done of a man standing in the tracks of an incoming train.

“It’s his visualization of my job,” Levey had said in November. “He says, ‘I’m in front of the train, getting run over.’ ”

Stewart, 37, who began his career working for a Unilever subsidiary, said he plans to return to corporate management in San Diego.

“I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do in the arts. I’ve run large and small companies. I don’t regret what I did, but I would like to use the leadership skills I’ve learned from running an arts organization and apply them to the corporate field.”

Stewart was born in Rhu, Scotland, and earned degrees in mechanical engineering and business from Edinburgh University. He studied at the London School of Economics and earned an MBA in nonprofit arts administration from Indiana University before taking on positions at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and the Dallas Theater Center.

He was hired in a flush time for the San Diego Rep. In 1988, the success of its long-running “Six Women With Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know” along with a benefit by Rep alum Whoopi Goldberg wiped out a financial crisis of 1987, and encouraged the leadership to expand the operation. But the 1989 premiere-packed season that followed was not well-received and resulted in a plummeting subscription base. Once at a high of 7,000, it fell to 3,500 and hovers at about 4,000 today.

The drop in subscription base kicked off a cash-flow problem that led to the Rep’s crisis campaign of 1990. The company raised enough to finish its 1990-91 season but did not eliminate its deficit. The troupe managed to complete its 1991-92 season as well, but with virtually no money in the bank. The budget has been pared down from a high of $2.5 million in 1989-90 to around $1.75 million today, according to Woodhouse.

The company is also renegotiating its lease with the Horton Plaza Theatre Foundation committee established by the Centre City Development Corp. to oversee the Lyceum. The seven-year lease comes due at the end of the year.

While Stewart struggled to bring in the money (he said he still expects a major grant to be announced in the next few months), he also built a broader base of support for the theater by creating multicultural partnerships. Woodhouse praised Stewart for what he called his “key role” in developing the Lyceum “as downtown’s premier multicultural, multidisciplinary facility.” Woodhouse said he expects the projects to continue.

They include:

* Project Discovery: This program brought 8,000 schoolchildren to the Rep at subsidized ticket prices last year.

* The Coalition for Arts and Culture: This alliance of San Diego arts and cultural organizations has proved an effective tool in lobbying against cuts in city funding for the arts.

* The Teatro Sin Fronteras Council and African American Council: Stewart founded these councils to give Latinos and blacks a voice in Rep programming.

* Lyceum Programming: Stewart forged partnerships with Asian, Latino and African American communities to be among the roughly 150 groups that produce about 600 events a year at the Lyceum.

Stewart said his commitment to multicultural efforts stems from “a personal passion for equity and harmony and peace.”

His biggest focus now, he said, is moving on to a new opportunity and challenge.

Meanwhile, the fiscal challenges continue at the Rep.

“I feel unquestionably that Doug’s and Sam’s decision making for the future of the theater is critical,” Stewart said. “There is no margin for error. There are no mistakes that can be made. There are no safety nets. All the safety nets have been used. They have a very great burden upon them because a mistake now will see the theater close.”

Woodhouse acknowledged the burden, but with more optimism.

“Yes, I would say this is a critical year,” he said. “I also feel that artistic and business choices we’re making are all made with an eye toward surviving and presenting a very entertaining and creative season. The important part is that we’re here, we’re alive, and we’re working very hard in our planning for next season.”