‘Rent’ Party Comes to La Jolla

Palmy La Jolla may not seem much like the East Village, where “Rent” is set. And the announcement that La Jolla Playhouse will introduce the late Jonathan Larson’s award-winning musical to the West Coast next July surprised those observers who thought the show would go directly to a commercial run in Los Angeles for its West Coast bow.

“I’m thrilled that we are doing a new production of ‘Rent’ at our 500-seat theater, because it returns the show to the not-for-profit arena where it was developed [at New York Theatre Workshop],” said La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Michael Greif, whose other role, as the director of “Rent” in New York, was instrumental in the La Jolla coup. The show’s producers thereby display their “commitment to theaters that nurture the creation of new works,” he said.

The new production could move to L.A. and/or San Francisco after it closes in La Jolla. That would certainly be a handy way to maximize the approximate $400,000 of “enhancement” money that the Broadway producers will invest in a new staging for La Jolla (out of a total budget estimated at $1 million). “They’re not sure yet what’s going to happen in L.A.,” said a spokesman for the producers. However, La Jolla Playhouse will not have any financial involvement in subsequent commercial runs.

Last year, “Slavs!,” a La Jolla production staged by Greif, moved to a fellow nonprofit venue, the Mark Taper Forum. But in this case, “Rent” is such a hot property that it’s likelier to go directly to a commercial engagement, say some of those associated with the show. (A spokeswoman for the Taper said that there were no current plans to bring “Rent” to the Taper after the La Jolla run.)

Greif’s new staging of the show in La Jolla will be the centerpiece of the 1997 season, running nine weeks instead of the usual six. The season will mark both the 50th anniversary of the founding of the playhouse and the 15th of its revival, and the theater is planning a series of “15/50” festivities. Though none of the other five shows has been picked, season subscriptions are already on sale for $97.50 to $210--”early-bird” discount prices good through Oct. 31 (although the precise costs of subscriptions after Oct. 31 hasn’t been fixed). Nonsubscription tickets to “Rent” won’t go on sale until March 31.

Meanwhile, the cast of “Rent” will sing “Seasons of Love” from the show at the Democratic National Convention Monday, and a two-CD cast album arrives in stores Tuesday. (See review, Page 60.)

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SKIRBALL AT SKIRBALL: The Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre is moving its well-known series of readings to the new Skirball Cultural Center’s 300-seat auditorium in the Santa Monica Mountains, near Sepulveda Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. While the move sounds logical, given the Skirball ties, the theater’s executive director, Kym Eisner, said that it’s not necessarily permanent.

The readings are on Monday evenings, and Eisner isn’t sure if audience members from south of the mountains will be willing to endure the traffic on the San Diego Freeway in order to attend them. However, she pointed out that the new location is as close as the series has ever come to the San Fernando Valley--and southbound evening traffic usually isn’t quite as daunting as the northbound--so the new site might open up new interest in the series from the north.

The series has been held at four venues since its inception, most recently at the Ivy Substation in Culver City.

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NOISES OFFSTAGE: When the Glendale classical company A Noise Within announced last May that it would move up from sub-100-seat status to 144 seats in the coming season, a contract agreement still hadn’t been reached with Actors’ Equity.

Now Equity reports that its members who perform with A Noise Within will receive $42 per performance (and stage managers will get $48) during the coming year, plus pension contributions. Because A Noise Within does rotating repertory, the company had sought such a per-performance agreement rather than one that would require weekly salaries.

However, the deal is good for only one year, and Equity agreed to it only because A Noise Within will use a regular Equity contract for its production of “A Christmas Carol” at the Alex Theatre as well as when the company’s shows tour to larger venues, said a union spokesman.