San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
THEATER NOTEBOOK
Prebys grants come at key time for local theaters
Last week, San Diego’s Conrad Prebys Foundation announced the award of nearly $78 million in grants to 114 nonprofit foundations, mostly in San Diego County.
The grants went to a vast mix of health care, educational, medical, animal and youth-oriented causes. But one of the biggest sectors to benefit from the foundation’s generosity was the arts. Forty-one grants totaling $28.6 million went to local theaters, dance companies, music organizations, art galleries and museums.
Tony Cortes, board chair for the Conrad Prebys Foundation, said the focus on support for arts organizations this year was no accident. Before he died in 2016 at the age of 82, Prebys was a generous patron of the arts. His biggest gift to a local theater was in 2005, when he gave $10.6 million to the Old Globe to build the Conrad Prebys Theatre Centre.
“A lifelong enthusiast of visual and performing arts, Conrad often found inspiration during a visit to a theater, concert hall or museum,” Cortes said in a statement. “This has been an extraordinarily difficult year for the arts and culture community, and Conrad would be deeply pleased to see the impact these grants will have in encouraging this community to do what it does best — inspire.”
One of the biggest Prebys arts grants announced March 22 went to Carlsbad’s New Village Arts, which received a two-year grant totaling $500,000. The theater is required to match those funds, to create $1 million in combined funding.
Kristianne Kurner, who cofounded New Village in 2001 and has served for many years as its executive artistic director, described the Prebys grant as a “transformational gift” that will provide long-term stability for the 20-year-old company, particularly as it comes off a yearlong pandemic-related closure.
Since 2007, New Village — which is a theater and a visual arts gallery and arts education center — has occupied a 1948 warehousestyle building at 2787 State St. in Carlsbad. The city-owned structure, which was once a produce warehouse and lumberyard, was leased to New Village in three- to five-year increments over the years, so the company invested in only minor upgrades over the years, in case it had to move, Kurner said.
But in the past year, the city offered a 20-year lease to New Village with the agreement that it must upgrade the building to “activate” the corner of State Street and Christiansen Way. In recent years, New Village hired architect Brett Farrow to redesign the building and secured more than $300,000 in grants from the
Sahm Family Foundation and the Nordson Foundation. With the new lease and previous underwriting, Kurner said New Village was finally in a secure enough position to apply to the Prebys Foundation for a major grant to finish the renovation project.
The new building will have more windows on its perimeter to allow passersby to see the art classes and public events going on inside. The theater will also get a new stage, new lighting, and sound and projection equipment, among other upgrades.
“We’ve done lot of work toward equity, diversity and inclusion in recent years, and we wanted to create a space that recognizes that,” Kurner said. “It will be a space where everyone feels welcome and where people can come and have adventurous artistic experiences in all aspects of the building. I think what the Prebys Foundation recognized was that our goal was to be there for all of North County to create this gathering space for a larger community than just Carlsbad.”
The Prebys Foundation also gave $500,000 to the Old Globe, which it will use for general operating expenses. San Diego Opera received $350,000, which will be used toward its 2021 and 2022 seasons. San Diego Repertory Theatre received a $100,000 season sponsorship grant.
Diversionary Theatre received $50,000, which it will use for its ongoing renovations. Playwrights Project, which promotes youth playwriting programs, received $25,000 for general operating costs. Write Out Loud received $15,000 to support its ongoing virtual programming. And Scripps Ranch Theatre received a $10,000 grant to support its 2021 operations.
San Diego Rep receives several grants for ‘57 Chevy’
San Diego Rep’s $100,000 gift from the Prebys Foundation wasn’t the only gift it received in recent weeks. The theater also received a $35,000 grant from the Parker Foundation and a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
All three grants will go toward the Theatre Without Borders production of the play “57 Chevy,” a one-man comedy starring Ric Salinas and directed by Rep artist-in-residence Herbert Siguenza. Salinas and Siguenza are longtime members of the Culture Clash performance group.
Written by Cris Franco, “57 Chevy” is an autobiographical play about a young man’s journey from Mexico City to Los Angeles, told from the backseat of his father’s 1957 Chevy. The Rep plans to stream a filmed version of the play in July.
“We are very grateful that three major funders share with us at San Diego Rep a deep love for this very special story,” Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse said in a statement. “‘57 Chevy’ is a father/ son story, an immigrant story and a Southern California story.”
‘Stop Asian Hate’ campaign gets support in San Diego
Eric Keen-louie, producing director at La Jolla Playhouse, was one of the creative minds behind the viral #Stopasianhate National Day of Action and Healing event held March 26.
On that day, Asian American celebrities nationwide posted digital videos on Instagram and other social media platforms where they talked about the wave of anti-asian violence that has been growing in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic.
March 26 was the anniversary of the day the first U.S. law on naturalization was enacted in 1790 to limit citizenship to only “free, White persons.” Among the participants who posted brief videos about the rising violence were singer/actor Lea Salonga, playwrights Lauren Yee and David Henry Hwang, and “Star Wars” film actor Kelly Marie Tran.