Another Nail-biter as Clock Ticks Towards Midnight

By Jorge Casuso

June 3 -- It’s another real-life cliffhanger at the Santa Monica Playhouse. With less that 24 hours to meet a $500,000 fundraising goal, the theater is just $12,000 short.

It’s not the first nail-biter in the playhouse’s year-and-a-half-long bid to own the theater complex off of a Promenade alley it has occupied for 40 years. Twice supporters have come through at the last minute to keep the curtain from dropping for good due to escalating rents.

“It just seems like each time is a nail-biter,” said Sandra Zeitzew, the playhouse’s director of public relations.

Actually, $6,000 would do it, since a donor has offered to match the amount raised up to $50,000.
“Your $50 is worth $100 to the theater,” Zeitzew said. “The match is really wonderful because it can really put us ahead.”

If the theatre exceeds the $500,000 required by the landlord, the money would go towards a down payment and some much-needed upgrades to the old brick building at 1211 4th Street, Zeitzew said.

“The $500,000 is not the entire campaign,” she said. “That only secures the right to buy the building. We still have to raise money to buy it.”

The owner of the building gave the theater an extra four days after the fundraising effort failed to meet the goal by the original June 1 deadline. Volunteers are making a final flurry of calls hoping to meet the Wednesday’s midnight deadline, Zeitzew said.

“We’ve been running the phone banks,” Zeitzew said. “Different people are coming every night. We had promises from people who said if we get close to call them back.”

The two previous goals also resulted in a race against the clock, with the last one coming through thanks to a fairy tale ending.

With 15 minutes left before the January 31 midnight deadline, a caller whose daughter had seen her first production of “Cinderella” at the playhouse, donated the $1,000 needed to meet the $200,000 goal.

"It was amazing," recalled Evelyn Rudie, the theater's co-artistic director. "Everyone started screaming."

The race was nearly lost on its very first day, when playhouse officials received the paperwork from their landlord setting the first benchmark -- raise $20,000 in 24 hours.

Unable to mount a formal campaign on such short notice, playhouse officials turned to parents, friends and family. "All through the night, emails and calls kept coming in, from students, teachers, alumni thousands of miles away," Zeitzew said at the time.

The following day the final donation came via Western Union at 4:57 p.m.-- three minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline.

In the long run, buying the building where plays have been staged for generations of Santa Monicans will pay off, bringing down the mortgage payments to half the current rent, Rudie said.

"It's going to save us a tremendous amount of money and give us leverage in fundraising," she said. "People know the money is going into rent, not programming. We'll have more for scholarships and artistic support."