Alex Theatre

Redevelopment Agency green-lights new nonprofit that is expected to up creative visibility.

By Angela Hokanson

“Of course, publicity is the most important thing in this business,” she said.

Glendale Arts will create a website containing a master calendar for arts events happening in greater Glendale, said Barry McComb, executive director of the Alex Theatre, and who will lead Glendale Arts. The calendar would include everything from gallery exhibits to performing arts events at local schools, he said.

The website will also contain links to local artists’ Web pages, and maps to art venues around the city.

“Really, the primary purpose of Glendale Arts will be to serve as a clearinghouse between the Glendale arts community and arts consumers,” McComb said.

The website will hopefully pique residents’ interests in art performances or groups that may not have known about before, said Vince Takas, the president of the Glendale Art Assn., a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting art appreciation.

“They will expand arts across the board in Glendale,” Takas said.

For the Glendale Art Assn. in particular, the new organization might drive new members their way, or perhaps consumers interested in purchasing artwork, Takas said.

Glendale Arts also plans to develop an online, centralized ticketing system for citywide arts events on the organization’s website, McComb said. People will be able to purchase tickets online to any local art event that was listed on the master arts calendar, he said.

“We would become kind of like the Ticketmaster of Glendale,” he said.

By centralizing arts ticketing in this way, participating arts organizations could save money by not running their own ticketing services, and expose potential audience members to a wider range of arts events, McComb said.

Farther down the line, Glendale Arts would like to establish ticket kiosks around the city where people could purchase tickets to arts events, he added.

The website won’t be transferred to Glendale Arts until July, and will be under development for several months, he said.

Tim Dietlein, an owner and producer of Glendale Centre Theatre, hadn’t yet looked into the role Glendale Arts will play in the city, but he supports the notion of collecting arts information in one place. Ticket kiosks around the city would also be a great asset, he said.

Even though building up the art scene in Glendale could have the effect of increasing competition among existing art venues in the city, Dietlein said he would welcome more local arts businesses.

“Good art promotes good art,” he said. “Good theater promotes good theater.”

The structure of Glendale Arts will also allow the organization to access new sources of revenue for the Alex Theatre and other arts programs, McComb said.

Because the governing board won’t be a city commission, board members will have greater leeway to donate money to the organization, and will be better positioned to apply for certain grants.

“The real growth for us is going to be in the area of contributed income,” he said.

The city’s Redevelopment Agency voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the creation of Glendale Arts, a private nonprofit organization charged with overseeing the operation of the Alex Theatre and promoting the arts around Glendale. The board of directors of the new nonprofit will replace the Alex Regional Theatre Board, the city commission that currently governs the historic theater.

Glendale Arts was conceived as a way to make the Alex Theatre more financially sustainable by opening it up to new revenue sources, and as a way to foster the Glendale arts community, according to the city officials.

“I think this will be very helpful for the artists especially,” said Gayane Galstyan, manager of Harvest Gallery, a Brand Boulevard gallery that exhibits contemporary work, mainly by local artists.

The spotlight will be directed at local artists
Assemblyman Paul Krekorian is poised to turn cameras on several youngsters during FilmFest 43.

By Ryan Vaillancourt
Glendale News Press

The prospect of a dwindling California entertainment industry at the hands of runaway production is especially daunting for Assemblyman Paul Krekorian since the local economies in his district, which includes Glendale and Burbank, lean heavily on film and television.

As part of his effort to combat the economic problem, Krekorian chairs a select legislative committee on preserving the state entertainment industry, and he’s pushing policy measures that would crack down on intellectual property theft.

But on Friday night at the Alex Theatre, Krekorian’s focus will turn to a distinctly more local initiative, free from policy speak and complex legislative analysis.

Instead of lobbying legislators, Krekorian will showcase the work of dozens of local students who have made short films for Filmfest 43, a film festival featuring submissions from young filmmakers attending high schools throughout the 43rd Assembly District.

“I thought the film festival would be an opportunity to both give high school kids an opportunity to have an outlet to demonstrate their creative talents and also to encourage them to consider careers in this area so we can continue to foster the entertainment industry workforce in Southern California,” Krekorian said.

A number of major studios are sponsoring the event, including Disney, Warner Bros, NBC-Universal, Sony Pictures and Paramount.

And judges include Mike Petros, associate professor of television at Glendale Community College; Dug Ward, an adjunct faculty member at UCLA’s Animation Workshop and a former animator for Fox’s “King of the Hill”; and Robert Peterson, who chairs the graduate film program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

The call for entry prompted more than 100 submissions, including one from Clark Magnet High School sophomore Michael Aloyan, 15, who says he sees the festival as a career opportunity.

“I’m nervous to find out if we got [accepted] or not, but it’s a pretty big deal because there’s going to be all those studio execs there, and because, you know, this is the career field that I want to go into,” Michael said.

Submissions include short narratives like Michael’s “Yesterday,” which follows a young man’s memories of love, in reverse.

“Reflection,” a silent film by John Burroughs High School junior Anna Tschetter, traces a young woman’s eerie encounter with her apparent doppelganger that moves into her house and wins her parents’ hearts.

Others include student Susan Bryant’s documentary of the Clark Magnet High School robotics team and a short Claymation love story by Ella Nepales, a student at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy.

“We hope to see some of these young filmmakers perhaps have their name in lights in years soon to come,” he said.

The festival starts 6:30 p.m. Friday at Alex Theatre.

The event is open to the public, and admission is free.

To RSVP for free tickets, call Krekorian’s district office at (818) 240-6330.

Glendale News Press
May 10, 2008

The Alex may get grant aid
City is considering forming a nonprofit organization to run theater, making it eligible for funds.

By Jason Wells

Published:  Last Updated Friday, May 9, 2008 10:31 PM PDT

CITY HALL — The city and the Alex Theatre’s governing board want to create a new nonprofit organization that would operate the historic venue, bring it to self-sufficiency and promote cultural arts citywide.

Under the proposed structure, the Alex Regional Theatre Board would be reformed into a private nonprofit umbrella arts management organization called Glendale Arts.

The new structure would allow the nonprofit to continue collecting from traditional revenue sources, like ticket sales and rental fees, while taking advantage of more grant and foundation funding opportunities that come with being a nonprofit organization, city officials said.

“We’re really looking to position ourselves as the voice of the arts community on the private side,” said Barry McComb, executive director of the Alex Regional Theatre Board.

A major part of that will be to compile the city’s arts resources under one domain, where residents and visitors can access the information — calendars, events, locations, performances — in one place, under one “brand.”

The creation of an arts “clearing house” would also lead to a guild of volunteers that, under Glendale Arts, could be assigned and be shared among member organizations, McComb said.

The Alex Theatre, in addition to being a major venue, also has plans to extend its box office ticketing capabilities to other arts organizations, which not only consolidates business operations for them, but produces another revenue source for the theater, McComb said.

Additional revenue and business ventures will play a major role in the mission and direction of Glendale Arts, formerly known as the Glendale Arts Alliance, since the current $415,000 annual subsidy from the Redevelopment Agency ends in 2015, city officials said.

The relationship between economic independence and benevolent arts promotion on behalf of Glendale Arts should be symbiotic as the city continues to push for more cultural arts options, Arts and Culture Commissioner Steven Lee said.

“We need a strong arts organization like Glendale Arts to help build a strong infrastructure that we can help nurture,” Lee said. “We are working with them hand in hand.”

Many of the commissioners attended the public Glendale Arts scoping meetings, in which community members gave input on how they wanted some of the city’s cultural deficiencies addressed through the new organization, including more government subsidies, venues and gallery space.

And in January, the commission voted to form a temporary three-member subcommittee to work more closely with city strategic arts planning efforts.

But the municipal arts movement was dealt a setback in April, when the city’s first community services coordinator, Eve Rappoport, left to take a position with the city of Torrance.

Her job was to increase the visibility of city arts and cultural programs, and to serve as the liaison between the arts commission and Glendale’s stock of artists and venues.

In the process, she provided about 95% of the commission’s resources through project management and coordination, Lee said. The position is still vacant.

It is that hobbled progress that continues to frustrate one of the biggest cultural arts proponents on the City Council, Mayor John Drayman said.

While the Glendale Arts proposal would certainly help in unifying the arts movement, real progress in expanding cultural venues, such as a first-class museum or more gallery space, won’t happen until the city fully devotes its financial and organizational muscle behind the effort, he said.

Historically, the city has pointed to struggling nonprofits and playhouses to stoke Glendale’s arts image, but “that is not enough,” Drayman said.

Supporting the formation of an umbrella arts organization may be a step in the right direction, but “that is not a city arts program, and we need that,” he said.

An Arts & Economic Prosperity study, sponsored by Americans for the Arts, found that in 2005 the nonprofit arts and culture community in Glendale was a $12.7-million industry, generating 357 full-time jobs and $1.5 million in local and state tax revenue.

Without laying the groundwork for expansion of that industry, surrounding communities will capture the growth and leave Glendale behind, Drayman said.

And in that vein, the city and Alex Theatre, through Glendale Arts, are intrinsically tied, McComb said.

“At our core is collaboration,” he said. “We’re not looking to be on that island out there by ourselves.”

The Redevelopment Agency, in its dual role as the City Council, will consider the final proposal at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in City Council Chambers, 613 E. Broadway.

Sneak Preview’ will pay tribute to the Alex Theatre as it parades through Pasadena on Jan. 1.

By Jason Wells

To be called “Sneak Preview,” the 35-foot-long float will feature a scene set in the glamour era of 1930s and ’40s Hollywood and the movie premieres that took place at the iconic theater on Brand Boulevard.

A white, stretch convertible limousine is parked in front of the Alex — complete with its 22-foot-high spire — with skylights and plenty of flowers.

Alex Theatre-released classics like “National Velvet,” starring Elizabeth Taylor, and “Going My Way,” with Bing Crosby, will be featured on the marquee.