“After three years and spending a whole lot of money, we’re not able to continue,” Stepanian said. “I don’t want to risk signing a lease and not being able to pay for it.”
In a public appeal for assistance to the City Council on Tuesday, the theater’s production manager, Gabrielle O’Sullivan, said Stepanian and other founding members and donors had already invested a combined $200,000 of their own money over the past three years to keep the playhouse afloat.
They did so without forming “any committees to research the feasibility of it,” she told the council. “We took our time, energy and talents and made the playhouse work.”
But those attributes appear to no longer be enough for the small nonprofit playhouse, putting Glendale in the position of possibly losing a second theater company as A Noise Within prepares to move to Pasadena in 2010.
Luna Playhouse officially opened in September 2006 and staged 26 productions within its first year.
Since then, the theater has put on performances that cater to a wide range of niches and cultural tastes, including Chinese, Latin, Jewish and Armenian stories.
All of the selections have been made with an eye to artistic value and statements, not to their potential return, said Stepanian, who is the most recent member to the Arts & Culture Commission.
He conceded that the altruistic business model may have suited playwrights more than the bottom line, but said the theater’s outlook only become bleak in the last five months as the economy soured.
“It’s a bit difficult to break down walls in Glendale, it seems,” Stepanian said. “We’ve always lost money, but I didn’t mind. . . . We’re happy to keep on doing it because we love theater.”
