Encinitas resident Jill Mesaros is the producing director of Miracle Theatre Productions that is soon to leave its long-time home at the Theatre in Old Town. Miracle’s exodus from Old Town State Park is largely due to a state law requiring the venue to re-bid its contract every ten years, a process that Mesaros decided would be too costly for the production company to consider. Push is coming to shove, she reported, and Miracle’s departure is that much greater a reality.
The 250-seat Theatre in Old Town, 4040 Twiggs St., is one of several state park properties up for bid per state requirements. An award board will convene to consider the lone proposal on the 27-year-old facility whose capital improvement needs would cost the bidder around $330,000.
That kind of money, Mesaros said, is better spent in an area rife with new possibilities for live fare.
“People in cities like Encinitas, Oceanside, Carlsbad and San Marcos have seen [local] live theater, but most of the theater in the county is south of La Jolla,” Mesaros explained. “We’ve been talking to the City of Encinitas for approximately six months about how we might help them realize their theater project, and we are really excited about the possibilities there.”
The company is virtually the only for-profit theater entity in San Diego County ” as such, its funding mechanism isn’t dependent on the shifting nature of conventional fund-raising efforts, she continued.
Miracle, formed in 1994, is known for lavish music- and dance-oriented fare, a concept that largely escaped its audience base with the recent production of “Das Barbecã.” The play, a send-up of Richard Wagner’s “Ring” opera cycle, met with the wrong kind of critical acclaim upon its June debut. Ticket sales severely lagged, and the show closed almost as soon as it opened.
“Maybe the name scared everybody away,” Mesaros said, “but ‘Das Barbecã’ just never sold. In 12 years, something like that’s never happened to us.”
The company has hastily resurrected “Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit,” favorably received at Theatre in Old Town last spring. The spoof of several hit Broadway musicals has an open-ended run, with its closing contingent on the state bid procedure timetable.
After that, Miracle may find a favorable response elsewhere.
The down side involves the departure of a successful San Diego theater company and a popular Old Town venue. Local theater is showing some signs of settling in in other quarters, such as south downtown, where two companies have set up shop a block apart.
But Miracle’s plans weigh in the balance on that kind of stability. The lack of venues is an enormous problem for San Diego theater ” and the loss of yet another doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Tickets for “Forbidden Broadway” are $31 to $43 and available by calling (619) 688-2494.