Annenberg Ctr. head leaves amid money problems

The troubled performing arts center must search for a replacement while planning for massive reorganization. Amidst preparations for a major reorganization and while dealing with a substantial deficit, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is facing an additional problem -- finding a new managing director. After a 33-year tenure in various positions at the center, current Managing Director Stephen Goff announced his resignation last August, agreeing to stay on at the financially troubled theater until a replacement is found. The University expects to have a new managing director by Jan. 1, 1998, Goff said. His departure comes as the center prepares for a three-year reorganization period. The reorganization will not affect student performances, although no decision has been made about non-University productions from July 1998 through the year 2000, Provost Stanley Chodorow said. Goff's resignation came after the plans to restructure the theater's operations were announced. Although he has enjoyed his 22 years as managing director, Goff -- a 1964 University graduate -- said the reorganization process might be best served by new blood. "Under the reorganization, maybe it is time they got somebody else to take it over from that point," Goff said. Cary Mazer, chairperson of the Theater Arts Department and a theater critic for City Paper, said Goff's departure will give the University greater latitude in rethinking the role of the Annenberg Center. "The University needs to find a home? for curricular academic programs in the performing arts and for the many extracurricular performing arts clubs," Mazer said. "Steve's departure provides the opportunity to rethink what the Center might be for and how it might be used." Under Goff, the theater won praise from faculty and administrators for attracting interesting and groundbreaking productions to campus. Mazer praised Goff's ability to attract diverse productions such as Angels in America, Wozza Albert, The Blood Knot, Master Harold and the Boys and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. At the same time, however, the center is experiencing financial difficulties as a result of reduced arts funding and slow ticket sales. Recently, the University has been pushing for an improvement in the center's bottom line. The reorganization process -- which calls for adding concerts, film series and lectures to Annenberg's current offerings in children's theater, student performances and dance -- resulted from a six-month review of the problems facing the center, Chodorow said. "The arts are expensive," Goff said. "And we all have to work together to be able to pay for them." The University has certainly been contributing its fair share of funds, according to administrators. Over the past nine years, the theater's operating expenses have increased by 13 percent, while revenue has decreased 16 percent, according to Chodorow. The center accumulated operational deficits in six of those years despite University contributions averaging $1.2 million per year to the center's budget. For fiscal year 1997, an "unanticipated and substantial deficit" forced the University to cover half the theater's expenses, according to Deputy Provost Michael Wachter.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.