He’s Driven by a Higher (Will) Power

Ben Donenberg, producing artistic director of Shakespeare Festival / LA, is aware of the irony.

Perched on a couch in a sequestered nook of the historical downtown bastion known as the L.A. Athletic Club, the producer can’t help but savor the incongruity. After all, this is hardly the kind of setting in which you’d expect to find one of L.A.’s most successful theatrical populists. Someone who’s made a career of bringing the Bard to the people, for the past 16 years producing free Shakespeare (with a donation of canned food) in outdoor locations throughout L.A.

Yet here sits the energetic Donenberg, discussing preparations for this summer’s production. Opening Friday at downtown’s Union Station, Shakespeare Festival / LA presents “As You Like It,” directed by Donenberg and Lance Davis. As he talks, the paradox becomes even more pronounced. For his is not just any “As You Like It,” but a lefty one, with Pete Seeger songs laced liberally throughout.

“Shakespeare put more songs into ‘As You Like It’ than any other play,” Donenberg says. “And I looked at it and asked, ‘What were these songs and why did he use so many of them?’ They were popular ballads of the time.

“This is where Pete Seeger comes in,” he continues. “Shakespeare is saying that freedom and liberation lead to harmony. So we are starting our show in an oppressive industry, just like it does in Shakespeare’s time in the orchard, [but this time] with ‘If I Had A Hammer.’ ”

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So what’s a nice left-of-center guy like Donenberg doing in this once-exclusive place? As it happens, it’s where he plays basketball, since the club is near Shakespeare Festival / LA’s downtown offices. “I’m probably the only guy in the L.A. Athletic Club wearing a ‘Will Power’ pin,” Donenberg notes ruefully. “But it keeps me sane, playing three times a week. I’m a point guard, a playmaker. That’s what they call my position.”

Playmaker indeed. Linger with the enterprising Donenberg for a while and it becomes clear just how apt this moniker is--without ever glimpsing him on the court, or near a stage--and basketball may not be the only reason he frequents the club. “Ben! How are you? Great to see you!” says a businessman in a well-tailored suit who happens to walk by. “Hi, how’ve you been?” responds Donenberg, reaching to shake the man’s hand. Once the man has gone, Donenberg explains: The man is a banker who gave the festival a five-figure donation last year. Clearly, Donenberg, 42, has the producer’s wiles.

His ambitions are lofty, too; last year he staged “Julius Caesar” on the steps of City Hall, and then, for Halloween, a “Shakespearean Seance” at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. The year before he produced “The Tempest” in the Watercourt at downtown’s California Plaza. The company also tours each summer production to various other far-flung sites with the aid of a 30-foot semitruck, dubbed “Will’s Wheels,” that converts into a stage.

And for a nonprofit L.A. troupe, Shakespeare Festival / LA’s staying power is highly unusual. “I am really proud of it,” Donenberg says. “I’ve had a lot of support from people who have dough, and I have had good boards of directors. People really get caught up in the vision of it.”

He has his admirers. “Ben is one of the theater’s great magicians,” says David Houk, a developer-producer and former Shakespeare Festival / LA board member who has donated downtown office space to the company from the start.

“He’s committed to putting theater back into the community. His ability to raise money is phenomenal, and his talent in bringing in good directors and actors and putting on fun shows downtown is terrific. He’s got a dream and he’s making it work. He’s a very practical dreamer.”

Admittedly, Shakespeare isn’t a particularly hard sell at the moment, what with the popularity of “Shakespeare in Love” and the high-profile productions directed by Peter Hall at the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre. But Donenberg remains sanguine about all the hoopla. “What happens at the Ahmanson is very different than what happens on the streets in front of City Hall and in the parks,” he says. “But I’ll tell you, [Center Theater Group artistic director Gordon Davidson] has got a real challenge filling the Ahmanson. We get 800 to 1,000 people a night to see our shows, but we’re not charging what they charge.”

Moreover, when Shakespeare is no longer the man of the moment, Donenberg’s troupe will remain--thanks in large part to his skill in securing support from some unlikely quarters.

In the early 1990s, for example, Donenberg was in the news for challenging the policies of L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department, which rejected a Shakespeare Festival / LA grant application based on insufficient “diversity.” Donenberg appealed the decision, and it was reversed. But he didn’t stop there.

“I was really pissed off that a lot of arts money was going to social services, and that to be evaluated as an artist you were also being evaluated by the amount of social service that you did,” he recalls. “So what I tried to do was shift the arts money going to social service to social service money going to arts.”

Specifically, Donenberg approached the Community Development Department of the city of L.A. “The agencies that get money from this department are things like homeless shelter this or AIDS that and poverty this and poverty that,” he explains. “But we’ve been funded by them for eight years now, about $100,000 a year.”

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That money supports a program called Will Power to Youth, which Shakespeare Festival / LA runs in a joint venture with the National Conference for Community and Justice. “We hire clusters of poverty kids, age 14 to 21, for six or seven weeks when they’re off from school, pay them minimum wage full time, and they get high school credit,” says Donenberg. The students are taught how to perform Shakespeare as well as human relations skills, under the guidance of Donenberg’s wife, Danielle Bedau, who works for the National Conference.

Since 1992, more than 270 students have gone through the program, earning more than $250,000 in wages. “These are families that by definition have per capita incomes of $8,000 a person, and we give the kid about $1,200 to $2,000,” says Donenberg. “It’s a significant impact on their family life, and it’s a demonstration to me and to our community of supporters that art can contribute dramatically.”

The program has worked so well, in fact, that the Community Development Department is now helping Shakespeare Festival / LA acquire a building. The group is currently in escrow on a warehouse on South Flower Street, which they will use for offices and production facilities and to run the Will Power to Youth program. But that doesn’t mean Donenberg and company will be changing their priorities.

“The play’s the thing,” he says, grinning at the chance to quote Shakespeare. “The focus needs to be on putting on good plays, because if we don’t have good plays, funding dries up and all the other programs will go away.”*

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“As You Like It,” Shakespeare Festival / LA at Union Station, main concourse, 800 N. Alameda St, downtown. Friday and Saturday, 8:30 p.m. Also Burton Chace Park, 13650 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey. July 8-18 (no performance July 12), 8:30 p.m. Admission free with canned food donation, but reservations needed. (213) 489-4127. South Coast Botanic Gardens, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Palos Verdes Peninsula. July 22-Aug. 1, 8:30 p.m. $15 (in advance), $18 (at the door). (310) 377-4316.