I don't have any specific data for attendance at the pre-1994 shows. But the approximate story was ...

The capacity of the recital hall at El Camino is 160. We only filled it once or twice that I can remember. Average attendance was probably about 100 (except for They're Playing Our Song, which probably only averaged 60-70 people per show -- it had a cast of only 8). The typical run would be 5-7 shows (might have had 8 once). We usually scheduled across three weekends and would get cancelled on one of them (as El Camino groups had priority and could boot us).

For Grease, I think we had a capacity of over 200, and probably had one house that was pretty full. Avereage attendance was probably 120-150. That was the one where we built a bunch of risers for the audience to sit on (since the floor of the cafeteria was flat).

Tickets were always free, though we hawked donations pretty hard (always had a box set out by the front door with big letters, asking for $$). We usually averaged about $1 per attendee in donations.

Initially, El Camino was very cheap. Taylor Thompson knew a guy named Bob Guest, who was the El Camino faculty advisor to the Gilbert and Sullivan Club. They arranged things so that we would donate $100-200 to the G&S club, which would then reserve the recital hall for our shows, and "sponsor" us (without a sponsor, an outside group could not perform on campus). We avoided labor charges altogether since Taylor and Steve Norris were employed by the city, and would donate their time as house manager and stage manager, respectively (all that was required for this facility). However, by the time we did Oklahoma, we were forced to start paying labor charges to the theater (usually about $1500).

The move to the Armstrong came about in part because of these charges, and in part because we outgrew the space. El Camino had no pit area, so, we had for years relied on the services of Frank Quizon, an AF capt. who would synthesize the entire score for us. All told, Frank handled developed full synthesized score for FIVE SHOWS!! He was one of the real heroes of the early years -- I think the club might not have been able to do the early shows without him -- certainly they would have been much harder and more expensive.

Frank left the AF in early 1992, and moved to San Diego, so we had to rely on a different music source. We were able to do Oklahoma because karaoke had become popular enough that you could get tapes of 12 of the most popular historical shows (though missing some of the songs -- I recorded "Poor Jud" on my old keyboard while sitting on the floor of my house -- to play the final chord, Scott had to reach in between my hands and hit a couple of notes). However, in 1993, we couldn't find any other taped show that we wanted to do and were capable of doing. So we picked Birdie, knowing we'd have to do music some other way -- we decided it would be fun to take a shot at a having a live band, and recruited a rhythm section and a woodwind section, mostly with the aid of Charlie Stowe. We had to put them backstage, which was uncomfortable and difficult, since neither they nor the conductor (Charlie) could see the stage (nor could the performers see him). Part of the reason the backstage was so uncomfortable was that they had had a flood there a couple of months before the show, which had damaged 8-10 grand pianos. The piano carcasses were strewn out about backstage, interspersed with musicians, cast members, and the odd set piece or prop. We were forced to build the set so that it basically never came off stage. The music worked out pretty well, but we were so cramped, that the only way to keep the live music and have space was to find another theater.

An interesting side note is that one of the musicians that Charlie Stowe recruited to play for us was Debbie Brooks, fairly recently arrived in LA from San Luis Obispo. She and I became friends during that show, and I recruited her to do Guys and Dolls with us in 1994, hoping that she would conduct. When I posed this to her, she said that she really didn't want to do it, but she did know a conductor that might be interested. Debbie worked with Rudy Aguero at TRW, and had heard of Mark and his musical background, without ever having met him. At the time he was still working on his undergraduate degree in performance conducting at Cal State Dominguez, and conducting jobs were hard to come by. So she got him to start attending rehearsals about 4 weeks into Guys and Dolls (when we still didn't have a theater lined up -- we didn't get the Armstrong for sure until 6 weeks into rehearsals) ... and the rest is history.

-- Chuck