Geffen Gives $5 Million to UCLA Stage : Theater: His unusual donation to the Westwood Playhouse is unrestricted. The 498-seat, nonprofit venue will be renamed the Geffen Playhouse.

In one of the largest philanthropic donations ever made to an already-constructed nonprofit theater, David Geffen, the music and movie mogul, has given $5 million to UCLA’s Westwood Playhouse.

The 498-seat theater will be renamed the Geffen Playhouse.

The theater “is important to the cultural life of Westwood and the university,” Geffen said in a phone interview Thursday. “It’s a terrific opportunity for a smaller alternative to the Music Center or the Huntington Hartford (the former name of the Doolittle, which also is owned by UCLA). In a city like L.A., we can’t have enough theater.”

“It’s a very generous gift, and we’re truly thankful,” Gilbert Cates, producing director of the playhouse and dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, said in a separate interview Thursday.

Cates plans to launch a professional nonprofit company at the playhouse, which has been used largely for commercial productions in the past. He said Friday that the company will produce one play during the 1995-96 season and then hopes to offer subscription seasons, with “probably five or six plays a year,” in 1996-97. The theater also is used by the university.

Geffen co-produced “Little Shop of Horrors” at the Westwood in 1983. But he cited the theater’s attachment (since 1993) to UCLA, which is across Le Conte Avenue from the playhouse, as his primary interest in the theater. Geffen was a University of California regent from 1980 to 1990 and said he’s “a big fan” of the university.

Geffen made his fortune in the recording industry and recently co-founded the multimedia production company DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. He has previously invested in New York stage productions including “Cats,” “Dreamgirls,” “Master Harold . . . and the Boys,” “M. Butterfly” and “Miss Saigon.” He said he has donated all his profits from movies and theater to his David Geffen Foundation, through which the Westwood Playhouse gift is being channeled.

The Westwood gift appears to be the largest single donation from the foundation ever made public, but Geffen said that not all of his gifts are made public. Foundation president Andy Spahn said the $5 million is the largest gift the foundation has made in the arts arena.

“There are no conditions to the gift,” Geffen said, adding with a laugh, “hopefully I get a free ticket.”

Cates confirmed that the gift is without restriction and said there was “never any discussion” that Geffen might get an option to develop plays presented at the playhouse or to benefit personally from the playhouse in any other way.

Geffen will sit on the new company’s board, which will be “the principal architect of how the money is used,” Cates said. Other board members will be announced in about 10 weeks.

Some of the money will help refurbish the playhouse and bring it up to codes that govern accessibility for the disabled, Cates acknowledged. Geffen said he believes the theater will be “a lot more comfortable.” Cates said much of the money is likely to go into an endowment for support of the company’s programming.

Cates cited the current occupant of the playhouse, the Steppenwolf Theatre production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” as “an example of what the Geffen Playhouse can produce--it’s contemporary, literate, audience-encouraging.” He declined to outline specific plans for the theater, however.

Theater leaders hailed the gift. “For such a long time, we’ve hoped there could be a relationship between Hollywood and the nonprofit theater, where so many of the people in Hollywood got their start,” said Lindy Zesch, longtime deputy director of Theatre Communications Group in New York.

Zesch said this kind of gift is rare nationwide: “In terms of an outright gift, not related to the construction of a building, I don’t think there has ever been anything this big.”

“It’s our hope that it’s the first in a string of such gestures from the entertainment industry,” said William Freimuth, director of Theatre LA, the organization of local producers.

“It’s wonderful. Hopefully the Westwood Playhouse will be a permanent fixture,” said Charles Dillingham, managing director of Center Theatre Group. “And it’s certainly good news that a member of the Hollywood community is making such a generous contribution.”