As part of the SAP convention, Karla Ross Productions provided entertainment and theme development for an event for 2,000 people at Santa Monica's Museum of Flying.  The event had a 1940's theme which was carried out with various entertainment acts including a jazz singer during the cocktail hour and the music of swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.  Guests also enjoyed tarot card readings, era look-a-likes such as Bette Davis and Clark Gable and swing dancing lessons.  Other event suppliers who provided services for the party included Hollywood Rentals, Party Solution and DC3 Catering.

Karla Ross Productions has provided entertainment for many high profile events in Southern California including movie premieres, wrap parties, charity benefits, event ceremonies and grand openings.  The company has an impressive list of corporate clients including IBM, Lexus and Paine Webber.  Services include bands, orchestras, strolling musicians, dance instructors, celebrity acts and complete show production.

"We don't just book entertainment", says Karla Ross.  "We listen to clients and hear what they want.  We specialize in creative entertainment -- something unique to make the party memorable."  Karla Ross Productions is located in Santa Monica and can be reached at (310) 476-5100.

The California Science Center is a museum for children, and when its annual gala comes around, the benefit draws on its expertise in creating interactive environments that are fun for kids.  After all, gala guests are just bigger kids with bigger wallets.  The benefit always celebrates a new exhibit, but Science Center folk know better than to peg their fund-raiser to a show about something dry and useful like, say, physics.  For the past several years, the museum has ridden the coattails of science-fiction crowd-pleasers that explore the joys of superheroes and robots, and this year was no different.  The ninth annual black-tie gala hailed the opening of the traveling exhibit "Star Wars: Where Science Meets the Imagination."

Christina Sion, vice president of food and event services, began toying with her 840 guests as soon as they stepped out of their cars.  Revelers walked down a red carpet lined with 501st Legion members -- Star Wars fans so intense they own their own Stormtrooper costumes -- who volunteered to help animate the event.  Fortunately for the Science Center, the George Lucas saga has zillions of fans, and more than 70 Star Wars characters from the 501st Legion turned out to transform the mezzanine overlooking the main lobby into the cantina from the film.  There, Chewbacca and Luke Skywalker posed for pictures with guests, contortionists from Karla Ross Productions contorted in Twilex costumes with elaborate headdresses borrowed from Lucasfilm, and bartenders served drinks in glowing plastic glasses at bars decorated with boulders lit from within.

For dinner, the lobby was recast as an Imperial Star Destroyer, with illuminated, planet-like spheres looming over tables covered in silver satin cloths, sparkly chargers, and clusters of white orchids and roses in glass vases filled with pebbles and mirror shards.  As Troopers guarded the room from a raised platform against a wall, guests feasted on wild-mushroom tarts, Kobe-beef tenderloin with parsnip and spinach cakes, and dark Belgian-chocolate pyramids.  Then it was on to a showing of the IMAX film Destiny in Space and dancing until 1 AM in the red-and-black Vader Room on the first floor of the Science Center.  Green lasers and large boxes containing humanoids, which pushed against the stretchy fabric fronts to form moving sculptures, gave the temporary nightclub plenty of space-age atmosphere.  Grown-ups wielding lightsabers danced to covers performed by a band from Ace of Hearts and indulged in all kinds of interactive play, including a high-tech video roller coaster from Party Pals and an oxygen bar provided by Airheads Oxygen Bars.  Guests left with gift bags of Neutrogena products and a DVD of the original Star Wars film.  ~ Irene Lacher

French Twist

by Lisa Hurley

May 1, 1999 12:00 PM

THE CHALLENGE? Keeping a 22-year-old fund-raiser fresh while pleasing a sophisticated clientele-all without breaking the bank. The solution? Using a little savoir-faire.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, has relied on a "Monte Carlo" fund-raising benefit-complete with casino-style gambling-every year since 1976. The formula has proved a winner, netting a total of $2.75 million since its inception. The theme for the most recent event-"A Celestial Night in Monte Carlo"-came from honorary chairwoman Audrey Geisel, widow of "Dr. Seuss" writer Ted Geisel. To carry it out, Newport Beach, Calif.-based Masterpiece Productions turned to contemporary French design to create a sleek, sophisticated nightclub with a heavenly ambience.

The evening unfolded in three stages. First, some 400 guests gathered for an hour of cocktails and hors d'oeuvre in one of the museum's courts. They then moved outdoors to the parking lot, which had been transformed into an elegant dining area complete with ocean view. After dinner, another 300 guests arrived for gambling and dancing staged back inside the museum.

Masterpiece achieved its celestial look with a color scheme of blues, white and yellow. The dining chairs were covered in white pin-dot fabric, which contrasted against the ice-blue and cobalt-blue bengaline tablecloths; the supplier was Resource One of Reseda, Calif. On the tables, the settings alternated between cobalt-blue charger plates and chargers with frosted silver beading. Reminding the guests that their generosity was funding art, the sculpture "Hammering Man" by Jonathan Borofsky towered above diners.

The stately floral arrangements, created by Anthony Griffin & Associates of Costa Mesa, Calif., displayed white and yellow flowers in full bloom, "in the French style," explains Masterpiece Productions partner Steve Norton. Other floral arrangements included clear vases packed tight with whole lemons and topped with floral sprays.

In keeping with the museum setting, the dessert buffet bars themselves were works of art. The bars were built to be slightly higher than the standard buffet and sculpted in sinuous lines. They were then upholstered in spandex fabric and cross-lighted in changing colors. Cobalt-blue votive candleholders served as risers for clear glass plates holding sugar-rimmed martini glasses filled with lavender mousse.

The menu from caterer Hyatt Regency La Jolla offered yellow gazpacho with crabmeat, herbed rack of lamb with tomato bordelaise, and a salad of Belgian endive, baby frisee and a mixture of shiitake, white cap, oyster, morel and wild mushrooms. San Diego-based Waters Catering created the dessert-gold-dusted chocolate truffles-along with the dessert buffet offered later in the evening. Also available were stations featuring crepes and infused sorbets.

The lighting-designed by Images By Lighting of Culver City, Calif.-created a starry night indoors and out. It sent gobos of shooting stars spinning across the walls behind the dessert buffets and onto outdoor screens partitioning off the dining area. Cloud gobos were projected behind the crepes table as well as behind the French chanteuse.

The evening's entertainment actually started as soon as the guests arrived. Stilt-walkers dressed in fanciful costumes greeted each arrival.

"Guests kept going back to look at them," Norton notes.

Masterpiece worked with entertainment firm Karla Ross Productions, Santa Monica, Calif., to line up the entertainment, which included a swing band at dinner and disco music in the "casino."

The event was again a success, notes museum development director Anne Farrell, netting more than $170,000 for MCA. She praises the deft work of Masterpiece Productions. "We had an art exhibit opening one week after our event, so we needed to have a crew get in right away to hang art," she says. "Masterpiece was out by 9 a.m. the next day."

She also praises the sensitivity of the company in creating an event to suit the museum. "We are a contemporary art museum," she explains. "We have pretty good taste to start with, so 'party as usual' is not what we're about."

Farrell notes that fund-raising events for cultural institutions pose an interesting paradox. Despite the fact that the museum's benefactors are often financial powerhouses, they don't want to see money spent extravagantly. "Our patrons want to know their money is going to the right place-to the museum," Farrell says. As a consequence, "our special event production companies need to keep economy in mind."

Farrell is a believer in the power of special events to strengthen cultural institutions. "Any institution lives and dies by its profile in the community, and that includes its social profile," she says. "Special events have an important role to play in any nonprofit organization. They can showcase what is unique about it."