THEATER IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

“Where are the yuppies?” Peg Yorkin, producing director of L.A. Public Theatre, asked plaintively . . . challengingly.

The California Theatre Council’s producer of the year stood onstage at the Beverly Hills Hotel receiving her tribute at a black-tie occasion marking the first decade of the organization’s existence.

“I recently read an article which said yuppies don’t go to theater, they go to dinner. And funny as it may sound, it’s probably true. They are not in the habit of going, and we are doing little to encourage them.”

Yorkin wondered why. Unlike movies and television, theater doesn’t need “to reach millions of people to break even. But what do we do?,” she asked. “For the most part we do plays which were successes or halfway successes in New York. We do comedies because people want to laugh and don’t want to think anymore. We do plays that perhaps will go on to another medium--read TV or cable--and then we can recoup.

“For financial reasons,” Yorkin continued, “we do plays that have no more than three in the cast and are set in the kitchen . . . like TV sitcoms. Well, after a few evenings of boring theater at $15 or $20 or $25 a pop, the audience says the hell with it.”

Her audience loved it. Yorkin’s critique--and her conclusion that “the one thing theater can do very well is present ideas . . . speak to the human condition . . . be political”--came in the midst of a three-day Theatre Council conference Wednesday through Friday that had no formal theme but was packed with ideas not only of what the theater is about, but also of what to present.

“Where is the play which speaks about the rage of women?” Yorkin asked, or the play about abortion? “I actually did read one script about abortion but it copped out at the end.”

Where is the play, asked actor/activist Peter Coyote earlier at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, that deals with NASA, “this ‘80s society, this high-tech mode?. . . How come I’ve never seen a play about the struggles of a theater company? And couldn’t that be a metaphor for any small business in the United States?”

About 200 producers, directors, managers and actors of nonprofit theater attended the conference at the four-month-old $16-million Los Angeles Theatre Center complex, which has become a showcase among nonprofit theaters.

Although Coyote asserted he had “a hunch buildings like this reinforce the rigidity of plays now going on,” most took the remark simply as a nice, jagged-edge slice of irreverence. Besides Bill Bushnell, artistic producing director, in welcoming the conference to the Theatre Center, had already predicted a subscription base of 60,000--or more than twice the present figure--within the next three years .

Bushnell’s optimism was in sharp contrast to the conference’s underlying theme of hard times ahead--of “finite audiences” and “flat budgets,” which sounded like drumbeats during the three days of intense panel meetings.

Indeed, either because the conference participants had already heard so much about budgets that were going nowhere, or because Bob Reid, the new director of the California Arts Council, is so affable, he drew only attentive concern when he spoke at a panel dealing with “the changing environment of arts funding.”

Stephen Albert, general manager of the Mark Taper Forum, said large theater companies were concerned that 90% of their audiences might already have been tapped.

Stephen Richard, general manager of the Los Angeles Theatre Center, discussed actor salaries. After moderating a meeting of producers of medium-size theaters (budgets of $200,000 up to $1 million) from around the state, he found half to three-quarters were unable to pay their actors even minimum Actors’ Equity wages.

Sharon Ott, artistic director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, discussed director salaries. She said that in the year prior to going to Berkeley in July, 1984, she directed nine plays, including “The Seagull” at South Coast Repertory Theatre, and earned $20,000.

By the time a panel on “the pay TV deal” came along Friday afternoon, the audience was hardly receptive to hearing from Showtime officials that presenting the “glorious” Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George” later this month, will bring in “a limited audience.”

During a question-and-answer session, Ted Schmitt, producing director of the Cast Theatre in Hollywood, noted that three years ago Showtime and Catalina had filmed “Journey’s End” at his theater--and wanted to know why they hadn’t come back. Alan Sabinson, Showtime’s senior vice president for original programming, gave a frank answer. He said Showtime needed public attention.

The theater conference was also an occasion for artists to talk about their art and what it means.

Richard Dreyfuss, accepting an award for outstanding artistic achievement, noted that he started in theater in Los Angeles in 1963.

“I was working the week that John Kennedy was killed. I couldn’t understand why the audience showed up that Saturday night. It was a very good show. They laughed and cried. And I understood.

”. . . after everything (that) happened (during the week), I began thinking about the guy, or the girl, writing that play about the space shuttle. . . .”