AT&T; CHOOSES LATC FOR ARTS SUPPORT

The Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Eighth Los Angeles Theatre Festival (which kicks off tonight with Darrah Cloud’s “The Stick Wife”) has been selected by AT&T; to participate in its ongoing AT&T; Performing Arts Festival.

The announcement by William Clossey, public relations vice president for AT&T;’s Southern California, Nevada and Hawaii operations, was made at a luncheon Wednesday and marks LATC as the seventh performing arts organization to join in the AT&T; festival since its inception in the summer of 1985. Previous participants have been Chicago’s Steppenwolf and Wisdom Bridge theater companies, Washington’s American National Theatre, the La Jolla Playhouse, Baltimore’s Center Stage and the Houston Ballet.

In real terms, AT&T; will be underwriting the two-month LATC festival to the tune of $200,000, allowing it to considerably enlarge its activities. It also becomes the subject of a print and radio advertising campaign that will serve “both organizations,” Clossey said, pointing out that funds for the AT&T; festival come out of the company’s marketing budget.

“These are advertising dollars,” he explained, “not philanthropy. The genesis of the festival was divestiture of the Bell System and the need for AT&T; to establish an identity of its own. We want to raise our visibility in the major markets we serve. Southern California is our second-largest market. The selection of the Los Angeles Theatre Center is good business.”

In addition to the previously announced presentation of four fully produced plays (“Stick Wife,” “The Glass Menagerie” opening Friday, Jon Robin Baitz’s “The Film Society” opening next Thursday and El Teatro de la Esperanza’s “La Victima” opening Feb. 5), the festival will now incorporate poetry readings by American poets Carolyn Forche (Monday, 8 p.m.) and Mark Strand (Feb. 23, 8 p.m.), and a Big Weekend of interrelated events (Feb. 18-22).

The latter includes two symposia and staged readings of four new works with pre-performance coffee and conversation and post-performance discussion.

“There are terrific parallels for us in the business we happen to be in and the performing arts,” Clossey said. “The missions are communication and the common denominators are innovation and risk-taking. We consider ourselves an innovative information movement and management corporation. That image has a lot to do with the (organizations) we choose.”

The New Works Project of the festival (partially funded also by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation) will present staged readings of “Dakota’s Belly, Wyoming,” by Erin Cressida Wilson, a new play by LATC veteran playwright Donald Freed called “Vets,” Marlane Meyer’s “Etta Jenks” and Steven Dietz’s “Foolin’ Around With Infinity.”

A Feb. 21 symposium at 4:30 p.m., slyly titled “Six Directors in Search of an Audience” will offer the comments of six directors who would have no trouble scaring one up (all, notably, past and present beneficiaries of AT&T; largesse). They are the La Jolla Playhouse’s Des McAnuff, the Goodman Theatre’s Robert Falls (formerly artistic director of Chicago’s Wisdom Bridge), “Ajax” and “Zangezi” director Peter Sellars (formerly artistic director of the American National Theatre), Steppenwolf’s Gary Sinise, Center Stage (Baltimore) artistic director Stan Wojewodski and LATC artistic producing director Bill Bushnell.

The second symposium (on Feb.22, 4 p.m.) is even more slyly called “Do We Have to Show You Our Stinking Badges?--Hispanic Theatre in the 1990s,” after a recent play of not-quite-the-same-name by El Teatro Campesino’s Luis Valdez, dean of Hispanic-American writer/directors.

It will be chaired by Bushnell and Jose Luis Valenzuela (director of “La Victima”), will include Valdez among the panelists, along with Craig Noel and Jorge Huerta (of the San Diego Old Globe), David Emmes and Jose Cruz Gonzales (of Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory). The best news of all is that admission to both symposia is free.

“My mission,” said Clossey who’s been in his Los Angeles post a year, “is establishing a broad presence for AT&T; at the intersection of activities of theatrical excellence and urban redevelopment. What’s unique about LATC is that it’s also part of the revitalization of downtown--something we want to encourage and believe in.”

Something that can also use all it can get from this sort of vigorous and visionary corporate support.

SHORT AND NOT SWEET: “Sweet Bird of Youth” at the Ahmanson with Lauren Bacall and scheduled to tour three more cities before hitting Broadway later this spring, will close down Jan. 25, at the end of its Los Angeles run.

Producer Douglas Urbanski would not comment on the decision, referring us instead to a collective statement issued jointly by the show’s four producers (Urbanski, Duncan Weldon, Karl Allison and Jerome Minskoff). It read tersely, “The producers of ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’ have decided not to tour the production after Los Angeles. A decision will be made at a later time as to the fate of the production.”

Experience tells us that such “later” decisions rarely get made.

A distinct loss of luster in the production’s transatlantic crossing (it was a major hit in London) is likely to be the real reason behind the closing. The hardest decisions can be the wisest.

MINI-FESTIVAL II: Theatre West, meanwhile, is readying “Lifetimes 10: Writers Play With the Puzzle.” This is an evening of 10 short plays by members of the company dealing with different moments in the span of life--fetal to post-mortem--opening Jan. 30.

Andy Griggs is producing with William Wood as creative coordinator. In addition to the 10 playwrights, the mini-marathon involves eight directors and 20 actors and marks the first full-blown production of original work to come out of the Writers’ Workshop.