Unfolding Drama of Theater : Panelists Gauge Present, Future States of Theater

The ambiguous, present-future time warp suggested by the title of a symposium held Saturday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center--”State of the Art: Theatre in the 21st Century”--was reflected in the discussion itself. Symposium participants cast a wary eye on the upcoming decades, while lamenting theater’s current condition.

Moderator Morgan Jenness, consulting dramaturg to New York’s Public Theatre and LATC, led the sometimes rambling discussion--a part of LATC’s “Big Weekend”--through an assessment of the art’s ability to survive the combined gauntlets of technology, government’s and education’s neglect of culture, and its ability to realize the opportunities of an increasingly multicultural society.

Playwright Eduardo Machado, however, resolutely chose to remain in the present, sparing criticism of no one in the theater world, especially his fellow scribes and the audience.

“We’re in real trouble,” he declared, recalling recent works in New York that literally made him nauseous. For not publicly complaining about unspecified problems with National Endowment for the Arts funding for playwrights, he referred to his fellow authors as “cowards. Where but in the U.S. do you have playwrights who are afraid to speak out on this issue?”

Writers are afraid of being labelled as rebels, Machado argued, for it lessens their chances of entering the movie and TV world. But radical, challenging forms and themes, the panel generally agreed, are the only bulwark against mediocre theater.

They also agreed that that kind of theater was everywhere, while the leading edge was begging for money. Resident LATC designer and Norwegian stage artist Timian Alsaker, observing matters from across the Atlantic, asked rhetorically, “Why doesn’t this country view continued support for its culture as absolutely important?”

At the same time, reminded UC San Diego theater professor Jorge Huerta and playwright Velina Hasu Houston, peoples of color are a potentially large audience (read: ticket buyers) who will come--”if they can see their concerns and passions addressed on stage,” said Houston. “The present reality is that wherever you go, the audience is white.”

That’s because, Machado noted, resident theaters supposedly nurturing new work rely on “middle-class audiences, who always demand safe plays.”

Machado went further: “Audiences ultimately don’t matter, regardless of how many post-play, audience-artist discussions theaters arrange. Playwrights write for themselves.”

Huerta strongly disputed this, saying that “this theater person doesn’t have contempt for the audience, (who) can’t be blamed for theater’s problems.”

As for the 21st Century, Jenness asked panelists for “wish list” items. Houston hoped for “all artists, not only the playwrights, to be braver, and for theaters to not assume that audiences have an 8th grade educational level.” Times’ theater critic Sylvie Drake wished for “a theater of language,” a Los Angeles theater scene that’s focused on itself “rather than looking for validation from New York,” and for education to emphasize the quintessential value of the arts.

Playwright Thomas Babe posed the heretical suggestion that “each resident theater should go out of business every 10 years, before it becomes old and tired.” Huerta desired a more complete training program for theater artists “before they’re professionals.” Machado wanted theaters to produce “the plays they were most afraid of doing, either because they’re too controversial or the cast is bigger than six. If they did that, theaters might surprise themselves.”