TWENTY YEARS OF L.A. THEATER : A REPORT CARD

Tonight the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle celebrates “Twenty Years of Los Angeles Theater” at the Sheraton Grande Hotel. Times Theater Critic Dan Sullivan looks back over those two decades and reports on what went right, what went wrong and what didn’t go at all.

Lou, the guy at the next desk, didn’t get it. “You’re going to be reviewing the Broadway openings for the L.A. Times?”

“No, Lou, I’m going to be reviewing the L.A. openings for the L.A. Times.”

“No fooling. They got theater out there?”

And so I left 43rd Street and, yes, they had theater “out there.”

It was January, 1969, and a lot was happening. The Taper was in its second season and was about to send a show to Lincoln Center: “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” The Ahmanson was hosting the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Doctor Faustus,” featuring an eerie parade of Hieronymus Bosch mutants. The RSC wouldn’t play New York until the ‘70s.

Beah Richards and Yaphet Kotto were doing “Macbeth” at the Inner City Cultural Center. “Hair” had just opened at the Aquarius, the show that proved that L.A. could sustain a long run (two years). “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” was doing nicely at the Ivar, featuring Gary Burghoff, soon to be of “M.A.S.H.” fame.

Jimmy Doolittle had a subscription series going at the Huntington Hartford, the nicest proscenium theater in town. The Theatre Guild was bringing road companies into the now-defunct Lindy Opera House. (Bad ones, but still). And down on Robertson Boulevard we had the Company Theatre.

Ah, the Company Theatre. Steve Kent and his colleagues had gone through USC together (playing Watts before the Watts riots) and they didn’t see any reason to split after graduation. So they rented a shack on Robertson and set up as a theater collective.

Very ‘60s, that impulse. So was the work. It was visionary, energetic, magnificently naive: As if you could imagine a new world into being if only you imagined hard enough.

One night the Company brought its signature piece, “The Emergence” to Pomona College. It ended with a radiant light show, engineered by Russell Pyle. There was a moment of silence. Then, from the back, somebody said, “Faaaaaahr . . . out.” It was a prayer.

Theater would see plenty of laser lights and smoke-effects over the next twenty years. The difference was that the Company believed in them. The group couldn’t live on transcendence alone and broke up in the ‘70s, after a period when the faction that carried the dream (if not the name) became known as the ProVisional Theatre. But the radiance lingers.

The Company won an award at the first LADCC awards dinner (actually a luncheon at the Press Club). Another winner was a Chicano group from Central California called El Teatro Campesino. They did ironic little sketches called actos, including one about a barrio kid who goes off to claim his manhood and his death in Vietnam--”El Soldado Razo.” The author and director was Luis Valdez. We would see plenty of him too.

No, theater in L.A. in ’69 wasn’t chopped liver. It had an audience--Los Angeles Civic Light Opera’s subscription list was said to top 150,000--and it was starting to have a structure. The story since then is how the structure has evolved.

The saddest story is the decline of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. LACLO’s taste was stuck back in the 1940s, but it was a resident theater before the term was invented.

Its ties with the community were superb. When a customer complained that “Cabaret” was off-color, he would get a letter from founder-director, Edwin Lester, commiserating with him and offering him extra tickets to the next show, if that would help.

Subscriptions were so coveted that a San Marino man, it was said, had passed his down to his son in his will. A list of local guarantors took up four pages in the program.

What could go wrong? It all went wrong, and today LACLO has a skimpy subscription list, totally controlled by the Nederlander Organization, which once appended this friendly note to a season’s prospectus: “Canceled checks do not guarantee seating.” If you believe in local control--that a community’s art institutions should be operated by people with a stake in the community--the CLO’s death was a major defeat.

But the principle was vindicated almost everywhere else. The Taper didn’t become a booking house. The Hartford (renamed for Jimmy Doolittle) didn’t get torn down for a parking lot. Inner City and the East West Players, the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Theatre West, El Teatro Campesino and Theatre 40, are all still in business. (Company of Angels got burned out in ’88 and has just reopened in Silver Lake.)

And a small Costa Mesa theater called South Coast Repertory grew up to win a 1988 Tony award for being a distinguished American resident theater.

What’s remarkable is how many of the key players of ’69 are still making theater here, sometimes in a fine new plant. Even more remarkable is the reclaiming of a theater that was about to go down the tubes in ‘69, the Pasadena Playhouse.

Add our newer theaters--L.A. Theatre Works, Theatre/Theater, the Back Alley, the Victory, the Cast, the Gnu, the Matrix and especially the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Spring Street, and the result is a real theater town--a town that generates most of its own power, without relying on outside sources.

We do import, of course. The key players here were the Shuberts. Impressed with CLO’s box office figures, they opened their own theater in Century City in ’72 with “Follies.” It only ran a few months, but it was as carefully produced as it had been on Broadway. And that applied to the musicals that did go on to have a long run at the Shubert, from “A Chorus Line” (‘76) to “Les Miz,” (‘88). The Shuberts gave value, and when they didn’t have a worthwhile product to offer, they kept the store dark.

Road companies from New York became a rarity. They weren’t needed. The Taper could mount its own production of “The Real Thing” (‘86). The Pasadena Playhouse could do its own “Steel Magnolias” (‘88). LATC and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre could collaborate on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (‘87). The production would have authority, while fitting the needs of this space and this audience. A great improvement over the silliness of “There’s a Girl in My Soup” at the old Lindy Opera House.

The L.A. audience became increasingly knowledgeable. The Olympic Arts Festival of ’84 and the Los Angeles Festival of ’87 were key events here. Incredibly, some local theater people grumbled about each. It was as if they didn’t want their work being compared with that of giants like Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook. How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen “The Mahabharata”?

Only--it’s not the farm. Something we were often in danger of forgetting over the 20 years, because theater in Los Angeles means theater in Hollywood.

I have a horror story about this. I’m standing in the lobby of the Hartford in the spring of ’74. I’m just back from seeing “The Front Page” in London and I’m eager to see it with American actors. Up comes the press agent. “Oh, Dan,” he says, “Mr. X (naming the star) says he knows that his hair is too long for the part, but he’s up for a Western at Universal.”

One saw the priorities. One kept seeing them. For instance, there was the night that Dinah Manoff had to miss her own opening in LATC’s “Alfred and Victoria” (‘86). She was doing a “Murder She Wrote” episode at Universal.

The hope back in ’69 was that L.A. would become the new London, a town where an actor could pursue a film career and a stage career simultaneously. What we hadn’t realized was that, whereas in London everyone would understand that the stage commitment must come first, in L.A. it would be the Industry commitment.

This habit of mind strengthened the already existing attitude that doing theater in L.A. was an optional activity, like doing summer stock. (“The Best Man” at the Ahmanson in ’87 was summer stock.) Consequently, when a serious film actor decides to do a play, he won’t do it in L.A. He’ll do it on Broadway or in the West End. That’s where the challenge is. That’s where theater is--well--theater.

Theater’s theater anywhere, if you respect it. The Industry has disrespected it. It’s a short-sighted policy. If L.A. theater is a talent pool for the Industry, then the Industry should help with the maintenance. I first saw Ed Harris in a play at the Callboard Theatre; Nick Nolte at the Westwood Playhouse; Richard Dreyfuss at Theatre West.

This brings us to Equity Waiver theater. Edward Weston of Actors’ Equity devised it in ’72 as a way to put more actors to work, even if the work was unpaid. The result was a boom in small-theater productions: more than 500 a year by the mid-’80s.

Waiver kept a lot of actors happy. (“Give me a job and the rest of the crap will get solved”-- “A Chorus Line.”) But it didn’t put any food on the table. Last fall, Equity demanded that the theaters start forking over at least $5 a performance. After a long battle, they are now doing so, and most of the producers are still in business.

So much for the evolution. What did the last 20 years of Los Angeles theater add up to artistically? What did the community create, as opposed to import?

A report card might read:

Shakespeare: D-

Only one world-class performance in 20 years: Victor Buono’s Falstaff in Gordon Davidson’s staging of “Henry IV, Part One” at the Taper in ’72. Shakespeare at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego wasn’t bad at all. But Shakespeare in L.A. meant Charlton Heston addressing the multitudes in “Macbeth” (‘75) at the Ahmanson or Charles Marowitz cutting up “Hamlet” (‘85) at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre, the forerunner of LATC. Or worse.

In the ‘70s, we had something called the L.A. Shakespeare Festival. Producer Peg Yorkin abandoned it because she didn’t like Shakespeare. You get the same sense at many local productions: That the actors don’t like Shakespeare’s language, can’t untangle it, can’t behave in it.

Solution: Bring in a Brit who likes American actors, and will teach them how to speak Shakespeare in American. A candidate: Simon Callow. His staging of LATC’s “Jacques and His Master” (‘87) combined a classical attack with a multi-racial sound--very clear, very us.

Modern Classics: C+

Not a brilliant record here, either, but the language problem was less. Some highlights: Richard Chamberlain in “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Ahmanson (‘73); the Taper’s “Major Barbara” (‘71); LAAT’s “Waiting for Godot” (‘77); South Coast Repertory’s “The Playboy of the Western World” (‘83).

Each cast had the patina of an established classical rep company, and for a moment one could pretend that such a thing finally had come to Southern California, courtesy of the Getty Museum, perhaps. Why don’t we have a world-class rep theater? Because nobody wants it badly enough.

American Revivals: A

Hollywood is full of good vernacular actors, and we rarely see an unsatisfactory performance of a vintage American play. (Or, for that matter, of a straightforward realistic new play.) This is our tradition, and we’re good at it. If the script seems old-hat, we’ll find a way to finesse it, as Charles Marowitz did when he staged “The Petrified Forest” (‘85) at LATC. We can do the ‘30s, the ‘40s and the ‘50s in our sleep. Sometimes we do.

New Plays: B

Certainly there’s been an enormous effort to find them. Back in the ‘60s, the Taper’s New Theatre for Now series was a novelty. Today it’s almost too easy for a new L.A. playwright to get a hearing. He may even find that his script gets “developed” out from under him, as happened to Jon Robin Baitz and “Dutch Landscape” at the Taper this season. This was an example of the process running away with the product.

Still, there has got to be a process. The location and development of new scripts is at the heart of a creative theater’s mission. All three of our leading houses have a good all-over record here: the Taper, LATC and South Coast Rep.

The Taper’s many prizes included Derek Walcott’s “Dream on Monkey Mountain” (‘70), Dan Berrigan and Saul Leavitt’s “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” (‘71), Michael Cristofer’s “The Shadow Box” (‘75), Luis Valdez’s “Zoot Suit” (‘78) and Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God” (‘79). LATC gave us Baitz’s “The Film Society,” Jose Rivera’s “The Promise” and two fine new scripts by Marlane Meyer--”Etta Jenks” and “Kingfish” (all in ‘88). South Coast Rep commissioned and produced work by Keith Reddin, Craig Lucas, Timothy Mason and others.

The Waiver houses did their bit for new playwrights too. Foremost among them was John Steppling, whose dark vision of the California Dream has obviously influenced Meyer. Steppling surfaced through the Padua Hills Festival, was taken up by Susan Loewenberg’s L.A. Theatre Works (at the Night House), and Scott Kelman’s Pipeline, ran his own season at Ted Schmitt’s Cast Theatre and has also worked--not always happily--at the Taper and LATC.

Toward the end of the ‘80s, we could almost talk about an L.A. school of playwrights. It would include young Jamie Baker, who had two pungent family plays done in Waiver houses last season, “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” and “South Central Rain.” Good prospects here.

Acting Ensembles: C

We saw many fine ad-hoc ensembles--the gang that did Steven Berkoff’s “Greek” (‘82) for L.A. Theatre Works, for example. But not until the recent work of the Actors Gang--”Violence” (‘86) at the Wallenboyd and “Carnage” (‘87) at MOCA--did you feel that old Company Theatre flame. The only consistent theater ensemble is the Taper’s ITP (Improvisational Theatre Project), which does plays for children and mostly works in the schools. ITP’s production of Doris Baizley’s “Guns” in ’77 burns in the memory--it needs a revival in the era of the Uzi and the AK 47.

Political Theater: C-

A hot genre in the late ‘60s, and the Taper was thought to be at the forefront of it. But the urge waned. It was easy enough to dramatize the Vietnam War (“Tracers” at the Odyssey--’80) and the resistance to it (the Taper’s “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine”--’71, the Odyssey’s “Chicago Conspiracy Trial”--’79). But how do you put the oil crisis on stage? Or inflation? Or a local rent strike?

Actually this is quite possible, as the San Francisco Mime Troupe has demonstrated on occasional trips south. But it means risking being an agitprop theater, and nobody wants to fall into that trap.

So the Taper looked askance at racism in Brazil (“Savages”--’74), in South Africa (“Sizwe Banzi is Dead”--’75) and in 1942 Los Angeles (“Zoot Suit”), while confining its examination of contemporary Los Angeles to the feisty old people living at the Venice pier (“Number Our Days”--’82) and the new immigrants of “Green Card” (‘86).

Prudence was the watchword, and almost all American theaters shared it. One can recall only a few local (or national) theater responses to the Reagan years, including a pleasant little revue called “Rap Master Ronnie” at the Odyssey (‘85) and the Actors Gang’s “Violence,” an angry response to the Libyan bombings.

We did have two tough examinations of the American prison system, LAAT’s “Short Eyes” in ’76 and Taper, Too’s “In the Belly of the Beast” (‘84) with a superbly feral performance from Andrew Robinson as convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott. LAAT also went behind the Nixon myth in Donald Freed’s “Last Tape and Testament of Richard M. Nixon” (‘83). Otherwise, a fairly wimpy period.

Minority Theater: C

The Inner City Cultural Center couldn’t keep up its strong early pace, but did teach us about the feasibility of color-blind casting, and is still, as they say, hanging in there. The East West Players raised our consciousness about Asian American theater and brought us Wakako Yamauchi’s beautiful “And The Soul Shall Dance” (‘76), but didn’t address the city’s new Korean and Vietnamese communities. Carmen Zapata’s Bilingual Foundation of the Arts found its niche. It was a period when much “minority” art showed up on mainstream stages, a trend that will continue in the ‘90s. In L.A., we’re all minorities.

Experimental: C

The period didn’t encourage it, and we didn’t see a lot of it. We did get quite a lot of performance art, at LACE, at MOCA and especially--thanks to Scott Kelman--at the former Wallenboyd Theater. The best of it was hard to tell from traditional theater, even traditional stand-up comedy. The worst of it was hard to tell.

Design: A

Standards were high, even in Waiver Theater. In Los Angeles, the script may not play well, but the designers will imagine an appropriate world for it. Notable names here: Robert Zentis, Russell Pyle, the late H. R. Poindexter, Paulie Jenkins, A. Clark Duncan, Gerry Hariton and Vicki Baral, Charles Berliner, Noel Taylor, Tharon Musser, Cliff Faulkner, Shigeru Yaji, D. Martyn Bookwalter, Timian Alsaker, Jon Gottlieb, Garland Riddle, Ralph Funicello, Paulie Jenkins and many more.

Criticism: C

Too much boosterism, not enough analysis. That’s just speaking personally, of course.

What about the next 20 years?

The first task is to bolt down the structure, which is in place, but still a little shaky. Take the L.A. Theatre Center, our gutsiest major house. LATC is presenting at least as important work as are the theaters at the Music Center, and is doing about three times as much work. But the “Miracle on Spring Street” needs more financial backing in the community. LATC won’t be able to rely on the Community Redevelopment Agency to cover its shortfalls forever.

Money will continue to be a problem for everyone. The more serious the theater the more it needs a steady ongoing source of support. The new L.A. Arts Endowment will be able to help our theater somewhat, but the most logical guarantor of all would be the Industry, on the grounds mentioned earlier.

If a tiny percentage of the budget of each big-budget film and TV series went to a live-theater fund (just as a percentage of the costs of a musical recording session goes to a live-music fund), our theaters could concentrate more on the work, less on the financing.

As for the work, who knows what the ‘90s will bring? The town needs a serious classical theater, but neither the Taper, LATC nor South Coast Rep has a real passion for the classics, so if this comes about it’s likely to be under someone else’s leadership. Perhaps the Getty Museum will open a research theater or the San Diego Old Globe will start a northern branch.

The Music Center faces a great opportunity at the moment. CTG/Ahmanson will be working at the Doolittle for the next couple of years, while “The Phantom of the Opera” reigns on the Hill. Gordon Davidson will run both CTG/Ahmanson and CTG/Taper, which is probably the way it should have been from the beginning.

Davidson’s recent seasons at the Taper have been so “balanced,” so careful to accommodate everybody’s needs, that the theater has lost its excitement. Now Davidson has the chance to please the people at the Doolittle and to challenge them at the Taper. One doesn’t know if that’s the game plan, but it would be a good one. Challenge was what made the Taper’s--and Davidson’s--reputation.

LATC will continue its brash ways as long as Bill Bushnell is leading it. This theater can be outrageously bad (“Barabbas”--’86). But it loves to go to the edge, as somebody in the community has got to do.

South Coast Repertory will continue, in its clever way, to deliver more than it promises. Who wanted, this season, to see “The Crucible” again? But at SCR, one really thought that John Proctor might go free. This theater--again, without making noise--also does a lot for playwrights who make it big five years later. And SCR also comes the closest of anyone to having a real rep company--or at least a core company. May it forever be outside of the L.A. “loop.”

Financed or not, the people who learned how to be producers since the 1960s will probably keep at it--the Cast’s Ted Schmitt, the Odyssey’s Ron Sossi, the Back Alley’s Laura Zucker and Allan Miller, the Victory Theater’s Tom Ormeny and Maria Gobetti, the Matrix’s Joe Stern (he didn’t do a lot, but what he did was choice), L.A. Theatre Works’ Susan Loewenberg, the Pasadena Playhouse’s Susan Dietz.

What keeps the flame alive?

Dietz had the best answer when asked by some smart New Yorker why she wanted to do theater in Los Angeles. Because, she said, she wanted to live in Los Angeles, and doing theater was her trade.

Exactly. Ready for Act Two?