Taper’s Festival Foray Proved Too Expensive

A bit more than 3 years ago, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles called a halt to its play festival, New Theater for Now. It had begun in 1967 and was one of the oldest in the country. The reason it ended? Lack of money.

“The only other thing around when we began was the O’Neill Center,” says Gordon Davidson, the Taper’s artistic director. “We started the festival as a series of Monday night readings, and then we expanded it.”

Shoestring productions staged between major plays on the Taper Mainstage grew larger with the financial backing of the Rockefeller Foundation, he says. Perhaps the best-known play to come out of the festival during the late 1970s was Luis Valdez’s “Zoot Suit.” But after the foundation dropped its support, the festival became “a victim of its own success.”

“People expected more and more,” Davidson says. “More scenery, more costumes. The playwrights wanted more. Everything seemed to grow. And it became more expensive even with simple productions, because we are a full union house.”

To cut costs, Davidson sought cheaper venues. New Theater for Now was produced on a 20th Century-Fox sound stage, in a coffee house at USC and at the Aquarius Theater. Eventually it returned to the Taper in the mid-’80s, the last time in November, 1985.

Although Taper staff members maintain that the festival could be revived if money is found, Davidson says he now prefers workshops and readings away from the pressures of a public forum. He cites “Stand-Up Tragedy,” a new play by Bill Cain, as a successful instance of that thinking.

Cain’s play went from a workshop last fall--it was one 16 developmental projects in the Taper Lab ’88 NeWork Festival--to a Taper, Too production in March and is scheduled to open June 1 on the Taper Mainstage.

“That,” Davidson says, “is a dream scenario for a playwright.”