The Upheaval in San Francisco Theater : There’s ‘a turnover in generations’ as many of the Old Guard leave the scene

This city’s theater scene has long been dominated by artists grounded in the experimental drama of the 1960s, but a recent rash of resignations suggests that the 1990s will see significant changes on--and behind--Bay Area stages. With the grudging acknowledgement in this city that it has been replaced by Los Angeles as California’s theater capital, the next few years may prove crucial to the Bay Area’s cultural health.

Several veteran figures in the San Francisco theater community have announced their departures in 1990, including directors of the Magic Theatre and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the drama critic of the San Francisco Chronicle and the director of Theatre Bay Area, a service organization for theaters and drama professionals here.

“It’s truly a turnover in generations,” said Bernard Weiner, who resigned in March after 16 years as the Chronicle’s drama critic.

“Most of us have been around for 15 or 20 years, and mid-life crises creep up even on theater people,” he said. “I’d been going to an average of 225 shows a year--most of them not worth seeing--and I was just burned out.”

Weiner said that theater in the Bay Area had lost its vitality in recent years.

“After the cultural upheaval of the ‘60s, there was a high point in San Francisco,” he said. “The mid-’70s to early ‘80s were a high watermark for all sorts of theater. Then, coincidental with the Reagan decade, things hit a plateau and have stayed there for a while.”

Many agree with Weiner’s sorry assessment of Bay Area theater. Prof. David Littlejohn, who teaches cultural reporting at UC Berkeley’s journalism school, said that the drama community has become increasingly polarized between theaters specializing in Broadway revivals and those favoring obscure, performance art-style works.

San Francisco theater “seem to be at a dead end. It’s abandoning plays and players in favor of some kind of gestural personal dynamic thing that’s supposed to get through to you on some unconscious level,” he said.

“It’s pretty insubstantial. There isn’t much to say about it, isn’t much to think about it,” he lamented.

“Whether the theater structures in the Bay Area can encourage new writing, I just don’t know,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait for something new to come along, but it doesn’t look very promising.” As a critic, Weiner, 50, was well-regarded in theater circles here, particularly for his interest in smaller, non-commercial productions. He said he would turn his attention to directing plays, and to writing plays and poetry.

Replacing Weiner is Gerald Nachman, 52, a Chronicle entertainment columnist known for his preference for cabaret and musicals over avant-garde theater.

“I tend to view theater as entertainment--show biz, if you will--and not as an arcane academic pursuit,” Nachman said. “I hope to make our theater coverage accessible to more readers, not fewer.”

Noting the great influence Chronicle reviews have on ticket sales, some at non-commercial theaters have expressed concern at Nachman’s selection.

“I know they’re scared of me, but I’ll try to calm them as much as I can,” he said. “My appointment means only great things for the San Francisco theater community: they can look forward to an unending series of raves,” he jested. But he did say that the Chronicle would pay less attention to alternative theater than it had.

In deciding which shows merit coverage, Nachman said, “We have to ask ourselves, are most readers really going to care about this? To be frank, a lot of the small productions here are just vanity productions, done for theater people and not the playgoing public.”

At the Magic Theatre, the resignation of artistic director John Lion, who founded the troupe at a Berkeley bar 23 years ago, also suggests the closing of an era.

The Magic, which now operates three stages at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, gained national attention during Sam Shepard’s tenure as playwright in residence. Shepard’s “Fool for Love,” “Inacoma,” “True West” and “Buried Child” (which later won the Pulitzer Prize) all had their premieres at the Magic.

Since Shepard’s departure in the early ‘80s, however, the Magic’s prominence has faded. “We entered a period you might call the ‘Post-Shepard Hangover,’ ” said Harvey Seifter, the managing director. “One era had ended, and a new one hadn’t yet begun.”

The theater has concentrated on familiar works by such playwrights as Beckett and O’Neill in recent years, and the occasional Off-Broadway show.

Seifter, 36, who came to the Magic in 1988 from New York’s Theater for the New City and who expects to assume artistic direction of the company after Magic trustees meet next month, hopes to return the Magic’s emphasis to new plays.

“There’s a sense that, in some ways, San Francisco has become cut off from the most exciting national currents,” he said. “I know that in Los Angeles, (they) have a number of theaters that are pumping large amounts of money into new play development. If that doesn’t happen here, it will become tremendously difficult to keep theater alive in the Bay Area.”

Lion said that after spending his adult life as director of the Magic, he had wearied of the work. The father of two young children, he said he wished to spend more time with his family and complete his doctoral thesis in theater at Stanford University. “I’m 45 now,” he reflected. “One wonders how long one can be an iconoclastic young man.”

Since 1967, the Magic has produced some 200 plays, of which Lion directed 70. He hopes eventually to publish his thesis as a book. It deals with Shepard’s work.

Departing as well is Simon Levy, who, as executive director of Theatre Bay Area, a theater service organization, catered to the interests of 152 member theaters.

“The changing of the guard is healthy, really,” he said. “The people who are leaving were all on the cutting edge in the 1970s. Now, maybe we’ll have a New Wave in Bay Area theater.”

Across the San Francisco Bay, Mitzi Sales, managing director of the Berkeley Repertory, announced her resignation from the 22-year-old troupe.

“I’m leaving because I’ve had the same job for 18 years,” she said. “It’s time to try something new.” No replacement has been named.

Sales, who saw the Berkeley Rep’s budget grow from $72,000 in 1972 to its present $3.6 million, said she had no plans other than to travel in Europe.

“Perhaps there’s something in the air. If Lithuania can hire a music teacher as prime minister, and Czechoslovakia elect a playwright for president, maybe it’s time for all of us in the arts to make a change,” she said, referring to Vytautas Landsbergis and Vaclav Havel, respectively. “Maybe we should all go to Lithuania and run for parliament.”