COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : Experiencing L.A. Fest

I must disagree with my friend Laura Zucker about the Los Angeles Festival. Far from showing us in the L.A. theater community how to reach multicultural audiences, the festival would teach us that only free events held in parks, where people already congregate, with massive free publicity from The Times, is how it’s done.

It would also teach us that local talent and institutions are not worthy of this same support, that a self-serving administrator must be imported to fill the media with inane sound bites on how L.A. “thinks of itself as a cow town,” and that somehow only out-of-town and foreign arts groups can “show us who we really are.”

If multicultural theater, dance and art are important enough to spend millions of dollars for 17 days of stunt programming, think how much farther that money could go if spent on a permanent multicultural center showcasing these same groups throughout the year!

Zucker was speaking as an individual and not as chairman of the Associated Theatres of Los Angeles when she wrote of her support for the festival. And hers is a distinctly minority opinion, based on the discussions I’ve had with local theater people--most of whom deplore the festival in general and its administrator’s attitude and utterances in particular.

ATLAS’ worthy goal of providing L.A. with mid-size professional theaters requires a long-term commitment to local arts institutions, not to triennial spending sprees. The real lesson of the festival is that if you give it away in a park, you can’t sell it in a building--a rather unfortunate “prophetic vision for the arts in L.A.”

MICHAEL DAVID WADLER

Artistic Adviser

Colony Studio Theatre