LATC Reaches a Critical Stage in Its Struggle for Survival

Three blocks from Skid Row, where theater consists of schizophrenic encounters with the down-and-out, the Los Angeles Theatre Center is struggling for its life . . . a victim of the economic downturn.

What makes the struggle especially ironic--almost a parable of the times--is that the graffiti-ridden building in which the five-year-old theater group operates is the former downtown headquarters of Security National Bank, founded in 1916 and a venerable rock-solid institution throughout the Great Depression. The walls are institutional marble and the massive metal doors that open on the lobby are as rock solid as the doors to Ft. Knox. Tickets are sold from a gilded bank teller’s cage and the theater’s restrooms are in the former bank’s vault.

But a week ago, the $388,000 interest payment on $4.6 million in outstanding bonds was not made by the city and the bonds went into default. If the bonds had been held by the building’s former occupants, LATC would probably be no more. But Mayor Tom Bradley has proposed that the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency take over the theater and leave 70% of its productions in the hands of the present company, headed by artistic director Bill Bushnell and managing director Bob Lear.

Lear and Bushnell, who thrive on irony anyway, see only sunny days in their precarious financial future. Institutional and corporate support has not dried up and audiences seem to be growing, not dwindling. Two current productions--”The Joni Mitchell Project” and “Blues in the Night”--are both such big hits that they have been extended through the first week of the recessionary new year and reviews of LATC’s newest oddity, “Hip Hop Waltz of Eurydice,” have been very good.

Lear, who worked for a major corporation’s grant-making arm prior to accepting his current job with LATC, maintains that the economy will actually help the downtown theater experiment as more wallet-watching patrons discover this inexpensive alternative to the Shubert, Taper and Doolittle.