The Challenge Facing the Theatre Center

Sylvie Drake proclaims that the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s possible demise results from municipal and societal failures (“Who Will Be the Losers if LATC Closes?,” Aug. 9). While the city’s policy and inactions may have contributed to LATC’s problems, the key failure was LATC’s. And that failure was an artistic one.

I was a first-year season subscriber. After being beaten over the head with a heavy-handed political agenda, I refused offer after discounted offer to re-subscribe. The artistic merit independent of politics, I still felt the chill of an agenda shadowing my evening.

Bill Bushnell and company may have put on some interesting plays, but their other decisions prevented them from building a strong subscriber base. LATC failed to see that it is the money of the great masses of the political and socially unenlightened that supports such endeavors.

In other words, politics got in the way of business.

DENNIS A. GURA

Santa Monica