‘Peer Gynt,’ Steppling Play Top New Season at LATC

A new John Steppling play and David Schweizer’s adaptation of “Peer Gynt” highlight the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s seven-play winter/spring/summer season.

The season at the financially rocky complex will include stagings by two top officials from the Mark Taper Forum.

Robert Egan, the Taper’s associate director, will co-direct Steppling’s “The Sea of Cortez,” set in a laetrile clinic in Baja California, Feb. 13 through March 29. (Steppling will be the other co-director.)

And Oskar Eustis, resident director of the Taper, will stage the Los Angeles premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda’s “Fish Head Soup,” about the homecoming of a son who was long thought dead, April 9 through May 24.

The season is scheduled to open with “Some of My Best Friends Are . . . ,” a comedy about interracial relationships, created by members of LATC’s Latino Theatre Lab. Postponed from the current season, it is now slated for Jan. 23 through March 15.

Schweizer’s five-actor version of Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” will be the English-language premiere of a production that was staged earlier this year in Polish, both in Poland and at the recently completed International Ibsen Festival in Oslo, Norway. It’s slated for March 5 through April 19.

James Magruder’s new translation of “The Triumph of Love,” by the 18th-Century French writer Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, is planned for April 23 through June 7.

Steve Carter’s “Pecong” is expected for a May 7-June 21 run. A retelling of the Medea story, set in the Caribbean, it was postponed from the current season. It will be produced in association with Newark Symphony Hall and LATC’s Black Theatre Artists Workshop, and directed by Dennis Zacek, artistic director of Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre.

A final entry in the season, to be announced later, will play July 9 through Aug. 9.

When asked about the financial ability of the theater to plan that far into the future, LATC artistic director Bill Bushnell said: “We feel as financially secure as do about half the theatrical institutions in the country. At this particular point, all of our projections indicate that expenses are identified and under control.

“If conservative revenue projections work out, we are confident that we’ll be OK through next season. . . .”

Bushnell said the LATC has downsized productions and contained costs, but that there was still a carry-forward deficit of more than $1 million. “We have not dealt with that issue yet,” he said.

Sylvie Drake contributed to this article.