Taper Subscribers Reach the Steam Cycle

“Many of our subscribers have written steaming, hurt, angry and, in some cases, sensitively written letters accusing me of ‘stupidity, bait-and-switch, inconvenience, sandbagging, violation of contract, carelessness, and obnoxious and repugnant trickery.’ ”

So wrote Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum, in a recent letter to some of those angry subscribers.

“None of these is true, of course,” he added.

The issue: Ticket sales for the Taper production of “The Kentucky Cycle,” slated for Jan. 19-March 29.

The two-part “Cycle” was a late addition to the Taper season, replacing the one-part “The Shape of the Table” as “Play 3.” More than 20,000 subscribers had already renewed by the time they learned about the switch.

They learned about it in a splashy brochure that touted the “Cycle” as the centerpiece of the Taper’s 25th-anniversary season and as “probably the largest undertaking in the Taper’s history.”

The brochure also included a bill. Although exact amounts varied, depending on each subscriber’s initial price scale, one subscriber who contacted Stage Watch was charged an additional $44 on top of the $21 she had already paid for “Play 3.”

The $65 total is more than three times as much as the subscriber’s original price for “Play 3.” As she interpreted it, the Taper not only added an extra show to the season (Part 2 of the “Cycle”) but also jacked up the price of the “Play 3” ticket she had already bought.

When she complained to the Taper, she was told the offer was all-or-nothing: The entire “Cycle” with the extra charges, or a refund of the original $21.

Taper development director Robert Schlosser told Stage Watch that the “Cycle” is “more than twice as expensive” as a normal production. Most subscribers understood, he added, that “we are an arts institution trying to bring them something special. We are not a retail store.”

Why not allow subscribers to see only one part of the “Cycle” at their original cost? “It wouldn’t make sense,” replied Schlosser. “It would be like selling half a play for half the ticket price.” The “Cycle” of nine short plays about 200 years of one family’s history, seen over the course of two discrete parts, is in fact one long play, he emphasized. “We wouldn’t be acting responsibly as artists if we allowed them to take just a piece of it.”

AT THE WESTWOOD: Avery Brooks will star in Phillip Hayes Dean’s play “Paul Robeson” at the Westwood Playhouse, Jan. 7-Feb. 2. The monodrama was previously performed in L.A. by Bennet Guillory.