LATC Gives ‘Breathing Space’ to Remaining Tenants

The biggest question mark dangling over the Los Angeles theater scene as 1992 begins: the fate of the municipal theater complex on Spring Street.

Will it even be known as Los Angeles Theatre Center by the end of next year? The company that was also called LATC bit the dust in October, but its lease gave the city the right to keep using the LATC name, said Rod Punt, assistant general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, which manages the facility. However, if a new long-term tenant takes over--which could happen in July--the name could change.

The building’s long-term future will be discussed at a meeting of the City Council’s arts committee slated for Jan. 6.

In the meantime, the labs and outreach programs that are left over from the LATC company will get a temporary break on the rent the city will charge at the building.

When the rents kick in Wednesday (so far the groups that remained in the building haven’t paid any rent), the former LATC organizations will receive a 75% subsidy on the rental of offices and rehearsal space.

And instead of paying the set rate of $1,000 a day for the rent of Theatre 3, for example, the former LATC groups will be charged $500 plus half of the gross up to the $1,000 mark, Punt said.

These rates will remain in effect through June 30, by which time a permanent tenant will supposedly have been selected.

There had been outcries from the former LATC groups that the city was charging too much.

“The more we realized how under-funded these groups are, the more we saw that they need that breathing space,” Punt said. He called the discount “a gesture to help the organizations stabilize.”

One of the labs, the Black Artists’ Theatre Workshop, plans to use Theatre 3 during three Monday nights in February--Black History Month--for a production of three one-acts: Rusty Cundieff’s “The Black Horror Show,” “Endangered Species” by Stacey McClain of the comedy group Culture Shock and an untitled piece by Keith Antar Mason, whose works have often been seen at Highways.

The Black Workshop would also like to sponsor the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle” at LATC. Before LATC went belly up, the Mime Troupe won a $5,000 grant from the city’s Endowment for the Arts to bring “Uncle” to LATC next spring. And the show is booked into the new Lancaster Performing Arts Center in the Antelope Valley on April 9-10. But the troupe needs a new sponsor if the show is to make it to Los Angeles.

The Latino Theatre Lab still hopes to introduce “Some of My Best Friends Are . . . ,” a comedy that had been on LATC’s announced season before the collapse of the company, in LATC’s Theatre 3 in the spring.

Cultural Affairs is also negotiating with outside groups. The producers of a Spanish-language rock musical, “El Cuarto Poder,” are aiming for an April 10-May 31 run in the largest of the LATC theaters, the Tom Bradley.

“El Cuarto” producer Jorge Luis Rodriguez said he is being asked to pay the full rent, more than $1,600 a performance.

But a discount is being requested by the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, which wants to present its “My Visits With MGM (My Grandmother Marta),” by Edit Villarreal, in Theatre 3 in May. Otherwise, the group can’t afford it, said Managing Director Jim Payne.

“I fear that only very well-funded vanity productions could take advantage of that complex” under the full city rates, Payne said.

A FEW GOOD BOOKINGS?: Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men,” a military courtroom drama that did well on Broadway, is booked into the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills from April 7 to May 2. It’s part of a national tour that starts Jan. 7 in Hartford, Conn., starring Michael O’Keefe, Alyson Reed and Paul Winfield.

Last spring, it briefly looked as if “A Few Good Men” would start its tour at the Doolittle Theatre, but Ahmanson-at-the-Doolittle producer Gordon Davidson decided to open his season with “The Most Happy Fella” instead.

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!: The nominees for writer of a musical, in the latest round of theater awards from the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, included George C. Wolfe for “Jelly’s Last Jam,” Sheldon Epps for “Blues in the Night” and Gaston Leroux for “Phantom of the Opera.”

Gaston Leroux?

Leroux, the author of the novel on which “Phantom” is based, apparently elbowed aside Richard Stilgoe and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who are credited with adapting the book for the libretto of the musical. Then Epps defeated Leroux and Wolfe to win the final award.

Still, with Leroux dead since 1927, it would have been interesting to see who would have accepted the award had he won.

Leroux’s phantom, perhaps?

BEATING THE BUSHES: You thought Bill Bushnell would finally stop asking people for money? Not quite.

In his new, still-untitled part-time job, Bushnell will raise private funding for CalRep, the professional theater company at Cal State Long Beach.

At least he won’t have to worry about paying the maintenance costs of a building--the burden that he believes sank his tenure as artistic director of Los Angeles Theatre Center. CalRep operates in state-maintained on-campus facilities, presenting most of its work in a 90-seat theater.

CalRep Artistic/Producing Director Howard Burman hopes the hiring of Bushnell will indicate that the company is moving from being “viable” to being “significant.” However, because of recessionary cutbacks, the university subsidy of the company is likely to decline. Burman raised private money to pay for the hiring of Bushnell, and more will be necessary if CalRep is to fill “the missing link in the Long Beach artistic fabric”--which Bushnell says is his goal.

Another attempt to create a more “significant” Long Beach theater--by Shashin Desai, director of the 99-seat International City Theatre that is housed at Long Beach City College--met a tepid response two years ago. But Burman said CalRep will expand “at a more reasonable rate.”

In addition to his developmental work, Bushnell will teach classes in acting and theater management.

“It’s rewarding to go back and read Stanislavsky again (as preparation for his teaching),” he remarked. “You lose sight of why you do (theater) in the first place.”

He’ll direct one production in CalRep’s 1992-93 season, and he expects to arrange a CalRep production of one of the plays that had been slated for LATC when it closed, though he declined to say which one. He said he also has commitments to direct in Norway and Iceland next season.

Bushnell is also planning to refine his skills as a television director for free-lance assignments and, in the long run, for tapings of CalRep productions.

The 3-year-old CalRep consists of faculty members who work with the company as part of their jobs, graduate students and a few guest professionals. It operates under Actors’ Equity’s 99-Seat Theatre Plan, but Burman said one of its productions will move to a 300-seat theater on campus next year, and eventually the company hopes to present work in the 1,200-seat theater that’s part of a new performing arts center being built at the university.