Theatre LA Wants to Stand on Ceremony

A Tony-type show for Los Angeles?

Theatre LA, the local service organization for theatrical producers, is planning to launch a peer-judged awards competition. The new awards would be incorporated into the group’s Ovation ceremony, which has so far existed only as a tribute to lifetime achievement, not specific achievements.

“We’re interested in raising the profile of L.A. theater, and we think peer awards will help that,” said Lawrence O’Connor, the Shubert Theatre general manager who is heading Theatre LA’s awards committee. He pointed to the many theater awards ceremonies in New York and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards as events that can pay off at the box office. He believes peer awards would “create more marketing opportunities. We’ve got theater that’s just as good as New York’s, but not as many people know about it.”

Although the Ovation ceremony would continue to salute a few people for their lifetime achievements in addition to the competitive awards, “eventually we’ll run out of lifetime achievements,” said O’Connor.

Details have yet to be worked out. In the past, it often has been noted that Los Angeles theaters are spread over a larger geographic area than other cities’, and this would make it more difficult for award voters to see all of the contending shows.

O’Connor said the organization hopes to initiate the first season of eligibility in the fall, so don’t expect the first awards ceremony for at least a year.

Meanwhile, also at Theatre LA, executive director Karen Rushfield has resigned. Consultant Lea Ellison has been brought in “to act as an interim manager while we do an organizational evaluation and form a search committee” for Rushfield’s replacement, said Theatre LA board president Barbara Beckley.

NEA NEWS: Twelve Southland theaters received grants from the theater program of the National Endowment for the Arts this year.

Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum received $234,000, up slightly from last year’s $230,000. As usual, this was the second-largest amount awarded to any one company, topped only by the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, which got $268,000.

South Coast Repertory also received a small increase, moving from last year’s $117,500 grant to $120,000. But the two major San Diego theaters slipped. The Old Globe dipped from $177,500 to $168,515, while La Jolla Playhouse dropped from $75,000 to $60,000. The struggling San Diego Repertory Theatre moved up from $47,500 to $50,000.

Two Southland companies, Deaf West in Los Angeles and San Diego’s Sledgehammer, received their first NEA money ever--$5,000 each.

Some may find irony in the fact that the first of three Sledgehammer productions that NEA adjudicators saw last year was “7 blowjobs,” a satire about the government arts funding process, sarcastically dedicated by playwright Mac Wellman to four bitter NEA foes: Sen. Jesse Helms, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Rev. Donald Wildmon and Pat Robertson.

But the play is “not about acts of fellatio performed on stage,” noted Sledgehammer executive director Ethan Feerst. “It’s about these issues and how you define them. The title tends to be the most daring thing about it.”

Two other companies, previous theater program recipients, were returned to the list this year after not receiving theater program grants last year. Bilingual Foundation of the Arts got $5,650 and East West Players received $5,000.

Other local winners were the Odyssey ($22,000), Cornerstone Theatre Co. ($10,560) and Stages ($6,600).

And in a separate NEA design program, L.A. lighting designer Lawrence Oberman has received a $15,000 fellowship. The money is the NEA’s, but the program is administered by Theatre Communications Group.

“CAMPING” EXPEDITION: A show that was announced twice for the Pasadena Playhouse, only to be canceled both times, is about to open at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass. Former Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Paul Lazarus is scheduled to direct Mark St. Germain’s “Camping With Henry and Tom,” July 20-31, just as he had been slated to do in Pasadena.

When the show was canceled in Pasadena, the difficulty of casting the roles of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Warren G. Harding were cited as the reason. In the Berkshires, the cast will include John Cunningham as Ford, Robert Prosky as Edison and Ralph Waite as Harding.