Producer Hopes Coronet Move Will Be Serendipitous

When New York producer James Freydberg takes over the Coronet Theatre, one of L.A.’s most prominent mid-sized venues, on Sept. 1, look for it to become a link in the Los Angeles-New York theatrical pipeline.

That’s not what Freydberg had in mind for the Coronet four years ago, when he first became interested in taking over the La Cienega Boulevard hall. Then, he recalled, he wanted to go shopping for shows in L.A.’s many sub-100-seat theaters and move them up to Actors’ Equity contracts in the 277-seat Coronet. But his plans stalled when Serendipity, a children’s theater company, got the Coronet lease.

Two months ago, Serendipity announced that it was pulling out of the Coronet. Freydberg was finally able to secure the lease, but “this time my intent is nothing like what it was then,” he said.

Now his first priority is to develop his own shows in Los Angeles and move them to New York--and move his own Off Broadway shows from New York to L.A.

“L.A. is a high-risk venture,” he said. “If I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down on my own.” A recent event that “shook” Freydberg, he said, was the relatively short run for “Oleanna” at the 99-seat Tiffany Theatre. “That frightened me about L.A.”

Freydberg’s first Coronet show (other than his 1992 co-production of “Wrong Turn at Lungfish” there during a Serendipity hiatus) will be an import of a one-woman play he produced Off Broadway, Claudia Shear’s autobiographical “Blown Sideways Through Life,” opening in September. Then he hopes to do “something more experimental,” and only after that will he perhaps do something from a local company. He may use the theater to mount occasional TV pilots, “but that’s not the primary priority.”

Freydberg knows at least one local producer. He co-produced “Burn This” and “Fool Moon” with Center Theatre Group, and he has had “casual discussions” with CTG’s Gordon Davidson about possible CTG use of the Coronet, perhaps as the Mark Taper Forum’s long-sought second stage.

“We may try to work something out,” Davidson said. But he added that he likes the courtyard in front of the Coronet more than the theater itself.

MISSING: When the Mark Taper Forum announced its season a couple of weeks ago, the most obvious omission from the list was Tony Kushner’s “The Heavenly Theatre,” which was postponed from the current season. Artistic director Gordon Davidson said that Kushner simply won’t have the chance to do the necessary work on it because of conflicts with the film version of his “Angels in America”--but “when he’s ready to take it off the shelf, we’ll be here to do it for him.”

Also missing was any sign of a show from the Antaeus Company, the classical repertory group that completed its Taper run of Chekhov’s “The Wood Demon” Saturday. “We would love to have been on the schedule,” said Antaeus company manager Dakin Matthews. “But they have a lot of commitments and constituencies they answer to.” He noted that the Taper paid for recent Antaeus workshops of potential projects. Farthest along is Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.”

Matthews and Taper producing director Robert Egan both hinted that the company might end up becoming involved in one of the non-Antaeus-generated shows next season. Of the shows on the list, Derek Walcott’s “The Odyssey” would seem the most logical vehicle for a classical company.

Working with Antaeus on “Wood Demon” was mostly trouble-free, Egan said, despite the complicated Antaeus policy of triple casting, creating a variety of different casts. However, Egan did face “occasional requests of an actor for too much time off.” Next time, he wants a “more defined policy” about the amount of flex time that an actor can take during a run--and when it can be taken.*