Why L.A.’s Theater Isn’t World-Class

“Does L.A. Get the Theater It Deserves?” asked the Oct. 1 Calendar. A more relevant question is: Does L.A. get the theater it wants? The answer is, lamentably, yes. But the reasons run deeper than traffic, inconvenient location and a lack of tech facilities, as Calendar suggested. Los Angeles is a world-class movie-making and television-producing town and could be a world-class theater town. Here are four reasons why it isn’t yet:

* First, the theater here just isn’t as good as it is elsewhere. Sorry, but it’s true. The writers, actors, directors and designers in cities such as New York, Chicago, London and Paris are simply better stage artists. The explanation is obvious: By and large other cities’ theater folk (not everyone, of course) believe the theater is a worthwhile artistic end in itself. They don’t look at the stage as a place to audition for sitcoms and features. In L.A. (again, by and large), they do.

* Second, this city’s theater will never be considered world-class as long as there is such rigid ideological uniformity in the plays themselves. Los Angeles is rapidly becoming the nation’s clearinghouse for political correctness, and nowhere is this more manifest than in its dramaturgy: worthy, feel-good plays that champion victims, that celebrate women’s abilities to bond while chiding men’s inabilities to commit, that whine self-righteously about the seemingly endless martyrdom of the latest minority-of-the-month (and frequently majorities-called-minorities).

Most plays aren’t political, but here they’re treated as if they all are, and as a result characters can’t become individuals, only representatives of groups--ethnic, sexual, religious, economic. As such, they are invariably portrayed flatteringly (and one-dimensionally)--because to reveal a flaw might be to offend, which is not allowed in 1995. If “The Glass Menagerie” were produced for the first time in town tomorrow, Tennessee Williams would be vilified as a sexist, racist and homophobe because Amanda is a shrew and Laura fragile; because it fails to probe the depths of the racial inequities in 1945 St. Louis, and because the author doesn’t fess up to his own sexuality onstage. For a playwright to challenge this censorious political canon is to wind up on the same intolerant pyre as David Mamet’s “Oleanna” and Jackie Mason’s one-man show, both attacked by critics for having the wrong political point of view.

I’m not stumping for some loony right-wing theater, but good grief, wouldn’t it have been illuminating to have at least one play about black racism in the last 10 years so the reaction to the Simpson verdict and the “Million Man March” wouldn’t have taken everyone by such surprise?

* Third, a world-class theater needs world-class critics, and L.A. has never had them. By contrast, many New York critics have become as well known as the playwrights they reviewed: George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, George Jean Nathan and Stark Young in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Brooks Atkinson, Walter Kerr, Harold Clurman and Kenneth Tynan in the ‘50s and early ‘60s. Even in the last 10 years, when Broadway has weathered one premature obit after another, the names of Frank Rich, Robert Brustein, Brendan Gill, John Simon and John Lahr are better known than the one genuinely original voice to have come out of the theater here, Justin Tanner. The same is true in London--every daily paper (yes, even Murdoch’s) has intense theater coverage and criticism. And in both cities, unlike L.A., the important plays are usually reviewed on television.

* Fourth and finally, L.A. doesn’t have a world-class theater because it doesn’t value writers very much, and the theater is primarily a writer’s medium. Other cities appreciate authors considerably more (in Ireland, they’re on the money!) and because they do their theater is livelier--all their literature is.

*

Los Angeles admires directors more than writers because it’s a company town and directors are charged with bringing the studios a can of film every week--just as the real estate investor understands the need for an architect but values the contractor, who can put the building up, even more. In the construction trade, however, nobody confuses the builder with the architect.

It’s harder for directors to take undue credit in the theater because it’s clearer who does what: Plays are essentially (though not exclusively) verbal rather than visual. Language conveys sensation, not pictures and language. And plays tend to be more idea-oriented and philosophical. Consequently, directors in the theater are (rightly) considered interpreters, not creators. Until that priority is clear--and valued--here, the lack of substance in the plays themselves will continue to prevent the Los Angeles theater from reaching the artistic heights it does elsewhere.

Most of these problems are correctable--such as the development of better critics and the encouragement of more participants who find the theater a worthwhile goal in itself. And surely the theatergoing public would welcome diversity in the substance of its shows rather than in the distracting stunts of men playing women and blacks playing whites. Whether the people of Los Angeles want any of these things--or, indeed, if they even really enjoy the theater--is another matter.