To Market, to Market

Joan Stein is the kind of woman who thrives on challenge. She has to, or she couldn’t last producing commercial theater in Los Angeles.

As one of only a handful of producers in recent memory who have been able to make mid-size stage fare viable here, Stein has succeeded where many before her have failed or declined to even try.

Los Angeles is not, after all, widely regarded as a theater town. Many out-of-towners would as soon bring a play to Los Angeles as, well, book the Bolshoi Ballet into Las Vegas.

Yet Stein, 43, insists that the stage has a place here.

“For seven years, I’ve been running a theater that is profitable and viable,” says the producer, who moved to L.A. from her native New York in early 1990. “If I’ve been able to make theater work in Los Angeles, it means that other people could too.

“Most people don’t move to Los Angeles to work in the theater,” Stein says during an interview in her office in Beverly Hills’ Can~on Theatre. “I don’t think that just because it’s not New York and [theater] is not the major cultural event [here] that it doesn’t have a place. It is important.”

As the force behind such long-running L.A. hits as “Love Letters,” “Forever Plaid,” “Ruthless!” and Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” Stein has clearly found a stripe of theater that can fill an L.A. house. It’s light fare, easy to like, even while it usually meets the quality standards of critics.

Stein also keeps busy. She has the latest incarnation of “Forever Plaid” running at the Can~on, and her productions of “Picasso” are running in Chicago and San Francisco. And coming up is the L.A. premiere of A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia,” which she’s co-producing with her husband, Ted Weiant, and which opens Feb. 19 at the newly refurbished Coronet Theatre on La Cienega.

“Joan Stein is probably one of the best theatrical producers in the country,” says sometime partner Susan Dietz, who was one of the first commercial theater producers in post-’70s L.A.

“I’ve watched her day after day, show after show, in the trenches,” says Dietz, who co-produced “Love Letters” and co-manages the Can~on with Stein. “I’ve had a lot of partners in this business, and this is a singular experience.”

“She’s energetic, committed and has a genuine love of the theater,” says Gil Cates, who runs the UCLA-owned Geffen Playhouse, which in its previous life as the Westwood Playhouse was where Stein produced “Picasso.”

“She is relentless,” Gates says, adding, “and you can use that word, in her pursuit of an audience.”

If Stein is indeed hard-driving and resourceful, to hear some tell it, she could herself bear the title of her hit play “Ruthless!”

“She doesn’t let up, it’s true,” says one actor from a previous Stein show who asked not to be named. “[Public] appearances. Events. Press. You know there’s a machine [at work supporting a Stein show].”

“Group sales” is what one theater marketing specialist deadpanned when asked to characterize Stein. “Those guys in ‘Plaid’--they sing at department store openings, right?” quipped another. And to hear Stein’s own husband tell it, her secret is “Marketing. Marketing. Marketing.”

Her returns have been impressive: “Love Letters” returned 150% of its investment, “Forever Plaid” returned 143%; “Picasso” returned 164% for the L.A. production, 200% in San Francisco, where it’s still running, and 120% in New York.

Still, supporters and critics alike often lament that Stein doesn’t try to work her magic on fare that is a little more substantial. Stein claims she isn’t pandering to L.A.; she chooses plays simply because they suit her taste--and that of her target audience.

“Here, it’s mostly a Westside audience, and that happens to fit with my taste,” Stein says of the Can~on. “I’m not choosing plays for that audience; I just happen to be of a like mind. . . . When I do a play it’s like falling in love. It’s chemistry. If I don’t love it, I don’t do it.”

Even if Stein were to bring more challenging works to L.A. stages, there are those--including Weiant--who doubt the audience would be there. Speaking in a separate interview, Weiant, who also manages the Coronet, is far more willing than his wife to say simply that L.A. is not likely to support more serious plays.

Basing his assessment in part on his first producing experience, a successful staging of Neil Simon’s “Rumors” that is still running after eight months at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, Weiant says: “If we were doing ‘Marat/Sade,’ we would not have an eight-month run. ‘Broken Glass’? I don’t think so.”

But is a Westside audience really so narrow? Others say not.

“The Westside audience is broad and diverse,” says UCLA Center for the Performing Arts Director Michael Blachly. “There’s real support for the cutting edge, avant-garde and creative work. Highways is a good example of that,” he adds, referring to the Santa Monica performance art venue.

“The Westside will support all kinds of theater,” agrees the Geffen’s Cates. “[UCLA] did Ian McKellen in ‘Richard III’ and that was sold out from Week 2. I think that the Westside is the most varied audience. The audience is there, but it has to be cultivated.”

Photographs of Fred and Rose, a beguiling pair of wire-haired dachshunds, occupy a place of pride on Stein’s office bookshelf--above pictures of the producer with her mentor, the late Bernard Jacobs of the Shubert organization, and Weiant. Near Stein’s desk, there’s a cache of dog paraphernalia--half-eaten chew toys, a silver bowl, a fuzzy shmatte.

These office accouterments go a long way toward explaining Stein’s “falling in love” with the Gurney play, which premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1995. “Sylvia” focuses on a middle-aged executive (Charles Kimbrough) and his wife (Mary Beth Peil), and the trouble that ensues when he brings home a stray dog (Stephanie Zimbalist). The production is directed by John Tillinger, who also staged it in New York.

“The issues of the play are the issues of a marriage and people changing,” says Stein, who has been married to Weiant for nearly 20 years. “It’s about this stranger--whether it’s a person or a dog or a place--coming into your life and shaking it up and making you look at everything.”

Weiant shares Stein’s enthusiasm--in fact, he, not Stein, was the one who first decided to produce the Gurney play here. He happened upon “Sylvia” while producing a show at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, where “Sylvia” was the next production up as his show was closing.

Weiant and Westport executive producer James B. McKenzie decided to take “Sylvia” to Los Angeles. Later, they invited Stein to join the project. McKenzie subsequently dropped out and “Sylvia” became a mom-and-pop show--the couple’s first L.A. co-production.

As with all her efforts, Stein’s marketing plans for “Sylvia” are elaborate and creative: She plans to keep her show in the media with frequent announcements of special ticket deals targeted to niche audiences.

“We’re offering a discount in previews if you bring a gift for an animal rescue group,” Stein says. “There are various [animal] groups who are going to do benefits. We are working with pet companies as promotional sponsors.

“ ‘Sylvia’ has limitless possibilities for the dopiest, most fun tie-ins,” Stein says with a chuckle. “If this show was not made for Ted and me, then no show was.”

Indeed, they’ve shared both work and play--and their work in plays--from the start. They met in the New York theater world, where Weiant was directing and teaching acting, shortly after Stein graduated from the State University of New York at Albany, where she studied English and theater.

In 1975, they launched a theater company in New York called the Actors Annex. He brought his directing talents, and she her theater and business savvy, to the venture.

Stein had learned the art of the sale from her father, a now-retired vice president of advertising for a chain of East Coast stores.

“He never read stories to me,” she recalls. “He would come and sit on my bed and bring me big loose-leafs of marketing plans, so that was my training.”

In 1977, Stein and Weiant folded the Actors Annex and joined together in another venture --marriage.

After that, Stein spent short intervals as a press agent and in real estate advertising. But she was soon ready to go back to the theater.

“By ’79 I had found ‘Table Settings,’ ” she says, referring to the show, written and directed by James Lapine, that she would produce as a rental at Playwrights Horizons in New York 1980. That show, which later moved to the West Side Arts theater in New York, launched her producing career.

From 1981 to 1986, Stein served as the managing director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass., where she produced more than 40 shows.

During this time, she also continued to cultivate her contacts in New York theater, including such notables as the Shuberts--a.k.a. Bernard B. Jacobs (who died last year) and Gerald Schoenfeld--who took Stein under their wing. Their Shubert Organization has invested in every one of Stein’s shows since 1983.

In 1987, Weiant and Stein returned to live year-round in Manhattan, where they continued to direct and produce. Two years later, they decided to give Los Angeles a try. They moved here in January of 1990 because Weiant was interested in pursuing directing opportunities; Stein had just produced the TV movie “My Brother’s Wife” for ABC, so the move seemed to make sense.

Once the decision was made, Stein secured permission to produce Gurney’s “Love Letters.” Next, she asked Dietz to become her partner on the venture.

Staged first in the balcony theater at the Pasadena Playhouse, “Love Letters” later ran for two years at the Can~on Theatre, which Dietz had managed since 1983.

The two-character epistolary drama, staged by Weiant in reader’s theater style, was marketed largely on the basis of its constantly changing celebrity cast.

“In Los Angeles, which is so celebrity-oriented, you have to play to your audience,” Stein says.

After “Love Letters,” Stein took over the day-to-day operation of the Can~on, while Dietz diversified to work in television as well as theater. Stein brought “Forever Plaid” to the Can~on, this time with co-producer Veronica Chambers, who is also her partner on the current revival.

Stuart Ross’ frothy musical about a four-part harmony group that comes back from the dead ran for 18 months in 1992-93. With this show, Stein went after the kind of repeat business the show was known for generating.

“We had a campaign with so-and-so from the South Bay [saying] ‘I’ve seen the show 23 times,’ ” she says. “We called it the ‘get a life’ campaign.”

With “Ruthless!”--a black-comedy musical sendup about a child star by Joel Paley and Marvin Laird-- Stein simultaneously targeted both a hip, nightclub audience (one of the leads was played in drag by Loren Freeman) and the with-kids crowd (another lead was played by the cutesy, then-8-year-old Lindsay Ridgeway). The show ran for eight months in 1993-94 and also generated a cast album.

In 1994, Stein brought her first nonmusical play since “Love Letters” to L.A.--the Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre’s staging of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” A lightly entertaining play about a fictional meeting between the titular artist and Albert Einstein, it is arguably the most substantial work Stein has brought to town.

She had a lot to work with here: Steppenwolf has significant professional cachet, making this an event in the theater world for that alone. And then, of course, there was the celebrity status of Martin; this was his first produced play. But Stein also kept the play in the media with public events. She staged a “Create Your Own Picasso” contest on the sidewalk in front of the theater, for example, and coordinated this and other activities to coincide with Martin movies playing on local TV stations. The play ran for 10 months and moved on to a successful run produced by Stein in New York.

The darkest cloud on Stein’s horizon is the questionable future of the 382-seat Can~on, which at one time was slated for demolition to make way for a new Bloomingdale’s.

Owned by Bloomingdale’s parent company, Federated Department Stores, the theater is part of a property up for sale. Stein has been trying to persuade the company to parcel out the theater and sell it to her and her partners, but Federated has yet to agree.

Stein claims that losing the Can~on would be enough of a blow to make her consider moving.

“This is the only thing that could prompt me to leave Los Angeles--the impression, which would be right in my face, that theater doesn’t matter,” she says. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the question still remains whether Stein has the power to make theater matter even more. On this, many in the L.A. theater community agree: She has what it takes, when she wants to do it.

“If she wanted to produce ‘Coriolanus’ she could,” says Cates, referring to one of Shakespeare’s least popular dramas. “And maybe we should encourage her in that direction.”

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* “Sylvia,” Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd. Opens Feb. 18. Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. $35-$42.50. (310) 657-7377, (213) 365-3500.