Encore! Encore!

Maybe they should have started with a little Shakespeare.

Instead, on April 9, 1967, downtown’s Mark Taper Forum, at the brand-new Music Center of Los Angeles County, opened its doors with “The Devils,” starring Frank Langella in the tale of a libertine priest, a nun and their sexual fantasies.

The choice infuriated local Catholic officials and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--whose opinion carried weight, since the Music Center stands on county land. The county slapped a tax on the theater and formed a committee to keep a watchful eye on it and its then-33-year-old artistic director, Gordon Davidson.

The Taper’s larger, more sedate sister, the Ahmanson, opened later that year with the American premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s “More Stately Mansions.”

Unlike the scrappy 750-seat Taper, known for its cutting-edge and often highly topical fare, the Ahmanson, which can accommodate audiences of 1,300 to 2,000, established its reputation as a haven for glamorous stars in tried-and-true shows. The roster has included Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Goulet, Maggie Smith, Hume Cronyn, Katharine Hepburn and Carol Channing, and blockbusters ranging from “A Man for All Seasons” starring Charlton Heston to the long-running “Phantom of the Opera” (1989-1993) and its current offering, “Show Boat.”

Badly in need of a make-over by 1993, the Ahmanson shut down for two years for a $17-million renovation, reopening in 1995 with a full-helicopter production of “Miss Saigon.” Over the years, both theaters have relied on Hollywood’s ready army of movie and television actors who yearn to return to theater.

While new plays, including Neil Simon’s Tony Award-winning “Biloxi Blues,” have been developed at the Ahmanson, innovation, confrontation and challenge have become synonymous with the Taper and the name Taper nearly interchangeable with Davidson (he currently is artistic director of the Ahmanson and the Taper under the umbrella Center Theatre Group; the theater had its first four seasons under the artistic direction of Elliot Martin, who turned over the reins to Robert Fryer for the next 18 years). Together, these two venues have come to represent the city’s only true theatrical hub.

In keeping with the controversy of its opening, the Taper has continued to push the envelope, nurturing new plays including, in recent years, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Kentucky Cycle” (1992) and “Angels in America” (1992) as well as Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” in 1993. As might be expected, there have been criticisms of the theater’s choices: that they’ve gone both too far and not far enough, that they’ve done too little to nurture fledgling artists or should do more with the classics. New Work Festivals, as well as workshops and smaller productions at the tiny Taper, Too have offset some of the outcry, but Davidson’s still-unresolved determination to find yet another, mid-sized stage to balance off the others provides hope that some of these demands may yet be met.

For the moment, however, Davidson remains in a pleasant state of shock that both he and the Taper have lasted for 30 years. “I’ve had my disappointments, but for the most part, the sense of adventure, pioneering, trying new things, and of feeling a level of support that is extraordinary from both the performers and the audience--it fed the soul a great deal,” he said recently.

Los Angeles is ever a hybrid of reality and fantasy, of Hollywood hype and plain hard work, and the theater here is no exception. Because many of the world’s greatest actors live here, more than a few have performed on the Ahmanson and Taper stages. Thirty years of memories could fill volumes, and Davidson says the Center Theatre Group is documenting its own past. In lieu of a definitive history, The Times has invited a few of the actors who have trod the boards to speak for themselves, to give perspective on what these two theaters have meant to them.

STEPHEN SPINELLA IS TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, AND STREISAND: “Angels in America, Part 1-- Millennium Approaches” (1992), Taper.

“I never thought ‘Angels’ would go [from the Taper] to New York and become such an event; Broadway was never a thought! We workshopped it at the Taper, Too in 1990, in that little tiny theater, and then finally the production went to the main stage in 1992. The Taper was unquestionably the best entrance the angel ever had, the most spectacular and the most exhilarating. Every night, everything built up to that moment, when the back wall cracked open and the angel flew in--you would just feel the audience gasping. It was just so beautiful.

“I met my agent [through the Taper production]! I had left an agency sort of in the beginning of the rehearsal process at the Taper, I didn’t have an agent, and I went to a dinner party, where I met this woman who had just seen ‘Angels’ who was raving about her agent at William Morris. I met him, and was introduced around William Morris, and they wanted to sign me. That was what I got from the L.A. production.

“I never liked to know who was in the audience, but [other cast members] were always peeking. [One night] I was sort of horrified to find out that Barbra Streisand was there. Everything I did was followed by this little chorus in my head: ‘Barbra Streisand just saw me walk out onstage in a kimono and mules; Barbra Streisand just saw me take off all my clothes.’ It’s a wonder that I could do anything! She came backstage and she was incredibly gracious, with Donna Karan, actually, and Donna Karan ended up giving me a tuxedo for the second Tony Awards ceremony that I went to.

“A lot of big stars came to the main-stage production, but Barry Manilow came to the workshop production. Barry Manilow was one of the first people ever to give ‘Angels’ a standing ovation.”

A YOUNG MATTHEW BRODERICK IS AWED BY THE AHMANSON: “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1982), “Biloxi Blues” (1984), Ahmanson.

“ ‘Brighton Beach’ was the first lead I had ever done, and the fact that it was a premiere of a Neil Simon show was an enormous deal to me. I just remember driving up to the Ahmanson and seeing this enormous white building, and then seeing all of the seats, and I was just stunned by the size of it. I remembered as a kid my father [actor James Broderick] working at the Kennedy Center, I used to think: ‘God, this is so big!’--and there it was, the same kind of feeling, and I was starring in a show.”

JAMES EARL JONES FINDS SOMETHING ROTTEN: “Othello” (1971), Taper.

“I knew that ‘Othello’ was not working. I was working with a director [John Berry] that I loved, and still love, but he became a bit disturbed that Anthony Zerbe [as Iago] and I had done the play before and he thought we were resistant to his direction; he got paranoid that we were following the directors of our previous productions, and not his. There was one point I remember lying on a bench between rehearsals and thinking: ‘I should suggest we do “King Lear” instead.’ And we were stuck with a set design that was like a jungle gym.

“The Taper is a good theater; you just have to have the right cast, the right set and the right director. We had a wonderful director, a set that fought us, and a cast that was not able to serve the director, nor he us.

“The critics bombed it, but still, [college] students who hadn’t seen much Shakespeare came to see it and it became a sellout. Then the critics came back, and said: ‘Oh my, they’ve really improved it.’ Well, we hadn’t done a thing to it!”

JACK LEMMON GETS STANDING OVATIONS--FROM HIS WIFE: “Juno and the Paycock” (1974), Taper; “Idiot’s Delight” (1970), “A Sense of Humor” (1983), Ahmanson.

“We did ‘Juno and the Paycock,’ with Walter [Matthau] and Maureen [Stapleton], and I have to admit there was a personal reason that I loved it. Every night, Carol Matthau and my wife, Felicia, would come and stand in one of the entrances, and when the lights went down, and then came up, they would be standing there, and they would step forward and start hollering, ‘Bravo!’ Everyone thought they were standing up from their seats, and so the whole theater would follow them. So we got a standing ovation for every performance. It was terrific.

“I remember one night early in the run in ‘Juno,’ some kid was sitting in the very front row who put one of his feet up on the stage, which is a very dumb thing to do. . . . It was either Maureen or Walter--I’m pretty sure it was Walter-- after a couple of minutes of this nut sticking his foot up there, gave the guy a kick on the bottom of his foot that he is never going to forget. There were no more feet on the stage after that.”

TAPER AUDIENCE MEMBER PUNCHES UP THE SCRIPT FOR EDWARD JAMES OLMOS: “Zoot Suit” (1978), Taper.

“I think ‘Zoot Suit’ was a milestone for my career and also a milestone for theater. It was the first major piece of work in the history of American theater that served to really bring the Latin American experience to the main stages of America.

“During a performance, at a time when there was chaos on the stage as they were beating my character up, we ended up having to stop a man from getting into the fight. He came up on the stage with us, and it got pretty intense. That was one of the great things about this piece of theater. I would say that at least 60% of the people who came to see the piece had never been to a theater before in the history of their lives.

“It threw me into being one of the few actors who has ever been catapulted into world recognition through the American theater. I would have to say it is the cornerstone of my entire career.”

FOR TYNE DALY, THE TAPER IS A FAMILY AFFAIR: “Ashes”/”The Three Sisters” (repertory) (1976), “Black Angel” (1978), “Gethsemane Springs (lab) (1976-77), “Love and Good Company” (Itchey Foot) (1981), Taper.

“The first time I went down to the Mark Taper Forum to see a whole production, my father [James Daly] was playing in [“The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” 1971] when the Taper was just a few years old; the last time I went to the Taper was to see my kid, Kathryne Dora Brown, in Marivaux’s “Changes of Heart” [1996]. I thought, this is what 30 years can do!

“Both ‘Ashes’ and ‘Three Sisters’--that season of repertory was very important for me, because I had auditioned at the Taper for eight years! I made a success in ‘Ashes.’ I did not make a success in ‘Sisters’; there were those sorts of reviews that said ‘Miss Daly is dreadful as Olga’--you know, right to the jugular. But there were some folks I played with whom I’ve kept as friends forever.

“Joyce Van Patten and I did the first experimental mounting of ‘Gethsemane Springs’; the thing went on for five hours. I was playing an 80-year-old French matriarch. . . . By the time we got to the third act they’d be streaming out of the theater. We had a lot of entrances from the [house], and Joyce said to me: ‘You know, Tyne-o, the hardest thing about performing at the Taper is beating the people up the aisles.’ We had on these huge period costumes, and people would be fighting to get out. It was awful! But they seldom hire a 30-year-old woman to play an 80-year-old woman on TV.”

CHARLTON HESTON WALTZES WITH SHAKESPEARE . . .CLASHES WITH O’NEILL: “The Crucible” (1972), “Macbeth” (1975), “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1977), “A Man for All Seasons” (1979), “The Crucifer of Blood” (1980), “Detective Story” (1984), Ahmanson.

“I’ve richly enjoyed the parts I’ve done at the Ahmanson. To waltz with the old gentleman [in 1975’s “Macbeth”] is always the best thing an actor can do. [Shakespearean roles] are always the best parts.

“But though I was delighted to do it, I was disappointed in ‘Long Day’s Journey.’ I am more comfortable in Shakespeare; I first did ‘Macbeth’ when I was 14 years old, and the horse knows the way. [“Night” director Peter Wood] and I had lunch, and I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and he said, ‘How about “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”?’ And I said, ‘You son of a bitch.’ He said, ‘That may be the best American play ever written!’ And I said, ‘Also the most difficult. I’ve done O’Neill before, he is not actor-friendly in the way that Mr. Shakespeare is.’

“I think one of my primary achievements [at the Ahmanson] was when we remodeled the theater [Heston served on the reconfiguration committee]. [Before the renovation] a friend of mine with the Royal Shakespeare Company was here, and I said: ‘Well, what do you think of our theater?’ And he said: ‘To play Shakespeare at the Ahmanson is like playing him on the white cliffs of Dover--only the audience is in France.’ The acoustics were horrible; they really were. Now it’s fine.”

MICHAEL LEARNED FINDS SHE’S REPLACEABLE: “Mary Stuart” (1981), “Picnic” (1986), Ahmanson. “A Month in the Country” (1983), “Three Tall Women” (1996), Taper.

“In ‘Mary Stuart,’ one day I was being very noble--I had the stomach flu, upchucking and dizzy and terrible, and instead of calling in the morning and saying, ‘Get the understudy ready, I’m sick,’ I showed up, and got into my beautiful costume. They said, ‘Look, if anything happens, just walk offstage.’ I don’t remember walking offstage, but I guess I did, they had to bring down the curtain. And within 10 minutes, my understudy, who had no costume and no wig, not my height or weight or anything, was on. I thought, hmmm, we certainly are replaceable.

“I have always loved working there; theater is my first love, and now I appreciate it even more, because parts for women my age are so much more interesting in the theater. You are far enough from the audience that every line and wrinkle doesn’t show.”

BEFORE “SEINFELD,” MICHAEL RICHARDS MEETS ARTHUR MILLER: “American Clock”/”Wild Oats” (repertory) (1984), Taper.

“That was an interesting time, because we weren’t just doing the plays for our community, it was all part of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, so we were doing the plays for the world. [“American Clock”] was a special project, Arthur Miller was with us, and he was rewriting it--that was very, very exciting. I was feeling very, very young, and there I was, standing in the presence of Arthur Miller--he wasn’t someone I could just sit down with and say: ‘So, what do you like to eat?’ I wanted to play the part right for him. Since he didn’t say anything about the part, I figured I was doing OK.

“[Before the Taper shows] I had started going back into the comedy clubs, and it just didn’t feel right to me. I thought, ‘What am I doing now, preparing myself for a stand-up comedy career? That’s not what I want to do.’ So when [“Wild Oats” director] Tom Moore called me, it was the perfect call. After I did the two plays at the Taper, I went and studied formally for a number of years.”

LYNNE THIGPEN: FROM FLOWER CHILD TO 101 YEARS OLD: “Godspell” (1972), “Tintypes” (1981), “Having Our Say” (1996), Taper.

“[The Taper] was my first experience working on the stage as a professional actress outside of New York. My first job was ‘Godspell.’ I did it in New York, then I went to L.A.--that was interesting. We were all young kids at the beginning of our careers.

[In “Having Our Say,” Thigpen portrayed Bessie, the younger of the centenarian Delany sisters]: “I had been approached before about doing the role, to replace someone in a New York production, but I decided if I was going to do it, I wanted to do it from scratch, with somebody else new, so we could find our own Sadie, and find our own Bessie. Then this one came up, and I went: ‘Yeah!’

“It’s so interesting to go someplace and have the same backstage crew that was there when I was in ‘Godspell’; needless to say, they know their theater inside and out. The doorman? Same guy! That sense of continuity is sort of fun, because everything we do is so temporary.”

ALAN ALDA FINDS L.A. AUDIENCES SHARPER THAN NEW YORK’S: “Jake’s Women” (1992-93), CTG/Ahmanson (at the Doolittle).

“It was very interesting to do [“Jake’s Women”] here, because it had been playing on Broadway for eight or nine months, and in North Carolina for about a month before that, and one of the things that I was really interested to see was, the L.A. audiences for that play seemed sharper, more alert and more sophisticated. In fact, they were sharper, and picked up some things the New York audiences didn’t.”

JOHN GLOVER IS STAR-STRUCK AT THE TAPER: “Juno and the Paycock” (1974), “The Traveler” (1987), “Henceforward . . .” (1991), “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” (1993), Taper.

“On [“Juno”], I had never been to Los Angeles before; I grew up in a little town in Maryland. . . . There was this incredible opening night where Jack Benny came, and Rosalind Russell and Gregory Peck. It was just amazing the people who would show up, I mean, Gene Kelly. Somebody different would always be at our dressing room, saying: ‘Good show, guys, good show.’ It was just this kind of incredible introduction to Los Angeles, Hollywood, theater.

“And then, ‘Lips Together, Teeth Apart’--I called [playwright] Terrence McNally in New York about it, and said, when Gordon does it in Los Angeles, please let me play this part. He said: ‘Call Gordon. Tell him. . . .’ And because I did that, Terrence thought of me for ‘Love! Valour! Compassion!’ [for which Glover won a Tony in 1995]. If I hadn’t done ‘Lips Together, Teeth Apart,’ there would have been no ‘Love! Valour!’ for me.

“[Davidson] has made it possible for us to pick up a phone and call him up and say: ‘I need to do a play.’ It’s just wonderful.”

IN 1979, THEY DIDN’T BELIEVE PHYLLIS FRELICH WAS DEAF: “Children of a Lesser God” (1979), “In the Hands of the Enemy” (1985), Taper.

“[In 1979], I remember it was so unique to see a deaf actor onstage with hearing people. There were a lot of people in the audience who thought I must be pretending to be deaf. They just didn’t think a deaf person could do that. Of course, no one would think that now.

“For a theater to take on a production like [“Children of a Lesser God”] was very unusual; it was a bilingual production of a kind that no one had ever seen before, and no one at the Taper at the time, including Gordon Davidson, knew much about sign language, but everybody had this great willingness and enthusiasm and the nerve to learn. Of course, now they do [sign-language interpretations] of all of their plays, and that program started with us.

“[The play] went on to all kinds of success; in the [deaf] world, a historic success. As to what’s happened since, it’s still tough, still a struggle. There are still very few people developing roles for deaf actors--very, very few--and there are still occasions when we have to fight to get a deaf actor in a deaf role; that still happens, but not much. That has changed too.”