3 Playwrights, No Actors, One Memorable Night

Three stellar figures of ‘90s theater helped Center Theatre Group celebrate its 30th anniversary Wednesday in a panel discussion that sparked some heated comments from a near-capacity audience at the Mark Taper Forum.

The panel included Tony Kushner, playwright of “Angels in America”; Anna Deavere Smith, interviewer, writer and performer of “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” whose next major piece, about the U.S. presidency, is expected on the Taper stage in approximately a year; and Athol Fugard, the South African playwright who directed and is acting in his own “Valley Song,” currently at the Taper.

Among the many topics covered, multiculturalism sparked the most passionate exchanges. Some members of the audience applauded after Fugard, who has long challenged apartheid in his work, said in response to a question, “I don’t know what [multiculturalism] is. It’s a phrase I neveruse.”

Kushner, whose “Angels” focused on the AIDS crisis and gay life, challenged the audience response. “Why ‘bravo’? I think multiculturalism is an incredibly important thing. It sounds like a buzzword, but it stands for a desire to see officially sanctioned American culture reflect more diversity than has previously been the case.”

Smith is known for playing characters of many races, ethnicities and ages and of both genders in her solo shows, and she also defended multiculturalism, but said that it is often defined narrowly as “identity politics.” She asked, “Can we go someplace else, other than that, with this? Are we always going to be stuck in the literal? Maybe not. Maybe theater will just be a place where you must look like what you’re representing.

“We have to be more imaginative about race,” she continued. “It’s not about black and white. . . . My dream is of creating a kind of theater that is about shifting identities.”

Smith’s remarks later drew a spirited response from actress Tyne Daly, who was in the audience. “You seem to think we’re not interested in hearing each other’s stories,” Daly said, also citing a recent controversial speech by playwright August Wilson in which he advocated black-specific theaters and condemned “colorblind” casting. “Mr. Wilson is saying, ‘Forget it, that we won’t cross lines anymore’. . . but I always felt the theater was a place where we came together to experience the intimacy of sharing stories with each other.”

Smith replied that her discouragement stems from the preponderance of whites among her professional colleagues when she began working in the theater and her uncertainty “that when we entered the multicultural phase that we were prepared as colleagues.” This followed earlier comments in which Smith said that multicultural efforts were an example of “public rhetoric” more than reality.

Kushner argued that efforts toward multiculturalism had been beginning to work--until political forces put the clamps on the National Endowment for the Arts. NEA-inspired resident theaters, he said, are “one of this country’s great cultural accomplishments.” He noted that when he received NEA money to write an early draft of “Angels in America,” “I felt moved that this was taxpayers’ money and that I was being commissioned by the people of the United States to write a play. . . . What’s horrifying is the destruction of the NEA. Only about 20% of the people support its destruction, but it’s all but gone.”

When Smith said that dried-up funding wasn’t the only problem, Kushner agreed, but added that “money may be the only legislatable, political solution.” He also defended Wilson’s remarks: “It’s important that we not become impatient with expressions of nationalistic identity that come from the fact that racism is still ongoing.”

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Throughout the evening, Smith pointed to institutional problems. “I’m scared by the extent to which artists are being run by managers,” she said. Her statement that “you can go into a theater and never see any work being done--just people in offices,” drew an angry rejoinder from Center Theatre Group casting director Stanley Soble.

“Some of us work behind those doors in offices so you can do your work,” Soble said from the audience.

Smith acknowledged to Soble that “of course you support our endeavor” and said her earlier remark had been in the context of whether theaters can or should support resident acting companies, an idea that had been pooh-poohed by Kushner: “There’s no way to fight the competition with film and TV [in employing actors].”

Besides, he added, “you have to be nuts to be a really good actor. So it would be scary to have actors running theaters. Directors take over for that reason.”

Fugard began the evening with eloquent remarks about how survivors of a nuclear apocalypse inevitably would tell one another stories--and in the process, bring back theater. However, in the freewheeling discussion that followed the initial remarks from each panelist, he largely deferred to the two Americans.

At one point Kushner, who is currently working in England on a play set there, asked Fugard how he found time to write while also acting and directing. “I don’t manage to do any writing at all--and all I do is write,” Kushner quipped.

Fugard replied that he usually separates the activities, but in fact he is polishing a new play here in Los Angeles even as he acts in “Valley Song”--the first time he has been able to effectively do both at once, he said. “I’m very dependent on the process of acting in terms of understanding my [writing] craft,” he said, adding that he can tell from the audience reaction when “one of my extended monologues is possibly overextended.”

“I don’t think any of the three of us could be accused of not writing plays with long speeches,” Kushner replied.

The discussion was loosely moderated by John Sullivan, executive director of Theatre Communications Group.