Fronting the Avant-Garde

The Los Angeles theater scene may offer a range of fare, but cutting-edge work has long been in short supply. First-rate, mid-size or larger avant-garde theater--the kind that can be found on a regular basis in New York and in many of Europe’s cultural centers--is conspicuously absent from such a large, diverse and dynamic city as this.

That’s not because L.A. doesn’t have a serious audience for cutting-edge fare, as well-attended past engagements, both festival and individual, have proven. Rather, it’s largely because there’s no venue dedicated to presenting it on a regular basis.

True, the occasional experimental piece may be seen at UCLA’s Center for the Performing Arts, the Los Angeles Theatre Center or elsewhere. And smaller but equally venturesome works crop up now and then at a handful of enterprising small low-budget venues like Glaxa, Highways, LACE and the Actors’ Gang.

The problem with such an intermittent and movable feast, however, is that often artists don’t have sufficient rehearsal time in such spaces, and the technical capabilities of the theaters may not be sufficient in any case. Even more important, audiences may not know where to look until it’s too late.

Fortunately, the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, being dubbed the REDCAT, to be located within the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, promises to change all that. Set to complete the design process in December and begin construction as early as March, the theater will open along with the hall in 2002.

Announced in December 1997, the REDCAT theater was added as part of a deal securing a critical donation from the Walt Disney Co. and executive Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew) for Disney Hall. It will be administered by the Valencia-based California Institute of the Arts, which has been looking for a venue in the city for the past decade.

Innovatively designed, flexible in configuration and state-of-the-art in technical capability, REDCAT was modeled after the Cottlesloe theater at the National Theatre in London, but with changes that make it even more versatile. Disney Hall architect Frank O. Gehry designed the space, with the help of CalArts’ Christopher Barreca, a noted set designer who also has experience designing theaters.

Adaptable to proscenium, thrust, in-the-round and other configurations, the theater will seat anywhere from 227 to 266 patrons (Disney Hall will seat 2,380). It has side walls consisting of tall double doors that can open inward or be removed entirely, and several movable overhead gantries that can accommodate anything from lighting instruments to performers.

There are also features clearly designed to encourage experimentation, such as interior walls with an outer layer of plywood that may be painted and then replaced, creating an environmental setting.

Adjacent to the theater lobby will be a gallery as well as a small cafe where theatergoers can linger after performances. And architectural details throughout--such as the plywood inner walls, the curving sculpture above the entrance and signature metal railings--will echo the design in the main concert hall.

In short, REDCAT’s high-end multifunctionality will make it an ideal home for experimental work. And that is indeed how CalArts intends to use it, with programming that will include not only avant-garde theater, but also music, dance, film and more.

If this vision remains undiluted, the new venue could provide for L.A. what places like the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the Kitchen have for New York: a consistent focal point for experimental performing arts. Given its location amid downtown’s emerging Grand Avenue “culture corridor,” REDCAT should also help diversify audiences for the Music Center, as well as bring down the median age of the audience there--much as the now-shuttered “Serious Fun!” festival once did for Lincoln Center.

“We want it to be some combination of LaMama ETC, Dance Theatre Workshop and the Knitting Factory,” says CalArts President Steven Lavine, comparing REDCAT to several of Manhattan’s avant-garde presenters. “Very frequently, it’s our faculty that’s populating those spaces. So we’re in a way making our own little BAM.

“I would like it to emerge as the most exciting multi-arts avant-garde space in the country,” Lavine says. “I think that we will have the best facility. None of this can be vanity productions or purely student productions. It’s going to be for the very best stuff we do. I hope we can weigh in on the national landscape.”

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REDCAT’s mandate makes it more than just another theater in a city that already has many. As a base for the avant-garde, it stands not only to bolster CalArts but also to give the greater performing arts community an overdue shot in the arm. That, in turn, should help boost L.A. theater’s national profile.

The scenario goes something like this: Unlike their more commercial peers, many of the avant-garde’s most talented artists teach for a living. They like to teach at places like CalArts because they are encouraged to continue working professionally, where their accomplishments reflect back on the school.

“CalArts was meant to be a lab in which faculty and visiting artists create work,” Lavine says. “This [theater] reaffirms the lab nature of CalArts, that the goal is to make professional-level work, to make things that are culturally important, and to make that central to the learning environment.

“We think of [REDCAT] as much in terms of our faculty as our students,” Lavine says. “The theater school is being constructed almost like a production company. Students will work in a lab environment, in work that is meant to have a life beyond CalArts.”

Consequently, REDCAT can help attract artist-teachers to CalArts. In fact, it’s already been at least partially responsible for luring Janie Geiser--director of the new Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts--and stage/opera director Travis Preston, among others.

Last year, Preston and collaborator Tom Gunning created an experimental theater piece called “An Unseen Energy Swallows Space.” It was seen on campus in Valencia, and then at the Kitchen in New York in June, with 10 CalArts students in the cast.

L.A. itself never got a look at “Unseen Energy.” But it’s just that kind of scenario, says Lavine, that REDCAT will remedy. “This is going to give us the kind of visibility that CalArts has never had.”

Simply by virtue of the premieres that REDCAT is bound to present, L.A’s visibility should also increase. Moreover, because artistic adventurousness tends to be infectious, the creative dialogue will broaden. And that’s likely to foster fellow-traveler activity at other venues.

REDCAT may be the first hepcat out of the bag, but it won’t likely be the last.*

Jan Breslauer is a regular contributor to Calendar.