Theatre LA Searches Ended Close to Home

In 1998, Lars Hansen led the committee that looked for a new leader of Theatre LA, the primary service and advocacy organization for L.A. theaters and producers.

Alisa Fishbach got the job, but she resigned a year later. Lee Wochner headed a second search. This time the job went to Hansen, the former searcher.

Last month, Hansen resigned to take a new job as executive director of cultural relations for USC. The new president of Theatre LA, at least for six months, is none other than fellow former searcher Wochner.

A search committee is looking for another permanent president. It’s now led by Paula Holt, who runs the Tiffany Theaters. Given the previous sequence of events, can we look forward to Holt eventually becoming the president of Theatre LA?

“Very funny--but not on your life!” was Holt’s response when this question was posed to her last week. Asked to elaborate, she said she had never thought of the possibility of taking the job and doesn’t want it--too demanding.

Theatre LA is best known for the annual Ovation Awards, but Hansen led it into other major ventures: the Web Tix half-price same-day ticket service on the organization’s Internet site and the new LA Stage magazine.

However, given Holt’s candid reaction to the possibility of becoming the group’s president, as well as the turnover in recent years, the job doesn’t sound particularly enviable. Holt acknowledged that the salary is not competitive with comparable jobs in business or big-time academia. Yet the job comes with a big title--CEO as well as president. And the person who’s hired becomes the highest-profile representative of one of the country’s largest theater scenes.

Wochner, who will hold the reins for at least six months, said last week that he’s “having a load of fun” so far. He didn’t rule out the possibility that he might decide he wants the job permanently. So far, though, he has no big new initiatives in mind.

Wochner will not be serving full time. He will keep his position as one of two artistic directors of Moving Arts, a small theater company operating out of Los Angeles Theatre Center. Moving Arts is a member of Theatre LA--and was once one of its smallest members, he recalled.

Wochner, 37, has lived in Los Angeles since 1988, when he arrived as a graduate student in USC’s writing program. He is a playwright as well as a producer and has performed other theater-related tasks, including writing stage reviews for a newspaper in southern New Jersey, where he grew up. He has been on the Theatre LA board for five years.

He’s perhaps best known to the local theater community as one of the organizers of the L.A. RAT conference in 1999. RAT (the letters stand for several different names; “Radical Alternative Theater” is one of the most descriptive) is a national movement of small, low-budget, aesthetically adventurous theaters. It’s often seen as a counterpoint to the organizations that represent established theaters.

Theatre LA represents many kinds of theaters--the big establishments as well as the struggling RATsters. Yet Wochner sees no conflict between RAT and Theatre LA.

“The basis of RAT is generosity and resource-sharing and connectivity,” he said. “That’s exactly what Theatre LA does.”

RAT has taught him “that you can always put on a show even if you have only a lawn chair,” he said. “But you shouldn’t pride yourself on having nothing but a lawn chair.

“The larger theaters want a younger audience base,” he said. “The smaller ones want marketing assistance. Theatre LA can be the bridge.”

He recalled a play in a small theater, several years ago, that so impressed him and his wife--they were two of only seven people in the audience--that they arranged to bring an additional 30 people to the show the following weekend after arranging twofers for their theater party. “That story can be reenacted with Web Tix all the time,” he said. “I want to apply that story more often in L.A. theater. I’m not sure that people have been invited enough.”