‘Home-Grown’ Versus ‘Outside’ Isn’t the Issue at Taper

Since the beginning of drama at the Festival of Dionysus in classical Greece, the central issue in theater has been repertoire--”What plays do we do?” It has been the primary question at my own theater, the Mark Taper Forum, from the moment the theater was conceived.

And as the theater--theater in general and the Taper in particular--is in various ways a public institution, the question of repertoire is always a matter of public debate. I expect it will remain so for as long as there are passionately held and sometimes conflicting aesthetic, political, social and personal values and ambitions all contending for the same limited time, space and resources--which is to say, for as long as theater matters, as it must.

Michael Phillips’ restrained and earnest “perspective” on the Taper’s recent repertoire (“In Search of a Play of One’s Own,” Dec. 31) is a thoughtful contribution to this eternal debate. And his strong declaration that we need a second space is most welcome.

On those occasions when I disagree with Phillips’ aesthetic judgments, I tend to keep it to myself. He does his job; I do mine. There are, however, some matters of fact and facts misunderstood that I’d like to correct, particularly the mistaken dichotomy of “home-grown” productions versus “outside projects.”

The Taper was not originally conceived to be exclusively a venue for world premieres. Certainly the production of new plays was first among our many ambitions when we started the theater--even though at that time we had little idea from whence these new plays would come. Few reading this will remember what American theater was like in 1967, but at that time new plays were the province of Broadway or obscure, experimental off-off-Broadway spaces, while off-Broadway and the still young regional theaters were primarily committed to acting companies, the classics and the great modern European plays.

We too wanted to do classics, as well as revivals of famous and unjustly neglected modern works, but it is also clear that we had a strong taste for the new, politically and socially relevant material that reflected the times we were living in with great immediacy. From the start, our “mission” was pretty much what it is now: to create in Los Angeles the full dynamic variety of the art of theater.

Of course, it is always a challenge to do all these things in a single season, but we do design the seasons to have variety, an artistic integrity, breadth and depth. One of the confusing elements of Phillips’ “perspective” on the Taper is that it obscured the distinction between the calendar year (January to December) and a theatrical season, which runs from September through August. Thus, in writing about Taper productions in the year 2000, Phillips groups shows from two different seasons, 1999-2000 (“Jitney,” “Metamorphoses,” “The Poison Tree” and “Expecting Isabel”) and the first two productions of the current 2000-2001 season (“King Hedley II” and “Closer”). In doing so, he perhaps ever so slightly distorts the thought behind our scheduling.

There are four world premieres in the 2000-2001 season: Cornerstone Theater Company’s “For Here or to Go?” by Alison Carey, the upcoming play about physicist Richard Feynman by Peter Parnell, “The Body of Bourne” by John Belluso and “In Real Life” by Charlayne Woodard, co-produced with Seattle Repertory. These premieres are bookended by “Hedley,” “Closer” and a substantially new version of Warren Leight’s “Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine” on the front end and Marc Wolf’s “Another American: Asking and Telling” as the season finale.

What the Taper does not do are “job-in” productions or “tryouts” headed for New York or elsewhere. We have on rare occasions presented work that was the creation of another company that we thought important for Los Angeles to see (“Metamorphoses,” “Black Elk Speaks” and Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company, as examples) or hosted Spalding Gray or Mabou Mines or Haifa Municipal Theatre from Haifa, Israel. Otherwise, what you see at the Taper is rehearsed at the Taper and produced under the guidance of the Taper’s artistic and production staff--even with productions we do in collaboration with other theaters, such as “The Kentucky Cycle” and “The Cider House Rules.”

These multi-theater collaborations seem to concern Phillips most. And while money always matters, finance is not the prime motivation for these collaborations. Rather, we are trying to find ways to give to important artists and challenging projects what they need most to develop: time and artistic continuity. Networking productions among various regional theaters is just one way to do this and is a vital component of the playwriting process.

This in fact was the point of my statement to the New York Times, which Phillips paraphrased, that it isn’t institutional stability I’m worried about; it’s quality. Phillips quotes this statement out of context, making it seem as if I were referring to the quality of plays being done at the Taper. In fact, as the fuller quote reveals, I was discussing how the lack of sufficient time for rehearsal, ensemble work and exploration of acting styles threatens the quality of productions of new plays in American theater in general.

Phillips’ comments on the two August Wilson plays illustrate the importance of multiple productions and time in developing new works. He considers “King Hedley II” “problematic” compared with “Jitney.” But “Jitney” arrived at the Taper toward the end of its production-chain of regional partners while “Hedley” was somewhere in the middle of its journey. I can assure you, with Wilson in residence, it profited greatly from its time on the Taper stage.

As flattered as I am by Phillips’ belief that the Taper is “able to launch Broadway or off-Broadway hopefuls with ease,” the truth is that the decision to do a show in New York usually comes well after we have committed to and produced a play and so has little to do with our own artistic considerations. Even our premiere of Neil Simon’s “The Dinner Party” was purely “home-grown” for the local audience. We then decided to remount our production at the Kennedy Center for only four weeks in Washington, D.C., and it was a rave review from the Washington Post that persuaded commercial producers to move the show to Broadway.

As mentioned earlier, Phillips very forcefully focused on one crucial matter: the need for the Taper to have a second, smaller space. The fact is that the sensational physical space and audience relationship of the Mark Taper Forum is not the appropriate venue for certain plays.

This was not always the case. In earlier years we did all sorts of experimental work on our stage, with New Theatre for Now on Monday nights and short-run workshop productions, and we had an audience eager to go on what I call the roller-coaster ride of new work--because, like a roller coaster, it is not only exciting but also has definite highs and lows.

This became more difficult to do over time, in part because of finances, but also because we have been so very successful. When you win several Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prizes, you find that the bar has been raised for audience expectations.

The second space will address some of these issues while providing greater flexibility and diversity. When we get the second space--and it is a matter of when, not if--I can promise you it will be a roller-coaster-ride venue, a place of surprises and variety--some thrilling, others inevitably frustrating, and I’m sure they will be “home-grown.” As such, it will in no way end our discussion about repertoire.