Radio Drama Troupe Assails KCRW’s Cancellation of ‘Playhouse’

Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason, founding members of the award-winning L.A. Theatre Works Radio Company, are protesting a decision on the part of KCRW-FM (89.9) to drop “KCRW Playhouse” and its “star attraction”: their group’s Sunday-night series “The Play’s the Thing.”

In a letter sent to general manager Ruth Seymour on Monday, the actors called the move, initiated in late March, a retreat from the kind of programming that made the station the “flagship” of the Los Angeles public radio scene.

“KCRW has suddenly become a lot less eclectic, no matter what they call their music shows,” Mason and Dreyfuss said. “Radio theater accounted for less than 1% of KCRW’s weekly schedule, so it is hard to imagine that they can’t find the time to air this important programming

Retaining the company--which had been affiliated with the station since its inception in 1987--no longer made good business sense, Seymour told The Times. She said the audience for the time slot had been dwindling, the demographics skewed older and there was an insufficient supply of radio dramas to fill the program 52 weeks a year.

“‘Sounds Eclectic,’ the program replacing the ‘Playhouse,’ serves up a mix of contemporary music that attracts a younger audience,” Seymour said. “We launched it nationally in October--and now we’re finally able to broadcast it ourselves. And we’re still creating radio drama--particularly detective pieces by Walter Mosely and Ross McDonald. Canceling a program always provokes outrage, but that goes with the territory.”

KCRW is continuing to contribute financially to the theater group until the end of the season in September. “We were the engine that created them,” she said, “and we want to give them a soft pillow.”

L.A. Theatre Works was created to give local talent a chance to work in live theater--without the usual long-term commitments precluded by TV and movie work, said Susan Loewenberg, the group’s producing director. Charter members such as Ed Asner, John Lithgow, Jo Beth Williams and Julie Harris are featured in plays carried nationally on a host of public radio stations, including outlets in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and globally on satellite radio and the Voice of America. That Los Angeles listeners can no longer partake is the “city’s loss,” she said.

“People give to public radio because of the gestalt , what it represents--because programs like mine are on,” she said. “The mission is far greater than numbers. Sunday evening is one of the toughest time slots--and much of it was filled with material that had nothing to do with us.”

If Seymour is looking for radio dramas to program in that slot, Loewenberg added, she need look no further than the group’s 300-plus audio recordings, about a third of which have never been aired on the station. And as for cultivating a younger, more diverse audience, she said, hundreds of young Latinos turned up for L.A. Theatre Works’ productions of Culture Clash and, most recently, “Zoot Suit.”

“Ruth is a brilliant person, but she’s made a bad decision,” Loewenberg said. “You don’t spend 15 years building a brand and then abandon it with no discussion--and three weeks’ notice. Because it was never formally announced, many in the group are just learning of the program’s cancellation. This kind of move reflects the dumbing down of America.”

L.A. Theatre Works plans to continue recording plays such as Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” and Sam Shepard’s “True West” in front of a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center. It is looking for another public radio station to step in and fill the L.A. void.