Playwrights’ Arena Trying Ambitious Plan

Another Los Angeles theater company is trying to rise from the ranks of the sub-100-seat scene and join the relatively few companies that operate with larger capacities and Actors’ Equity contracts.

This particular odyssey, by Playwrights’ Arena, may be the most daunting challenge yet undertaken by any of the would-be larger theaters, for here is a company that presents nothing but new plays by Los Angeles County-based writers.

“We don’t have the benefit of familiar titles,” said Jon Lawrence Rivera, the company’s co-founder and artistic director. “That’s the scary part.” It’s easier to build bigger audiences if they have some idea of what awaits them.

Playwrights’ Arena and Equity have worked out a five-year plan, centering on the 289-seat Theatre 2 of downtown’s Los Angeles Theatre Center. This year, the company will offer three plays there, beginning Saturday with Luis Alfaro’s “Bitter Homes and Gardens.” But only 99 seats will be used, so the company will still use Equity’s 99-Seat Theater Plan, which requires only token fees for the actors.

Next year, the seating capacity will increase to 150--and wages will follow suit--but for only one of the group’s four shows. In 2003, two of the four will be presented at the larger capacity, and in 2004, three of the four. Finally, in 2005, the company hopes to use all 289 seats for all four productions.

Managers of the municipally owned LATC were eager to rent Theatre 2--next to the main entrance on Spring Street--because it’s seldom used for theater, probably because it has a proscenium stage that faces a forbiddingly high, raked seating area. “It’s hard to appreciate a show from the last row,” Rivera said.

Only the lower rows are used in the current 99-seat configuration, Rivera said. He acknowledged that he isn’t sure how he will overcome the sharp rake in future shows. However, because of the lack of demand for the space, Rivera got a good rental deal--the same rate as at LATC’s 99-seat black box, Theatre 4.

Equity, which usually frowns on proposals to reduce seating capacity (and, in most cases, actors’ wages), was willing to allow a smaller capacity here because it would help a company that wants to move up the Equity scale and also because Theatre 2 normally goes unused, said Equity Western Regional Director John Holly.

Playwrights’ Arena used a 35-seat space on Pico Boulevard from 1992 through 1999, then rented three different sub-100-seat spaces in 2000. Now that it has made a commitment to LATC, its budget is growing from $75,000 last year to $125,000 this year to at least $150,000 in 2002, and its fund-raising will have to grow too.

Rivera said that the sellout success of Culture Clash’s extended run at LATC last year, plus the prototype year-by-year deal that Burbank’s Colony Theatre negotiated with Equity, encouraged his company to move forward. But he noted that the Colony had built a base of several thousand subscribers in its 99-seat days--and it usually offers familiar titles. So Playwrights’ Arena’s task is harder.

This season, the company is offering subscriptions for the first time. The other two plays will be Alice Tuan’s “Last of the Suns,” Aug. 4 to Sept. 9, and Robert Harders’ “Crawlspace,” Oct. 26 to Dec. 2.

HE’S BACK: El Portal Center in North Hollywood has shifted shows in its June 19-July 15 slot. Charles Nelson Reilly’s “Save It for the Stage” will replace the premiere of Murray Schisgal’s “We Are Family,” which had been selected by the theater’s previous artistic director.

“I was never a fan” of the Schisgal play, said Jim Brochu, the current artistic director. After an audience survey this year revealed a distaste for world premieres, Brochu decided that after the badly received “Shooting Craps,” a second such premiere in one season would be a mistake.

Reilly performed his autobiographical show last summer not far from El Portal, at the 99-seat Falcon Theatre in Burbank, but it had to close before it had exhausted its potential, leaving a 500-person waiting list, Brochu said. Also, it has been revised into “more of a play--with a beginning, middle and end.”

TAPER WEST: If you’re a Mark Taper Forum subscriber, you may wonder where you’ll sit when the Taper audience temporarily moves to the Wilshire Theatre for “Copenhagen” next fall. Taper subscribers will be placed in a pattern “as close as possible to the configuration of how they sit at the Taper,” pledged artistic director Gordon Davidson--and they’ll be on the orchestra level.

DISABLED THEATERGOERS: If you would like to comment on the accessibility of local professional theaters (not movie theaters) or share any anecdotes on the subject, please e-mail Don Shirley at don.shirley@latimes.com or write to him at Calendar, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA. 90012. Include a telephone number.