Performing Artists, Venues Ask: Should Show Go On?

When it comes to the performing arts, the familiar saying is “The show must go on.”

But in the wake of the national crisis, performing arts venues throughout the country are making 11th-hour decisions on whether the show should go on.

Along with performance cancellations, some have found themselves axing glittery openinggalas, directing ticket proceeds to relief efforts or adding special onstage tributes for victims.

Though most theaters opted to go dark on Tuesday night, decisions on performances Wednesday, tonight and through the weekend had arts groups in a state of backstage mayhem as late as Wednesday morning.

In New York, Broadway and off-Broadway theaters above 14th Street are expected to resume performances tonight. However, a Rachmaninoff Festival slated to begin at Lincoln Center tonight had to be canceled because musicians from the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir were unable to fly into the city from abroad. Friday night’s performance of “The Magic Flute” will go on as planned at Lincoln Center.

The L.A. Philharmonic decided on Tuesday to return to the planned Hollywood Bowl schedule beginning Wednesday. “Our job, as an artistic organization, is to provide solace at this time,” said Philharmonic managing director Deborah Borda.

Included in that decision was proceeding with tonight’s Bowl performance, Wynton Marsalis’ New York-based Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in performing “All Rise,” leader Marsalis’ new 12-movement, life-affirming composition. It is the first time it will be performed in its two-hour entirety.

With its choirs and emotional swirl, the piece could be seen as joltingly out of place with the mood of the day, but Borda believes the composition’s uplifting nature makes it wholly appropriate--and many of the jazz orchestra members seemed eager Wednesday to take the stage.

“As a musician, I feel it’s my duty to give something to people, I really do,” said trumpet player Seneca Black, 23. As the Lincoln Center orchestra members rehearsed Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, much of their attention was focused on the distant destruction in Manhattan. The intensive tour will make it impossible for any of the 15 members to return home for five weeks.

Joe Temperley, a renowned baritone saxophonist and, at 71, the elder of the group, said there was no dissension among the members about playing. “I don’t see a point in not playing,” he said. “A lot of people are going to come hear us. I suspect some won’t come, but we’ll play. It’s what we do.”

“It’s a good time for it, because people come together in times of tragedy,” Marsalis said. “The negative energy that brought down the World Trade Center will be returned tenfold with positive energy. They’ll rebuild them. Next time, they might put up three.”

What will be the reaction tonight, Marsalis was asked, when the national anthem is played before the performance, a Hollywood Bowl tradition? “That,” he said in a cracking voice, “will be very emotional.”

Center Theatre Group went ahead with performances of “In Real Life” and “Another American: Asking and Telling” at the Mark Taper Forum on Wednesday. Both are solo shows, and the performers wanted to do them, said Gordon Davidson, CTG artistic director. It was especially important for “A Real Life,” which was canceled Tuesday and closes Sunday, meaning additional performances were not possible.

However, with Matthew Bourne’s dance-theater piece “The Car Man,” “we felt that to have an opening and a party and the excitement an opening generates might not be the best thing,” Davidson said. An invitation-only preview was scheduled for Wednesday evening in place of the opening.

Los Angeles Opera did not make the final the decision to cancel Wednesday night’s opening of “Lohengrin” until Wednesday morning--with opera artistic director Placido Domingo stranded in Ohio and principal conductor Kent Nagano unable to get here from Germany.

Nagano, whose L.A.-bound flight from Frankfurt on Tuesday was diverted back to Germany, had conducted his German Symphony Orchestra Berlin in a celebration of the opening for the new Jewish Museum in that city Monday. Domingo partied past 3 a.m. Tuesday at a farewell gala for Valery Gergiev, after his final performance conducting “Queen of Spades” at the Music Center. A private jet taking Domingo to New York after the party was forced to land in Columbus, Ohio.

In the end, said Edgar Baitzel, the company’s artistic director, a flurry of phone calls among him, Domingo, board of directors chairman Leonard Green and board president Marc Stern led to cancellation of the opening, regardless of Nagano’s availability. Through a spokesman, Domingo said: “The day after a national tragedy, we should postpone our opening night, because it is a celebration. Our feeling is that people still want to be home with their families.”

Recent events will not prevent American Ballet Theatre from performing at San Diego Civic Theatre Friday through Sunday--it just makes things a little more difficult.

The dance company began a September tour in Kansas City, Mo., where it performed Tuesday night. “The only reason to cancel the tour would have been if the safety of the performers had been at risk,” said Kevin McKenzie, company artistic director. “It was really only a problem of logistics.”

To get to San Diego, the company opted for a 30-hour bus ride. leaving Kansas City Wednesday morning. “This tour is what we should be doing,” McKenzie explained. “At worst, people will be distracted; at best, their spirits will be uplifted. It’s kind of a good feeling for us, actually.”

Times staff writers Don Shirley and Lewis Segal contributed to this report.

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