Are These Actual Barriers to Drama?

A joke going around East West Players is that the pioneering Asian American theater company will stage a site-specific production of “Les Miserables” on the street outside its theater in downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo.

Erecting that musical’s famous barricades would be no problem. On Oct. 5, the day the United States began bombing Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Police Department placed two large concrete barriers at each end of the block in front of the theater, complete with checkpoints that restrict the flow of traffic.

The move was in response to the possibility that terrorists might attack Parker Center and other police headquarters buildings, the back entrances of which face East West across Judge John Aiso Street.

No one at the theater has any idea when the barricades will come down. They may be permanent; an LAPD spokesman, Lt. Horace Frank, said he expects the barriers to “be up for the rest of time.” They’ll almost certainly stay up during the run of East West’s next production, Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Sisters Matsumoto,” which opens Wednesday.

“Sisters Matsumoto” is set in the aftermath of the internment of Japanese Americans in remote camps during World War II, as a family returns home to California’s Central Valley. East West artistic director Tim Dang hopes Gotanda’s play will have particular resonance right now, “with all the talk about Arab Americans facing wartime racial profiling.”

The play might also carry special meaning in this venue, which was a church that served as a registration center for the camps during World War II. Interned Japanese Americans stored belongings in the basement and returned to retrieve them.

It’s even possible that the images of police activity outside the theater might enhance the feeling of being in the regimented wartime world that serves as the prelude to the story in the play.

Dang learned about the barricades the morning they were put in place in a phone call from the production manager for “Red,” which was playing at the theater at the time. When Dang arrived around noon, he found officers at the checkpoint barring non-police vehicles from passing through.

Actors and other production personnel as well as audience members could enter the block only on foot--after they found an alternative to their normal parking arrangements, which involve entering a lot just north of East West’s theater, through an entrance off Judge John Aiso Street.

Perhaps because of the availability of street parking on Sundays, the Oct. 5 matinee was delayed by only 20 minutes. But Dang immediately began phoning and faxing LAPD officials, requesting permission for East West employees and patrons to drive through the checkpoints.

Since then, most theatergoers have been allowed to pass through, but East West officials have heard reports of some who were denied entrance--including two committee members who arrived on a recent weekday to help plan the theater’s 36th anniversary gala.

They’ve also heard reports of others who simply turned their cars around at the checkpoints.

“The barricades reinforce a sense of gloom and tension,” said Daniel Mayeda, co-president of East West’s board. He said most of the subscribers will find their way to the shows, but he fears they may hesitate to recommend productions to friends.

“On the other hand,” Mayeda added, “we’re the safest theater in L.A.; no other theater is behind police barricades.”

Company officials believe the barricades have exacerbated the effects of the economic recession on the company’s financial health.

For the current fiscal year, which began in July, East West had already planned to trim its budget by about 10%, from more than $1.3 million in the previous year to $1.2 million, in response to the slowing economy.

For example, Dang selected a five-actor musical revue for this year’s late spring show, “The World Goes Round,” instead of a bigger musical, like last year’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

Still, in the wake of Sept. 11 and the barricades, much of the company’s financial picture is worse than expected. Season subscriptions have fallen from 1,100 to about 1,000, instead of rising to the projected 1,300.

Although “Red,” the first production of the season, received reviews as good as any in East West history, ticket sales were 23% lower than projections, and the no-show rate for subscribers was higher than ever. Theater officials blamed post-Sept. 11 malaise and the barricades. Revenue from advertising in the program and in newsletters and sales of promotional items have also fallen, as has corporate and foundation support.

The only silver lining is in the area of private contributions. Last month, the company received its largest single contribution ever from an individual. The donor requested anonymity, and the company won’t reveal the amount beyond six figures, but it and other gifts were big enough to boost the level of giving by individuals to 87% above projections for the year.

The company’s debt stands at about $92,000--down from $170,000 a year ago--thanks to the private donations.

In response to the shortfall in earned income, East West has taken several actions to cut back expenses.

Over the holidays, the company moved its offices from rented quarters at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, two blocks away, to a former storage and dressing room on the fourth floor of the Union Center for the Arts, the city-owned building that houses the company’s theater on the second floor.

The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency is paying the expenses of building walls in the space to make it into more of an office and to muffle noise from a nearby generator. Most of the items that had been stored there were moved to the company’s existing warehouse and rehearsal space in an industrial zone on the east side of downtown L.A.

The moves will save $30,000 a year in rent, and managing director Al Choy noted the added convenience of consolidating operations in two locations instead of three.

However, the move also has its drawbacks--the amount of office space has shrunk from 2,000 square feet to about 750. The theater’s board, which used to meet in a boardroom, met Monday in the new, cluttered office--”an eye-opener for some of them,” Choy said. Revenue-producing classes that are scheduled to begin in February have not yet found a new home.

The set for “Sisters Matsumoto” has also been affected by cost-cutting. The script calls for the two-story interior of a Victorian house, and such a set was built for the play’s previous productions elsewhere. At East West, the set will be a blond-wood platform costing about $2,000, in comparison with the estimated $10,000 that a Victorian house set might have cost. “It’s more metaphorical, less representational,” Dang said. He added that the production’s director, Chay Yew, “is very spare in his stagings, so it’s great that he’s directing for us right now.”

Speaking by phone from San Francisco, playwright Gotanda said such revisions are fine with him. “I’m interested in looking at it differently,” he said. Although his stage directions ask characters to go to the second story of the house, and this set won’t have a second story, he said Yew should “throw out stage directions like that.”

East West is also economizing with a hiring freeze, effective last October. The number of full-time staff has decreased from nine to seven, supplemented by four part-timers and volunteers.

Regardless of the barricades, the company’s leaders hope some of the confusion for would-be theatergoers will be alleviated in time for “Sisters Matsumoto.” They’ve met with city officials, and the city has agreed to pay for street signage that makes it clear that businesses on Judge John Aiso Street are open and welcoming customers.

Dang said city officials also have assured East West that officers at the checkpoints will allow drivers with business on the block to pass through the barriers. The city channeled several million dollars in federal block grants to the renovation of the Union Center for the Arts, Mayeda said, so he believes the city will want to protect that investment. East West also raised $1.5 million for the renovation effort.

Union Center has two much smaller tenants: the nonprofit gallery L.A. Artcore, which has similarly suffered from the barricades, said executive director Lydia Takeshita, and the nonprofit media arts organization Visual Communications. That group’s operations manager, Amy Kato, said her group isn’t as reliant on foot traffic as the others, but added that “people feel apprehensive” when they arrive for meetings.

When East West moved to Union Center in 1998, after spending decades in a 99-seat theater in a somewhat seedy part of east Hollywood, “we thought that being next to a parking lot and the Police Department would be a big plus,” Dang said. “Other than artistic issues, parking and security are two of the main factors that audiences mention most.”

“We’ve weathered crisis after crisis,” Mayeda said, “so we’ll get through this. The artists themselves have contributed money. They’ve been very helpful.”

“I tell the artists it’s like a situation out of ‘Les Miserables,’” Choy said. “You just have to brave the barricades.”

*

“THE SISTERS MATSUMOTO,” David Henry Hwang Theater, Union Center for the Arts, 120 Judge John Aiso St., L.A. Dates: Opens Wednesday, 8 p.m. Regular schedule: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 17. No matinee this Saturday. Prices: $25-$30. Phone: (213) 625-7000.