The Rights Dance

In 1993, Paula Holt--who wanted to produce David Mamet’s “Oleanna” at her Tiffany Theaters--was leaving her home for dinner with friends at a Mexican restaurant when she received a call from Ricky Jay, the magician and Mamet confederate whom she had befriended. He told her that the planned L.A. premiere of “Oleanna” at the Mark Taper Forum had fallen apart in a fractious dispute between Mamet and the Taper over casting. Now was the time for her to make her move.

Holt didn’t want to stand up her friends, so she met them at the restaurant. But she also wanted to reach Mamet at his Vermont home as soon as possible. So she stepped away to the telephone in the women’s room of the restaurant and, using a number provided by Jay, called Mamet’s home. “You don’t know me, but ...” she recalls telling the playwright, to whom she’d never spoken. By the end of the call, she had Mamet’s verbal assent to a production of “Oleanna” at the Tiffany, which indeed took place in early 1994.

It was a happy ending for Holt. And for theatergoers, it was a reminder that not every play by a stellar playwright must pass through a large, prominent theater in order to be seen in L.A.

That’s a sometimes forgotten fact. In the vast but diffuse theatrical landscape of L.A., many casual theatergoers seldom venture beyond the centrally located Taper, its larger and adjacent sibling, the Ahmanson Theatre, or whatever mega-musical happens to be in town on tour. These theatergoers might occasionally see a show at another large theater, especially in their own neighborhoods, but they would rarely consider a show at one of L.A.’s many smaller venues.

Yet these small theaters--with lower ticket prices, few bad seats, longer runs and often strong reviews--can give L.A. audiences their first look at new material or rare revivals of old plays.

For example, Alan Bennett’s “Talking Heads,” seven monologues including three that had never been staged, even in Bennett’s home country of England, is at the Tiffany. The Fountain Theatre is staging the first L.A. revival in 24 years of “After the Fall,” Arthur Miller’s play loosely based on his relationship with Marilyn Monroe.

Unfamiliar work may not ever attract casual theatergoers, but revivals of famous titles or L.A. premieres of high-profile plays that have been acclaimed elsewhere have a better chance. The producers of these small productions face formidable challenges, however. Among them is obtaining the rights to the plays.

L.A. is no ordinary market in the minds of playwrights and their agents. In most other cities, the rights to prominent plays are dispersed by intermediary licensing companies without direct and careful consideration by the writers and agents. But that’s not true in New York or L.A., the major media markets, where the professional stakes are highest.

The decision to apply careful scrutiny to rights requests from L.A. theaters “usually relates to the film and TV life of a play,” New York agent Charmaine Ferenczi says. “You don’t want a production with bad publicity”--for it might be noticed by L.A. film and TV powers, who could be considering the play for its film potential or considering the writers for potentially lucrative screenwriting assignments unrelated to the play.

Agent William Craver says two of his playwright clients--whom he declined to identify--recently turned down requests for their most famous works to be done in small L.A. theaters. They felt their reputations as writers were based on those plays, he says, and they didn’t want to run the risk of bad productions.

This raises a sore point for L.A. stage producers. Craver says the reputation of small L.A. theaters is plagued by the “perception that many of the productions are mounted for the benefit of the actors,” as showcases for would-be screen stars, without high professional standards.

It’s true that the staggering number of small productions in L.A.--an average of about 1,500 a year--is usually linked to the staggering number of actors here. Thirty years ago, the multitudes of L.A. actors who wanted to appear on stage in the vicinity of Hollywood--regardless of the wage scale--led their union, Actors’ Equity, to stop requiring payment to its member actors in sub-100-seat venues within Los Angeles County. This “Equity Waiver” plan ended in 1988, but it was replaced by a plan that still requires token stipends (as low as $5 a performance) in the county’s small theaters.

But the fact that small L.A. theater is often actor-driven does not necessarily mean the resulting productions are vanity-driven or otherwise subpar. Many serious theater artists work in small venues here, albeit without much pay, and their productions sometimes snatch local awards away from larger companies. Without large marketing budgets, however, the small theaters don’t always communicate their seriousness and level of achievement to the primarily New York-based playwrights’ agents.

“Most agents are not very familiar with the L.A. scene,” says Barbara Beckley, producing director of the Colony Theatre, which recently moved from the ranks of sub-100-seat companies to larger quarters--and more visibility--in Burbank. “They tend to think we’re just a bunch of actors doing a showcase.”

The writers and agents also have another reason to hope their plays land in larger L.A. venues instead of smaller ones. The larger the theater, the greater the writers’ royalties--and the agents’ percentages.

For example, when the Colony was still a 99-seat company in 2000, a production of “A Shayna Maidel” required royalty payments of only $50 a performance, Beckley says. But when the Colony presents the L.A. premiere of “Fuddy Meers”--a play by David Lindsay-Abaire that became available only after the Colony moved into its new 276-seat theater--next year, royalties will be $150 per performance or 8% of the weekly gross, whichever is greater.

Higher up the theatrical hierarchy, a single production at the Taper might yield a playwright royalties as high as $60,000, according to Charles Dillingham, managing director of the Taper’s parent company, Center Theatre Group.

Shortly after the Matrix Theatre produced Mamet’s “A Life in the Theatre” in 1980, the Matrix sent solicitations for $100 donations--in exchange for nameplates on the theater’s 99 seats--to everyone on its mailing list. One of them went to Mamet, who returned it with this handwritten and only slightly hyperbolic note: “I already gave you my play for free.”

Still, because few playwrights make their primary income from their plays--most make more money from relatively anonymous film or TV writing jobs, or from teaching or other sources--the size of the royalty or the venue isn’t necessarily of the utmost importance. “I’m less concerned with the venue than I am with partnering my writer clients with top talent,” agent George Lane says.

Arthur Miller, the dean of American playwrights, says he is sometimes concerned about requests for productions in small, unknown theaters because his plays “need a little air. Until I get some details about the company, it sometimes sounds as if they’ll be done in a closet.”

However, when Miller and his agents receive persuasive information about the quality of the applicants, they are open to productions in small theaters. His “The Man Who Had All the Luck,” which bombed in its Broadway debut in 1944, received its second production just two years ago at the 99-seat Ivy Substation in Culver City, co-produced by L.A.’s Antaeus Company and Finesilver Shows. That production helped attract attention to the long-ignored play, which is now set for a Broadway production in May, starring Chris O’Donnell.

Rights to the Fountain Theatre’s current production of Miller’s “After the Fall” were initially turned down more than a year ago. But the theater’s artistic co-director, Stephen Sachs, sent an appeal for reconsideration, which prompted a letter from Miller’s side seeking still more information about the company. One more written round of bragging about such achievements as the theater’s 23 world premieres, 17 L.A. premieres and 100-plus awards in 10 years finally netted the rights.

Beckley reports a similar experience when the Colony obtained the rights to Miller’s “Incident at Vichy” for a 1995 production. This was the only time an initial rejection was reversed in the Colony’s years as a 99-seat theater, she says.

The Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles recently obtained rights to revive Miller’s “The Price,” after “going through a few hoops” on the subject of casting, which Miller had to approve, says Odyssey artistic director Ron Sossi. The negotiating of hoops may continue, for the most notable name in the cast, JoBeth Williams, is still awaiting word on casting in a TV pilot and may have to withdraw from the play, which is tentatively scheduled to open April 20.

One Miller play that no L.A. theater will get soon is “The Crucible.” The rights aren’t available as long as the possibility exists that the current Broadway production might eventually show up in L.A.

Joe Stern, the intrepid producer at the Matrix Theatre on Melrose Avenue, has received his share of acceptance and rejection letters during his 25 years of producing in Los Angeles. In 1982, Stern’s fourth show at the Matrix fell apart when a playwright friend decided not to release rights to his play because the Matrix has only 99 seats. Next Stern was turned down for Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” on the grounds that South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa--only about 50 miles from Los Angeles--already had the rights. But Stern was able to convince Pinter’s agent that the theaters were sufficiently far apart. South Coast staged “Betrayal” in August 1982 and Stern presented his version, which won seven L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards, in March 1983.

In 1986, Stern got the rights to Simon Gray’s “The Common Pursuit”--on the condition that he pay for Gray to fly from England to L.A. for rewriting and give him approval of cast and director. Stern complied, only to discover three weeks after rehearsals began that the production required--in Stern’s view--casting and directorial changes. The changes meant another round of lobbying to get Gray to accept them. After going through two actors, Gray suggested casting the young Nathan Lane, who did the play at the Matrix and later in New York.

Stern has been unable to obtain the rights for a revival of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” but Glendale’s A Noise Within succeeded, perhaps because it also was requesting to do “The Little Foxes” sequel, “Another Part of the Forest,” in repertory, says Geoff Elliott, A Noise Within’s artistic co-director. A Noise Within also would pay somewhat higher royalties than the Matrix, because it seats 144, above the threshold of Equity’s 99-Seat Theater Plan. However, A Noise Within was turned down for Pinter’s “The Birthday Party,” and Stern snagged those rights and presented the play last year, perhaps because of the theater’s previous success with “Betrayal.”

Reasons for rejections are not always made explicit. When Stern was trying to get rights to “The Women,” he was told by an agent for the estate of the late playwright Clare Boothe Luce, “My dear, they can see the [1939] movie on videotape.” Fresher movie deals--or the possibility of them--are often cited, several producers said.

On the other hand, Deaf West Theatre, which must ask for the rights to do American Sign Language adaptations of existing scripts (its recent hits include “Oliver!,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Big River”), reports that it has never been turned down on the grounds that the rights holder wouldn’t approve such an adaptation. “It makes it easier because we market to a special audience,” Deaf West artistic director Ed Waterstreet says.

If Deaf West applied for the rights to the first L.A. presentation of a well-known play, however, “that might be tough,” says the company’s producing director, Bill O’Brien, because the playwright would want L.A.’s first look at the play to be in its original form. O’Brien also says that trying to put together touring rights, which Deaf West has been doing recently, sometimes presents “a Catch-22--it’s hard to get the rights unless you say where you’re going, and it’s hard to get the places unless you say you have the rights.”

Occasionally a 99-seat theater will pass up rights that may later become more valuable. The Fountain’s Sachs says he decided not to pursue a chance to produce “Wit” after its premiere at South Coast Rep; later the play won the Pulitzer Prize (and played the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood). A few years ago, the Fountain decided not to produce Israel Horovitz’s “My Old Lady” despite a long history of producing Horovitz in L.A.; earlier this year, “My Old Lady” turned up in a Taper production at the Doolittle Theatre, where its grosses did not meet budgeted projections.

For plays a producer really wants, “a lot of it is about not taking no for an answer,” Sachs says. The Fountain tried to get the rights to dramatize “The Great Gatsby” for years. The rights holders said no but offered the rights to other F. Scott Fitzgerald adaptations as a consolation. The Fountain produced “Tender Is the Night” and “The Last Tycoon” dramatizations and, perhaps because of that track record, finally got “Gatsby.” A production is slated for later this year.

Productions in small theaters are technically considered “amateur” productions in rights-granting circles, even though everyone connected with them may be a professional. “Sometimes when I’m on the phone to New York, I can hear the tone of their voice change when they find out we have only 99 seats,” Sachs says. But he detects some hope that New York agents may eventually change their tune. “People in New York are starting to understand our productions won’t be of lesser value.”

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Don Shirley is a Times staff writer.