NYC arts have room at the top

George C. Wolfe announced Thursday that he would leave his job as producer of New York’s Public Theater, bringing to three the vacancies in the leadership of New York’s leading cultural institutions.

Wolfe’s announcement followed the Jan. 30 death of Robert J. Harth, artistic and executive director of Carnegie Hall, and the news Monday that Joseph Volpe will retire in 2006 as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.

As producer at the Public since 1993, Wolfe has overseen such award-winning productions as “Angels in America,” “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk,” “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” “Topdog/Underdog” and “Take Me Out.” In recent years, the company suffered $11 million in losses from two Broadway productions, “The Wild Party” and “On the Town,” but its 2003 financial figures showed an improvement from 2002.

Reached in Los Angeles, where he is casting an HBO version of one Public Theater show, “Lackawanna Blues,” and overseeing his staging of “Topdog/Underdog” at the Mark Taper Forum, Wolfe said he was leaving the job to concentrate on his own writing.

He has been writing a play for the last five or six years, he said, about “the dynamic between fathers and sons and what happens during an abandonment.” The play “spans the ‘40s through the ‘80s and is unquestionably formed by my own experience.”

He also is working on two screenplays and “something that might turn into a novel,” he said, although he added, “I’m sort of a coward about calling it a novel.”

As the Public’s producer, Wolfe said, “my life is infinitely chaotic in the sense of how many things need to be juggled.” He said he planned “to live inside my own chaos.”

He also said that he had been “doing this dance with other media,” such as HBO, since 1986. Asked if his projects might eventually include feature films, he replied, “Sure, that would be fun.”

His biggest regret at the Public, Wolfe said, was his inability to build a 499-seat space to supplement the organization’s five smaller venues. “A larger theater would alter the financial dynamic,” he said.

The Public, which was founded 50 years ago as the Shakespeare Workshop, was led by Joseph Papp for most of its history as off-Broadway’s most prominent theater, the original home of “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” as well as the summertime Shakespeare in Central Park. JoAnne Akalaitis ran the theater for two years between Papp and Wolfe.

Wolfe made the decision to leave the Public last fall, he said, but the timing of his actual exit “is vaguely defined -- sometime in the ‘04-’05 season,” most of which he said he has already planned. “I wouldn’t leave the institution in the lurch.”

“I know a number of people who would be quite wonderful” at the job, he said. He will help interview candidates, he said, “but it’s more of an institutional decision than my decision.”

Although the Metropolitan Opera has more time to find a successor, doing so will be a comparable challenge. Volpe’s rise from apprentice carpenter to third-longest-tenured general manager in the company’s 121-year history gave him a singular understanding of all the operations of the house.

The Met, however, has run $10-million deficits each year on its roughly $193-million annual budget since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And although Volpe and James Levine, the company’s artistic director, are already scheduling expanded seasons in 2007 and 2008, Levine’s new duties as music director of the Boston Symphony beginning next year raise questions about his continued involvement with the Met.

The Met’s new director, or directors -- Volpe has said he feels the job is too big to be handled by one person -- will have to deal with those issues.

Met chairwoman Beverly Sills said she wasn’t worried, however. “He’s given us 30 months, so we can be very methodical,” she said. “We’re OK.”

At Carnegie Hall, Harth’s successor will have to decide how to continue his innovative programming choices, reflected in plans for the 2004-05 season -- the first created entirely by him. The season ranges from whirling dervishes to flamenco dancers as well as jazz and classical music events. Many of these events are scheduled to take place in Carnegie’s new Zankel Hall, which opened in September and whose regular sold-out performances are helping to keep the organization in the black.

Noting the three simultaneous vacancies, Wolfe said that “maybe there is something in the air for New York cultural institutions to reexamine their relationship with the city. Maybe they can best do that with new leaders.”

If the Met, Carnegie and the Public all follow new directions, New York’s cultural landscape could change dramatically. Taken together, the three institutions cast an enormous shadow over the city’s performing arts.

All three are notoriously independent. There is even potential for competition between the Met and Carnegie over a new director. But the possibility also exists that three new directors might feel a certain comradeship owing to the shared experience of starting new jobs and might build bridges between their companies.

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Times staff writers Paul Lieberman in New York and Chris Pasles and Mark Swed in Los Angeles contributed to this report.