Reading Douglas Theatre choices

The first season programmed by Center Theatre Group artistic director Michael Ritchie at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City will include a festival of works by four L.A.-based solo artists as well as a collaboration with another L.A. theater company.

Unlike the recently concluded first season at the Douglas with six world premieres, this season will consist largely of work previously done elsewhere. Ritchie said the premieres were “a great way to inaugurate the space,” but his choices would mark “a shift in the original intent” of the Douglas to bring it in line with his desire to mix up the programming on the other CTG stages: the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre.

The Douglas season will open with Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle’s “all wear bowlers,” an act revolving around silent film clowns who find themselves unshackled from the screen. Previously seen off-off-Broadway in New York, it’s slated for Sept. 28 through Oct. 28.

Two youth-oriented productions are scheduled: “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” adapted by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz (“Anna in the Tropics”) from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story and first produced by Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis (Nov. 9-Dec. 18), and Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou’s “The Stones,” an Australian play that the authors will revise with L.A.-specific references (March 18-April 9).

Ritchie’s Douglas selections follow his decision to shut down most of CTG’s formal play development programs, which had nurtured much of the work seen at the Douglas last season. Ritchie pledged to seek collaborations with other companies as a less formal means toward the same goal.

All four of the solo works, running in repertory, that will make up “Solomania!” (May 12-June 11) -- Jerry Quickley’s “Live From the Front,” Dan Guerrero’s “¡Gaytino!,” Adriana Sevan’s “Taking Flight” and Roger Guenveur Smith’s “The Watts Towers Project” -- were partially developed at CTG’s discontinued programs. Two shows are by black artists and two by Latinos, which were two of the groups represented by the discontinued labs. The other disbanded labs represented Asian American and disabled artists.

Ritchie said he was happy there was representation of two of the groups, but it wasn’t a factor in their selection. “I was looking for great pieces for audiences at large,” he said. Brian Freeman, who lost his part-time job July 1 when Ritchie discontinued the Blacksmyths lab that he ran, will direct “Live From the Front.”

Ritchie has seen none of the four solo acts but did read the scripts. “I didn’t think that everything about [the axed programs] was wrong,” he said, adding that he hoped to continue developing similar work through other means.

The method most touted by Ritchie is collaborations with other theaters, but the only such arrangement is the previously announced “Permanent Collection” (Jan. 15-Feb. 12), a co-production by Robey Theatre Company and Greenway Arts Alliance, repeating their smaller production from earlier this year. CTG will pay for and present “Permanent Collection,” Ritchie said, “but we don’t want too many of our fingerprints on it.”

Ritchie, who was named to his post in late 2003 but officially took over at the beginning of this year, said he had not been in L.A. long enough to see much local work that might qualify for a collaboration. “I’d be throwing darts to choose other companies now,” he said.

He spends many weekends in New York, where his family will live until his son graduates from high school next year. Asked what he had seen in L.A. recently, he offered two titles: Antaeus Company’s “Mother Courage” and Pasadena Playhouse’s “Private Lives.”

But he said he would spend more time in L.A. now that he was producing his own seasons. Other CTG staff members also will survey local productions, he said. Doubters “will have to wait and see how it evolves.”