The reviews are already coming in

In one of his first actions as Center Theatre Group’s new artistic director, Michael Ritchie moved last month to eliminate four theater development programs and curtail new play readings and workshops.

Ritchie said he wanted to “see a shorter list of plays in production as opposed to a long list that gets mired in development.” In place of the Asian Theatre Workshop, the Blacksmyths, the Latino Theatre Initiative and the Other Voices program for disabled artists, he plans to partner with other, smaller theater companies to present their work at one of the three CTG stages -- the Ahmanson Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre. For now, the future of the Taper’s 18-year-old New Work Festival is uncertain.

The disbanding of the programs caused a stir and raised questions about the direction and philosophy of L.A.’s largest theater company, which built its reputation on new work by emerging artists. For some perspective, The Times asked five prominent playwrights who have participated in various CTG programs for their take on Ritchie’s decision.

“Hearing about the dismantling of the Taper Labs, I am reminded that I live in a white country, and in a time of fear there is no room to be compassionate or interested in others who do not think like you,” writes Alice Tuan. According to Jon Robin Baitz: “Gordon Davidson created a theater that has a blood-knot bond with the communities of Los Angeles. A new Taper can not be just a city on a hill, a theatrical Parnassus.”

*

A dramatic shift in the wings / New artistic director Michael Ritchie plans to curtail play development at the Center Theatre Group. Six artistic staffers will lose their jobs, and there are far-reaching symbolic implications. We asked five playwrights with strong Taper ties to comment on this new direction for some of the city’s leading stages.

*

‘Little things are important’

By Jon Robin Baitz

Special to The Times

Michael RITCHIE’S decision to rethink how the Taper develops new plays is no surprise; he’s seen the big machinery at work and he has every right to try another way. That’s his prerogative as new artistic director. But that in no way implies that Ritchie can simply throw up his hands and abdicate responsibility for the new American play. If anything, it puts more pressure on him to preserve, protect and nurture writers just as his predecessor did, and if he’s going to start simply booking in shows, then he shouldn’t be in the job (and one doubts he would have wanted it).

Gordon Davidson created a theater in the Taper that has a blood-knot bond with the communities of Los Angeles. A new Taper can not be just a city on a hill, a theatrical Parnassus. Gordon had his own unique social conscience, and his iconic legacy will reflect the commitment he made to the great Babel of voices in L.A. His era was one of heartfelt belief in the narrative of a people, whether they were black, Latino, gay, whatever. Attention must be paid.

But while attention is being paid, Ritchie must remake the political landscape he has inherited. Here’s some of it: There are three demanding and different stages to be programmed, big seasonal debts, entrenched staffers, and, somewhere at the lower part of the pyramid, there’s something that resembles a political third rail: the development labs.

Perhaps he’s wondering if all those labs (Asian, black, Latino, disabled, etc.) are not a somewhat condescending institutional palliative to communities whose writers have been taught to expect nothing more at the end of their developmental process than “a reading from the Taper.” Perhaps he’s wondering why not many plays have come out of those labs and onto the Taper stage? And what of all those readings? Is he thinking: “Is this the best we can do?”

My experience is that the world of play readings is a murky purgatory of lowered expectations for emerging writers. After all, plays are solitary and costly business for a writer. Readings give you something to look forward to. Often, the workshops that lead to them are a way of bringing lonely, disenfranchised writers together, offering a kind of cruel watery hope of seeing their work on the main stage while literary staffers churn out grant applications, so as to keep the whole ossified cycle moving forward.

Indeed, play development at the Taper becomes a kind of diplomatic career -- it requires caution, patience and the honing of agendas -- for a literary manager, just staking out his or her turf can be a full-time battle. So understand what Ritchie is considering redacting: People’s Turf. There is a lot of constituency politics involved in a place like the Taper, and as in life, when politics comes first, art comes second.... Is that why labs tend to produce polemics as often as they do plays?

There are important questions to be asked of the Taper literary staff: Do the plays that come out of these labs have significant lives beyond them?

CTG now has to produce almost 18 plays a year among its three spaces. Ritchie must be going through old seasons, asking himself if the labs in their present incarnation are a source for significant, vibrant, angry, bloody, hot and smart new writing to put on some of those stages. If they aren’t, why not?

It makes sense that Ritchie wants to see what else is out there. And why not start looking to smaller, wilder, hungrier theater companies around L.A., and letting them have at it? Big institutions miss little things, and little things are important.

Jon Robin Baitz’s plays include “The Substance of Fire,” “Three Hotels,” “Mizlansky/Zilinsky” and “Ten Unknowns.” His play “The Paris Letter” is at the Laura Pels Theatre in New York.

*

‘Simplest production values’

By Lisa Loomer

Special to The Times

Writing is such an isolated way of life, especially in Los Angeles, where having a cup of coffee with another writer who lives across town can require intricate plotting and several drafts of e-mails.

But contact with other human writers is important: Having a place to go to read your work; having a deadline; being there for other writers to hear their work. It helps the work, and it helps the soul.

Now, I have known some (really organized) playwrights to launch groups themselves -- and I’m sure these will spring up in place of the Labs. But how about an actual Playwrights’ Center like the one they have in Minneapolis? How about a New Dramatists West? How about a space purely devoted to new work, to experimentation, without the pressures of production? Part of that space should be devoted to a cafe or a theater bar -- because how do you have a theater community without theater bars? The best part of the Taper Writers’ Group was the yearly retreat. We had the work, and we had a place to hang out.

I’m enormously grateful to Gordon Davidson for my years with the Taper Writers’ Group and to all the writers, dramaturges and actors who made it so exciting. Each year I felt that if the Taper would put up the nine or so plays that came out of that group, with the simplest production values, it would make for a truly amazing Los Angeles theater season.

Lisa Loomer’s plays include “Living Out,” “The Waiting Room,” “Expecting Isabel,” “Birds,” “Broken Hearts” and “Accelerando.”

*

A glorious rainbow roll call

By Alice Tuan

Special to The Times

I am forever grateful that the Mark Taper Forum gave me my start as a playwright. The year was 1992 when Oliver Mayer, a playwright and the then literary manager, and Oskar Eustis invited me into the Mentor/Playwright Program. What was first instinct (to document myself into the U.S. culture by writing a play) now had a venue to express, continuously.

Mentors like Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, John Steppling, Len Berkman, Eduardo Machado, Eric Overmyer and Paula Vogel conducted workshops with local playwrights like Luis Alfaro, Lynn Manning, Han Ong, Amy Hill, Bridget Carpenter, Naomi Iizuka. It was glorious and eye-opening for a neophyte playwright.

In the 1990s, bright talents such as Chay Yew, Lisa Peterson, L. Kenneth Richardson, Vicky Lewis and Alfaro had offices at the Taper to work on plays that could “theoretically” be developed for the main stage. The Taper had surged at this time, having presented such exciting new works as “Twilight: Los Angeles,” “Angels in America” and “The Kentucky Cycle.”

The labs were a means not only to find new writers focused in their specialty areas but to produce new works that reflected more of the population of Los Angeles and to attract new and diverse audiences.

That was during a time when multiculturalism was vogue and inclusive. It was a beautiful liberal experiment to make sure the rainbow roll call remained colorful.

I was impatient with a kind of surface ethnic representation that meant the work existed through readings but never in full Taper main stage productions.

This is simple supply and demand -- new work is not in demand in the same way Shakespeare with stars is. Or award-winning work. These days it is about ticket buyers, about filling the seats, and not necessarily about reflecting the audience.

I mourn the dismantling of the Asian Theatre Workshop, of the Latino Theatre Initiative, of Blacksmyths, of Other Voices. I’ll miss visiting spaces that nurtured young writers and supported new projects. I’ll mostly miss the happenstance meetings in the Taper hallways, as writers, actors, directors and designers bumped into each other. It will still happen, but sadly, outside the Mark Taper Forum.

Hearing about the dismantling of the Taper Labs, I am reminded that I live in a white country, and in a time of fear there is no room to be compassionate or interested in others who do not think like you.

The Bush administration is the most multicultural ever -- on the surface -- yet it is, unfortunately, the least diverse in thinking. If the legacy of multiculturalism is ethnically color-coding the arts to allay fear, then we will continue our hollow affair with representational democracy.

Or maybe, just maybe, the multicultural experiment did work! And instead of having to legislate diversity into the institutions, the lessons have been learned! And the the Taper powers automatically know to program new plays representing Los Angeles playwrights, showing world sensibilities, reflecting the city’s population! As heart-wrenching as it is to see the circle that nurtured my playwriting let go of one by one, maybe, just maybe, the lab model had to go the way of the theater curtain to make room for a paradigm that will grow, blossom and inspire the theater for this new century. Maybe, just maybe.

I’m crossing my fingers, Michael Ritchie!

Alice Tuan’s plays include “Ajax (por nobody),” “Last of the Suns,” “Ikebana,” “mALL,” “Coastline” and “iggy woo.”

*

Nurturing diversity

By Anna Deavere Smith

Special to The Times

While attention is on Michael Ritchie and his decision to disband the labs at the Mark Taper Forum, projects that were created 15 or 16 years ago in part to engender diversity, we should take this opportunity to reflect on the field at large. We should also consider cultivating the interest that has emerged into new programs, new projects and new initiatives.

Ritchie’s decision has led me to raise a number of questions about where we are at the moment:

To what extent did the initiatives that came about in the ‘80s and ‘90s lead to diversification of the management staffs of theaters?

In the past two years some important artistic director jobs opened on the national scene. How many people of color were on the short list for the jobs? How many women? How many women and people of color who were not right for the jobs, or not available, were brought in to be a part of the process?

Did board members ask about diversity as they put together their wish lists? Did women board members ask these questions? Did board members of color ask?

To what extent do projects like labs make their way into the actual infrastructure of what is meaningful to the life of any theater? To what extent do they breed leadership? If not, why not?

To what extent did these initiatives result in diversification of audiences? If they did affect audience diversification, how will it continue in their absence?

What are the relationships of schools and universities to the ways that communities of theater artists are working? Are schools and universities promoting new and innovative ways for students to collaborate? Are there initiatives in schools and universities to find and cultivate talent in the areas of design? How about management? Are schools still in the ‘70s model of organizing projects around identity politics, better called “the politics of affiliation”? Or are they encouraging and rewarding students for creating projects that cause them to cross cultural boundaries in order to collaborate?

I think of the success of the collaboration of George C. Wolfe, Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner on “Caroline, or Change” as a model of such work. Do we see more possibilities coming down the pike?

Since Sept. 11, the issue of diversity plays out on a world stage, and in so many ways we never finished our work here at home. Nonetheless, we could join others who are engaging their talents in all corners of the world, and we could use lessons learned at home about cultural differences to help us do it.

I asked former president of Ireland Mary Robinson what she thought the relationship of art to human rights was. She said, “Art is human rights” and suggested I read Seamus Heaney’s magnificent poem “From the Republic of Conscience.”

As theater artists we could do a lot to advance intercultural literacy. We should be prepared to be ambassadors when businesspeople and politicians fail to be.

What about theater boards? How much have the projects of the mid-’80s and ‘90s influenced how board members think of the priorities of a theater these days?

Where do foundations stand? What foundations are stepping up to the plate? Why and why not?

I’m stopping here.

This could be an opportunity to organize ourselves around an important agenda -- or the moment could weigh about as much as a pingpong ball. A weightier agenda could broaden and include more issues and lead to more opportunities that are about the future of the theater, our audiences and how we matter in the world, in general.

I will end on a personal note. If I had arrived in New York City, as I did in ‘76, and there was no Ellen Stewart calling out her opinion in the back of her theater, La Mama ETC, while a skinny director called Ozzie Rodriguez did his best to make sense out of a strange play we were working on (it’s not always about the play; sometimes it’s about the community struggling to make the play); if Ed Bullins had not held his playwriting workshop dutifully every Saturday morning at the Public Theater; if all those women from Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls ...” weren’t pouring out into the lobby after their matinees on those same Saturdays; if, in the mid-’80s, Susan Mason, Mame Hunt and Roberta Levitow’s lab hadn’t been holding forth every midweek night at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and meeting sometimes just to eat sushi and drink sake and holler about things; if it hadn’t been for Bill Bushnell’s gruff and sometimes outrageous comments about my early work on the one hand and his decision to produce it on the other; if Gordon Davidson had not been willing to create a very specific kind of creative community for the making of my play “Twilight: Los Angeles” -- I would have been one alienated soul. Now, maybe this kind of excruciating alienation would have served my work, and I could have ended up like Dostoevski, but I doubt it.

It is wonderful, isn’t it, to see the increase in faces of color at awards shows accepting awards. But the colors we see are on the faces, for the most part, of performers. Do we see the same multicolors when designers, managers and producers step up to be celebrated?

Let’s work to make new kinds of working communities. Let’s be as protective of the way we make theater, and who gets included in the making of it, as we are of the theater we are trying to make.

I’ve been hearing more questions on these issues and seeing more advances in places like hospitals and corporations than I hear in the theater of late. That’s not a good sign.

Anna Deavere Smith’s work includes “Twilight: Los Angeles” and appearances on “The West Wing.” She is founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue and teaches at NYU.

*

Stifling the shared experience

By John Belluso

Special to The Times

After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, my first experience with a professional regional theater was at the Mark Taper Forum.

Victoria Ann Lewis, the founder of the Taper’s Other Voices Project for theater artists with disabilities, had read an early play of mine called “Gretty Good Time” and invited me to Los Angeles to develop the play through Other Voices Chautauqua Festival, an annual event that brought together disabled theater artists, scholars and performers of all sorts as a way of developing new work and sharing it with the vast and diverse theater community of Los Angeles.

As a person in a wheelchair, I was used to being the only one in the room who was in a chair. At the Chautauqua, I was surrounded by people in wheelchairs; people with limps, gimps of all shapes and sizes, all together making theater. It was fabulous.

After my first visit I became a frequent flier. I attended the next two Chautauqua events and was commissioned by Other Voices to write a play. We agreed that my topic would be a little-known figure in American history: the writer, poet and antiwar activist Randolph Bourne, himself disabled from spinal tuberculosis, labeled by society a “dwarf” and a “hunchback.”

The play was written and developed through Other Voices, then was selected to be workshopped as part of the Taper’s New Work Festival. The play was given a “workshop production” -- costumes, lights and some elements of scenery were in place -- but the actors moved about with scripts in hand. That allowed the author a chance to get an idea of how the play might live on the stage, what might be working and what might not be working.

Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson saw the workshop production and decided to take the play to the next level. He slotted the play in the next season at the Taper and “The Body of Bourne” opened on the main stage of the Mark Taper Forum in June 2001.

It all seems simple enough. But having a new play produced by a prestigious regional theater is never simple. Having a new play produced by any theater is never simple. Plays are never created in a vacuum. They are always part of a complicated tradition -- a tradition constructed by living, pulsating human beings all working toward one goal: live performance.

The performance of “The Body of Bourne” would never have existed without Victoria Ann Lewis calling the play into being. It would never have existed without dramaturge Pier Carlo Talenti brainstorming ways in which the script could be strengthened and the brilliant suggestions, demands and incomparable staging of director Lisa Peterson.

The lesson I learned is that plays are like people, none an island unto themselves, all interdependant.

So with the Other Voices developmental lab for playwrights with disabilities now being closed down, alongside the other developmental labs at the Taper, I’m both saddened to see the passing of such an important support system for playwrights here in L.A. and nationwide, and I am proud of the legacy that individuals like Lewis and Davidson have given to the community of theater.

“Play development” has always existed. Playwrights have always found support, suggestions and guidance from their peers. But the uniqueness of the Taper Labs was the fact that it was support that was given to the playwright from within the playwright’s own community, and sadly, our theater world, like the rest of the world, is becoming more factitious.

John Belluso is the outgoing director of the Other Voices Project. His plays include “Henry Flamethrowa,” “Gretty Good Time,” “The Body of Bourne,” “The Rules of Charity” and “Traveling Skin.”