Center Theatre cuts new play programs

The ax has fallen on Center Theatre Group programs designed to develop new plays and playwrights -- including a cluster of labs that has been one of the most distinctive features of CTG’s Mark Taper Forum for more than a decade.

Artistic director Michael Ritchie, who took the helm of Los Angeles’ flagship theater company in January, is eliminating the Other Voices program for disabled artists -- a Taper fixture since 1982 -- plus the Latino, Asian American and African American labs established from 1993 to 1995.

Ritchie says he hopes collaborations with other, small theaters would fill some of the gaps.

The action, which takes effect July 1, means no major theater company in the L.A. area will sponsor ongoing ethnic-specific programs. Last August, South Coast Repertory shut its 19-year-old Hispanic Playwrights Project. The demise of the disabled artists lab will leave only one similar program affiliated with a major U.S. theater, the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, said Victoria Ann Lewis, Other Voices’ first director.

Ritchie, who said he hasn’t attended a play reading in seven years, is also dropping a system of readings and workshops conducted under the direction of playwright Luis Alfaro -- whose job is being eliminated, along with those of the lab directors.

“I’ve never liked having a play read to me,” Ritchie said. He prefers to read it himself because “it gives me the ability to go back over it.”

Alfaro, who oversees the Taper New Work Festival, said Ritchie is missing the point. “Development is where you meet emerging artists. A festival is not about readings. It’s about relationships and building a community of artists. Great art rises collectively, not because one person writes the play that every regional theater produces.”

He noted that Ritchie’s changes will mean lost work for artists beyond playwrights; 140 actors and 16 directors had jobs at his last New Work Festival.

Jessica Goldberg, an award-winning playwright whose work has been presented at the annual New Work Festival, said she is “heartbroken” over the decision. “The support of the artistic community at the Taper has been essential to the development of my last three plays.”

Tim Dang, artistic director of East West Players and a member of CTG’s diversity advisory committee, said the to-be-discontinued labs “mean so much to so many emerging playwrights. They help sift through thousands of scripts. And even if the work didn’t go on [to full production], the lab heads have the clout to say, ‘This will be read at the Taper.’ That means a lot.”

Ritchie’s predecessor and CTG’s founding artistic director, Gordon Davidson, who created the new play programs and granted them a degree of autonomy, declined to comment.

Instead of devoting resources to such programs, which seldom result in full CTG productions, Ritchie plans to produce full stagings of new plays by fewer writers. “I want to see a shorter list of plays in production,” he said, “as opposed to a long list that gets mired in development.”

Ritchie also hopes that his initiative to establish partnerships with other theater companies, in which their work would be presented at CTG facilities, will provide an alternative way of developing plays and relationships. His first example: “Permanent Collection,” a recent hit at a small L.A. theater, will be restaged at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City in the coming season.

This amounts to “outsourcing,” said Brian Freeman, the outgoing director of CTG’s now-scrapped Blacksmyths lab. “That’s not new play development. It’s bringing in a product. It’s apples and oranges.”

“You certainly can argue that,” said Ernest Hiroshige, chairman of CTG’s diversity advisory committee. That committee, which has been meeting with Ritchie, was created in 2003 to help reflect minority communities’ views in the selection process that culminated in Ritchie’s hiring. Ritchie “wants to take advantage of a ready-made product instead of competing with it. He wants plays that can appear in the near future.”

Much of CTG’s new play program, including commissions, “will be centered in my office,” Ritchie said. But Diane Rodriguez, who has held a part-time job running CTG’s Latino Theatre Initiative, has been promoted to a full-time job as associate producer in charge of new play production. She’ll serve as a liaison with other local, national and international ensembles and as “an advocate for a wide range of artists.”

In his previous job, producing the summer-only Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Ritchie was accustomed to producing new work without extensive developmental programs, he said. “It wasn’t about managing many plays. It was, ‘All right, let’s put it on.’ It was a model that worked.

“If plays that are in development hell are valid, they’ll find a home. With too much development, they wither and die.”

If a playwright CTG is already working with wants a reading, Ritchie will provide it, he said. He might even produce a new play festival, but it would differ from previous New Work Festivals. The plays in Ritchie’s festival would be works that he has already decided “to take to a new phase, as opposed to filling holes in a festival schedule.” If there aren’t enough qualified plays, he said, “I won’t do it.”

In Ritchie’s first Taper and Ahmanson seasons, only one play -- the Latino trio Culture Clash’s “Water and Power” -- is by a writer from the groups represented by the Latino, Asian, black and disabled labs. There are no women writers except for lyricist Lisa Lambert, for the musical “The Drowsy Chaperone.” By contrast, the current Taper season -- Davidson’s last -- had works by a black writer, John Kani, and Alfaro, a Latino. The Ahmanson featured music (for “Caroline, or Change”) by a woman, Jeanine Tesori, and a collaboration with a deaf theater company on “Big River.”

Ritchie said he was confident that ethnic and other forms of diversity would still be represented. Among the plays he presented in brief runs at Williamstown that later moved on to other productions were two works by black artists, “One Mo’ Time” and “Lackawanna Blues.”

“Permanent Collection” is a play co-produced by the black Robey Theatre Company. But Freeman noted that it was written by a white writer, Thomas Gibbons. Alfaro said he fears the abolition of the ethnic-specific labs will signal that “somehow the issue of race isn’t real anymore.” As L.A’s flagship theater, Alfaro said, CTG “must represent Los Angeles on every level. If you can’t take that on, then run a 99-seat theater.”

In meetings, Ritchie “does appear to be committed to representing our diverse culture,” said the diversity committee’s Hiroshige. “We have to give him some latitude within the framework.”

Rodriguez said her presence should reassure doubters about CTG’s commitment to diversity. “I’m here, and I’m pretty loud,” she said. “With me around, you’re not going to forget it.”

Dang said Ritchie’s pledge to work with other theater companies could benefit his company, East West Players. Although East West works in a theater named after the prominent playwright David Henry Hwang, it lacks the clout and resources to present a Hwang premiere. But a co-production with CTG might make that possible, he said.

Ritchie has “a different style,” Dang said. “Maybe we’re not used to it, but we should give him that opportunity. If it doesn’t work, then we can call him on it.”

The exiting Anthony Byrnes, associate producer of new play development, noted the 2003 end of a private organization that developed playwrights, A.S.K. Theater Projects, and said the double loss “creates a vacuum for that kind of work in L.A.”

Juliette Carrillo, the former director of SCR’s defunct Hispanic Playwrights Project, said she is “greatly concerned for playwrights. It’s a very difficult and lonely task, and professional and financial success is a rarity. They need nurturing. The fact that these labs were focused on ethnic groups that are already suffering from underexposure makes it even worse.” However, she added, “the potential collaborations with smaller L.A. theaters could be healthy.”

CTG board President Richard Kagan said the board “had nothing to do” with Ritchie’s “artistically driven” decisions. “We hired him to look at the big picture,” Kagan said. “This is the results.”