In the storm’s wake, creativity

It was the kind of laugh even a comedy writer rarely wants to hear: unconscious, unintended, even a little guilty. “I think we need to take a vacation,” a wife tells her stressed-out politician husband in August Wilson’s latest play, “Radio Golf,” now at the Mark Taper Forum. “You’ve always talked about going to New Orleans. This would be a good time to go.”

There are “not too many tourists,” she says. “The hotels will be half empty.” Another nervous laugh.

After the recent performance, “we huddled backstage,” recalls Gordon Davidson, the Taper’s outgoing artistic director, “and said, ‘We can’t do this.’ ” He consulted Wilson, and the destination became San Francisco.

Much of the effect of Hurricane Katrina and ensuing floods on the arts of the Gulf Coast has been as tangible as a destroyed architectural landmark or a suddenly homeless symphony orchestra. But there are more subtle ripples in the larger world of American culture.

Some exhibitions and performances will be heard with new ears or seen with new eyes after the disaster. For instance, a Museum of Modern Art exhibition that opens Oct. 16, called “Safe: Design Takes on Risk,” will surely feel different post-Katrina. The show was conceived to deal with everything “from paper cuts to genocide,” according to MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli. But will the fact that this show about risk won’t be adapted to include the biggest natural disaster of the last 100 years make it seem out of touch?

The New Orleans Opera, which has canceled its two productions for the fall season, rents sets to other companies, mostly groups in the South and Midwest but as far away as Seattle and Puerto Rico. Jerome Sherk, director of production, said it is not yet clear how extensive the damage is and whether the “Trovatore,” “Tosca” or “Faust” sets that the group agreed to rent to operas in Austin, Syracuse and Nashville would be usable.

“We can say that the warehouse is not standing in a huge pool of water,” he said of the building just outside the city.

Closer to home, Los Angeles Opera may be hiring some musicians from the New Orleans company to play as part of its November and December productions, a spokesman said.

Because plays take so long to cast, paintings take so long to borrow and insure, and performers’ schedules are typically booked far in advance, fine arts programs tend not to respond quickly to news. Not to mention the time it takes an artist to metabolize a big political or cultural change.

It’s even true at topical and quick-off-the-mark institutions. Two years after the New York terrorist attacks, L.A.’s Evidence Room theater company, for instance, programmed Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” about mankind’s survival, for its resonance to 9/11. But artistic director Bart DeLorenzo says the Gulf Coast states’ disaster is still too unformed. “We have an Abu Ghraib piece up our sleeve, maybe for next season. But this will take a little more time. It seems like every day there’s a new revelation.”

DeLorenzo does think Katrina will provide rich material in the future. “This tragedy has brought to the foreground issues of race and class, and I think the theater is going to respond to that.”

South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is set to open Bertolt Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle,” in which a refugee flees a military coup. Brecht’s play, says SCR producing artistic director David Emmes, “is very much about the discrepancy between people of means and the people left behind.... I don’t think the audience will fail to draw that inference.”

Compared to the gradual movements of the performing arts, radio can respond quickly. Many of the DJs at Santa Monica’s KCRW-FM nodded toward New Orleans music on Labor Day weekend, including a full hour of the region’s sounds on Harry Shearer’s “Le Show.”

Tom Schnabel, the KCRW DJ who played “Louisiana 1927” and Ted Hawkins’ version of “Biloxi” on his Sunday world-music show “Cafe L.A.,” said he expected more interest, if not a huge surge of record sales, in New Orleans artists because of media coverage.

Although TV news shows have shown many images of the disaster, television otherwise has been treading lightly on the topic. As the broadcast networks prepare for the official launch of the fall season starting Sept. 19, there have been a few scheduling and marketing changes for entertainment programs, with network executives stressing the need for sensitivity in the wake of the tragedy.

The most significant effect was felt at ABC, which, shortly after the hurricane, stopped on-air promotions for the Sept. 21 premiere of “Invasion.” The series concerns a family whose lives take bizarre twists after a hurricane devastates their town.

On Sept. 7 -- eight days after floodwaters swamped New Orleans -- the network returned with new promos that cut out references to the show’s fictional hurricane, which had been featured prominently in the earlier spots.

Fox Broadcasting delayed the Sept. 11 airing of an episode of the animated comedy “Family Guy.” The episode was a parody of ABC’s “Lost” and contained references to a hurricane.

An NBC spokeswoman said the network’s entertainment programming had not been affected by the storm.

CBS was shooting a made-for-TV movie in the New Orleans area when the storm struck, and the crew was forced to decamp to another location, according to a network spokesman.

Similarly, “The Guardian,” a film starring Kevin Costner about Coast Guard rescue swimmers, had its cast and crew evacuated from New Orleans before the hurricane hit. But producer Tripp Vinson said the production will stay in Louisiana.

On Friday night, the film “Make It Funky!” opened with a benefit screening at the Mann Chinese. The opening for the documentary about New Orleans and its music was chosen long before the hurricane, says director-producer Michael Murphy. He expects the film to get more attention because of the disaster.

“It’s a tough one,” says Murphy, whose family goes back four generations in the city. “Normally when a film is coming out, you do everything you can to get publicity. Here, I want to make sure I get the message right.”

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Times staff writers Scott Collins, Rachel Abramowitz and Mike Boehm contributed to this report.