CTG, small troupes to meet

Michael Ritchie did not win friends with his first landscape-changing decision as artistic director of Center Theatre Group: eliminating the programs designed to develop new plays and foster multicultural diversity.

But even as he announced in May that he was scrapping Mark Taper Forum’s play labs for Latino, Asian, black and disabled writers and the series of public play readings that went with them, Ritchie insisted that diversity, new work and community consciousness would continue at L.A.’s flagship theater company. One way, he suggested without giving specifics, would be to team with local grass-roots companies for runs at CTG venues, especially the 315-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

Now it’s time to start talking specifics. Ritchie and Diane Rodriguez, CTG’s associate producer for new play development, have scheduled a meeting Oct. 5 with leaders from 16 local theaters, in which the loose agenda is to find out what the little guys think a $40-million-a-year company can do for them, and how Ritchie can most effectively get a handle on the region’s multifarious 99-seat theater scene.

The gathering “is for me to get a lot of feedback on a big idea,” Ritchie said Monday, and to get to know local theater leaders. Companies lacking invitations shouldn’t feel excluded, he added; the idea is to hear from a manageably sized but representative group.

He doubts that the meeting will lead to formal plans or guidelines for how CTG will collaborate with other L.A. companies.

Rodriguez, he said, has talked with officials at New York’s Public Theater, where the smaller LAByrinth Theater Company has an ongoing residency, and at Chicago’s Steppenwolf ensemble, which has a program that fosters local playwrights and a “Visiting Company Initiative” that seeks to throw a spotlight on smaller Chicago theaters by helping them produce shows in Steppenwolf’s three spaces.

Among those invited to participate in the CTG meeting are representatives from East West Players, an Asian company with a midsized theater; the Latino Theatre Company and East L.A. Classic Theatre Company; the black-led Robey Theatre Company and Watts Village Theater Company; and the multicultural Cornerstone Theater Company.

Other participants are the L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Company, the Theatre @ Boston Court, Pacific Resident Theatre, Son of Semele, Ghost Road Theatre, the Antaeus Company, the Evidence Room, Road Theatre Company, California Institute of the Arts’ Center for New Theater and Playwrights’ Arena.

Artistic directors of two small, respected L.A. theaters, the Blank Theatre Company and the Black Dahlia, said they already have had one-on-one meetings with Ritchie, which they initiated.

“There’s no question that Mike Ritchie wants to do the very best he can for theater in Los Angeles,” said the Blank’s Daniel Henning.

One central question in next week’s meeting -- and beyond -- figures to be how the leader of CTG, who will shepherd 24 plays on three stages this season, can find time to become conversant with the work being done on a small-theater scene.

“It’ll be complicated,” Ritchie acknowledged, especially since he flies back to New York City on weekends to be with his wife, actress Kate Burton, and their two children. That routine stems from their decision not to disrupt the education of their 17-year-old son, a high school senior. Most 99-seat and midsized theaters run their shows Thursdays through Sundays.

Ritchie said he had seen little “more than a handful” of local shows, including plays at two other major regional companies, the Geffen Playhouse and Pasadena Playhouse, as well as at the Actors’ Gang, Falcon Theatre and a few others. He’ll rely on Rodriguez and other CTG staffers as scouts.

Ron Sossi, founding artistic director of the Odyssey Theater, which has been staging plays since 1969, said it was disappointing that former CTG artistic director Gordon Davidson rarely tapped productions that originated on L.A.’s small-theater scene (Deaf West Theatre’s “Big River” being one of the exceptions). Sossi said he hoped Ritchie would consider reserving slots each season at the Douglas for transfers of shows.

“I don’t think they’re going to be knowledgeable about all the theaters in L.A.,” Sossi said. “It’s not going to necessarily end up being fair or equal or just -- just theaters that Michael Ritchie or somebody [from CTG] happens to see.”

That, in fact, is how Ritchie’s first local collaboration came about. Ben Guillory, producing artistic director of the Robey Theatre, said he had heard Ritchie speak of his wish to collaborate with small theaters and invited him to see the Robey and Greenway Arts Alliance’s co-production last spring of “Permanent Collection,” Thomas Gibbons’ play about a black executive who oversees a sumptuous but controversial art collection. Guillory said that Ritchie caught a 10:30 a.m. staging for school kids and immediately told him that he wanted to bring the production to the Douglas, where it will open in January.

Ritchie said he had expected to take heat for disbanding the Taper play labs, a longtime institutional apparatus for nurturing writers and promoting artistic diversity. He knew the move would place his play selections under intense scrutiny for inclusion of new and culturally diverse works. Besides “Permanent Collection,” whose author is white, the 2005-06 season includes “Solomania!” -- four one-actor shows in repertory by black and Latino writer-performers -- and the Taper premiere next July of “Water & Power” by Latino troupe Culture Clash.

“I accept [criticisms] at face value, knowing that given time those could shift,” Ritchie said. The silver lining in being accused of a multicultural misstep and suspected of insufficient commitment to new play development, he said, is that it reinforces how important those two areas are for CTG: “It draws an emotional reaction, so you know you’re doing something people care about.”

Times staff writer Don Shirley contributed to this report.