The Post Show Round Table

I almost titled this post, "My Disillusionment".

You'll understand if you read on. If you have been paying attention, you know I went to see Mike Daisey on Friday. (Read Me and Mike Daisey Part 2). What I didn't tell you in that post was what happened afterwards. When I took my seat for the show one of the ushers addressed the crowd and informed us that a special round table discussion, hosted by Daisey, would take place following the show. The topic? The state of theater in Los Angeles. The participants? 10 illuminaries in Los Angeles Theater and anyone else who wanted to stay. I wish, I could tell you I paid really close attention to the names, but I didn't. Suffice to say, reps from Center Theater Group, Odyssey, Cornerstone, were on the stage as well as a critic from the L.A. Weekly and someone representing the LA Stage Alliance. These were some key figures in the Landscape of Los Angeles theater. Also, that night in attendence in the audience were some critics I recognized as well as some theater producers I knew. It was a pretty good cross section of personalities from our theater world.

A Little perspective before I write on... Los Angeles is a really unique 'theater town' in that despite having the largest concentration of actors in the United States, it's probably the fourth or fifth town on the list when it comes to Theater. New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. have more successful and thriving theater communities with better developed audiences. Seattle, San Fransciso, Miami also routinely juxtapose L.A. for being true 'theater towns'. Our theater is divided into primarily two categories, super huge institutional and corportized theaters, or... really small ma and pa shops relegated to self described theater districts around town (i.e. NoHo, Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood, Culver City??). Mid Level - regional houses are the rarity. The Colony and the Falcon being two that stand out. So, the pickings for making a living doing theater in this town is slim to none. Theater, culturally, for the actor in Los Angeles, is something to do to keep up your chops or challenge yourself artistically. It's something to do, when you're not doing anything in front of a camera. No one comes to Los Angeles as an actor to do theater. There just isn't enough money to be made here in it. We even have a 'showcase' clause in the equity contract that allows union actors to play for small houses of 99 seats our less. The idea of a sustained resident ensemble is rarely ever practiced, when you compare it to the over 100 plus 'companies in town' that are membership / dues driven. Yes, that's actors paying to play on stage. You throw in the wide real estate gaps in town, under developed audience and the incredible diverse and distinct cultures in the South and Eastern Regions of L.A. and you have a recipe for tremondous untapped potential that continues to remain... untapped.

Many years ago, I was asked to run for a position as Producing Director for a company in town called the Actors Co-Op. It was a company with two 99 seat equity waiver theaters. It was supported by an institution and further subsidized by membership dues. My dream was to try and figure out how to transistion the Co-Op into a company that paid a fair and competetive wage to the actors. I could only manage this, by coming to a special agreement with Equity on wages, having longer runs, and expanding 50% of the budget to education. This would have come at the cost of completely shifting the culture of the company from what it had been for almost 11 years. I realized that my dream of creating a theater that supported the community through education and entertainment, while supporting artists through fair wages was just that... it was a dream. So, I pushed my idea of education, but ultimately the job went to someone who was interested in maintaining status quo.

Thus this is the problem with theater in Los Angeles. It needs to change today, but no one wants to give up what is here now, despite how broken the model is.

The idea of a theater servicing the community through education and entertainment is the basis of what I feel is the regional theater model. A theater crops up in a town and locally invests in the citizens. The theater holds classes for youth and adults, while putting up shows. The education allows for grant money to be obtained, while also acting as an incredible marketing tool to children and their parents. Eventually the class transition to touring education shows and in house children's theater productions. This is how I feel you do theater right. The main stage provides the large adult oriented entertainment. The education provides the developed audience of subsribers. The last ingredient is heavy volunteer efforts from the local community to be ushers and ticket takers.

In Los Angeles, there are maybe three houses trying to do this model. They are succeeding. Everything else is not. And it's these houses, that constantly complain about not having enough money, not having enough press, and not having enough audience. Guess what, these were the 10 people sitting on the stage Friday night with Mike Daisey (with the exception of Cornerstone). I listened to someone from the Odyssey say the words that spell the down fall of all theaters in this country... "I don't want to do Children's Theater, I want to do the Art I want to do."

My message to those folks running theater in this town is... "Guess what? That's not your job." The job of the theater is to support it's audience and community, not exist soley for the purpose of indulging the creative proclivities of the artists entrusted with running the stage. Artistcally, I may want to do a season filled with "True West" and "End Game" and the like, where I could star in or direct them all, but that's not my job as the steward of the theater. My job is to embrace my community for who they are, and then go from there. I'm not saying this is soley doing Children's Theater, but it's about engaging your audience where they are at, not asking the audience to engage you where you are at. Theater is about people, audiences and artists sharing things together. Theater is not about a building or a 'great space' or subscriptions. The theater is the product of the people coming to it, not the other way around. We don't understand that here in Los Angeles.

We have an entity like Center Theater Group that has more money than it knows what to do with, and sucks all the focus of the media, so that it's hard for a regional theater to grow in an area like say, Culver City (one of the few towns in L.A. perfect for a regional theater model). It's like a great Black Hole sucking all the resources into it. Yet, if asked, who is your audience, I doubt the marketing team could tell you. It's because they pull everyone's audience into a mixed grab bag that is just enough to keep their subscriptions up and attract out of town productions to their stages.

I found it ironic that Mike Daisey railed against theaters trying to 'get more money' to solve all their problems with paying artists in his piece, and then comedically, 10 minutes after the show when he asked his panel, what would you need to make big changes to the theater culture in L.A. the first answer out of someone's mouth was... "We need more money."

I sat in my chair and hung my head. Did they not listen to the show?

It's not the money that is the issue. It's our model. Maybe theater needs to be less capitalized and more socialized. Maybe the City should figure out how to support the Theater Arts in L.A. like they support the visual arts. Maybe we do need $5 dollar theater Wednesdays. Maybe we need A Theater Alliance that truly correlates resources and marketing stragies. We have a city with a School District crying out for subsidized arts education, yet no one is there to help that process along. And here I sit asking myself, "What the Fuck is everyone doing? Why doesn't anyone understand how to make this work?" How come people in Portland or San Diego get it, but the place I live, where some of the most talented people in the world are living, can't figure it out?

Los Angeles Theater is the great disconnect. The Theater Community fails to understand the audience, and thus it fails to understand itself. Everyone is just scrambling for crumbs, no one is building relationships with each other through the art. The solutions are so simple. That's probably why I'm so frustrated.