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Dan Berkowitz Remembered (1949-2019)

The playwright, author’s advocate and mainstay of L.A. theater for 25 years  died of a heart attack last week, at age 70

By Jonathan Dorf

Dan Berkowitz attends the Los Angeles Gay Pride Mayor’s Reception at the Factory on June 4, 2008 in West Hollywood. (Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

Dan Berkowitz was a force of nature. There’s really no other way to describe him, and I’m not even sure that does him justice. When I was asked to write about Dan, with whom I co-chaired the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) for 15 years, honestly, I was overwhelmed. How do you even start to describe someone who did so much for so many?

There was Dan the writer, who was perhaps best known as one of the authors of A…My Name Is Still Alice, which premiered at the Old Globe and to which he contributed a number of sketches, including the show’s running gag. He also co-authored the musicals Miami Beach Monsters, which ran for four months in New York, and There’s No Place Like Hollywood, which was nominated for an Ovation Award for Best Musical. Dan was also a master of short plays and wrote dozens of them, including When Oprah Says Goodbye, which was a finalist for the Heideman Award, Crime and Punishment: The Musical (a one-person show that I saw him perform to hilarious effect), and even a trio of plays for young people that I published at YouthPLAYS, my publishing company.

And that doesn’t include his film and TV work—in addition to being the author of a number of commissioned screenplays and teleplays, Dan served as the principal scriptwriter for The Movie Channel’s hosted format, putting words in the mouths of on-air hosts Robert Osborne and Michele Russell, as well as such guest hosts as James Earl Jones, Christopher Reeve, Run-DMC, Joan Fontaine and Little Richard.

There was also Dan the director and producer. He directed and produced dozens of plays, musicals and cabarets, and was a producer for the Emmy Award-winning David Susskind Show. He would often journey back to the east coast to direct professional summer shows in Princeton, the setting of his college days. More recently, he directed several of ALAP’s entries into the Hollywood Fringe, Breathing Room: A Chamber Symphony for Two Actors and a Musician, and Hot Flashin’, an all-female musical comedy about life after 40, at the Odyssey.

But for all of his prowess as a creative artist, maybe the Dan who made the greatest impact was Dan the advocate. As fierce as the humor in his plays could be, he was even more fierce as an advocate for writers. While I joined him as co-chair of ALAP in 2004, he had actually been on the scene for a long time before that—just after ALAP’s founding years—co-chairing the organization with Dick Dotterer and then holding down the position solo until I came along.

ALAP is the service and support organization for playwrights in greater Los Angeles, and for Dan personally, as he told me on a number of occasions, a major part of its value to him was social. Dan, who was an incredibly social guy and the most convivial host I’ve ever known, understood the importance of creating community among people accustomed to spending long periods cloistered in solitary confinement. Over the years, many ALAP events made use of his shaded patio in West Hollywood, where Dan offered up his legendary cosmos, tasty snacks, and his notorious tacky door prizes.

But social value aside, Dan also understood the importance of playwrights banding together to protect their rights. He was a firm believer, for example, that playwrights shouldn’t pay submission fees, and wrote the policy that exists to this day: ALAP will not promote any “opportunity” to its members that charges a fee. As Dan put it, “We believe running a theatre is a business, and such a business should not require writers—the creators of the work which makes theatre possible—to subsidize it. We are especially opposed to charging writers to participate when other major participants such as actors, directors, and designers, are not required to pay to play.” That notice has been sent to many groups over the years, and in a number of instances, it’s caused them to rethink their policy and waive their fee.

Dan pushed for basic production and reading contracts for playwrights to be available for free through ALAP’s website—they still are—and more recently, he gained funding for ALAP’s Diversity Fellowships: a year of free ALAP membership for playwrights of color, young playwrights and playwrights from other underserved groups.

Dan’s advocacy led him to become the Dramatist Guild’s West Coast Member Liaison, and later its first Los Angeles Regional Rep. And when the Guild decided to create new regional council seats, he was elected the first Dramatists Guild Council member to represent the California region, also serving on the Guild’s Education Committee. He took great pride in representing the playwrights of Southern California, a region that contains the country’s second largest collection of playwrights (after New York City) and which historically hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves.

If that weren’t enough, there was also Dan the critic. In addition to serving as a personal critic for numerous writers through his script consulting services, he did a stint as an Ovation voter, and at the time of his passing, he was both a Tony voter and a critic for the Los Angeles Post.

Finally, there was Dan the doer. He was the hardest-working and most efficient person I knew, and when I look at all of the things he did for ALAP—whether it was transitioning us into an independent non-profit, being the driving force behind countless “big fall events” or filling out grant applications year after year so that we could pay all of the participants in the Pride Play Reading Festival—it will take an army to do everything he did. I don’t say “to replace him,” because that’s simply impossible. Even if we can find replacements for the actual duties he performed, there’s no way to replace Dan’s incredible generosity of spirit—seasoned with a dash of caustic wit—from which so many people have benefitted.

At this point, Dan would probably have told me to wrap it up so we could get to the booze. So I’ll leave it at this: I’ve been so very fortunate to call him my friend, and we are all fortunate that Dan chose our community to call home.

Jonathan Dorf is a playwright, and chairs the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights

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Yes, You Can You Be a Patreon

By Steven Leigh Morris

Stage Raw’s focus has always been the almost mystically vibrant yet historically maligned L.A. theater scene, which grew even more bruised by the gutting of arts coverage across the region in print media. It’s as though the breadth of the theater scene simply vaporized from most forms of institutional consciousness. This gutting of arts coverage (and news coverage) in print media was an international phenomenon having to do with all kinds of technological and financial changes.

Locally we felt it at LA Weekly, once a civic beacon for the L.A. stage community with a weekly docket of one to two major features plus 12 reviews per week, and its annual theater awards. When, in 2014, the LA Weekly dropped those awards after 36 years, and its theater coverage slid to two reviews per week, the theater writers of that newspaper banded together and formed Stage Raw. We vowed to maintain a newspaper’s editorial standards to the best of our ability, to keep alive the cherished tradition of a community-centered awards ceremony (that’s really an excuse for a big party), and to pay the critics at least the same token fees that were offered by the Weekly. We made it work financially with a little help from our friends who felt, as we did, that the work of L.A.’s theater community – particularly newcomers and undiscovered companies — deserve to be recognized, welcomed, praised and respectfully criticized in a public forum.

Stage Raw is now in its sixth year. Our stable of writers has expanded to include displaced writers from other publications, as well as public and private university graduates who share our dedication to local theater, and more diverse voices. Every year, we’ve celebrated our view of the finest work in theaters of 99-seats or fewer with an awards ceremony at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. The upcoming Awards ceremony is slated for Monday night, September 9.

Earlier this year, we completed our first professional mentorship program for teen journalists, underwritten by Z. Clark Branson. With Branson’s continued financial support, the Wallis Center for the Performing Arts will also be partnering with us for the next, expanded phase of that program. (Details of that partnership to come.) Currently, we’re working with HUMANITAS and LA STAGE Alliance to produce the first-ever Stage Raw/PLAY LA Weekend Theater Festival (Sept. 6-9), six new play readings and two colloquies, also at Los Angeles Theatre Center.

There’s more we’d like to do. More reviews, podcasts, website improvements, artist profiles, compensation for editors and fact-checkers. We’d like to evolve from a renegade website to more of a professional journal of our extremely important scene. We can’t do any of this by running on fumes – which has been our situation sporadically over the past few years. And this is why we’re trying out an experiment in fiscal stability through Patreon.

If you value what we do, you can become a Patreon subscriber of Stage Raw. A monthly donation. Whatever you can afford. And we’ll give you stuff in return. You’ll become part of our family. True, if you’re reading this, you’re already part of our family, but this way, you’ll get a place at the dinner table. And no, being a subscriber is not a guarantee of a review of a show you’re in or producing, or, it should go without saying, a guarantee of a positive review of a show you’re in or producing. Like being a subscriber to any newspaper, that’s not one of the perks. But you can read about the perks we do offer at patreon.com/stageraw.

LA theater deserves recognition and respect, and that’s what Stage Raw does. Professional arts journalism is an endangered species, due to cultural climate change. But with your help, we can make a difference, together. Thanks for listening, thanks for your continued support, and thanks for creating and viewing the dynamic spectrum of live theater in our weird and wonderful city.

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99’s Last Stand: Doubling Down on Intemperance

By Myron Meisel

The dispute between Rome and Carthage

Warning to the sensitive: the following screed will not be circumspect. I’m going to impugn other people’s motives. I’m going to express opinions that may be unpopular. However, the opinions, such as they are, are mine alone. Stage Raw has provided me the platform to express them. Whether or not they reflect the views of persons connected in any way with the site, I have no idea. So here goes:

For the survival of Los Angeles theater as an artistically vital ecosystem, everything utterly depends upon a single goal: securing a stay, whether by temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, of the implementation of the deliberately demolishing Actors’ Equity pseudo-plan on December 14, freezing the status quo in place until the issues in the case can be resolved. At this juncture, nothing else matters, and every effort not concentrated toward that end distracts from the cause.

It is good to be reasonable – it speaks well for those so inclined. Los Angeles theater has always been intrinsically idealistic, because it had to be. In its battle to remain viable, however, such estimable impulses in the struggle against Actors’ Equity Association (Equity) have not made a dent in the Union’s implacable and obsessive determination to annihilate the presence of L.A.’s finest union actors in the county’s smaller theaters, indisputably against those actors’ will.

But that’s not all: Like Rome to Carthage, Equity’s new Agreement will sow the ground with salt as to render it infertile ever after. Without those talents, the aesthetic glory that is our local theater scene will wither as if in time-lapse photography virtually overnight. This conflict was conceived, generated, and has been unremittingly conducted in bad faith, and no amount of persuasion, goodwill or parsing of the opposition’s deliberate and dishonest arguments or contorting contentions is going to alter the outcome.

A Primer

More than forty years ago, I started a relatively short but not insubstantial career as a litigator, with a fair amount of appellate work for one then so young, and an ultimate specialty in defending other lawyers. At this remove, I am undeniably rusty and out-of-date. However, whether in law or business, there are observable patterns and consistencies to human behavior, and well-established strategies, wise or foolish, for getting one’s way through working the system. And you don’t need to be a professional or have other expertise to be familiar with the ways of bullies, or, put another way, parties obsessed with the primacy of their prerogative.

While it may have been laudable for the Plaintiffs to file but not to serve the suit, in order to encourage the start of discussion, Equity characteristically abused that process, extracting concessions upfront, cannily draining resources, and making the most of stalling for time as the best means to obscure and advance their strategy, which, not coincidentally, has been rigorously, even slavishly drawn from the established management playbook for suppressing workers’ rights that every employer-retained labor lawyer deploys. (You can discern the standard checklist approach in their Motion to Dismiss.)

These tactics include the manipulation of unfairly conducted elections (whoops!), advancing simplified and insincere arguments (here, minimum wage) as red herrings, the shameless “spin” of facts, and above all, contriving an endgame in which divide-and-conquer will extinguish remnants of resistance after the dictated terms are enforced upon the unwilling.

People have scratched their heads over how little Equity seems to care about the working conditions currently guaranteed by the Plan. Similarly, does any reasonable person believe that the institution of minimum wage payments will result in one single actor being able to make a living doing local theater? No, and neither does Equity. It’s merely a straw argument to figleaf its intention to scorch the earth so no professional theater will exist in Los Angeles except for those that can afford to offer contract pay.

Oh, and except for all the touring companies of commercially successful shows that hire non-union actors with impunity because the union is too toothless to bring those abuses to heel. And, in their eyes, those contract jobs will go disproportionately to their New York members, the ones who have their respect and pretty near sole attention. (Angeleno actors make great understudies, and those are good gigs.)

Understanding the Legalities

So shall we get down to basics? First of all, the assignment of Judge Hatter to the case is the most positive development imaginable. Judge Hatter presided over the original case in 1989 that generated the 99-Seat Plan, and while he may not remember the case, all can be absolutely certain that he has instructed his clerks to resurrect the files and fully brief him on the facts. The strongest hope for Equity to win either its Motion to Dismiss or the suit itself had been to find a disengaged judge (all of them are overworked) who would not be willing to grasp the context and history of the case and might be hoodwinked by a sleight-of-hand distillation that misrepresents the facts.

Second, the Motion to Dismiss is a pro forma filing and largely a distraction, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Equity, as a client, could be actually deluded enough to believe it has grounds to win it. These are rarely granted, and all the plaintiffs need to demonstrate are triable issues of fact, of which there are many. I find it curious that defendant Equity actually advances the notion that the presence of non-member plaintiffs provides a basis for the dismissal of what it prefers to characterize as an internal union matter (which I am certain is how their tunnel-vision perceives it). To the contrary, the variety of plaintiffs, union members and otherwise, underscores how this case fundamentally is a contract dispute, over the breach of the Settlement Agreement of the 30-year old complaint, which was anything but an action exclusively concerning membership matters.

However, this underscores the essential importance of engagement with the lawsuit not only by actors but also by the community at large, whose fundamental interest in the outcome makes all the difference in consideration of the merits of the case. This means not merely the producers, as Equity would like to insist, but the audience, related businesses, neighborhoods, cultural institutions of all the other arts, politicians, etc.

Crucial to prevailing on the merits will be to demonstrate the outsized, devastating effect that Equity’s imminent action will have on the economy and culture of a major metropolis that will never recover from the depredations wrought by instituting its duplicitous new regime. And make no mistake, none of those so-called exemptions, or “carve outs,” ostensibly permitted will survive beyond a year or two, although I’d expect Equity to move as quickly as it feels it can get away with to eliminate the remaining “membership” companies on technicalities one by one, until it confronts the few it may tolerate to remain with prospective summary execution at its chimerical and unsympathetic will.

Let’s examine the prospects and requirements for freezing current circumstances in place during the pendency of the litigation. Temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions are customarily hard to obtain. One cannot be sanguine: It’s an uphill battle, but it is possible, and everything hangs in the balance.

Generally speaking, there are four requirements that must be met for a TRO or preliminary injunction to be ordered: (a) a likelihood that failure to issue the order will result in “irreparable harm” that cannot otherwise be compensated for by money damages or other legal remedy; (b) there is a likelihood that the party will prevail on the merits in the suit; (c) a public interest would be served by granting the request or harmed by not granting it; and (d) that the balance of harm favors the moving party.

My own assessment: Showing the likelihood of irreparable damage should be demonstrable by the plaintiffs. It will require a goodly amount of evidence to inform the Court of the context in which it can appreciate the enormity of consequences if the Equity plan is implemented, however briefly. It will take a lot of work to make the case well. Luckily, one great benefit of the extended debates that have taken place since the initial attack (which in hindsight was obviously planned long before launched) is that many ideas have been advanced from which to organize a persuasive presentation. I am confident this essential element can be established.

A dicier proposition is the likelihood of ultimately prevailing on the issues in the complaint. Although couched as an objective standard, there is much room for subjectivity on the part of the Judge in how demanding he will be on this point. I don’t pretend to know how the suit will ultimately be decided by a jury, if tried; my own preference would probably be for the judge to be the trier of fact. Clearly I believe the plaintiffs to be in the right, but that is hardly transparently so, and the defendants will strive mightily to obfuscate the facts and the issues. No outcome is assured for either side. However, my best guess is that with a strong showing of irreparable harm, the Judge will be prone to look favorably upon the motion and not deny it on this ground alone if it is deemed to be a close question.

That brings us to the issue that is most amenable to effective action by the actors, the audience, the private sector (both business and philanthropic), public servants, indeed all the citizenry and institutions of Los Angeles: the indisputably substantial public interest that would be served (or more piquantly, not yet harmed) by securing the status quo in place for now.

Equity, Why?

Experience has taught me that speculation on the deep motives of others is a suckers’ game. We never know anything about other people’s marriages, no matter how things may appear. Most people are deeply vested in their ultimate inscrutability. Institutions, especially entrenched ones, all the more so. Experience has also shown me that I rarely follow what I’ve learned from experience, and I suspect I’m not alone in that.

But why does Equity so detest the 99-Seat Plan in Los Angeles? Because they do not believe that sustained work of any genuine artistic value can possibly be mounted here given that local actors must be beneath consideration except as practioners of the lesser arts of television and movies.

Obviously, they are afraid that the Plan’s existence represents a contagion that could spread (we can only hope, for the sake of actors everywhere). They claim it undermines them in contract negotiations with producers, although Dakin Matthews, among others, have surely demolished that contention.

My own first intimation of the troubles to come was the announcement of the new Equity headquarters in North Hollywood. Sure, it’s great to have a meeting place and all that, but my knee-jerk reaction was: Why were they spending all that money, and mostly on themselves, less for the actors’ benefit? Well, I intuited, they are going to need to show some results to justify that cost, and the 99-Seat Plan, I believe, was their target all along.

Kevin Delin of Footlights has made the trenchant observation that the financial strain caused by Equity’s relatively recent affiliation with the AFL-CIO may be a pertinent factor.

But my own sense of the psychological forces animating Equity’s hostility are not based in unionism, nor in concern for the welfare of the members, nor indeed any genuine principle at all. Instead, they feel elementally weak and ineffectual on their members’ behalf, and they derive a sense of power from bullying those whom they perceive contradict their authority.

Essentially so enamored of their own inflated sense of prerogative that they misinterpret as a duty, Equity cannot tolerate the rank insubordination of actors believing so passionately in their own art and craft that they demand the license to decline to toe the Company line. Those big union salaries might be going to their officers’ heads.

Organize!

Whether it takes the form of petitions, letters, friends of the Court submissions, or what have you, it’s best to take guidance from the plaintiffs’ lawyers, but I believe it is impossible to overdo: Organize! Everyone must devote all their energies in a single direction.

Organizing can make an enormous difference to the case: Indeed, can contribute meaningfully to the prospect of our theater culture’s survival.

We are all concerned, many distraught, and some of us dispirited. Nevertheless, the time for this campaign to focus is now.

It’s crunch time: Leave the arguments to the lawyers. Focus not on the merits of the issues but on winning the case. That requires a better general understanding of the lawsuit and its prospective outcomes than has generally been bruited on social media and elsewhere.

It’s time to grow up and accept the realities: Equity as presently constituted will never countenance any hint of Los Angeles live performance apart from commercial endeavors or pure vanity projects, which happens to confirm its unshakeable prejudice that those are the only conceivable manifestations of Los Angeles theatrical culture. Their contempt and condescension are absolute: Los Angeles actors are permitted to work in television or film, the lesser arts, and while they may be dues-paying members of their union, Equity fundamentally views its mission almost entirely in terms of servicing the wants and needs of its New York constituency.

I will be even more forcefully provocative: Any settlement or compromise with them must have rigorous and rapid enforcement remedies, because they will breach any such agreement in every way, tiny or substantial, that they can conceivably test, because, even if constrained to agree to a continuation of the Plan in some form, they will never concede their defeat, nor their opposition to artistic freedom of choice for their Los Angeles members.

Stop Equity’s destructive plan in its tracks before everyone loses what took decades to build, at least until the equities of the legal system (remember, it’s not a “justice” system) work themselves out.

Correction: An earlier version of this article had the incorrect name of the judge assigned to the Asner v. Equity case. The correct name is Terry J. Hatter, Jr.

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Darkness in December

A joint message to the Los Angeles community from Pro99 and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Equity

The clock is ticking! Beginning December 14^th, 2016, despite the Los Angeles community’s urging and a lawsuit served on Actors’ Equity Association by Equity members and producers, Equity will impose new rules and regulations which will change theatre in Los Angeles forever. This change will take away most of the opportunities for Equity actors to work in intimate theatre in Los Angeles and destroy Los Angeles intimate theatre as we know it.

Forty-eight years ago, Equity actors in Los Angeles fought for and were granted the right to form theater companies and perform without pay. These were professional actors. They wanted the same thing that we want now: The right to do the work we have always dreamed of – to be artists in relationship to our community, in theatres that are safe and treat all the artists fairly.

Equity’s new rules and regulations destroy a system and a community that have been in place for almost half a century. The changes will eliminate the prior 99-Seat Plan and a settlement agreement approved by both actors and the union after actors sued the union in 1986 to prevent similar changes. These current changes were brought to an advisory referendum on April 21, 2015 and were defeated by the Los Angeles Equity membership 67% to 33%. Actors said they did not want these new rules and regulations by a margin of 2 to 1. Actors want to preserve their right to follow their dreams, to do the work they want to do. No one is forcing actors to volunteer. It is an actor’s choice. It is an actor’s right. Equity is trying to take away the actor’s right to volunteer.

Equity’s new rules indicate Equity believes making money must take precedence over making art. These new rules purport to create more paid contract work for actors and stage managers in LA’s small theatres. That’s a positive goal, and one we can all agree on in principle. Unfortunately, creating a rule doesn’t create a reality.

99-seat and under theaters all conform to the old guidelines that Equity set for actors’ reimbursements. Many theatres surpass that amount and give their actors more. Equity wants everyone to believe this conflict is about wages. It is not. All of us in this community would be like to be paid more to do the work we do, but that is not why we make theatre. Los Angeles’ intimate theatres are among the few places on earth created to house hope – and so they are priceless and must be protected at all cost. Equity’s New Agreement and new internal codes won’t help theater artists in LA, it will hurt them.  

Art is not and cannot be solely a commercial venture.

Many theatres you know and love will either be forced out of business or have to use non-union actors. Actors you know and love will no longer be appearing in intimate theatres. The theatres that will be forced to change or close include theatres that are large and small – The Odyssey Theatre, The Fountain, The Skylight Theatre, Boston Court, The Victory, The Blank and more than 70 other theatres.

Equity says their new internal rules and codes will afford actors similar opportunities to what they used to have under the old agreement. This is not true. These rules and codes greatly diminish both actors and theatres’ ability to achieve excellence. 

The new codes have budget and rehearsal period restrictions so onerous that the good theatre being done and seen in intimate theatres will disappear after December 14^th. Why is it so necessary to put such punitive limits on budgets and rehearsal periods?  What are these restrictions trying to accomplish? 

The only exclusion which continues to give Equity members the opportunities they have had for the last 48-years is “the membership company rule.” Equity members can continue to volunteer in “Equity approved membership companies,” but without protections. This means that Equity members working in these theatres are no longer guaranteed the safety and other protections Equity still guarantees them in the other new rules and codes. Why can’t members working under the Membership Company rule have those protections?

Some Equity approved “membership theatres” you may know include Pacific Resident Theatre, Theatre 40, Theatre West, Rogue Machine, Antaeus, and many more. What is an “Equity approved Membership Company theatre?” What are the qualifications to get Equity’s approval? Why can actors volunteer in these theatres but cannot in other legitimate not-for-profit 99-seat and under theatre organizations? Why can actors continue to volunteer at Rogue Machine and not at The Skylight Theatre? How is this rule fair to actors or theatre organizations?

Equity would like the members in these companies to believe they are safe. Membership theatres are not safe. “The membership company rule” is an internal rule and Equity has warned it can be changed at any time. Union members would not have a say in such changes.

The Los Angeles Intimate Theatre community has survived for almost a half century. It has been both a laboratory and a proving ground. Actors, playwrights and other theatre artists who may not have ever gotten an opportunity have found the beginnings of significant careers here.   Equity seems determined to make sure that can’t continue to happen.

More than 120 plays that received world premieres in the intimate theatre community have gone to contract. They’ve been seen on Broadway, Off-Broadway and all over the world. In most cases the local Equity actors who originated roles have benefited. Last year, Spring Awakening went from a 99-seat house to Broadway. Fifteen Los Angeles actors went with it.

Don’t let Equity turn out the lights in December. Don’t let LA theatre go dark.

• Write Equity leaders and tell them how important intimate theatre in Los Angeles is to you – why you want it preserved.
  
• Tell your friends. Tell elected officials. Tell the media.
• Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/ILove99SeatsLA
• Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/99SeatsLA
• Check in with us on our Website: ilove99.org
• Join our fight… Get on our mailing list.
• March with us when we protest.
• See plays and if you can afford to do so, support your local theatres.

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A Q&A with Annie Saunders of The Day Shall Declare It

by Bill Raden

Experiential and interdisciplinary performer Annie Saunders of The Day Shall Declare It (photo by Bill Raden)

In a ramshackle, circa-1930s tenement railroad flat crisscrossed with clothesline and drying linen, a man and a woman enact a graceful if alarmingly acrobatic tug of war over a leathery vintage suitcase. It plays out as a kind of balletic, Apache dance-like breakup: the woman, writer-performer Annie Saunders, is repeatedly dragged the full length of the space — one moment pulled across the kitchen table, the next hauled by piggyback — as she feebly tries to prevent the man, British actor Chris Polick, from taking a runout powder on their fictional counterparts’ marriage.

It is a curious mix of Fred and Ginger by way of Ralph and Alice Kramden from the old 1950s/60s Honeymooners TV show. But it takes on an additional layer of the surreal as Saunders and Polick meticulously count out each step, as if reciting some sort of half-remembered form of physical algebra.

In fact, they are in the final stages of rehearsal for The Day Shall Declare It, a powerful and poetic, audience-immersive tapestry of stylized movement and lavish production values, with a script artfully collaged by Saunders (who also co-directs) and co-director/choreographer Sophie Bortolussi from Working, Studs Terkel’s oral history classic, and early Tennessee Williams One-Acts. The show garnered universal acclaim in its Los Angeles premiere last year, and the two women are about to open its remounted encore run in the same sprawling 3000 square-foot Downtown Arts District factory space.

Watching from the sidelines, Bortolussi finally calls a break. As she gives notes to Polick, Saunders takes a pull at a water bottle before sitting down at the kitchen table to speak to Stage Raw.

A native San Franciscan, Saunders came to Los Angeles six years ago after moving from London, where she was exposed to the experimentally created worlds of London’s Punchdrunk and Shunt theater companies, and where she worked with the immersive group Theater Delicatessen. She has described The Day Shall Declare It as emerging from her desire to create an experimental movement piece that explores the current economic upheaval in America.

Chris Polick (photo by Gema Galiana)

Stage Raw: This is such a great old space.

Annie Saunders: When I got to L.A., I was kind of trying to figure out what I was going to do here and driving around and seeing a lot of really intriguing, seemingly abandoned space, especially downtown. And so I decided that I wanted to make work that kind of occupied those spaces temporarily. I mean, I just really was feeling like I wanted to explore those buildings, and I thought maybe this is the kind of work I want to be making in L.A. like inviting people into these spaces and creating these kind of temporary worlds.

Stage Raw: You seem reluctant to use the word “immersive.” Why is that?

Saunders: I definitely think it’s being used more and more as a buzzword to describe all kinds of different work. I’m not sure anybody ever knew really what it meant. I think it always meant different things to different people. For me, I guess what it’s always meant is just that there’s no apparent delineation between the audience and the performer. There’s no, like, “You stay here and we go here, and those spaces are two different spaces, and this is the line.” That’s always what I thought it meant. … For me, if you have that, if you have “this is the space for the audience and this is the stage for the performers,” — this is not an immersive experience in my definition, right?

Stage Raw: Okay. If the term immersive is over, what are you calling it?

Saunders: I don’t know. I say stuff like, “Do you want to come see the show?” People are like, “Oh yeah. Tell us about the show.” I’m like, “Well, you know, the audience walks around. It’s like that.” Sometimes I say, “Oh. It’s more like a movie set. There’s no kind of stage and there’s seat.” I just talk a lot basically. I don’t have a word anymore. Sometimes I say “immersive” and people go, “Oh cool.” I kind of think, “Do you have any idea what I mean by that? I’m not even sure you know. I’m glad you’re excited but I don’t actually know if you know what I mean.” We were in tech for this last year, and we were here really late at night and had some food delivered. The guy came to the door,— it was like 2 in the morning, and he [said], “I’m driving by this place, man. I was like wondering what was going on in here. This is so cool. Looks so cool. What is it?” I was like, “Oh. It’s like a play but it’s like the audience moves and there’s no, like, stage.” He was like, “Oh. It’s like 3D theater.” I was like, “Yeah. That works. That will work.” I mean, obviously, if you interrogate that, all theater is three-dimensional, but it spoke to me in a way.

Annie Saunders and Anthony Nikolchev (photo by Gema Galiana)

Stage Raw: Why do you think immersive work has struck such a chord with audiences at this moment in history? Everybody coming out of CalArts now is doing immersive theater. What is going on?

Saunders: I don’t know. I mean I’m not sure. It’s possible that I’m not educated about the situation. I mean, you know, people have been for a long time excited by haunted houses, which is very much like in a lot of ways the sensation of a Punchdrunk show. You know, you have a mask, and there’s this very creepy element, and especially the work now. … I mean sometimes people say, like, “Oh, is your show like Sleep No More?” I’m like, “Well, it’s similar. You can move around but it’s not like a million rooms and you’re deciding and you’re alone a lot of the time. But here there are no masks. It’s much more about intimacy, I think. And there’s a ton of text. I mean Sleep No More is a dance show basically.”

Stage Raw: The Day Shall Declare It incorporates a lot of text.

Saunders: Movement and text is in equal parts. I mean we’re talking and moving pretty much the whole time. In terms of why people are excited, I mean, if we just say, “Okay. Why are people excited about making work and seeing work where there isn’t seating and a stage?” If we just take it as that. I think the answers are kind of exciting. I guess what I think first of all is that this is the screen age, and we are, I think, losing a bit of what it is to be human people with skin and muscles and sweat and tears and blood — the experience of having touch and proximity, really like an intimate experience among strangers with just human interchange: eye contact, touch, whispering, breath, and to be so close to a lot of heightened emotion and heightened physicality, really close. I feel like maybe in the digital age, there is a craving for that. I hope.

Anthony Nikolchev (photo by Gema Galiana)

Stage Raw: Is this the same show that was here last year?

Saunders: It’s really never the same. Yeah. It changes. It changes every time. There are some concrete changes in this version, which is that we have this new amazing bar. We have outside partners running this kind of historically accurate kind of pop-up speakeasy with this amazing menu. … Also, every time we come back to this material, we find new things. I mean, just as you saw, like, the sort of details that we’re working in the choreography and the intention and the acting, there’s always depth. There are always more places to go. And it changes, you know. Like the season is different. We’re different. Our lives have changed. We have a new relationship to each other. Things change and we respond to that. Things in the setup change. I mean, even the layout is the same, but we have new pieces and we climb all over the stuff. All of that needs to be re-felt and readopted.

The Day Shall Declare It, 2051 East 7th St., dwntn; The intimate performances will run six nights a week, Tuesday through Sunday, with doors opening at 8:00pm and performances beginning at 8:30pm.; through June 19. Thisisthewilderness.com.