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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered:

This Week’s Roundup:  IRS Red Tape for the Nonprofit Arts, New York Report, 99-Seat Lawsuit Update, and Stage Raw’s Second Annual Holiday Festivus

By Paul Birchall

IRS to Arts Donors: Drop Dead

The Performing Arts Alliance (PAA) has been raising the alarm about the latest threat against the economic lifeblood of the nation’s nonprofit theaters, orchestras, opera and dance companies and their artists. And this time, it’s not coming from a crippling recession or the opening of a new front in the culture wars. It’s coming courtesy of our friends at the Internal Revenue Service.

The D.C.-based Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of America’s professional nonprofit arts institutions, has issued an Action Alert on a proposed IRS regulation that for the first time would allow — but not require — 501(c)s to collect their donors’ Social Security numbers or taxpayer identification numbers to substantiate gifts. The new rule was published in September for public comment, but its language has attracted little attention in spite of what could be its devastating impact on donations should it be enacted.

The deadline for comment is Wednesday, December 16.

According to the Alliance, the rule, which is being offered as an option to the traditional contribution receipt issued to donors with the dollar amount and the disclaimer that the charity did not provide any goods or services in exchange for the contribution, will kick in with gifts of $250 or more.

The problem, the Alliance argues, is that at a time when identity thieves are routinely plundering the high-security databases of major banks and giant retailers — and when the IRS itself is urging taxpayers to never give out their Social Security numbers unless “absolutely necessary” — even offering a voluntary option to nonprofits to become repositories for sensitive personal information will jeopardize donor giving while putting arts institutions under the crosshairs of hackers.

“This is just like another nail in the coffin of the performing arts scene,” insisted Jay McAdams, the executive director of South L.A.’s 24th Street Theatre. Jay, who spoke to me by phone, said the proposed change would impact all of the city’s nonprofit theater companies, but would particularly affect 99-seat stages, whose individual donors typically give in the hundreds rather than the thousands of dollars, and do it online with a credit card.

“If I’ve got to give you my Social Security number on [an online] form, I’m probably going to click off of it,” he said. “So why wouldn’t a donor do that? … A $300 donation is a pretty big deal for a lot of 99-seat theaters. I would guess that the vast majority of 99-seat theaters have very few donors at the $300 level. You know? So if you’re going to put a barrier in there at $250 to jump over, you’re just hurting the small guys.”

Nonprofits also point out that, bureaucracies being bureaucracies, the fact that the IRS is now insisting that the proposed rule will be voluntary doesn’t mean that it will not become mandatory in the future.

The Alliance urges interested parties to weigh in by posting comments to the IRS on the PAA’s Action Alert page. The responses need to be filed by Wednesday, so there isn’t much time.

These Vagabond Shoes

The Great White Way (Wikimedia Commons)

Early this week, I flew back from New York where I was vacationing with family. It was my mother’s birthday party, and also a fine opportunity to see some shows in the Big Apple. Now, I know what you’re thinking: I must have gone to see hot Broadway musicals like Hamilton, An American in Paris, or our own L.A.-bred production of Spring Awakening (which has announced a new national tour, by the way), and what have you. Frankly, I did no such thing: Instead, I dove into Off-Off-Broadway, the equivalent of the 99-seat scene I tend to gravitate towards here at home.

It was a treat to get even a slight taste. While it is useless to generalize in terms of our own theater scene, I can say that Los Angeles and New York are quite comparable in terms of professional skill and polish. What New York has that is different from L.A. is public and municipal support at an exponentially higher level. Hop into a cab, and backseat video monitors blare ads for the Off-Broadway production of Clever Little Lies, featuring Marlo Thomas. Head into Tribeca, and audiences willingly climb up four creepy steep flights of stairs in a ramshackle industrial loft building to pack the vibrant and exciting production of In the Soundless Awe in New Light Theater Project’s attic-sized performance space — a show that, due to the Actors Equity Association-mandated “Basic Showcase” code, may only run 16 performances over 4 weeks.

But don’t get me started; the code, which governs Off-Off-Broadway’s small-budget, independent productions, is enough to make any theater lover insane. New York is replete with productions of almost astonishing virtuosity and talent — shows rightly known the world over — but due to this crazy code, they must close in no more than a month. It’s terrible.

And, yet, it’s still better than the revolting Los Angeles 99-Seat Agreement that is being renegotiated for our city. In New York, 16 performances may turn the ephemeral life of a theatrical production into a mayfly-like blink of an eye, but at least the shows go up with little other interference. I wonder how L.A. would fare if a similar system were established here?

Noises Off, Talks On

March’s Pro-99 demonstration in NoHo (photo by Bill Raden)

By now, you will have heard that the plaintiffs for the Pro-99 seat movement and the AEA folks are continuing to meet privately to debate the future of Los Angeles’ intimate theater. Very little news is coming out of these meetings, and I’ve said already that I think this is a good thing: The less we know, the more progress is being made and the more hopeful the plaintiffs are of succeeding.

One thing that seems interesting, though. If you look at the December 7 press release that has been circulating, beneath the notice that the plaintiffs won’t serve the lawsuit while the discussions are taking place, there’s the sentence, “The plaintiffs have withdrawn with prejudice any claims or causes of action against Mary McColl, executive director of Actors’ Equity Association.” The phrase “with prejudice” literally means the suit against McColl can never be filed again. But what on earth does it imply? Does it mean, as I suspect, that the union wasn’t willing to talk until charges against her were dropped? If it took that kind of pressure to get the AEA leader to the table, it does suggest that the negotiations are quite a bit more charged than was thought. 

Perhaps news of what is going on behind the closed doors will be leaked at the various holiday stage parties around town, where no secret can withstand spiked 99-seat egg nog for long.

Let’s Have a Festivus!

Yes, it’s Christmas and lord knows the Theater loves a party. I am no exception. And I just want to say, if you invite me to your theater’s party, I will almost surely come. And you would love me at your party! I am a bon vivant and I will regale you under the table with glorious theater tales and bits of ancient lore. Think: a cross between Bob Cratchit, Falstaff and the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Actually, of course I am lying. Not lying about coming to your Christmas party (I would certainly do that), just about being a life-of-the-party kind of guy. I am more of an eavesdropping on other folks’ conversations and write them down for my column sort of a fellow.

One seasonal festivity that I definitely won’t be missing and to which you’re all invited is the Stage Raw second annual Festivus party, which is going to take place at the Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave on Monday December 21. There will be hot music courtesy of Jake Broder and his sizzling jazz trio from Sacred Fools’ hit musical Miravel, plenty of Christmas spirits, a nosh spread and, onstage, live performances by David Melville and Jessica Emmanuel, and an excerpt from Brooke Bishop’s poignant documentary-theater piece on lifelong love affairs, How Love Lasts!

Last year’s event showcased a wonderfully broad range of talent, from acoustic guitar music to Alan Mandell’s recitation of Beckett, to the inimitable John Fleck. Oh, that was a fun night — and, yes, there was plentiful of gossip to boot, as you’d expect from an SRO bacchanal packed with cocktail-lubricated partiers and containing more than a few theater journos. 

The event costs a paltry $10, but feel free to pay more as the proceeds will pay for Stage Raw’s outstanding community-supported stage coverage. So swing on by and have some fun even if you’re skint. Or stay home and offer your support from afar by buying tickets online anyway to help insure there’ll be another Festivus party — and the online arts journal that hosts it — next year.

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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered:

This Week’s Roundup: A Note from Sean Branney, SLM on Theater and Our Community, Olya Petrakova on Stagecraft, and Daniel Henning on a Meeting With Alec Guinness

By Paul Birchall

More on Banshee

(Photo courtesy of Theatre Banshee)

After news of the imminent closure of Theatre Banshee theater companies broke last week, I received a very nice email from Banshee artistic director Sean Branney. He particularly wanted to address the question of gentrification, and my suggestion that small theaters time and again help gentrify neighborhoods, only to get tossed aside by their landlords so they can reap higher rent. 

“At the end of the day, the gentrification of our Magnolia Park neighborhood certainly played a role in our being priced out of our space,” noted Branney. “But beyond gentrification, producing theatre has never been harder. There’s more competition from at-home entertainment. The audience is more fragmented. The reach of the press has never been shorter. Half price ticket services cut deeply into companies’ margins. The situation with AEA looms huge and ambiguously over the community. Ultimately, there’s a lot of forces at work which make the impossible job of running a small theatre that much more difficult.” 

It was fascinating to hear this from Branney and to realize that many of the issues you hear bandied through the zeitgeist are not just airy-fairy theories but real developments that need to be taken into account — and soon. Theater companies in Los Angeles operate in an atmosphere that is not necessarily benign or even ambivalent. It requires energy and ferocious innovation to survive in a culture that already wrongfully considers theater in Los Angeles beneath aesthetic consideration. The Banshee is really just the latest canary in the coal mine and we must take the closing of the company as just one more wakeup call.

What Would SLM Do?

Steven Leigh Morris at the 2015 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards. (Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging)

By now you may have read the interview in American Theatre with our own former editor Steven Leigh Morris who’s moved on to his new gig as executive director of LA Stage Alliance. The interview, conducted by the classy and professional Kevin Delin (also a contributor to Stage Raw) was a dynamic and thoughtful discussion of what Morris perceives to be his role in the community. 

Since Morris is new in the job  — the ink is probably still dry on his business cards — he can be forgiven for not talking specifics. Just casting a spotlight on the problems relating to theater and our community on the pages of a national periodical like American Theatre can be said to be a good start. If nothing else, it is reassuring to at last have a voice on the scene who is both passionate and articulate — and who can articulate that passion in a way that immediately gets the issues the attention it needs.

I especially appreciated his comment, “We need to get recognition of the art of theater beyond the theatre community, so that people who live in Los Angeles understand really clearly that if they haven’t seen a play, in a large or a small theatre, they haven’t really lived in Los Angeles.” 

Of particular note was the idea of creating a neighborhood for theater activity. Opined Morris, “The Hollywood Fringe Festival is particularly successful because it isolates a festival into a very specific geographic corner, a one-mile square block. And I think part of its success is attributable to that, its being tethered to a neighborhood. I see that as a potential fix to the geographic issues… That has worked in other cities, and I think that can work for us, too.”

On a post on the Pro99 Facebook page, Morris was challenged about whether he really means for Los Angeles to create a “Manhattan-style theater district.” “Exactly the opposite,” is Morris’s reply. “Neighborhoods —plural. Theater districts. Once upon a time it was simple to access the entire region, but traffic and poor public transportation has segregated us into colonies. Dealing with that is the challenge.”

Also intriguing was Morris’s discussion of the process by which a show in a small theater can jump to a larger venue and then perhaps on to Broadway. “That has been a model in New York for decades,” Morris suggests. “Now it’s starting to catch on here. I think there was more of a divide 20 years ago in that regard; I think the relationship between larger and smaller theaters is a little more fluid than it used to be. The smaller theatres are being scrappier, knowing the artistic directors of the larger theatres, and pitching their stuff.” 

He continues, “This is so complicated, which is why I am loathe to distinguish between the virtues and the vices of large theatres and small theatres. Maybe it’s age, but I’m just coming to see that theatre is theatre and it takes many many shapes and sizes. And the reasons for doing it are as varied as the appearances it takes. It’s very hard, and almost foolish, to draw divides and try to segment the kinds of theatre we have.”

A Petrakova Manifesto!

Artel’s Olya Petrakova, left, and Bryan Brown (photo by Bill Raden)

On a related note, the publishing of this interview with SLM in American Theatre has prompted long time local theater luminary Olya Petrakova to publish her LA Theatre Manifesto on the L.A. Theater Network Facebook page. 

Petrakova was the artistic director of the wonderfully ambitious and challenging theater company ARTEL and the subsequent Artworks Theater company which performed out of the now tragically shuttered Schkapf stage.  The document, which was first written and circulated in 2006, is a pleasure to read. (A word of disclosure: Petrakova once responded to one of my reviews of a show of hers with, “He writes his reviews like he is on the toilet” — which might be the best description of the critical process I’ve ever heard). 

Her manifesto details some of the steps that might yield an artistically sound and vibrant company. Much of the talk strikes one as being universally applicable to all good artist-driven theater groups: for instance, an emphasis on collaboration, notable in her statement, “…(the) ensemble meets regularly 3 or 4 times a week for at least 1 year, and when they meet they train, they work on the common vocabulary, develop the common aesthetic, discuss or improvise researched materials related to investigated ideas or to a specific future production.” 

Petrakova’s manifesto undeniably boasts an “artist” sensibility, and steadfastly favors loyalty to a particular theater company over branding oneself as an individual performer. Her other ideas include curtailing the conventional roles of director, producer, and writer, along with transforming the concept of place. “We don’t need traditional theatre space to create theatre, and spend thousands of dollars maintaining one, padding the pockets of greedy landlords. We need space to train, to meet, to work. When the good piece of theatre is born, it will find the place to be shown. I will watch it on the streets, on the roofs, in the abandoned houses, and pay for it.”

Of course, some of Petrakova’s ideas are more idealistic than practical (good luck getting my granny to your theater if there are no comfy seats to sit on). But as Petrakova herself clearly suggests, a manifesto is meant to spark debate, not be adopted as whole cloth.

Daniel, Alec and the Star-Shells of Madness.

Daniel Henning

Meanwhile, to conclude on a cheery note, we have this delightful essay up on Buzzfeed by Daniel Henning, the artistic director of our much beloved Blank Theater Company, about his childhood meeting with Alec Guinness. This is a story that has, in one version or another, been going around for years and years. It’s even mentioned in Guinness’s autobiography, apparently as a rather amusing self-deprecatory anecdote that makes him sound rather mean.

According to Guinness, he was once approached after a show by a young boy and his mother. The boy shyly but proudly admitted he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times and added that he would adore Guinness’s autograph. Guinness was appalled that someone would see this movie so many times. “Looking into the boy’s eyes, I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.” He grudgingly agreed to give the kid his autograph. First though, he asked, “Would you do me a favor?” “Yes, sir! Anything!” replied the boy. “I want you to promise never to see Star Wars again!” In Guinness’s telling of the story, the little boy burst into tears and was hugged by his mother, who snarled at the famous actor, “What a dreadful thing to say to a child!” 

On Buzzfeed, Henning — who reveals that he was indeed the boy — takes exception to the “official” story. He recalls attending a tribute to Guinness at the San Francisco Film festival, where he took the microphone and told the star that he had seen the movie 102 times. Guinness gasped and apparently fell out of his chair in shock.

Later, Henning went backstage to talk with the actor, who agreed to give the boy his autograph if he promised never to see Star Wars again. Instead of bursting into tears (Henning says), he and his mom shook hands with the star and happily left. The anecdote — Guinness’s version — was then promoted for publication and legend, Henning insists. 

Henning opines that he can’t understand why a wise and kind man like Guinness would feel the need to invent a story that actually makes him sound rather unpleasant. “But why did Guinness make himself into a monster? Why did he change the story from his being kind and gracious and lovely to being so mean to a child that the child busts out crying and his mother becomes haughty and drags him away?” Henning wonders.

It is an interesting question — but the truth is, the story really is amusing in its embellished form. I mean, how could you not laugh when you hear such a thing? And the telling of it does allow Guinness to clearly position himself as someone who took his Star Wars fame with a cup of lemon juice.

As for all the “star-shells of madness” bursting in Henning’s eyes — well, that is subject to interpretation, but I have seen some of his plays, including The Why, and that was some pretty star-bursty madness right there. 

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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered:

Bye Bye Banshee & Stage Raw ‘Visualizes the Invisible’

By Paul Birchall

BANSHEE OUT OF BURBANK

Theatre Banshee: another L.A. cultural treasure lost to gentrification (photo courtesy of the company)

Here’s a bit of unwelcome news for your Thanksgiving leftovers.  We’ve just had a note from Sean Branney, artistic director of Theater Banshee, the incredibly imaginative and innovative theater company, that the group has made the decision to leave their headquarters on Magnolia in Burbank. 

In an e-mail headlined “The End of an Era,” Branney writes, “It is with heavy hearts that we let you know that as of December 1, Theatre Banshee will be forced to move out of its artistic home at The Banshee. This fall we were hit with a sudden and massive increase in our rent. We have explored all available options and none proved a feasible solution to our dilemma. After twenty years of producing in the space, our time is up.”

Although the note goes on to assure us that the people who make up Theatre Banshee will continue to create, it is not as clear where this will happen.  I also can’t say this is the first time that a well respected theater company has been forced to move because a neighborhood is becoming gentrified due, in great part, to the existence of the very theater company that now can’t afford the rent. 

Really, I can’t even list the number of theaters this has happened to over the years, from the old Burbage on Sawtelle to the Celebration on Santa Monica.  On the other hand, it is sometimes not a bad thing for a company to move:  You can’t get bigger by staying in the same place, after all, and perhaps we will see Banshee take steps toward expanding to a mid-sized company.

Banshee has had a tremendous run; awards literally rained down upon such past productions as The Crucible and The Walworth Farce.  It is sad to see them being forced out of their theater home, but the truth is that a company as good as theirs is not down by a long shot just because they have to find a new venue. 

STAGE RAW THIRD SYMPOSIUM

Steven Leigh Morris, left, and the “Visualizing the Invisible” panel at 24^th Street Theatre (photo by Paul Birchall)

The intellectual sparks were a-flying on Monday night at the third of Stage Raw’s symposia “Visualizing the Invisible,” about the crises affecting arts coverage in Los Angeles.  The topic of this third panel was diversity, which is a theme that has been echoing throughout the region and country of late, as evidenced in the minutes of such local think tanks as the L.A. Theater Network, and on the pages of the national theater sounding board Howlround.  Their controversial proposal, Jubilee, calls for theater companies to pledge to a season of presenting only works by writers of color or other minorities or women.

Although the topic of diversity in arts coverage might have been the intention, the actual conversation (ably moderated by LA Times critic and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle President Margaret Gray) gradually turned into an exploration of diversity in the theater world in general. 

Panelist Jose Luis Valenzuela, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Theater and artistic director at the Los Angeles Theater Center, suggested that a critic or theater journalist needs to come from a place of contextual awareness.  “I think a critic can write about anyone, as long as the intellectual research has been done and you know what you’re talking about.  As long as you are a theater person and know the contemporary history and the context.”

Bob Verini, former theater critic for Variety and now a critic for Stage Raw, agreed.  “Critics have a responsibility to educate themselves on everything.”  He also joked, “What a lot of folks may not realize is that there are fewer professions easier to enter than theater criticism.  I can create a blog and get a comp.  When you review something, you are a critic.”   

More seriously he added, “Readers demand context:  Even when a show is not a critic’s cup of tea, the reader should expect the critic to be able to dip his feet into the cup of tea to see how it rates amongst plays of its type.” 

The curious issue of a lack of diversity amongst theater journalists themselves was raised by LA Weekly and Stage Raw critic Lovell Estell III who, as Verini noted, was one of the very few theater critics of color writing in the US.  “I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” noted Estell.  “I have yet to see another black critic.”  Estell described how he was dragged to the theater as a child by his mother — and he hated it at the time.  “Every time I go into a theater now, I hear my mother laughing.” 

The conversation gradually shifted to the need to establish a benchmark for diversity in theater generally.  Valenzuela noted that this is a conversation that has been going on for decades —since back in the 1980s and 90s, when the concept of “color-blind casting” gained traction. 

Estell explained that he was not a fan of color-blind casting.  “It’s nice to get a balance – but to say that we want to cast you because you are black or Asian — that’s condescending.” 

Added actress Rose Portillo, “Just doing color-blind casting for the sake of doing color-blind casting is not a good goal.  However, if you’re a certain artist and Chekhov speaks to you (you should have the chance to do it).”

Actor Richard Azurdia insisted that minorities want to go to the theater and see their own experience reflected.  “Every time we see a show with an artist of color or a disability – we come out to support them.”  He went on to coin a new term as an alternative to color-blind casting: “color-conscious casting.”  “We need to be race conscious.  We all see color, that’s fine:  We have to be conscious of it so we can work together.” 

Added Valenzuela, “Our color does not change.  People of color go to the theater if they think it’s relevant.” 

The discussion gradually shifted to thoughts on how the current theatrical economy has actually worked against promoting diversity on stage.  Valenzuela recalled how the country’s regional theaters used to be far more experimental and daring, serving their communities far better than they do today.  “Now the regionals are just a stop on a tour: They’re considered successful only if they sell tickets or get a good review,” sighed Valenzuela. 

In an interesting twist, a consensus emerged that the real problem is socio-economic. “Commerce diminishes the art form,” opined Valenzuela.  “The theater that sells the most tickets becomes the status quo.”

Jay McAdams, artistic director of the 24^th Street Theater, noted that the real issue will always be money.  “We want people who can spend up to $75 a ticket.”  He went on to say that the real obstacle to diversity is that poor people cannot afford that.

Michael John Garces, artistic director of the acclaimed Cornerstone Theatre Company, agreed. “Marketing is getting butts on seats.  That’s commendable!  We do it.  But that’s not engaging the audience, that’s manipulating the audience.  The people who can engage aesthetically with the audience are those who will be relevant.” 

During the post-symposium questions, a discussion erupted over Howlround’s Jubilee. The general consensus was dismissive. 

Garces suggested that the proposal itself was merely meant to provoke rather than provide a template for execution.  “Howlround is great,” he noted.  “But they have no power.  They can just instigate, and people can get riled up, and there will be a conversation on the topic.  However, no one is telling you what to do.”

Valenzuela put the “Jubilee” concept into perspective by noting that many portions of the performance community have been excluded for a long time.  “We are talking about a whole history of exclusion,” he explained. “Not everyone has learned how to deal with that issue.  Some people do want to make that conversation on their own.” 

As Valenzuela concluded, “This is a city of the 21^st century because of its diversity.  The society we have in this city is the global culture.”

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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered:

Paris, Suddenly Don Shirley, Deaf West at the White House, More Snark About L.A. Intimate Theater

By Paul Birchall

Tragedy in Paris

It’s been a week of hauntingly familiar trauma in the news. All of us must feel great compassion for the people of Paris following the appalling attacks that claimed 129 lives. That the targets were mostly entertainment and leisure activities — a rock concert, a Cambodian restaurant, a shopping mall, a football stadium — underscores that the attacks were deliberate aggressions against core Western values and freedoms.

After an atrocity like this happens, the press and the more tedious pundits and politicians spout recriminations and day-after-quarterbacking, demanding that we bomb the villains out of existence or cut off immigration so that the only people allowed into the country are those who look or think exactly like them.

My feelings are slightly different: Although the Paris attacks now threaten to globalize what has been a bloody regional civil war, they are part of a broader cultural war. The extremists don’t like freedoms we in the West take for granted. They burn books, manuscripts and musical instruments. They deny women education, force them to wear burqas or, if they’re from a religious minority, even allow them to be raped. They execute gay men by throwing them off of roofs. They behead scholars.

How do we in Los Angeles respond to this? By going on without fear — or at least with the awareness that fear itself should not stop us from doing what we love. Artists must continue to create art, the more provocative and more outrageous the better! And those who are not artists must go on supporting the things that give pleasure and which make all religious zealots gnash their teeth with rage. By all means, go on out to a rock concert. Eat a delicious dinner out. Spend a bit of your hard earned money on something wonderful and provocative — like a play. Be a warrior of culture.

Don Shirley, Contrarian

Don Shirley, right, with Stage Raw’s Myron Meisel

Earlier this week, Don Shirley penned a fascinating, contrarian article about the 99-seat movement in the guise of his summary of the Ovation Awards, hosted by French Stewart and Vanessa Claire Stewart, and that featured an appearance by Stage Raw editor Steven Leigh Morris as Los Angeles Stage Alliance executive director. The thrust of Shirley’s piece was a surprisingly clear-eyed analysis of the 99-seat issue, except with the opinion that it might be better for the minimum wage proposal to pass. Shirley’s take appears to be that the preponderance of small theater shows is in some way preventing the growth and inception of mid-size theater companies. 

He writes, “LA theater invests too much time and energy in maintaining a system of many easy-to-ignore theatrical boutiques, and not enough time and energy in creating institutions that can engage larger numbers of Angelenos, including more diverse audiences, as well as a bigger share of the national theatrical spotlight.” 

He continues, “Now Equity is trying to prod — clumsily, at times — some of LA’s smaller companies to become more professional and more prominent, while still leaving open the self-producing option for membership companies.”

We have heard this sort of argument before: Somehow the abundance of small theaters prevents the formation of mid-size theaters. I actually just don’t see the logic of it. How does the existence of one thing prevent the creation of another? The statement is a non sequitur. Regulations and rules to kill off one form of art are not the answer. 

Far better is to let people create the art they want and allow the “market” to decide. I get very tired of folks trying to compare the L.A. theater scene to the New York (or even the Chicago) scene. In his piece, Shirley notes the undeniable fact that very few shows actually move from the 99-seat arena to Broadway — while it is far more common for shows to move from public regional spaces like the Taper. 

As I think of it, the answer isn’t to saddle the small theaters with onerous regulations that prevent their existence in the hopes that instead of 100s of shows, we will get maybe four or five shows that pay equity wages. I think a better approach might well be to develop a robust system of government support (local, state and national) that allows nonprofit companies to develop works and then move them up and out. In London, for instance, it’s the government-backed theaters like the Royal Court where much of the most interesting and provocative stuff is born — and the Royal Court includes an 85-seat studio stage in addition to its 365-seat main stage. 

Shirley also noted what he thought was a peculiarly equitable attitude on the part of hosts Vanessa and French Stewart towards the opposing factions of the 99-seat fracas, particularly when they suggested everyone “find a friend you disagree with and tip a glass.” Shirley suggested that this was due to an attitude forming that it is necessary to move beyond the 99-seat issue, which may eventually be decided by the courts. Certainly, I think that is part of it. But I prefer to think the real change in attitude is the result of the backchannel talks that is going on between Equity and the 99-seat plaintiffs, and which (perhaps mercifully), no word is leaking out.

It’s Official: Deaf West is a Cultural Juggernaut

Deaf West’s Spring Awakening at Inner-City Arts (photo by Tate Tullier)

And, almost as a counterpoint to the Shirley article, we have received news that the Broadway juggernaut that is the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening, which was launched from Inner-City Arts’ intimate Rosenthal Theater, has been invited to perform at the White House. Broadway World is reporting that the cast (along with original authors Steven Slater and Duncan Sheik, are travelling to Washington DC to perform at an assembly on Americans with disabilities and the arts. Even more amazing, the show will be streamed live on the net at the celebration on November 18^th. 

Well, this is rather nice news, isn’t it? And, while I do generally share Shirley’s opinion that a production like Spring Awakening is the exception, not the rule, the truth is it is still a fine example of the system working as it should. When people discuss the shows that leap from the Taper to Broadway, for instance, those too are exceptions, not rules. There are many ways for shows to reach Broadway, if Broadway is where you want to go, and my point is that we should not be hobbling at least one avenue to the land of glittering prizes. Like I was taught back when I was in Stanislovski in acting school — you should negate nothing.

In any case, congratulations to the cast of Spring Awakening! Watch them live at https://www.whitehouse.gov/live, from 1 to 4 p.m. (Pacific Time) on November 18.

A Hollywood Agent Lectures L.A.’s Intimate-Stage Actors

Meanwhile, did you catch the delightfully loathsome article on Backstage by the so-called “Secret Agent Man” on his experiences attending an intimate show in Chicago vs. attending one in Los Angeles?

So the gentleman attended a play at a small theater in Chicago and was impressed by “an authentic theatrical experience, the kind you rarely see in L.A.” How pleasantly put! He further admits that he bustled backstage, utilizing his “agent” business card to schmooze the actors. How pleased he was that no one recognized that he was a super powerful agent who could make their dreams come true! How quaint and pleasant to be taken for one of the great masses and “to interact with them on a creative level. It sure beats having to make small talk about the industry.”

He further denigrates the L.A. scene by noting, “actors here in L.A. often seem to use theater as a means to an end. Plays are considered failures if they don’t attract industry attention.” And then, “from my perspective, most of the waiver productions I attend feel like showcases, not genuine theater.”

I suppose that there is some subjective truth to statements like this, which is why folks make them, of course. But I can’t help think that it is rather rich that some agenty agent, who comes to town to cast some dog food commercial, then snarks about a L.A. play because its actors want to get cast in dog food commercials. And what should actors do when they meet a Hollywood agent, who is only allowed backstage because he’s a talent agent? Are they supposed to engage in some Kabuki-like metaphor space where you can talk about anything other than the fact you’re meeting an agent? No, really.

And if I hear one more person talk about Chicago theater versus L.A. theater, my eyes will bug like what happens when you squeeze a cabbage patch too tightly. Yes, Chicago theater is indeed wonderful. I acted in Chicago theater for three years after college — it was the highlight of my life. But if you put a great L.A. play up against a bad Chicago play, I promise you the L.A. play is better. And, yes, if you put an L.A. showcase of sitcom wannabes against something done by the Pegasus Players or at the wonderful Theater Building on Belmont — well, it is an unfair comparison to make. It’s like comparing fish to, er, ham.

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This Week’s Roundup

Acrimony, Celebration, AEA and Yet More on Diversity

By Paul Birchall

The Old Guard

Halloween came and went, the veil that supposedly separates our world from the world of the dead is firm again, and we can put away the jack o’lanterns and set up the mantelpiece for Thanksgiving.  

Except, this year, for the LA theater community, Halloween is every day.  I mean, it never ends, and the one thing that has emerged this week in the absence of actual stories is the fact that there is plenty of sniping.  Was there ever a time when civility among the writers and journalists in our community was at quite this low an ebb?  Not in the last 20 years that I’ve been doing this, anyway:  Diversity versus status quo,  Union versus intimate theater, Embittered Old Guard theater journalists versus Embittered young Turk jerk theater journalists. Everyone is so angry!  Anger is exhausting. Isn’t it better just to bide your time and smile?

I think we have seen that some areas of the journo community are trumpeting the advent of a sort of war between a mythical Old Guard and a band of ferocious newbies.  I don’t buy it.  There is no Old Guard:  Really, Los Angeles would be lucky if there were an Old Guard; it would suggest that there had been a system in place over the last decades.  The so-called Old Guard has always just been dedicated writers working to cover the community in the best way they were able to, given the technology of the time.

Celebration Theatre opens shop in its new digs

Congratulations are in store for the Celebration Theatre, which has reopened in their new location at the Lex Theater on McCadden Place.  Although many of us were sorry when the Celebration had to leave their former LaBrea Ave. and Santa Monica Blvd. home, now a fine pot shop, the new location (just up the street from the Geffen GLBT Center) is  a great fit for the company’s work.  Although the two spaces are unrelated, synchronicity between the two is inevitable and will promote only the best work for both companies. 

The Celebration just opened Rober O’Hara’s Booty Candy, its baptismal production in the new space, and now, on his Facebook page, artistic director Michael Sheppard has announced an open call for company members.  “That doesn’t mean you get automatically cast or your play instantly produced, but it does mean that you can be part of a cutting edge queer theater company,” Sheppard notes. 

Even for ridiculous theater critics, the temptation to apply for company membership is really strong, and I can’t think of anything more delightful. Just the offer to audition sends me into fantasy land, despite my entire lack of acting credits or talent.  What if?!  So I heartily advise everyone to consider auditioning for the Celebration.  Why not? 

Incidentally, I also think we’re going to see more and more of these calls for company members in the months ahead, as the impact of Actor’s Equity new rules on the formation of non-Equity companies start to come into play.  What Sheppard, and other theater artistic directors who hold open calls for members right now, are doing is hedging their bets – creating rosters of performers who can be grandfathered into their companies even when AEA tries to shut them down. 

Yet More Updates on the AEA Lawsuit

We are hearing multiple reports of news that the AEA is actually meeting with the plaintiffs who filed the Pro-99 seat lawsuit against their own Union.  Neither side is being especially forthcoming about the negotiations, if negotiations they are.  On Sunday night, Jason Alexander referred to a “rumor” of talks at last weekend’s party celebrating the career and 86^th birthday of plaintiff, union man, and TV/ stage legend Ed Asner at the Skylight Theatre. (Alexander also referred to L.A.’s intimate theater scene under the 99-seat-plan as doing just fine for decades, “Then Equity decides to roll in and ‘improve’ it,” he quipped. Until the lawsuit filing, AEA refused to negotiate much of anything concerning its proposed changes to the Plan, and the result of that, along with alleged breaches of a 1989 Settlement Agreement, good faith, and fair representation, was the long-awaited filing of a lawsuit by AEA members against their own Union – or “Association” as some have been quick to point out.

So in the wake of the lawsuit, there appear to be talks, and talking is good!   I feel confident that the plaintiffs are unlikely to cave in, given how far they’ve taken this, but some compromise agreements, to preserve the health of the intimate theater scene, could be in the offing, we hope.

Frankly, I consider the lack of concrete information about these talks to be healthy. They can’t really negotiate in a climate of free-floating chatter. It is only when the ship starts leaking that the ship starts sinking.  One way or another, when the time is ripe, we’re going to be learning more about this story over the next week or so.

There’s No Business Like No Business

Meanwhile, in the propaganda department, AEA will be hosting a sort of seminar on how to produce small theater.  The class, entitled “The Business Behind the Show:  Producing for Non-Profit Theatre,” is “specifically designed for AEA members,” and will provide an analysis of the economics of strategies for producing small shows.  The class is a webinar, and will contains segments on obtaining grants, creating subscription series, and, yes, “the changing scene,” which, one suspects will refer to the minimum wage requirements that AEA is trying to push through, and which instigated the aforementioned lawsuit.

The speakers will include marketing and production executives from the New 42^nd Street Theater and the Manhattan Theatre Club, all lovely New York companies to be sure, but of marginal Los Angeles involvement – and their involvement only underscores the fact that AEA seeks to impose a One Size Fits All scenario. 

Jubilee, Chapter 17 . . .

The national fracas continues over the idea proposed by Howlround regarding the “Jubilee Year,” in which a group of organizers have asked theater companies to set aside the year 2020 to be a year in which plays will be produced only by women playwrights, or by playwrights of color, non-Caucasion ethnicity, or of LGBT orientation – anything but works by white male writers.  The proposal has had some traction in the media, and, as unlikely as the actual results are likely to be, it is spurring an interesting debate on the lack of diversity in the contemporary theater scene.

Howlround has now released a follow-up editorial about the Jubilee plan, entitled “You Don’t Have to be an Ally, But Don’t Be An Enemy,” which actually underscores the idea that the Jubilee is less an actual plan than a state of mind – a desire to find a way to boost diversity in the theater scene.  

The author, Catherine Castellani,  a playwright who’d qualify for the Jubilee proposal,  notes that it’s fine to object to the plan, but suggests that there are ways to enhance a greater variety of theater. 

“What does the alternate creative and positive response look like?” she asks. “I only know what I’d do. I’d network like mad. Go to every show I could manage. Volunteer. Get out there, be visible, be a supporter, use the opportunity to discover new potential collaborators. Frankly, do it in the hopes of becoming a known quantity, someone an artistic director might take a chance on down the road,” Castillani writes.  

I can’t say that I agree with the idea of excluding anyone – if the Jubilee were to say “for this year, no women’s plays will be considered,” there would be a rightful outcry. 

How about, instead, a proposal in which the season of 2020-21 will resemble the gender-ethnic-sexual-preference make-up of the population – something more along the lines of a manifestation of what we aspire to?

However, the more I think of it, the more the extremism of the premise is actually being used as a wedge to get us to examine the general way theater companies do business.  Many articles are being written discussing the subject, from Ezra Buzzington’s pieces online to playwright Marsha Norman (“Women have lived half of the experience of the world, but only 20 percent of it is recorded in our theatres.” ) It is a sad fact that the stages simply do not resemble our culture and if the debate on the discrepancy is made with some urgency, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing after all.  

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Round-up of the Week’s Events

Jubiliee Year, AEA’s response to suit, French & Vanessa host the Ovations, and more . . .

By Paul Birchall

Howlround’s Jubilee Year

Howlround, the indispensable national sounding board for theatrical philosophy and policy, has announced the formation of something slightly creepy called “The Committee of the Jubilee.”

The concept refers to a committee of various small and midsize theaters throughout the country, all joining together to promote diversity. This in itself is a tremendous idea – the future of our theaters will live and die on the diversity of the audiences that we can bring in. And the shows we put on should resemble the audiences we serve. And people should see people like themselves reflected on the stage. It’s a matter of simple common sense and, really, of customer service more than aesthetics. Theater needs to reflect the needs and desires of the people it’s trying to reach or, otherwise, what’s the point? No lasting art will be created and no shekels will change hands.

But that is not really what the Committee for the Jubilee is about. According to its announcement on the Howlround website, the idea is simply to obtain pledges from theater companies around the country that during the 2020-21 theatrical season, they will produce only works by “women, people of color, artists of various physical and cognitive abilities, and LBGTQA artists.” All other writers — the white males who have admittedly dominated the national scene for decades —  might as well take the year off, apparently.  

The roster of companies participating in the Jubilee year include Victory Gardens and The Gift theater companies in Chicago and, locally,  Artists at Play and the Evolve Theatre in the Los Angeles area.

First, to be clear, color-blind consideration of material in any format anywhere, not just in a theatrical situation, is a virtue for any number of reasons. This Jubilee just ain’t color-blind.

I think that it’s tremendous for distinctive theater companies to develop materials for their particular audience. We have all seen the wonderful work done by Deaf-West, East-West, Women’s Shakespeare, and Towne Street Players, to name a just a few. There’s truth to the Howlround statement when the Jubilee proposers note that “[Many companies’] theatrical seasons. . . look like a Victorian-era propaganda version of the human race . . . We shouldn’t be modeling for corporations and governments how to exclude in practice while promoting an image of inclusiveness.”

That said, I find the juxtaposition of the cheery, upbeat language of the proposal with the disturbingly bellicose underpinnings to be a distressing, insidious mix of idealism and hate – as though they’re trying to make enemies where no enemies exist.

As a white male, I can’t help but think that the underlying tone of white male-bashing is unhelpful: The Jubilee is gunning for the small theater companies, many of which could indeed stand to add more varied seasons. But is banning any writer, based on gender or skin color, the way to redress a glaring imbalance? I mean, imagine how the Jubilee Statement would read if it substituted black for white or woman for man. The proposal would be in court before you could say how do you do.

To me, much of the Jubilee Proposal puts me in mind of one of those creepy dating ads, which state that “we’re nice people” but “no fats, blacks or Asians need apply.” Preferences are preferences – and the Jubilee Committee’s proposal is still divisive, reverse racism with a sparkly label.

AEA responds to the lawsuit filed by its Los Angeles membership

A very short time after the plaintiffs for Los Angeles’s Pro-99 movement filed suit against Actor’s Equity, the Union fired back with a statement that is about as idiotic as you would expect from its entirely tone-deaf handling of the entire fracas. The Union’s retort to the filed document frames the entire conflict as a minimum wage issue, when the legal brief actually accuses the Union of breach of contract, breach of the covenant of fair dealing, and breach of the duty of fair representation. The Union, in its response, notes that it’s unfortunate that this is going to be an expensive matter of litigation, without mentioning that its multiple breaches of the Settlement Agreement and its obvious contempt for the expressed will of local membership in an already rigged referendum are what made the litigation necessary.

Let us be clear about something we’ve been saying for some time. The Union’s use of the minimum wage issue is a canard. They’ve signaled for some time that they  just don’t want to have to oversee the 99-seat theater scene. Minimum wage is essentially just a rallying cry in the way that Bush and Cheney used Weapons of Mass Destruction to muster public rage. The minimum wage argument is, similarly, an ideological bludgeon used to muster rage. The Union would benefit if most of the 99 seat theaters were to to drop out of the Union (as they have in San Francisco and Chicago) in order for AEA to claim that a greater percentage of its members are working in higher paid Union theaters. This would seem to be largely a game about statistics and ratios in a field with 90% unemployment among the Union membership.

As one reads the Union public response, though, it is clear that AEA is trying to galvanize the rest of the country against LA, rather than attempt to deal directly with employment woes of its own membership. The posts on the AEA Facebook page support this analysis: There are posts in which AEA members (not in LA) claim that the Union isn’t about pursuing art, it’s about getting people paid (which is inconsistent with AEA’s mission statement). Other posters note that if the AEA actors wish to work for free, they should just leave the Union. Some folks mention the good things that the Union brings to their members – as though it is not possible for the Union to be a good thing even when one of the things they do is ill-advised. A few posts even hold to that tedious trope that because there’s no theater in LA, the LA actors should just move to some other city if they want to do theater. How helpful.

On the other hand, East Coast AEA Equity Member Saum Eskadandi, whose comments have become a minor rallying point for AEA actors in New York who are sympathetic to those in LA. He is quoted as saying, “I’m just really confused by this union in general. I say if the actors there want it, and can see pathways by which new Equity contracts can be created, we should let them do it.”

This is the story that keeps on giving.

Royal Couple

French Stewart and Vanessa Stewart will be hosting the Ovation Awards at the Ahmanson Theatre on November 9. The pair are one of L.A. theater’s royal couples, and we couldn’t be happier that they continue to represent our community with passion, brains and class.

Making the Invisible Visible

Margaret Gray and Charles McNulty (LA Times) and Anthony Byrnes (KCRW) at the Stage Raw’s second symposium

Last night, Stage Raw hosted its second of three symposia on arts coverage. Margaret Gray hosted the panel at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena. The conversation focused on the economics of arts coverage, and the panel consisted of Sasha Anawalt, Anthony Byrnes, Sheldon Epps, Charles McNulty and Steven Leigh Morris. The conversation was centered on models for journalism in a non-profit world, including academia becoming a centerpiece for arts coverage, and the conundrums of pay-for-play models. Some of the more intriguing insights came from Anawalt (who heads USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism) who cited evidence that intelligent, long-form online journalism has a far stronger response than generally believed, and from Byrnes (KCRW’s theater columnist) who cited the failure of L.A. as a community to articulate the case, persuasively, for how non-profit sectors, such as live theater and online journalism, feed the society and the culture. Jenny Lower will have a full report later this week.

The final installment, dedicated to diversity in arts coverage, will take place Monday night, November 23, at the 24^th Street Theatre. Margaret Gray will moderate. Panelists now confirmed are Richard Azurdia, Debbie Devine, Lovell Estell III, Jay McAdams, Rose Portillo, Jose Luis Valenzuela and Bob Verini. RSVP here.  

Cursed Child

But, of course, one story trumps all others this week, thrusting every other concern into the fusty background. If you do not think this story is important – well, you should get out of the theater and go work in a bank or fish-gutting parlor.

Here it is: The new Harry Potter story is coming – and it’s going to be a play!

Well, two plays, actually. And that is good for the future of the theater in general, though some disagree with me.

I’m a librarian by day, and I recall vividly, every time that a Harry Potter book came out, it was the best thing in the world for libraries, as readers and readers would swarm in, read the Potters and then stick around and read other things as well. I think we can predict a similar uptick in theatrical awareness when these plays are performed in 2016.

J.K. Rowling’s commercial site Pottermore is reporting that the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, will open June 7 and run through July 29 at the London Palace Theatre. It will take place some 19 years after the book’s events, and will be written by Rowling, Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany. Tiffany won Olivier and Tony Awards for the productions of Black Watch and for Once.

The synopsis suggests that the story is going to feature Harry, now an adult, and his youngest son Albus.

“It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children,” says the press release. “While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

Registration for the opportunity to get tickets is available starting on October 28, and I’d anticipate that huge crowds of Yanks like me are going to fly out to England to catch the show when it opens this summer.

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Round-up of the Week’s Events

By Paul Birchall

Lawsuit Against AEA Filed, At Last

For our local theater scene, the huge event of the week was the release late Saturday evening of the Complaint filed with the U.S. District Court by Pro99-Seat Union Plaintiffs against their own Union, Actors’ Equity Association and its Executive Director, Mary McColl. At last, the first step in actually taking on the Union has taken place. The brief was filed but not served on the Union in the hope that the mere filing would bring AEA to the negotiating table, which is what the Review Committee (established in the 1989 Settlement Agreement — the result of the last time AEA members took their own Union to court) had been trying to do for months. In the Union’s eyes, however, as soon as they eliminated the 99-Seat Plan, the Settlement Agreement and its Review Committee went up in flames with it. I have been gnashing my teeth at the maladroit, arrogant behavior on the part of AEA, which is often so tonally deaf to the community it serves, it would almost be impossible to parody.  

The legal arguments are likely to take up our thoughts for some time to come, and we can expect many analyses of the document, what it means in terms of the strategy in the campaign for ensure the safety of the Equity Waiver scene.

One suspects that the reasons for filing the document, but not yet serving it to Equity, are an attempt to provoke a reaction from AEA.  The Union’s first response, however, was to re-name a breach of contract, breach of good faith, breach of fair representation, and breach of fiduciary duty Complaint as a “minimum wage” lawsuit, and to tell Pro99 to go stuff itself. This is not encouraging, but also not unexpected.

One of the aspects of the brief that leaps off the page to me is this:  The brief is essentially a continuation of the original 1989 Equity case – in the same way that World War II was really based on World War I, though separated by some years of peace.  The argument is how Equity has illegally abrogated the terms of the first legal agreement that was made with them in 1989.   The majority of the plaintiffs are holdovers from the original 1989 case – Greg Grossman, Salome Jens, and Joseph Stern, to mention a few.

The claim is made that the Union violated fair labor practices by ignoring the results of last April’s referendum – the one in which two thirds of the local membership voted to retain the 99-Seat Plan and repair it — and that the Union’s jiggery pokery in blowing off meetings with the Review Committee that was established by the 1989 agreement, sending biased information on the issue while ignoring any other point of view, and ultimately ignoring the results of the advisory referendum, and more than enough to merit legal damages and recourse.  

It is also interesting how the brief singles out for prosecution the Union’s Executive Director Mary McColl. The brief is flat out gunning for her.  One can’t help but think that her position in the Union is over, whatever happens, her being the now-cited instrument behind all the breaches of good faith. It would be much in the same way that Pope Benedict had to step down so Pope Francis could create a  seemingly more open-minded Catholic church.  

We will be saying more about this in weeks ahead – and so will the rest of the Los Angeles, I suspect.

McNulty on Criticism  

The other interesting weekend event was Charles McNulty’s essay on theater criticism. 

When the great and the good speak, it behooves us all to listen.  And I was particularly fascinated by L.A. Times’s Theater Critic’s excellent exegesis on the art of theater criticism in our local market. 

I really wish that every critic had the space to write a piece like this in a forum such as the L.A. Times – a piece that’s a philosophical explanation of how we review, how theater reviews should differ from theater criticism, and, yes, the ambiguous position of arts journalism in the context of overall arts coverage.  The article is, in many ways, a boiled down concentration of his thoughts from last month’s Stage Raw symposium at Rogue Machine, in which a panel of local writers attempted to define the issues confronting arts journalism.  McNulty will be back on Monday night for the second Stage Raw symposium, October 26, 7:30 p.m. at Pasadena’s Boston Court Performing Arts Center, also moderated by Margaret Gray, and joined by Sasha Anawalt, Anthony Byrnes, Sheldon Epps, Steven Leigh Morris, and Laura Zucker. As of this posting, there were 11 seats remaining RSVP here.

I will admit, I am often irritated by McNulty’s East Coast focus on Broadway reviews and London tours while coverage of the local scene goes wanting.  However, McNulty is on the money when he discusses the fine craft of arts criticism, and how it needs to differ from the market-oriented aspects of vox populi-Yelping.  

I found myself cheering when McNulty opined, “For as long as click counts are ruling journalism, theater criticism will be on the endangered species list.”  And I almost crowed when he mentioned, “report card (reviews) make for dull reading.”  

Summing it up in one more gem: “Criticism’s value is indissolubly tied to the art form’s. The mission now is to go deeper, to stop thinking so much about the business of the theater and to confront the reason for its existence.” 

Gary Grossman On the Mend After Serious Heart Attack

We are all thinking of theater producer Gary Grossman, who’s currently recovering from a heart attack suffered earlier this month. He’s one of the plaintiffs in both the 1989 and 2015 lawsuits against AEA, and runs the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz. His support of theater and his theatrical output as a producer has always been robust.

Publicist Judith Borne reported that Grossman should be released from the hospital in a day or so – and that he’s ready to throw himself into plans for the tribute to Ed Asner that’s coming up on November 1.  

It is actually a good week for Grossman: The acclaimed production of El Grande Coca Cola that he created at Skylight is slated to open at the Colony in an Equity production November 7^th.  Not to hammer the point home, I think Grossman would say that is the process by which productions under the 99-Seat code should lead to Equity work. 

Best wishes to Mr. Grossman and good thoughts for his quick recovery.

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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered

Bullying at Echo Theater? The Blogosphere Leaps to the Wrong Conclusion; AEA Councillor Sid Solomon Calls for the Right Protest at The Wrong Time; and a Street Party in North Hollywood 

Teapot Tempest

Deborah Puette in Echo Theater Company’s GHOST LIGHT

In a dramatic about-face, playwright Tommy Smith on Wednesday abruptly retracted allegations that Echo Theater Company had “stolen” his short play Ghost Light, which had starred Deborah Puette and opened August 5 to rave notices. The production was the playwright’s third collaboration with Echo artistic director Chris Fields, whose stagings of Smith’s Firemen in 2014 and last spring’s Fugue were likewise met with critical acclaim.

The retraction effectively brings to a conclusion a bizarre tempest that first broke on social media when Smith began urging theatergoers to boycott Ghost Light performances. The story was promptly picked up by the Los Angeles Times’s David Ng, who parroted Smith’s claims that a contract was never signed, that he had only been paid for a workshop run in August, and that Fields had made unauthorized “artistic changes to the text and title.”

Based on Smith’s complaint to the Theater, Echo pulled the show even before Smith had made his allegations public, which is why Smith’s boycott campaign was so perplexing to the Theater. (Ghost Light had been added as a curtain closer to Fields’s September production of Miki Johnson’s American Falls.) But despite Echo’s staunch denial of the charges to Ng, and its insistence that it had Smith’s signatures on both a signed agreement for 12 performances and a cancelled check, the LAT’s spurious he-said/she-said angle quickly caught fire on the blogosphere, with the presumption that Smith had been cavalierly wronged by Echo Theater.

The Echo, understandably appalled by the brouhaha, issued a press release on Tuesday, spelling out Fields’s dismay and including PDFs of the June 18, 12-performance agreement as well as a cancelled check, both signed by Smith.
 
The publication of the conclusive evidence apparently gave the playwright second thoughts — and left Ng and the Times in a bind, addressed in a follow up piece by Ng for the paper, in which Smith apologized profusely to the Theater. “I thank Echo for allowing me the time to understand my situation,” Smith said. “I am sorry that the public had to be involved at all.”
 
Fields’s response to all this was less angry than filled with sorrow and regret — understandable, given how Smith and the Echo had such a fruitful history, which now appears to have ended. “I’m glad it’s over,” Fields wrote, referring to the controversy, not to his partnership with Smith. “It was all so unfortunate and unnecessary. I’m also really sorry that it happened, because I valued Tommy enormously as a collaborator and artist.”
 
Ultimately, what interests me is not the story so much as why it occupied so much of the local gossip for the past week-and-a-half. And that has to do with the fact that a minor contract dispute was escalated to the scale of grand opera by a poorly timed and inadequately reported article by the local paper of record.

Get out the Gun for Annie

Correction: The protest against the non-Union tour of Annie was first created by Kate O’Phalen on thunderclap.it, and was promoted by Kevin Meoak on Pro99. The protest call was not an initiative by Sid Solomon or by AEA, as stated in the item below. After receiving the support of many Pro99-ers, Sid Solomon shared a Facebook event linking to the Thunderclap website. The FB event page states as follows: “”Actors’ Equity Association does not monitor or take responsibility for the content, information, and views presented and represented here. The content of this event does not represent official positions, policies, or opinions of Actors’ Equity Association.” — SLM

A couple of interesting niblets from the Pro99 movement. If you were following the Pro-99 page this week, you would have seen a surprising posting from Sid Solomon, one of the newly elected AEA regional councilors  – and one of the few who actively courted Equity member voters out here in the Los Angeles region. Many in the area were frustrated by Solomon’s lack of a forceful declaration supporting L.A.’s small theaters in their struggle against the Union, and its war against volunteerism (with stipends) in those theaters by insisting on minimum wage for Union actors. Solomon appeared to many to play both sides of the issue at the same time.

 
However, to his credit, Solomon never lied about himself or the Pro-99 issue: He mostly said that he would need to study the issue a lot more before coming down on one side or another – and, that, at least, isn’t necessarily a fib to win votes. And, frankly, any one of these folks who is actually willing to reach out to the voters in L.A. and to listen to the issues here is vastly preferable to the armchair pontificators across the country who condemn the economic fabric of L.A.’s intimate theaters, while having little sense of the scene here.
 
Anyway, this week Solomon posted a “call to arms” message calling for a sort of Equity protest at the opening of Annie, the bus-and-truck national tour coming to the Pantages this week. Now, for complicated reasons, many national touring productions of Broadway hits are cast with non-union performers, a regrettably standard practice — particularly  disturbing since these bus-and-truck productions have the gall to call themselves official Broadway productions and charge ticket prices far exceeding those you’d expect to pay for a non-union show. If you want to raise the charge of exploitation, look no further.
 
Solomon’s call to protest Annie during its Pantages run seems noble enough, however I do find myself questioning the motives behind mustering such a protest in Los Angeles. This show has been touring since early 2015. A New York Times article discussing the practice of using non union actors in the touring production of Annie was written as far back as February of 2014. So, this production is anything but news and this is simply one of many stops on the Annie Gravy Train.
 
Why have they decided to protest here and now, and not, say, in the Midwest or on one of the stops en route? Can it possibly be an attempt to distract from the other, larger AEA protest going on? Is it another attempt on the part of AEA to mend the union’s damaged reputations here in L.A., following the abrasive war over our intimate theater scene? Does AEA honestly believe that its members, like children, are so easily distracted by a sleight of hand on the left, while the right hand dismantles the local theater community?

NoHo Street Party!

A far better use of your time this next week, I think, would be to attend the fiesta being held on October 18th in North Hollywood – a street party being thrown to benefit North Hollywood businesses that support the small theaters, in particular AJS Costumes, the outlet operated by frequent Ovation Awards- , Lawee Awards- and LADCC Awards-winning costume designer, A. Jeffrey Schoenberg. We’ve written before about AJS and how it, as well as other businesses, are feeling the crunch in the tough economic times.

The party will be in the heart of the NoHo Arts district (around 5223 Lankershim), with all sorts of actors and performers in costumes (though I hope the weather has cooled by then). No one short of a troop of Baccantes on E can throw a party like folks in our small theater community.
 
This party also, I think, dovetails nicely with the beautiful comments made by Vanessa and French Stewart in their recent interview in Footlights, on the need for small theater to remain vibrant and healthy. The Stewarts are the Pro-99 Crown Couple, whose productions of Stoneface and of Louis and  and Keely: Live at the Sahara are exercises in how to take small shows and turn them into Equity successes.

In the article, along with the now-oft-used (though still germane) metaphor of 99-seat theater being like farming, with the paying product being what happens later in the process, French also describes small theater’s tight links to the environment it comes from.

“Saturday night is a team sport. It’s not just about your show,” notes Stewart. “It’s about the bar or restaurant next door. It’s creating foot traffic for each other and a shared sense of community. It’s citizenship.” So come on out next week and join the party!

[ssba]

Paul Birchall’s Got it Covered

Visualizing the Invisible: First Symposium, “Form and Content”

By Paul Birchall

Hard to discuss, or even to tell, where we are in the middle of a battle

These are tumultuous days for the theater community in Los Angeles, but one thing is for sure: There has never been a better time for the community to draw together for the purposes of thought-provoking self-analysis.  

One of the more positive outcomes of the past year has been a concerted effort on the part of practitioners and supporters of our theater scene to define the unique Los Angeles theatrical culture and to develop a strategy for its survival, growth, and prosperity. Several groups have recently formed in an attempt to do this, from the Los Angeles Theater Network (a local think tank) to the Facebook page operated by the Pro-99 Movement. There are many angels and they are dancing most adroitly on the heads of so many pins, theatrically speaking.  

Add to these groups the symposia (three forums over three months) started last week by LA Weekly critic and Stage Raw founder Steven Leigh Morris, which seek to articulate and to explore issues confronting the “crisis in arts journalism,” not just in the L.A. area but across the country. 

Before the panel, at Rogue Machine, on the set of Luka’s Room, left to right: Gray, McNulty, Morris, Paleo and Raden. The empty seat was to be occupied by John Flynn, who arrived at the very start of the symposium. Photo by Paul Birchall

Back in the day, I mighta been one of those hard-boiled newsies, sitting at his typewriter in the copy room, churning out an overnight review, and then shouting “copy!” to the copy boy to whisk the piece down to the editor. Now, like so many local critics, I have found that writing about the theater pays so little that I draw most of my income from work that has little to do with the stage, or with writing at all.  

The first Stage Raw-sponsored panel (“Form and Content”), moderated by L.A. Times critic Margaret Gray, brought out several of our local theater critics, an artistic director and a social media specialist to discuss the shapes and sizes of what, in this region, is charitably called “arts coverage.”  

The title for the series is “Visualize the Invisible” — perhaps a metaphor for the idea that few in the theater actually give the topic of arts journalism a thought until they need a critic or reporter to cover their event, at which point the power of the press’s bully pulpit is mighty strong. 

This first panel’s purpose was to take arts journalism and to apply what in management-speak is considered a SWOT analysis – an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – while the panel on October 23 will discuss arts journalism from the point of view of economics, and the panel on November 23 will address issues of diversity.

Panelist Bill Raden, writer for the L.A. Weekly and Stage Raw, described the importance of long-form criticism, which in the mainstream papers (though not the blogs) is going the way of the dodo. “Theater and its criticism are part of a larger discussion that includes literature, philosophy, and politics,” opined Raden. “Some people call this legacy journalism.” 

Panelist Charles McNulty, lead theater critic for the L.A. Times, remarked how he particularly misses the long-form reviews that were able to delve more deeply into the experience and meaning of a play. “I really love a nuanced response to anything,” McNulty explained. “I want to get into the impulse generating the art.”  

This, he regarded, is opposed to many other types of criticism, which are either a report card-like discussion of a show’s objective quality or its commercial merits. “We should put aside the ‘business’ of the theater and focus on something more urgent – what energizes the theater.” 

After Gray was prompted to ask how we entice people to read long-form criticism in an era “when people read less and less,” Raden riposted that people will always read writing that is good. “Present this material so that it is edited and thoughtful,” Raden noted. And that is what will mark the difference between standards traditionally attributed to print journalism versus uncurated blogs, which are frequently “self-edited.” 

Added panelist Tracey Paleo, editor of the website Gia on the Move, “There is no evidence people aren’t reading the long-form reviews (on the web). It’s just there is now so much content floating around.” 

Gray moved onto a meditation on “the elephant in the room”, the dire economics of arts criticism, where a thumb’s up Yelp review is about as useful for marketing as a McNulty think piece. “Who is going to pay” for long, deliberate, critical pieces when the fiscal trend is downsizing and trimming?  

McNulty pragmatically wondered why the academic community hasn’t taken up the slack, noting that during his years covering theater in the East, he knew of colleges that sponsored critical journals to discuss issues in the arts. Here, in Los Angeles, there’s no such tradition. “Why doesn’t Cal Arts write about arts, dance, and theater?” McNulty asked. “The fit is right. Academics are hungry for visibility.”

Morris also threw the conversation over to the audience, asking what they wanted from their arts criticism. 

Gary Grossman, producer and activist in the 99-Seat movement, replied that “we’re looking for a champion. We’re looking to be told where we’re going,” as opposed to a report that’s just a checklist of goods and bads. McNulty responded with a claim that many critics in town would agree with – that he (like any good critic) “gives 100 percent in his writing; and that is how he advocates for the theater.” 

John Flynn

Panelist and head of the Rogue Machine Theater, John Flynn, noted that arts criticism has declined partially as a result of the democratization of the Internet. There are a cacophony of voices and not all of them are equal. “There has to be respect for the well-educated professional,” he noted.  

Other discussions centered on the old ‘Butts in Seats’ question of how to bring audiences to the theater. The obvious answer is to market via the Internet – but the panel regarded the Internet as both an opportunity and a challenge. “If you want to engage with young audiences, you have to engage them where they are – the Internet is not the enemy,” noted Paleo, though Morris mused that the same information vehicle is ultimately “rearing a generation of lonely people,” due to the lack of connection to the external world. Underlined the pragmatic Flynn, “The Internet is not bringing people into the theater.” 

It was fascinating and delightful to be in the audience for this very important discussion of these issues. However, it is even more important to map out a strategy to ensure the success of the arts and their coverage.It is hard to come up with new ideas, especially when we don’t even know where our culture, our technology, or our economy is going. 

In many ways, arts journalism is undergoing an even greater threat than theater itself. Media are changing and methods of communication need to adapt to this or die. Discussing this in a symposium is like holding a conference on how to rebuild a country that’s in the middle of an ongoing war: It is almost impossible to reinvent before the war is over. Perhaps we will see where this all falls out when we’re on the other side of all this upheaval.  

Note: The next symposium is on the economics of arts coverage, moderated by Margaret Gray, with panelists, Sasha Anawalt, Anthony Byrnes, Sheldon Epps, Charles McNulty, Steven Leigh Morris, and Laura Zucker, October 26 at Boston Court Performing Arts Center. Presented in association with Footlights.  RSVP here.