Charles Marowitz (1934-2014)

BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

A prominent figure in local and international theater has died. Charles Marowitz worked with Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he founded the Open Space Theatre in London. Marowitz’s many plays include his 1987 Sherlock’s Last Case, performed on Broadway starring Frank Langella. He also wrote Murdering Marlowe, about an imagined loathing between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

In addition to co-founding Encore Magazine, published between 1954 and 1965, Marowitz is the author of numerous books on the theater, including a collection of essays about theater in the 1980s, Alarums and Excursions, and How to Stage a Play, Make a Fortune, Win a Tony and Become a Theatrical Icon – the title should suggest Marowitz’s wicked sense of humor.

He worked extensively as a playwright and director at Bill Bushnell and Diane White’s Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre on Oxford Avenue (current home to the MET Theatre) before LAAT moved downtown to become the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Marowitz took over from Jack Viertel as head critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner until the Examiner ceased publication in 1989. (In 1985, Viertel was hired by Gordon Davidson to be a dramaturg for the Mark Taper Forum.)

L.A.’s theater scene in general, the policy of double-casting roles (so actors can abandon theater productions for TV/film roles that pay better than acting in stage plays), the sheer number of plays routinely staged in Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s, and the quantity of celebratory reviews published by his peers, were all topics of his blistering critiques. His uncompromisingly cutting views of local people and institutions earned him the reputation of L.A.’s resident gadfly.

“The Taper and the LATC have to be fiercely assessed because they are the standard bearers–and at the moment the standards are falling somewhere around their knees,” Marowitz told the L.A. Times in 1990.

That same year, Marowitz founded the Malibu Stage Company. He was removed as Artistic Director of that theater in 2002.

On learning that news, Jeff Marlowe wrote the following letter, published in the L.A. Times:

“As an actor who has worked extensively with the Malibu Stage Company, I was shocked when I returned from a recent trip to London to learn of the board’s termination of Charles Marowitz as the company’s artistic director.

“Far from being fired, Marowitz should be honored as one of Los Angeles’s and Malibu’s greatest artistic treasures. An artist and a visionary who is an absolute joy to work with, he is a true professional, and he brings with him an unparalleled wealth of experience. With more than 30 books published, his work is taught at universities worldwide, and he’s credited with a unique vision for contemporary theater. If Charles Marowitz’s term as artistic director of the Malibu Stage “falls prey” to the current board’s “medicine,” then both Malibu and Los Angeles will miss out on one of the greatest theater practitioners alive today.”