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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