Danny Feldman<\/a> at Pasadena Playhouse is an exception, but it saddens me how little the large theaters that pay salaries look to Los Angeles artists. There are so many co-productions created in other cities that come here, along with touring productions. As wonderful as some of these are, I don\u2019t think it helps the arts of our city distinguish themselves.\u201d <\/p>\nWhen I started at The Times in 2006, Evidence Room was the cool kid on the scene. It was the theater where Megan Mullaly met her future husband, Nick Offerman, when the two were cast in the 2000 Evidence Room production of \u201cThe Berlin Circle.\u201d What was the guiding vision of this rambunctious company? <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was about expressing the moment and creating a creative space for exciting adventures,\u201d he said. \u201cThe governing aesthetic was finding really interesting plays and performance pieces to provoke. So we wanted to make a space that was exciting before the play and a place that was exciting after the play, and then like a really provocative piece of theater in the middle of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Theater, in other words, that was creating a sense of belonging and not simply stoking an appetite for consuming. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were part of that ethos of the Big Cheap Theater movement,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there were a handful of us that felt like we were in the same club. We would share resources, and artists would cross-pollinate. We would open the bar after the show, and people would come by after their shows.\u201d <\/p>\n
Intimate theater in L.A. has still not recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. The fallout from the 2016 Actors\u2019 Equity Assn. agreement, which imposed an hourly minimum wage for members who perform in Los Angeles County theater with fewer than 100 seats, is still being felt. And the impact of California\u2019s Assembly Bill 5, which reclassified low-stipend theater workers as full employees, has further fueled the soaring cost of production. <\/p>\n
\u201cI understand and sympathize with what the actors\u2019 union was responding to,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I was very curious about how this change would evolve. Of course, one of the issues in \u2018Enemy of the People\u2019 is that any kind of administrative body is never able to admit a mistake. I think we have enough evidence right now to look at what that change has enacted. And I don\u2019t think anyone who did that analysis would say that it has benefited actors in L.A., art in L.A., or audiences in L.A. I look back to when I was starting my company, and I think of the extraordinary range of productions, the amount of creativity that was in the air. You would see these fantastic full-scale Brecht productions with like 25 people, and they would take the city by storm. All of those have ended.\u201d<\/p>\n
For DeLorenzo, it comes down to a question of what does it mean to volunteer? \u201cI have no problem with the word \u2018amateur,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt comes from the Latin verb to love, and I think there\u2019s something important about that. I\u2019ve done jobs for money and I\u2019ve done jobs for love. And I\u2019ve enjoyed them equally. And I don\u2019t think that the union or the labor board has looked at this in the most realistic way by asking the question: \u2018OK, if we make this change, can actors now make a living doing this?\u2019 And they cannot, so what are we doing? Why are we pretending?\u201d<\/p>\n
If he were L.A.\u2019s theater czar, his first order of business would be to infuse more money into the scene. But another top priority would be bolstering the city\u2019s cultural self-esteem. <\/p>\n
\u201cThink of the impact of something as silly as the \u2018I Love New York\u2019 movement on New York theater,\u201d he said. \u201cL.A. has always been a little bit ashamed of our theater. And I think the leaders of our largest theaters have always been a little bit ashamed of L.A. theater artists. And it\u2019s a self-perpetuating system. If you\u2019re an intimate theater artist in Los Angeles, you can\u2019t graduate to the next level. You have to leave town to graduate. I wish that had changed over my time here in L.A., but it has not.\u201d<\/p>\n
For DeLorenzo, the New York aesthetic revolves around \u201ca play set in an apartment with a couch.\u201d What he finds special about the L.A. aesthetic is the expansiveness of the vision. But the desire to put the world on stage has become exceedingly difficult to economically pull off. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know theaters are going through a really hard time right now,\u201d he said. \u201cEven the well-funded theaters. But I think there is a selfish mentality of we just need to survive. These theaters are choosing productions that I can\u2019t believe anyone is proud of. There\u2019s a line in my adaptation of \u2018Enemy of the People,\u2019 in which a character uses the term \u2018leaders.\u2019 And Tom Stockmann says, \u2018Leaders? What? Who are you talking about? They\u2019re followers. They\u2019re DJs taking requests.\u2019 And I feel that way about many of our theater leaders: They\u2019re taking requests.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bart DeLorenzo, L.A.\u2019s most playfully provocative theater auteur, doesn\u2019t need any excuses to direct a Henrik Ibsen play.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1025094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[18046,1037,1582,276,410101,410102,2882,132856,410103,305528,6276,2961,224,5337,5349,3546,18904,410104,1148],"class_list":["post-1025093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-actor","tag-art","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-classic-play","tag-delorenzo","tag-drama","tag-enemy","tag-evidence-room","tag-ibsen","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-moment","tag-people","tag-production","tag-stockmann","tag-theater"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117161502459739208","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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