By Cynthia Citron
LOS ANGELES — “Here at the Geffen, I consider myself a curator of a museum of theatrical fare,” said Randall Arney, artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse.
Arney was responding to the question posed by Terence McFarland, CEO of the LA STAGE Alliance: “What is artistic direction and how can you tell when someone is doing it?”
The topic was the fourth panel discussion (of five) in the series LA STAGE Talks, sponsored by the Alliance. This discussion, held Monday in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater of the Geffen Playhouse, was co-hosted by the Geffen.
In addition to Arney, the panel included Cornerstone Theater artistic director Michael John Garces; Chance Theater co-founder and artistic director Oanh Nguyen; Ghost Road Company artistic director and co-founder Katharine Noon; Fountain Theatre co-founder and co-artistic director Stephen Sachs,;and Mandi Moss — who is a member of the artistic and management committee at Theatre of NOTE.
“The Geffen has 10,000 subscribers,” Arney added, “so we try to build a season that has a variety of things for a variety of people. We (artistic directors) are all there to tell theatrical stories to the local audience. Predominantly, it’s my taste and vision, but I want the stories to be provocative and create a conversation with the community.”
“I work with an ensemble of 17 artists, and we make decisions by consensus,” Garces said. “My job is to bring the disparate voices together and synthesize their vision.”
“I co-founded the Fountain with Deborah Lawlor 22 years ago, and so I’m clear about what my function is at the theater,” Stephen Sachs said. “The mission of the Fountain is to develop new works that reflect the diversity of this amazing metropolis that we live in. My job is to reach out to artists across the country and develop new plays that serve a variety of communities.”
He cited as an example the Fountain’s current season, which featured the West Coast premiere of a play by a Latina playwright, a world premiere that engaged the deaf audience by combining spoken words and sign language, and an upcoming Los Angeles premiere of a new play related to African American themes.
In response to McFarland’s request to “walk us through your project selection process,” Ghost Road’s Noon responded that hers is a company that is a creative collaboration of seven people whose job it is to “push the envelope” and present experimental work.
At Theater of NOTE, Mandi Moss said, a five-person artistic committee (from 100 members) chooses the season’s offerings. They look for new works and, to that end, sponsor a workshop series.
Then they undergo 10 intensive days of play readings, view their own statistical data, take a straw poll, and keep in mind what provides a balance from the previous season, and what is possible and also meets the needs of its members. “And though we can’t pin it down exactly, we try to choose what we consider a ‘very NOTE show’,” she added.
Chance Theater consists of some 25 people and a $400,000 budget, according to Nguyen. The group is artist-driven, but he takes the lead, considering himself “a servant” to his various constituents: the artists, the board, and the audience. The company proposes things to read and then it’s his job to apply for the rights to produce what they select. “We get turned down quite a lot,” he noted, “and I have to try to convince them why a 49-seat theater should have those rights. Sometimes it takes four years of repeated requests before we get approval.”
Arney, who previously served as artistic director pf Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, presides over a literary staff of two. “We need to stay in tune with places where good work is being produced,” he said. “We have to stay in touch with artists that excite us,” follow their passions, “and then ask them ‘What do you want to do, and when do you want to do it’?”
“We need to create an environment in our creative home where they can do their best work,” Sachs added. “A home that is fun to play in.”
Sometimes plays come as a package, with their own directors, he noted, and “it is our job to help with the casting, the lighting, the set. But most of all, we need to support and nurture the playwright and ensure that the story he is intending to tell is told.”
“If people have a personal connection to the work, we have to help to keep things focused,” Noon said. “Does it resonate? Is it relevant? Is everyone excited about it?”
Garces noted that his company is involved with partnerships with the community. “We have story circles,” he explained, “and we interact with the community. We put non-professionals onstage with professionals and guest artists; we decide what team we want to put together and then we advocate for who works well with whom. It’s a two-year process to get a play mounted.”
“And what is the role of the board?” McFarland asked.
“Not to micro-manage,” Garces replied. “To have a healthy relationship with the board, you need clear roles. Everyone has to be clear on what the board is there to do and not to do. They provide financial strategy and fiscal oversight. But if you are not a good delegator you can’t say no to anything.”
“When Gil Cates founded this company [the Geffen opened in 1995], his original board were all his buddies,” Arney commented. “They had his back and stayed out of his way. Their primary job is fundraising, and they don’t enter into artistic decisions. It can get ugly if they don’t understand the boundaries.”
Arney briefly discussed the pre-Cates history of what was known as the Westwood Playhouse. “In the beginning, this theater space was run by an old couple that had a furniture shop in the front. You had to go through all the furniture to get to the theater,” he says.
“Later, when the man had died and his wife [Kirsten Combs] decided to sell the space, she wanted a guarantee that the space would never be used for anything but a theater. Cates, who was founding dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, immediately made a deal with the university [which bought the theater] that guaranteed that the theater would remain a theater for the next 100 years.”
In recruiting Arney in 1999, Cates invited him to lunch. “I was an actor, so lunch sounded pretty good,” Arney said. Finally, after eight months of lunches, Cates offered him the job of artistic director.
An artistic director who is hired immediately after a founding artistic director leaves, as Garces was in the wake of Bill Rauch’s departure from Cornerstone, “usually lasts nine months,” Garces said. “I beat the odds. I’ve been with Cornerstone for six years.”
“How do you decide who to invite to join you?” McFarland asked.
“It’s about relationships,” Sachs responded. “Getting to know people’s work over time. Bringing them in to create in your theater.”
“You look for people who share your aesthetic values. You find relationships that are good marriages,” Noon said.
“You need to pool resources,” Arney offered. “Everyone wants to run a new play as a world premiere, but the playwright has a chance to refine it and improve it for its second run.”
To illustrate, he told of acquiring the rights to Grapes of Wrath from John Steinbeck’s estate and working feverishly with Steppenwolf to knock it into a play. When it opened in Chicago it got disastrous reviews and closed unceremoniously, but the company continued to re-work it. Arney struck a deal for subsequent productions at La Jolla Playhouse and at the National Theatre in London, where it got the reviews that prompted a New York run — which resulted in the 1990 Tony Award for Best Play.
McFarland’s question about how to go about making changes in a production elicited this response from Sachs: “Art rules the calendar, not the calendar ruling the art. If the work isn’t ready, we don’t open. You need to protect the (theatrical) family by being able to say ‘It’s not working’.”
On the subject of taste, “You need to trust your own instincts,” Sachs said. “The most successful decisions come from the heart—what you feel. Trust that.”
“The artistic director makes decisions about everything that happens,” Garces noted. “Everything that happens onstage involves a decision…You have to be willing to be the person not liked.”
“You have to learn on the job,” Nguyen added. “So find a mentor. And don’t hire a director to do your vision of a show.”
“You and the director have to be telling the same story,” Sachs commented. “You have to be in synch. If you’re not, the fault is yours.”
And finally, McFarland asked, “If you had one wish for L.A. theater, what would it be?”
“Pride in what we do,” Sachs responded. “Sometimes we feel like a stepchild to the film and TV industries, or to what’s going on on the other coast. We should be more proud of what we do.
“I wish that the theater could pay enough so artists could actually live on it,” Nguyen offered.
“More places where more than one energy exists. Places that house a group of theaters. More community locus points,” Garces advocated, citing LATC as an example.
“More moments with other theater people. More ways to help each other,” Moss said.
“There’s more creative work happening in L.A. There’s no place more dynamic,” Arney stated, specifying New York as one of the runners-up. “We need to work harder at finding each other.”
And the last, most poignant wish was offered by Noon. “I wish that every artist could play to a house full of people they don’t know,” she said.
The final LA STAGE Talks panel discussion “What Am I Hearing? The Aural Life of the Theater” will be held at Zipper Hall at the Colburn School, 200 South Grand Avenue in LA, from 7 to 9 p.m. on Monday, July 9. Admission is free, but RSVPs are required.
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com This article appeared in L.A. Stage Times