STAGE : Tapering Off ? : After 25 years at L.A.’s stage center, Gordon Davidson faces new challenges and criticism over whether he has lost his taste for risks

Last month, when a gala Beverly Hills fund-raising ball celebrating a quarter century of Gordon Davidson’s tenure as artistic director/producer of the Mark Taper Forum was canceled at the height of the recent riots, it provoked no small measure of irony.

Twenty-seven years earlier, the opening night of “The Deputy,” Davidson’s inaugural production as artistic head of the Theatre Group at UCLA, coincided with the onset of the Watts riots.

Indeed, if Los Angeles’ political realities have remained dishearteningly intransigent, the city’s artistic makeup has proven more malleable. In the 25 years he has headed the Taper, Davidson has overseen the growth of the theater from its origins as a small university-sponsored company into the city’s premier theater and one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious not-for-profit stages.

Under his stewardship, the Taper has helped launch the plays “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” “The Shadow Box,” “Zoot Suit,” “Children of a Lesser God” and this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, “The Kentucky Cycle.” The theater has won six Tonys and numerous other awards, bringing first-ever national recognition to a city more accustomed to Broadway roadshows and summer stock revivals. On a national level, Davidson is a leader in the country’s regional theater movement; at 59, he is one of the last founding directors still running a theater--and at a time when many not-for-profit stages, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, Washington’s Arena Stage and the New York Shakespeare Festival, have undergone radical transformations of leadership.

Locally, he wields even greater influence. As the artistic director of Center Theatre Group, Davidson has gone from being the hand-picked steward of Dorothy Chandler, the founder of the Music Center, to Los Angeles’ theatrical gatekeeper. In his position, Davidson has established unprecedented ties with producers in New York and London while controlling a mini-empire of stages that includes Los Angeles’ most prestigious theaters--the Taper and the Doolittle in Hollywood. When “The Phantom of the Opera” departs the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre next year, Davidson is expected to take over that space as well. It is a position of power and influence that, except for a handful of New York theater owners, few impresarios can rival and one that has altered the city’s cultural landscape.

“Gordon has created a venue where one did not previously exist,” says Jack Viertel, who served as literary manager at the Taper from 1985-87 and is currently creative director of the Jujamcyn Theaters in New York. “In Los Angeles, which has a poor reputation as a theater town, he has proved that plays of substance and merit can be seen and well-attended.”

That Davidson has piloted his theaters into national prominence within the long shadow cast by Hollywood (a second-class status embodied in TV producer Grant Tinker’s fabled reference to the Taper as “minor league”), and at a time when other resident stages, notably the Los Angeles Theatre Center, have tried and failed, is testimony to both the accomplishments and challenges inherent in creating live theater in the nation’s film capital.

“I don’t try to hype or not be a booster of West Coast theater,” said Davidson during a recent interview. “There is a life out here. When we started 25 years ago, we were virtually the only game in town and a lot has happened. But it hasn’t quite jelled in the way that I would like.”

And there’s the rub.

Supporters and detractors agree that Davidson is a talented administrator who survived two generations of leadership at the Music Center, an exceptionally savvy producer who established a cultural beachhead in a town considered hostile to the performing arts, and a charismatic, generous-spirited individual who, unlike his Hollywood counterparts, is roundly liked by those who know him.

But to the extent that a theater reflects the faults as well as the virtues of its artistic leadership, observers also say that Davidson has missed the opportunity to create a truly indigenous theatrical climate. While forging impressive links with New York’s and Britain’s theater communities, he has not formed similarly consistent relationships at home.

Interviews with dozens of playwrights, directors, producers, critics and staff members, past and present, reveal the consensus that Davidson’s talent and taste for power-brokering--epitomized in his producing duties at the Doolittle--has overtaken his ability for risk-taking.

As a result, more innovative work has been done at the La Jolla Playhouse, and more plays by area dramatists, including minority writers, have been done at LATC and South Coast Repertory. In seeking the respect of his peers on Broadway and elsewhere, Davidson has lost touch with a generation of local artists, many of whom describe the Taper today as remote, even “irrelevant.”

As one area theater critic put it, “For the guy who was once setting the pace in California, Gordon has become simply a good booker of shows.”

“At this point in his career, Gordon’s interest is in the Doolittle,” says Larry Ramer, president of the CTG board. “More commercial programming presents the challenge now and that has taken precedence over the Taper.”

“Gordon is a visionary,” says one theater consultant who, like many of those interviewed, spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “But he has lost interest in developing new material.”

Certainly many observers suggest that such changes reflect larger shifts now occurring among the nation’s not-for-profit arts institutions. A recession economy, a battered and rudderless National Endowment for the Arts, and cuts in federal, state and private arts support are forcing theaters across the country to shorten seasons, reduce operations and adopt more conservative repertoires. Last year, five of the nation’s regional theaters, including LATC, permanently closed.

“Gordon is responsible for filling some 2,000 seats a night,” observes Bill Bushnell, the former artistic director of LATC who is currently a director/producer at the California Repertory Company at Cal State Long Beach. “That precludes taking any kind of real risk taking.”

As director David Chambers, an associate professor at the Yale University School of Drama and a former chairman of the NEA’s theater panel, puts it: “It’s hard to remain the alternative guy, the challenger of the status quo, when you’ve become the biggest game in town.”

And Davidson is facing a local financial landscape that is among the country’s bleakest. The California economy is at its lowest ebb in two decades, the recent riots have raised untold repercussions and the $3-million shortfall that occurred last fall in the Music Center’s Unifed Fund has forced Davidson to cut productions, staffers and programs.

On the artistic side, Davidson has met with considerable success programming the Doolittle since 1989 as an Off Broadway satellite--stocking the theater with New York touring companies, such as Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” and Broadway-bound shows, including August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” and the musical “The Most Happy Fella.” However, he has exhibited a far less sure hand at the Taper in recent years, which is experiencing declines in audiences after a string of box- office and critical disappointments including “Babbitt,” “Dutch Landscape” and “Widows.” In an interview, Time Magazine theater critic, William A. Henry III, called those productions “noble failures.”

Indeed, until this year’s “The Kentucky Cycle” and last season’s “Jelly’s Last Jam,” which transferred to Broadway this spring where it earned 11 Tony nominations, including “Best Musical,” the Taper seemed to have lost much of the luster that attended Davidson’s early years.

Yet, asked to assess his 25-year tenure, Davidson shows few signs that he is shaken by such shifts of fortune. Like many local arts leaders, he says he is “saddened” by the recent civil unrest and particularly “the blame that has been leveled at the social welfare programs of the ‘60s.”

But unlike the Taper’s 20th anniversary celebration five years ago, when rumors ran thick and fast that a disaffected and bored Davidson was not long for Los Angeles, the director today is clearly buoyed by the commercial opportunities offered by the Doolittle. And with a new, recently signed three-year contract and the even larger carrot of running a three-theater complex dangling, Davidson gives no sign of wanting to leave or even ardently seeking his successor at the Taper. (An informal process to investigate Davidson’s successor at the Taper--begun with CTG board members a year ago--has been temporarily stalled.)

“When we started 25 years ago, we were virtually the only game in town,” he says. “And a lot has happened. It is a much tougher time today. Five years ago, the Music Center looked strong and L.A. still seemed like a place of the future. . . . But if you’re asking me if I am beginning to feel like a dinosaur? I refuse to be.”

“Call him back. Get someone else to deal with this. And this. Get more information on this. Call her back. And I’ll take care of this,” he says sliding the last of the pink phone messages to the edge of his coffee table, the name of a New York agent plainly visible.

In a town where the score is frequently kept in numbers of phone calls made and returned, Davidson, huddled in his office on a recent afternoon with his secretary, dealing out his message slips like a deck of cards, is clearly in the running. To paraphrase that axiom about theater being culled from “two planks and a passion,” Davidson seems to like his theater conjured from two phones and a passion.

He is a consummate deal-maker (“A masterful schmoozer without being transparent about it,” says a CTG board member), one who has already logged enough phone calls and air miles to snare several recent Broadway productions--Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women,” John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” and Cameron Mackintosh’s latest import, “Five Guys Named Moe,” for the Doolittle Theater next season. Indeed, ask Davidson to assess his current standing and it is telling that he speaks first of that theater.

“I’ll tell you the Doolittle is really fun,” he says, flashing his trade-mark chipped tooth grin. “I feel like I have nothing to lose there. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the same stake in it as at the Taper. I didn’t start it, the theater is only a temporary home and all I technically have to do is keep the audience coming while ‘Phantom’ runs its course.”

Joint ownership of the Doolittle by CTG and UCLA in 1985 resulted in a season of critical successes but box-office failures--Martha Clarke’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Lee Breuer’s “Gospel at Colonus”--that incurred a deficit and forced CTG to bow out of the arrangement after only one year.

By 1989, after the retirement of Ahmanson artistic director Robert Fryer, and with the prospect of a lengthy run at the Ahmanson by “The Phantom of the Opera,” Davidson had been appointed artistic director of the Ahmanson season at the Doolittle. Buffered by the Ahmanson subscription base and that theater’s production budget, Davidson cannily built the Doolittle seasons with a commercially viable mix of Broadway touring productions, such as Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” and Broadway- bound shows such as August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.”

Davidson himself is quick to note that his success has been due largely to booking shows with a track record. “I don’t feel the Doolittle is yet the place to create original work,” he says. “I’m pleased that we’ve helped the Wilson plays and ‘Most Happy Fella’ get to New York, but that isn’t really the goal.”

Yet, many would argue that validation by New York audiences and critics has, in fact, been the goal and the bane of Davidson’s Los Angeles tenure. “You have to remember that Gordon is from Brooklyn, that he is Jewish and that he came of age at a time in New York when the Group Theater and its emphasis on social issues dominated many people’s thinking,” says Russell Vandenbroucke, a former literary manager at the Taper in the ‘70s and currently the artistic director of Chicago’s Northlight Theater. “It was also a time when no one went to Los Angeles to do theater.”

The Cornell-educated disciple of Harold Clurman, head of the Group Theater, and protege of director John Houseman, founder of New York’s Acting Company, Davidson came west in 1964 as a 34-year-old stage manager and assistant to Houseman who was leading UCLA’s Theatre Group. Shortly thereafter, Davidson became the company’s managing director. In 1967, Dorothy Chandler, founder of the Music Center, invited Davidson and the company to become residents at the Mark Taper Forum, where Davidson set about making theater “attractive to those people who are socially aware and culturally inquisitive.”

“When I started I thought I had two obligations,” he says today. “To learn what Los Angeles was--its audience and its talent pool--and, because I was a New Yorker, to bring the best talent here that I could, the people that I had known in New York.”

That formula fostered what became the theater’s halcyon days, a decade when Davidson’s repertoire--socially ambitious and critically acclaimed plays including “The Trial of Catonsville Nine,” “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” and Luis Valdez’s “Zoot Suit” (the first mainstream theatrical hit by a Latino writer in the United States)--captured the country’s turbulent social issues and established a national reputation for the Taper as a playwright’s theater.

“There were real political causes then,” says Madeline Puzo, a former Taper staff member who is currently the producing director of Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater. “Civil rights, Vietnam, freedom of conscience. And the plays we were doing--’Catonsville,’ ‘Oppenheimer’-- incorporated all that.”

“The Taper was born in the midst of a war,” adds Edward Parone, who was Davidson’s first assistant director. “Our work was very political and Gordon gave the theater a brashness that was very relevant and very unusual for Los Angeles at the time.”

By 1980, six Tonys, five Obies and a Pulitzer Prize had been awarded to the theater’s productions; four Broadway shows that year had originally been done at the Taper. And a story in People magazine quoted New York theater producer Emanuel Azenberg as calling Davidson a “genius.”

But that kind of track record, unusual by almost any regional theater standard, proved difficult to continue. As the social foment of the ‘70s began to subside, and, according to some observers, as Davidson spent more and more time away from Los Angeles pursuing outside directing and producing projects, Taper hits became fewer and farther between. Subscribers were greeted with such productions as “Green Card” and “Made in Bangkok,” heavy on polemics and deficient in artistic merit. In addition, the radical chic status of the Taper--symbolized by the presence of Lew Wasserman, the powerful chairman of MCA, on the theater’s board--devolved as Hollywood’s elite gravitated toward opera and visual art worlds.

Davidson seemed to take the failures personally. There were the rumors that he was looking to jump from the Taper to the film industry, to New York’s Lincoln Center, to the Kennedy Center, any place except regional theater in L.A. By 1987 and the Taper’s 20th anniversary celebrations--a pre-recession economy that saw the director riding onstage Hannibal-esque atop an elephant--the perception existed that he was bored, that he had already selected his heir apparent, associate artistic director Robert Egan, and was simply awaiting the right moment for his departure.

“It’s inevitable what’s happened,” observes Parone. “Theater became unpopular and once the political issues disappeared, Gordon become like George Bush--a man in search of that ‘vision thing.’ ”

Another former staffer puts it more bluntly: “Gordon found other ways to grow--namely moving into the (Doolittle).”

Indeed, Davidson’s increasing attention to the Doolittle and the decline in the number of critically acclaimed productions at the Taper have led to criticisms that he has neglected local artists, particularly minority writers, and that the theater’s much vaunted original mandate of producing new work has lost its urgency.

“I live in the Palisades, I have an agent in London, more of my work has been done at Louisville,” says playwright Mayo Simon, whose two most recent plays have been produced at Louisville’s Humana Festival. “The fact is Gordon does not really want to work with local playwrights.”

Even Taper staffers agree that the organizational and physical makeup of the Taper, most notably the absence of an experimental second stage larger than the 90-seat Taper Too, prohibits any consistent grass-roots approach. “Artists tend to get lost (at the Taper),” says one former staff member. “It is almost impossible to get the theater to work more closely with the community.”

For Davidson, such criticism clearly stings.

“I used to hear that a lot in the old days, ‘Are you going to do any local playwrights?’ Then, it was easy to say what is local. Today, this is such an evolving city, who is it? Someone who came here two weeks ago, two years ago?

“I do think that the resident talent pool is of sufficient size that we are paying attention to it. Look at our mentor talent program. And certainly the theater staff are essentially people who are residents. Other than that, I don’t know if it is a valid question.”

This issue is starkly evident in the number of minority writers produced on the Taper’s mainstage. The demise last year of LATC, which had a strong commitment to the work of minority artists, plus the growth of South Coast Repertory’s Latino playwright program, has fueled the perception that the Taper has not successfully balanced pressures from the city’s Latino, Asian and African-American communities to be part of the theater’s constituency. Rather, the theater’s commitment to multicultural work has most consistently been evident in multi-ethnic casting of classics, such as the recent production of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.”

Luis Valdez--whose 1978 Taper-staged production of “Zoot Suit” remains one of the theater’s landmark productions--insists that the Taper is unique “in providing the backing of the whole theater, unlike a lot of minority programming at regional theaters that is peripheral.”

Yet, no other American-born Latino playwright since Valdez has been produced on the Taper’s mainstage and only one Asian-written work, Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Wash,” has been staged there.

“ ‘Zoot Suit’ was unique,” said Davidson. “I did not (avoid doing) a Hispanic play; there has been no play like (‘Zoot Suit’). I thought it would open the floodgates, but it doesn’t work that way.” As an attempt to fill that void, the Taper has recently adopted LATC’s Latino Lab project, and several participants in the theater’s new Mentor Playwrights Project are Latino.

Two of the theater’s other multicultural works, 1985’s “Green Card” and the Asian-inspired “Sansei” in 1989, were criticized for having been written and directed by Anglo-Americans. As for work by African-Americans, the Taper periodically put works on the mainstage--”A Soldier’s Play” in 1982 and “Asinamali!” in 1986. The theater has recently embraced George C. Wolfe, first with “The Colored Museum” in 1988, and last year’s “Jelly’s Last Jam”--which was a co-production with Broadway producers--and “Spunk.”.

However, the greatest criticism leveled at the Taper is that the theater has become a roadhouse interested primarily in importing the latest hit from New York and London. For example, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s “Our Country’s Good,” and Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theater Company--a trend that has fueled the argument that Davidson’s strength lies in producing, not developing, new plays. Critics also charge that the theater’s critical development funds are channeled toward those shows, such as “Jelly’s Last Jam,” that most indicate a potential commercial afterlife. Many artists suggest that Davidson is today no different from commercial producers vying for established hits.

As playwright John Steppling put it, the Taper has become “like Hollywood, interested in product, not writers.”

Yet, others insist that Los Angeles remains an inhospitable environment for serious dramatists. “The reality is that very few playwrights live in Los Angeles,” says Michael Peretzian, a former director and now a theatrical agent with William Morris. “On the one hand, the Taper offers tremendous exposure--the best in Los Angeles--but the irony is that producers only really respond to a writer after he has been validated by New York reviews.”

Says one staff member at an East Coast theater: “Whenever we get a good review in the New York Times, we can count on getting a call from Gordon.”

“I still think the more theater that is generated here by other artists, the healthier it is,” said Davidson. “I want this to continue to be a theater that is in touch with theater everywhere--Europe, Asia--I’m interested in what’s going on in England.”

He also acknowledges that “because of the shortfall at the Music Center, I am not spending the kind of in-depth time I need to think about new ideas, develop projects from scratch, nurturing others.”

Taper staffers agree that there are problems in this regard.

“We have the best play development program in the country, but where we hiccup is in the staging,” says Oskar Eustis, former artistic director of San Francisco’s Eureka Theater and currently a resident director at the Taper. “Because we don’t have an alternative space, we’ve gained a reputation of being something of a roadhouse.”

“The Taper’s developmental process is a double-edged sword for writers,” says playwright and screenwriter Shem Bitterman. “They present themselves as big proponents of new work, but the reality is the plays in development are rarely, if ever, done on the mainstage.”

“The Taper environment is terrific and Gordon is extraordinarily generous,” adds Tony Kushner. “But there is some frustration about getting onto the mainstage.”

Although the Taper has traditionally spread a wide net when developing plays offstage in readings and workshops, it has a much narrower window for mainstage productions. At one time nearly 30 plays in progress would vie for one or two slots in a Taper season. And of those works eventually promoted to the mainstage, several have received their actual premieres at other theaters. This has contributed to the perception that Davidson is unwilling to commit to a play until outside producers sign on and, in effect, minimize the Taper’s own risk.

For instance, George C. Wolfe’s “Spunk,” developed at the Itchey Foot in 1989, was first performed at theaters in New York and New Jersey before its arrival at the Taper last fall. The first half of Kushner’s two-part “Angels in America,” which was commissioned by San Francisco’s Eureka Theater, was performed at Taper, Too in 1990. The entire epic will arrive on the Taper mainstage next season-- after an acclaimed run of its first half at London’s National Theatre. Robert Schenkkan’s “The Kentucky Cycle,” developed over two years at the Taper’s New Works Festival, was ultimately refused a slot on the Taper’s mainstage. It wasn’t until Seattle’s Intiman Theatre produced the sprawling, two-evening saga to full houses and good reviews, did Davidson agree to stage it in Los Angeles, following which it won the Pulitzer Prize.

“No one at the Taper made me any promises they didn’t keep,” Schenkkan says. “But their development process is not that well thought out. It might have been better if the Taper had been willing to co-produce ‘Kentucky Cycle’ with the Intiman Theater from the beginning.”

“Gordon is terrific at programming what he can see,” says Bushnell. “And terrible at what he can’t see. Let’s face it, there are nationally recognized playwrights here who could have been nurtured here and they’ve left.”

For Davidson, it comes down to that elusive second stage that has kept the Taper out of the experimental arena.

“Look around. Where would you go?” asks Davidson. “There are lots of storefront spaces, 99 seats, that have kept a certain level of activity going. But it is hard to have a real impact in such diverse and small spaces.”

Although the Taper is one of several area theaters to have proposed using some of the LATC spaces, few suspect that will occur, given the current economic climate. Indeed, many observers say the situation has reached a stalemate--artists demanding a more hands-on attitude from the Taper and Davidson insisting he is doing as much as he can, given his theater’s diminished financial resources.

Although Davidson has been largely spared arduous fund-raising duties by the Music Center’s umbrella financial arrangement, like many artistic directors he is facing a forced retrenchment. The surprise $3-million shortfall in the Music Center’s annual drive last year will translate into the loss of 20% of the Taper’s budget for the ‘92-’93 season. As a result, Davidson is raising ticket prices while paring his theater staff by implementing hiring and salary freezes, trimming the Taper season from six productions to five next year, and he has had to cut his menu of play development programs.

“What I do know is that we are not alone,” he says about the cuts. “And I also know this is not a short-term problem. There is a real alteration in the way we finance art.”

(Ironically, the Doolittle is in stronger financial health; its $12-million budget includes the interest from the $10.4-million reserve fund that the Ahmanson theater has largely amassed during the tenancy of “Phantom.”)

Many suggest that until Davidson’s successor has been named, little will change at the Taper. Once considered the heir apparent, Egan has recently taken a six-month sabbatical, which has pushed the process back even further.

“This is not a hospitable time for theater,” says Egan. Although he is slated to return in the fall, his return, say observers privately, is dubious.

As for his stepping aside at the Taper, Davidson, who has a Mellon grant to study the issue of succession at nonprofit arts institutions, is elusive. “You’re catching me in a slight holding pattern,” he says. “What with the refiguring of the Ahmanson, the possibilities at LATC, a continuing role at the Doolittle. Until all that is settled, I don’t really see stepping aside.”

He speaks for a moment about the possibilities of a three-theater operation with “the Taper run by the next generation . . . going on to more experimental work.”

“Look, I am who I am,” he adds briskly. “The kind of risks I take are different from the kind of risks taken by Charles Ludlum or whatever artist you want to pick. What I love best is to go into unknown territory and see how I can swim in it. On one level, I love being in the rehearsal room. At the same time--and this has been a dichotomy in my own personality--I like that burden of being on the phone. But I don’t like it forever because it’s not the real food. It’s the cashew nuts in the bowl.”

Suggest to Davidson that after 25 years he is still wrestling with his own role as a theater artist, and he points to the collaborative nature of the discipline as the answer. “The act of making of theater is extremely rewarding for me, to stand at the back of the house, to get on a plane to go see a production, to give a few notes, just even peripherally being involved in the journey, it is all in my blood.”

* RECLAIMING THE TAPER

A commentary by Sylvie Drake calls for a resharpening of the edge. Page 58