For years, Audrey Skirball-Kenis and Charles Kenis asked not what the theater could do for them. They asked what they could do for the theater.
The acme of their theatrical philanthropy was A.S.K. Theater Projects. Most of the theatergoing public never heard much about it. But for many L.A. theater artists -- especially in smaller theaters -- A.S.K. was a godsend. And its recently announced demise, presaged by major changes in its mission last year, is devastating.
"It's sad when a project that has supported so many new voices fades away," said Andrew Barrett-Weiss, executive artistic director of Santa Monica's Powerhouse Theatre, one of the many smaller theaters that often turned to A.S.K. for ideas for new work. "That's my professional response. My real response is it stinks."
Among past recipients of the organization's largess is CalArts, whose master's level A.S.K. Theater Projects writing program is helmed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. "The program has had a profound impact on CalArts, and we are committed to maintaining it well into the future," said CalArts President Steven Lavine.
Launched as the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre in 1989, the name was changed in 1996 to reflect that the organization wasn't primarily a theater. It produced plenty of readings and some workshops, but its goal wasn't to sell tickets or to satisfy general audiences, critics or even its benefactors.
Audrey Skirball-Kenis and Charles Kenis "acknowledged that maybe 95% of what A.S.K. supports may not be to their taste," A.S.K. executive director Kym Eisner said last year, after the death of Skirball-Kenis at age 87.
This wasn't too surprising. A.S.K.'s mission was to nurture new theater -- and the fact is that most new theater, in its raw form, isn't very good. It takes a lot of time and resources to plow through stacks of scripts, to recognize a few that are worth developing, and to launch them on their way. That's what A.S.K. did.
For most of its life, A.S.K. was a rare combination: a theatrical laboratory and a theatrical foundation. As a lab, it developed plays and other forms of theater, without any proprietary interest in future productions. As a foundation, it gave money to theaters and other theatrical organizations to help them develop plays too. Occasionally it also organized events that went beyond play development, such as a seminal 1994 conference that sparked a renaissance of mid-size theater companies.
