Bill Bushnell

With arms outstretched as if wielding an unseen pointer, and in a booming voice deepened by chain-smoking cigarillos, the theater impresario of Spring Street might have been a high school principal lining up the class for the grand graduation picture. First he positioned on top of the staircase several dozen construction workers who happened to be in the huge marble lobby of the newly constructed and historically restored $16-million performing arts complex that afternoon. "Volunteers next.

WANTED: anyone who worked at Los Angeles Theatre Center when it had a full-fledged resident company from 1985 to 1991 or anyone who worked at that company's predecessor, Los Angeles Actors' Theatre, between 1975 and 1985. All of the above are invited to an Oct. 1 reunion at the downtown theater complex. They're also invited to submit funny stories about their LATC/LAAT experiences to the party's organizers at www.celebrate-latc.org.

Bill Bushnell is outta here. The man who ran Los Angeles Theatre Center--L.A.'s most important theater of the late '80s--has moved to St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands, where he shares a sailboat, At Random, with his brother Jon, a university professor. "I could no longer ignore the reality that I couldn't breathe in L.A. without sucking on my asthma inhalers several times a day," Bushnell wrote in his holiday letter to friends and acquaintances.

For the first time in more than a decade, Bill Bushnell walks from Spring Street into the lobby of Los Angeles Theatre Center -- the throbbing heart of L.A.'s theater scene in the late '80s, when Bushnell was in charge of the Skid Row-adjacent building in downtown L.A. "Nothing much has changed," he says, as he looks around the cavernous space -- but then he notices that the doors that lead into the building's theaters are painted a different color.

For the first time in more than a decade, Bill Bushnell walks from Spring Street into the lobby of Los Angeles Theatre Center -- the throbbing heart of L.A.'s theater scene in the late '80s, when Bushnell was in charge of the Skid Row-adjacent building in downtown L.A. "Nothing much has changed," he says, as he looks around the cavernous space -- but then he notices that the doors that lead into the building's theaters are painted a different color.

Scattering live theater throughout Greater Los Angeles certainly isn't helping the situation of meager theater attendance ("Theater Boom: In Search of an audience," by Barbara Isenberg, April 14). Bill Bushnell moves the Los Angeles Actors Theatre to isolated Spring Street, American Theatre Arts moves from highly visible Hollywood and Vine to suburban North Hollywood, causing the concentrated theater atmosphere in central Hollywood to be diluted with the visibility of a theater district diminished.

In the Dec. 16 issue of Calendar, Jan Breslauer reviewed Charles Marowitz's career in the theater and his projected plan for a resident company in Malibu ("Can't Kick Him Out of This Club"). I was named as an adviser, which is accurate. I have devoted over 40 years to the development of theater in this area, and I welcome the opportunity to assist a writer and director whose abilities I respect. I do not, however, wish to leave the impression that I share Marowitz's critical evaluation of Gordon Davidson of the Mark Taper and Ahmanson theaters and Bill Bushnell of the LATC.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center takes a great many measures to ensure the comfort of our patrons who are sensitive to cigarette smoke. Not only do we not allow smoking in the lobby or other public areas of the center, we place signs on the doors of the individual theaters when cigarettes will be smoked during a performance. Schiller, who wrote to both me and to Calendar (see letter above) about smoking in "Stevie Wants to Play the Blues," is accurate in that cigarettes and cigars are smoked onstage and smoke effects are used throughout the play to evoke a period and mood.

Sylvie Drake proclaims that the Los Angeles Theatre Center's possible demise results from municipal and societal failures ("Who Will Be the Losers if LATC Closes?," Aug. 9). While the city's policy and inactions may have contributed to LATC's problems, the key failure was LATC's. And that failure was an artistic one. I was a first-year season subscriber. After being beaten over the head with a heavy-handed political agenda, I refused offer after discounted offer to re-subscribe.

Had Sadownick gotten all the facts correct, perhaps there would be no "controversy" surrounding "Generator Eight," the upcoming dance festival at Los Angeles Theatre Center. Most important is the article's blatant lack of balance. Sadownick reported that dance producer Deborah Oliver raised the issue of the amount of government money the theater center had received. What he did not explain adequately (which I did both when he interviewed me and in a letter I sent to him) is that the $19 million the Community Redevelopment Agency has invested in the theater center has gone to the construction and maintenance of the facilities.

When Jose Luis Valenzuela graduated from school in his hometown of Los Mochis, near Mazatlan, Mexico, he was only 15. Yet he wanted to go to college in Mexico City along with his older brother. He shudders now as he describes how he obtained his parents' consent--he climbed to the roof of their two-story home and threatened to kill himself. It worked.

When the former Los Angeles Theatre Center company was in its heyday in the late '80s, the LATC lobby was famous as a hangout where multicultural mingling took place on a regular basis. The next four months promise to bring back some of that ferment. It will be the busiest chunk of time at LATC since the building's resident company folded in 1991, according to LATC business manager Lee Sweet.

Bill Bushnell is outta here. The man who ran Los Angeles Theatre Center--L.A.'s most important theater of the late '80s--has moved to St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands, where he shares a sailboat, At Random, with his brother Jon, a university professor. "I could no longer ignore the reality that I couldn't breathe in L.A. without sucking on my asthma inhalers several times a day," Bushnell wrote in his holiday letter to friends and acquaintances.

A man who cast a long shadow over Los Angeles theater for years makes his directing debut Friday at Cal State Long Beach. Bill Bushnell, former artistic director of Los Angeles Theatre Center, begins a new phase of his career with his adaptation and staging of Dylan Thomas' screenplay, "The Doctor and the Devils." It will rotate with director Joanne Gordon's version of "Dylan," Sidney Michaels' biographical drama about the Welsh poet.

In his July 13 Counterpunch ("LATC Needs a Multiethnic Approach"), Bill Bushnell once again feels the need to go to the mat with everyone around town over his old stomping ground. I was with LATC from May, 1986, to the day it closed. As general manager for the final five months, most of my time was spent with my fingers in the dike next to Bushnell's; eventually we ran out of fingers. I can't speak for the Cultural Affairs Department, but, from my perspective, Bushnell's self-aggrandizing, finger-pointing tantrums do nothing to benefit the artistic community.

In your July 5 profile of Al Nodal, general manager of the city's Cultural Affairs Department ("Cultural Desperado: Keeper of the Flame"), he states that spending more on LATC would have been throwing good money after bad, that "there was $450,000 there, but I really didn't want to give it to (Bushnell) to keep the theater alive for another week. He couldn't tell me how long it would last. . . . I don't think Bill can accuse us of not doing enough." Well, I can, and I will.

We were appalled by reading in Stage Watch recently of Bill Bushnell's latest ravings and demands for another $32 million from the Community Redevelopment Agency for his L.A. Theatre Center debacle--and later that Mayor Tom Bradley still backs funding. A self-appointed savior of theater here, Bushnell never has had the slightest inkling of what it takes to attract an audience anywhere, no less to the entrails of downtown Los Angeles. His pretentiousness of product, posing as "theater," has always been a turn-off to audiences seeking any pure entertainment value for the inflated price of tickets.

WANTED: anyone who worked at Los Angeles Theatre Center when it had a full-fledged resident company from 1985 to 1991 or anyone who worked at that company's predecessor, Los Angeles Actors' Theatre, between 1975 and 1985. All of the above are invited to an Oct. 1 reunion at the downtown theater complex. They're also invited to submit funny stories about their LATC/LAAT experiences to the party's organizers at www.celebrate-latc.org.

Though more dramatic than most, the Los Angeles Theatre Center's eleventh-hour reprieve from insolvency last week --with an anonymous $100,000 gift--was just the latest in a series of fiscal emergencies for the critically acclaimed theater group. Before it even opened the doors of its four-stage complex on downtown's derelict Spring Street, the theater center was millions of dollars in debt.

Sylvie Drake proclaims that the Los Angeles Theatre Center's possible demise results from municipal and societal failures ("Who Will Be the Losers if LATC Closes?," Aug. 9). While the city's policy and inactions may have contributed to LATC's problems, the key failure was LATC's. And that failure was an artistic one. I was a first-year season subscriber. After being beaten over the head with a heavy-handed political agenda, I refused offer after discounted offer to re-subscribe.