Theater Companies

The L.A. Festival is an idea who time has come. And gone. As enjoyable as the last three festivals have been, the basic formula simply has too many shortcomings to serve a city as diverse as L.A. The festival attempts to cram a seemingly infinite number of events into a two-week period. Anyone interested in attending more than one or two performances has to drop everything else. Events generally have runs of just a few days. By the time the reviews appear or the word of mouth gets around, the performers have packed their bags.

With power restored to much of downtown New York over the weekend, many theaters south of Midtown were finally able to open their doors for business following several days of literal darkness. Last week, theaters across the city were forced to close to the public because of power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. On Saturday, electricity started returning to lower Manhattan, and with it performances resumed at some of the city's premier theater companies. The Public Theater opened Saturday, with performances of the musical "Giant" and other productions.

On the evening of Thursday, Sept. 3, beneath a Big Top in Little Tokyo, ringmaster Michel Barette will launch the first Los Angeles Festival. Quebec's highly regarded Le Cirque du Soleil kicks off 25 days of performances by dance troupes from Tokyo and Paris, theater companies from Stockholm and Johannesburg, opera, jazz and performance artists. Today's Festival magazine begins Times coverage of September's arts marathon.

Let's congratulate the Actors' Gang for at least bringing some novelty to our classical repertory. When American theater companies feel an itch to revive a work by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, they inevitably reach for "The School for Scandal," which has come to epitomize that post-Restoration genre known as 18th century comedy. "The Rivals," Sheridan's first play, is a more unwieldy affair, but there are hearty laughs to be had from this scattershot spray of silliness from 1775. To enjoy them, however, one most be willing to plod through dizzying stretches of ludicrous plot.

“What's in a name,” quoth the Bard of Avon in “Romeo and Juliet.” In the offices of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, one of the deep South's flagship theater companies, marketing director Meg Lewis has been trying to brainstorm over that very question. On Sunday, a bluesy young rock band fronted by a woman who reminds a lot of listeners of Janis Joplin has a shot at Grammy Awards for best new artist and best rock performance, and the art director for its debut album is a contender for the award for best recording package design.

In Los Angeles, discount prices are bringing patrons back to some recession-starved theaters, while houses such as the Shubert Theatre in Century City hang on to the idea that if a show is enough of a blockbuster, Angelenos will pay full price to see it. The Theatre League Alliance, an organization that serves the city's nonprofit theaters, initiated a "sampler" program in January.

A cast of Highland Park residents is producing a play this weekend as part of an international project documenting the rise of community-based theater. "Saquen La Sopa, Ya!" deals with incest, gangs and citizenship in an immigrant community. The play was developed through improvisation by community members who participate in El Teatro de la Realidad, a theater program based at the Highland Park Family Resource Center.

Leaders from some of the largest theater companies in Southern California are scheduled to take part in a forum this month to discuss the issue of racial diversity and the inclusion (or lack thereof) of Asian Americans in stage productions. The forum is to be held at the David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown L.A. on Oct. 22 at 2 p.m. The forum, which is invitation-only, is to include participation by Michael Ritchie, the artistic director of Center Theatre Group; Christopher Ashley, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse; Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse; and Marc Masterson, artistic director of South Coast Repertory.

Virtually a year to the day since he was ousted as artistic director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival (since renamed GroveShakespeare), Thomas F. Bradac sat back and beamed with pleasure in the air-conditioned comfort of Chapman University's Waltmar Theatre in Orange.

These are daunting times for all the arts, and each day demands rededication and commitment on the part of each of us working in that field. The pat, dismissive comment with which Don Shirley closed his "Stage Watch" report (Calendar, June 21) on the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts' upcoming summer season helps no one, for this is not an era in which any theater benefits from having its problems and decisions treated flippantly. We are all fighting for our lives.