Theater Producers

Former Broadway theater producers Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb each were charged Tuesday in Canada with 19 counts of fraud for allegedly doctoring financial statements of Livent Inc., their now-bankrupt company. Two others also were charged in the case that involved alleged fraud of $322 million, one of the largest in Canadian history, said Detective Inspector Craig Hannaford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

His offices in Seoul are nearly 7,000 miles from New York - a 14-hour flight made several times a year - but that hasn't deterred Chun-soo Shin from his bid to become a major Broadway player. One of Korea's top theater producers, Shin has already made money off the growing popularity of American-style musicals in his native country. His hits include "Dreamgirls" and "Jekyll & Hyde," the latter of which has become one of the most popular musicals ever produced in Korea. The 45-year-old Shin is now looking to take his success to a global level.

It's midnight in Tijuana, and the border town is hopping. Jose Armand, a Los Angeles theater producer, is guiding a cadre of associates through the touristy Avenida Revolucion, a boulevard about to vroom into high gear. Drunk American jocks tote six packs; donkey-cart drivers offer Polaroids and the promise of immortality; and lost suburbanites who've been separated from tour groups whine helplessly. "It's T.J.," Armand comments to his L.A. compadres . "And anything can happen."

Joan Stein, a Tony-winning theater and screen producer whose diverse career included many Los Angeles stage productions, died on Friday at 59. She had been battling cancer and died atCedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to her husband, Ted Weiant. Stein helped to launch several long-running L.A. theater productions, including A. R. Gurney's "Love Letters," "Forever Plaid" and Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile. " She was the co-head of the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, where she worked for 10 years.

The financial muck at Livent Inc. got even deeper Wednesday as the live theater producer sought protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, said it earned $61.7 million less than it had previously reported and fired its two former top executives. The developments mark another setback for a glitzy, high-powered group of investors who took over the company, led by former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, former investment banker Roy Furman and Boston investor Thomas Lee.

Once again, a court has been asked to step into an argument between creativity and commercialism, and settle the question: What is left behind when a celebrity dies? And who does it belong to? This federal court case involves rights to the fame of Janis Joplin, the growly, belt-'em-out blues singer who helped shape the musical epoch of the '60s with her renditions of songs like "Me and Bobby McGee" and "(Take a) Piece of My Heart."

New York stagehands and theater producers reached an agreement on a contract Tuesday, avoiding the Broadway stage's second labor disruption in less than two years. Details weren't immediately available. A union spokesman said the contract is similar to a three-year accord the union reached last month with the Nederlander Organization, which owns nine Broadway theaters. That agreement called for pay increases of 3% a year and greater benefits.

Logically, you know it has to be--but somehow, you just don't think of Sean Penn as having parents. You imagine him suddenly materializing in Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, full-grown and dangerous, just in time to punch out a photographer for trying to shoot a picture of Madonna.

A group of 20 theater producers is considering challenging the legality of a new Actors' 99-Seat Theater Plan adopted by the membership of Actors Equity Assn. this week. In a meeting Thursday, the producers, all members of the Equity Waiver Theatre Operators Committee, also decided that they would deal with the union only as a unit. They said they plan to invite actors opposed to the new plan to form their own association.

More controversy seems likely in the ongoing debate between the union representing stage actors and the operators of Los Angeles theaters of 99 seats or fewer. The theater operators appear poised to reject the union's latest compromise offer. Actors' Equity Assn. on Wednesday announced that its council in New York had "unanimously approved 33 amendments" to its Actors' 99-Seat Theatre Plan and had changed the name to the Los Angeles 99-Seat Theatre Plan.

Rocco Landesman, a Broadway impresario known for his colorful personality and blunt candor, has reportedly been chosen by the Obama administration to lead the National Endowment for the Arts. According to a report in the New York Times, the White House will nominate Landesman for the position of chairman at the NEA, a post that was previously held by Dana Gioia. The formal announcement is expected to come today.

New York stagehands and theater producers reached an agreement on a contract Tuesday, avoiding the Broadway stage's second labor disruption in less than two years. Details weren't immediately available. A union spokesman said the contract is similar to a three-year accord the union reached last month with the Nederlander Organization, which owns nine Broadway theaters. That agreement called for pay increases of 3% a year and greater benefits.

Starting next year, Clear Channel Communications Inc. plans to send a large wooden version of the Trojan horse on a tour of U.S. museums as a frontispiece to an exhibition on ancient Greece and Troy. The show will be the third inroad that the huge, diversified and highly controversial media and entertainment corporation has made into the art world since late 2001.

Ralph Renzi can be blamed for all the 50th anniversary hoopla around the Williamstown Theatre Festival, for he was the one, back in the sleepy summer of 1954, who decided that the northern Berkshires were destined to offer attractions beyond their "roadside stands retailing trinkets." A rich New York couple, the Clarks, already were building an art museum up the street to put their Renoirs out of the reach of a nuclear attack.

Jenifer Estess, a theater producer who founded Project ALS to research a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease after she was diagnosed as having the malady in 1997, has died. She was 40. Estess died Dec. 16 at home in New York City. The cause of her death was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the formal name for Lou Gehrig's disease, her sister, Valerie Estess, told The Times.

At a time when public support for U.S. policy in Iraq appears to be declining, the Navy and Marine Corps have produced an upbeat short film about the role of sailors and Marines in toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. The six-minute film is being shown to military personnel and, if the project proceeds as planned, it will be shown in movie theaters in the U.S. before feature films. The military hopes to have the film in theaters by the end of the year.

Actor Ernest Harada was 14 and living in far off Hawaii when the musical "Flower Drum Song" premiered in New York. The first big Broadway musical with a large Asian-American cast, "Flower Drum" was set in San Francisco's Chinatown. The plot featured a timid "picture bride" just off the boat from China, her traditionalist parents, young Americanized friends and the usual romantic crises of an American musical. The teen-ager played the show's cast album over and over, until he knew all the songs.

America will miss "Miss Saigon." The Broadway production of the $10-million musical was canceled Wednesday by its British producer Cameron Mackintosh, angry that Actors' Equity vetoed his casting English star Jonathan Pryce in a lead role. The union denied permission Tuesday for Pryce to re-create his London role in "Saigon." Equity had been prodded by Asian-American activists who objected to the casting of a white actor in a Eurasian role.

Lester Osterman, 88, a Broadway theater producer, theater owner and three-time Tony Award winner, died Tuesday in a hospital in Norwalk, Conn. The cause of death was not announced. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Osterman was a successful Wall Street broker who began producing theater in his early 40s. He made his Broadway debut in 1956 as an investor in "Mr. Wonderful," a hit comedy with Sammy Davis Jr. He went on to win Tony Awards for "Da," "The Shadow Box" and "A Moon for the Misbegotten."

Former Broadway theater producers Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb each were charged Tuesday in Canada with 19 counts of fraud for allegedly doctoring financial statements of Livent Inc., their now-bankrupt company. Two others also were charged in the case that involved alleged fraud of $322 million, one of the largest in Canadian history, said Detective Inspector Craig Hannaford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.