creating los angeles theater
by
Douglas Messerli
The
death of major one of the major theatrical figures of Los Angeles on Sunday, October
2, 2016 came as a shock to many, and particularly to Howard and me, who’d seen
the Davidsons just a few weeks earlier at the MET opera HD production in
Century City.
Although we’d known Gordon Davidson for
several years, we didn’t get a chance to talk with him on that occasion, a
situation which I now regret. He looked healthy, but also, one has to admit, a
little frail, and I’m not certain he recognized us, even though we sat only a
few seats away. I had even recently seen him at an opening night production of A View from the Bridge at the Ahmanson Theater
on September 14, but in the swirl of the opening night crowd, I didn’t have the
possibility of speaking to him.
Much has been written about his
remarkable career, the invitation by Dorothy Chandler to have him run the then-newly
founded Mark Taper Forum, and his numerous successful productions—not all plays
which I openly admire, but important in developing an audience for contemporary
theater nonetheless—including The Devils (controversial,
to the say the least), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Children of a Lesser God, and Tony
Kushner’s absolutely remarkable Angels in
America.
I recall when we first moved to Los
Angeles, how my friend Marjorie Perloff expressed her delight in a Taper season
devoted to several of Beckett’s plays, but was disgusted by the audience lack
of attendance and their disparagement of these works. A couple of years ago,
after Davidsons’ retirement from that organization, Howard and I saw a
brilliant revival of Beckett’s Waiting
for Godot at the Taper, with full attendance and admiring reviews, so
Davidsons’ great foresight finally did pay off.
Although Davidson produced many more
traditional works, he always attempted to push the envelope, so to speak,
introducing new works whenever he could. Davidson liked “issues,” however, more
than “experiments” in his plays. As he, himself, put it: “I believe it must be
the job of theater to take hard looks at life, at issues people don’t always
want to confront. They will listen to what is said to them from a stage. That
is the power of theater. I respect it. I am in awe of it.”
And, indeed, he did many “issue” plays,
including The Shadow Box, for which
he received a Tony Award, The Great God
Brown, and a wonderful revival of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Perhaps his best known and most successful issue-oriented
play was Luis Valdez’s musical play from 1978, Zoot Suit, presented in 1978 with Edward James Olmos in the lead
role. Artist Carlos Almaraz painted some of the sets. It played to full houses
for a year before it moved on to Broadway, introducing wealthy white audiences
of the Bunker Hill theaters to a whole new theatrical tradition. That work,
coincidentally, is scheduled to be revived at the Taper later this year, an
event that Howard and I can’t wait to experience.
I first met Davidson when I asked him to
join the board of the Sun & Moon Press American Theater in Literature
Series, which he gladly agreed to, occasionally attending Sun & Moon
literary salons.
I worked with him, indirectly, when he
invited director Peter Sellars to stage at the Taper playwright Robert
Auletta’s modern version of Æschylus’ The
Persians in 1993. Doing away with costumes and sets and placing the play
firmly into the US wartime activities in Iraq, Sellar’s production was nearly
unbearable, for much of the Taper audience, to watch. I know because, having
published the play in my Sun & Moon American Theater in Literature series
in time for this production, I attended almost every night, selling copies
before and after the performances. Nearly every night, half of the audience
stormed out in anger, and I think I sold very few copies. But I admired
Davidson for bringing this play to his stage. It took guts.
Even if Davidson did not always present
the most innovative works, however, he permanently changed the theater scene in
Los Angeles, lighting a fire under its dormant theatrical scene until we
finally see today a wide range of theatrical events that in variety and number
(there are literally hundreds of small amateur theaters throughout the
metropolitan area) seems richer, in some respects, than New York’s Off
Broadway. And now, also, with the Taper and Ahmanson on Bunker Hill, the Kirk
Douglas Theater in Culver City (also a result of Davidson’s vision), the Wallis
Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, the Broad Theatre in Santa Monica, and the Geffen
Playhouse, and the Pantages in Hollywood, Los Angeles might be said to contain
a kind of mini-Broadway scattered across its vast spaces.
Davidson, finally, was a natural
charmer. He always had a smile, at least at the many social events in which
Howard and I met him, and spoke, if often excitedly, gently, with a slightly
bemused attitude. He was, always, a friend, inviting you into his theatrical
vision. Los Angeles will truly miss him.
Los Angeles,
October 13, 2016
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