Dim days for Heart Theatre Group
As a longtime supporter of the Middle Theatre Group, I was distressed to learn of their present-day problems [“Center Theatre Group cuts 10% of staff,” June 18], but not amazed.
Jessica Gelt’s fantastic write-up covers the theater world’s difficulties in excellent depth. Unfortunately also numerous theaters have abandoned the classes realized in the course of the pandemic. Wearing masks indoors helps prevent COVID from spreading, and requiring them makes theater audiences feel safer.
Keep the audiences risk-free and they will return.
Steve Purvis
Santa Monica
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Whilst Gelt’s write-up clearly depicted the present article-pandemic L.A. theater state, as a longtime member of A Sound Within’s board of administrators I would have appreciated to have viewed them outlined in the article and, in normal for The Moments to acknowledge A Noise Within just as aspect of the L.A. theater ecosystem.
As with the other theaters outlined, COVID and put up-COVID occasions have been hard to A Noise Within as effectively.
Whilst price tag savings has been a focus, fundraising has carried out extremely perfectly regardless of the submit-pandemic drop-off in ticket gross sales/subscriptions.
As a midsize theater in L.A., just want to make sure our voice is heard.
Robert Israel
Pasadena
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As a loyal subscriber to the Mark Taper for extra than 20 years, I did not resubscribe to the present-day year as a protest in opposition to the Taper’s advantage-signaling selection to restrict performs it would phase to all those penned by women of all ages or gay or bisexual playwrights or whichever other politically well-known subgroup ticked the range/equity/inclusion boxes. Even performs by August Wilson would not be contenders.
I wrote to the Taper that as a longtime subscriber I wished plays picked by advantage of excellence, not politics. Nobody responded to my letter.
The decline of the Taper (ideally only short term) is a wonderful decline to theater in Los Angeles. But it was a self-inflicted reduction.
Janet Weaver
Huntington Seashore
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I’ve been a theatergoer my total adult existence beginning when my mother and father took me to UCLA to delight in scholar performances in the campus’ 99-seat theater. Afterwards, I would come to be a period ticket holder at the Extended Seaside Playhouse and the Mark Taper while sometimes catching plays at the Schubert, Pasadena Playhouse and more compact venues in Hollywood and Sierra Madre.
The last theater I patronized consistently was the Candlelight Pavillion Evening meal Theater for both of those its pleasant musical theater and summer season midweek tribute bands.
It shut past calendar year and now I certainly have a hole in my lifetime that I have not been in a position to fill.
Ron Garber
Duarte
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What techniques does management system on employing to head rapidly and properly towards a retooling and restart of the business? What business enterprise survival issues were built by the board of administrators and administration that resulted in this most risky of conclusions? What will individuals who continue being on team in fact be carrying out through the pause? How will the Taper maintain subscriber and group visibility so loyalists in its audiences return to their seats?
I retired in 2021 immediately after 30 a long time of setting up and top a massive, quite effective and enduring nonprofit corporation. Pausing the companies that defined us — even in the deal with of extraordinary conditions — would have been equivalent in my intellect to the L.A. Situations pausing publication “for the foreseeable upcoming.”
I have received to believe that Taper management has a in depth system to keep exhibiting us that the theater is alive, current and creating spectacular artwork in our civic society. What is the program?
Paul Vandeventer
Los Angeles
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As a prolonged-time period subscriber to the Heart Theatre Group as very well as the Geffen, I believe this posting, while significant and normally superb, skipped a vital issue: The Centre Theatre Team has extended had a dysfunctional society that treats patrons in a transactional mode, even though the Geffen has been romantic relationship-oriented because its founding.
From personalized expertise, as properly as horror stories from close friends who as soon as were being really major contributors to the CTG, the administration has undermined its partnership with at least some patrons by a cavalier attitude that bordered on vanity.
Sadly, this dysfunctional society has now culminated in harm to its productions, artists, and staff members. A fantastic corporate culture is an asset. A dysfunctional culture is a accurate legal responsibility.
Eric Flamholtz
Los Angeles
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Immediately after the social deprivation of lockdowns, and the societal fractures made worse by the reality that we have less encounters with strangers in our each day residing, the restoration of dwell theater feels like a crucial will need.
Emily Faxon
San Francisco
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As a former subscriber to the Ahmanson Theater as of last calendar year, I am not astonished to see the challenges that are coming out of the choices getting produced by leisure corporations.
They are now dictating to the community what they should really want and who they need to see perform. This is not the way to preserve or attract an viewers. You incorporate the spiraling expense of attendance, the website traffic, gas, parking, and so on. Then you see this narcissistic strategy to the art, right here is the result.
Old-line producers understood that you had to give audiences what they wanted, you could possibly preach together the way, but you gave the audience what it came for.
Earl C. Adams
Granada Hills
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I’m certainly gutted to hear that Heart Theatre Team will be pausing programming at the Mark Taper Forum as they try to navigate the treacherous path forward via the wake of COVID-19, the usually looming audience cliff, the ever-raising and outrageous price of developing even the most simple of plays onstage, a extended-diminishing tradition of donor and subscriber aid across all regional theaters, and a normal devalued sense of this most special of art kinds.
This isn’t an isolated incident in Los Angeles. Theaters across the region are hemorrhaging all amounts of lifelines, from audiences to grants and anything in amongst. Businesses like Centre Theatre Group ended up only doable since of govt support and a shared belief across our nation that theater was an intrinsic and very important ingredient in the cultural lifeblood of a city. My own reason for leaving the theater industry — I experienced previously labored as Centre Theatre Group’s director of communications — was owing, in aspect, to the realization that extremely turbulent times have been in advance, and that the entire business was around damaged, economically, and in any other case.
I’m rooting for Center Theatre Group and for all the other regional theaters that are likely weeks if not months absent from earning related bulletins. A cultural pandemic is upon us, and there is no miracle vaccine ready in the wings. Buckle up and present up. It’s theater’s only hope.
James Sims
Middletown, Conn.
A pan of ‘The Flash’
Why do you carry on to let Justin Chang evaluation superhero videos as if they are intended to be just about anything other than summer time leisure [“‘The Flash’ is stuck in the past,” June 16] ?
It’s like a Pulitzer Prize-successful writer hoping to compose a crucial overview of a third-grader’s ebook report. All of the other 3rd-graders like and comprehend the topic matter, which is seriously all that matters, isn’t it?
One thing is for specified, if Chang doesn’t like a superhero movie, then I most certainly will.
Chris Wrenn
Carlsbad
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You refer to Ezra Miller as “their” in “The Flash” overview, and in an article about him the other working day, as “they.”
This is extremely baffling. If Ezra desires to be regarded as a “they” shouldn’t you stage it out in the article, as a substitute of making us scratch our heads thinking who else you’re speaking about?
Jefferson Graham
Manhattan Seashore
Joni Mitchell, grasp songwriter
Regarding “‘Joni Jam’ for the ages at the Gorge” [June 12]: Joni Mitchell is a the moment-in-a-civilization expertise.
“Both Sides Now” tops my checklist of the greatest lyrics ever created. And the underappreciated “Cactus Tree” isn’t much behind.
John Whiteman
San Diego
Inspiring awards show
With regards to “Tonys discover meaning off script” [June 13]: Writing holds a mirror up to our minds. The remarkable arts carry that mirror onto modern society to provide a reflection of who we are and who we may well come to be. From Oedipus Rex and Jocasta to Hamlet and Gertrude to Willy and Linda Loman to Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois, we learn from the imaginations of writers and from the courage of performers who embody individuals characters and their conflicts, as perfectly as the administrators who lend aesthetic direction to them in their artistic process.
Indeed, this year’s Tony Awards accumulating was an inspiration to all.
Ben Miles
Huntington Beach front
