All right, I’m going to say it: The city of Los Angeles
has a horribly underrated theater scene.
Stop laughing.
Seriously.
I’m waiting.
OK. I know it’s L.A., and I know it’s got the whole
Hollywood thing going on. I know there are as many premieres in
Westwood in a week as there are Ben Stiller movies in a year (which
is a lot, if you think about it), and I know people follow the film
industry here more closely than people in Washington, D.C. follow
politics. Just look at our governor.
Still, Los Angeles theater is underrated. In fact, it may be
precisely because of the film industry’s influence that
theater is ignored the way it is around here. And strangely enough,
that it’s ignored is part of what makes L.A. theater so
appealing.
Look at it this way: In New York, Chicago, Seattle or any city
that prides itself on theater, theaters have to be big to
distinguish themselves and make money to support their size. The
duality results in strong productions of tried-and-tested plays and
cheap productions of new plays, unless a regional theater is
producing a new musical based on a movie to eventually take to
Broadway.
Theater in Los Angeles, on the other hand, has no such
expectations. The city is filled with tiny, 99-seat theaters that
aren’t afraid to produce new and interesting plays because,
after all, they only have to sell 99 seats a night.
“Jewtopia,” a comedy in which a gentile poses as a Jew
simply in order to date Jewish girls and a Jew poses as a gentile
for similar purposes, still plays to sold out crowds nightly more
than a year after its opening in the Coast Playhouse in West
Hollywood. Quirky play. Small theater. Big hit.
And tickets, at their most expensive, are only $30 each, a far
cry from more prestigious regional theaters across the country that
usually charge about twice that amount. Movies cost $10 in L.A.
now, and with everything else so expensive in the city, theater is
surprisingly cheap.
Even the largest theaters in L.A. can be affordable. The Center
Theatre Group, the downtown center that includes the Ahmanson
Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum, offers $12 public rush tickets to
certain dates of every play. Also, every play at the Mark Taper
Forum (and some at the Ahmanson Theatre) has a designated
pay-what-you-can performance, meaning if you plan correctly, you
can see the biggest that L.A. theater has to offer for whatever you
want. But there is a $1 minimum charge for a ticket.
And UCLA students get discounts on theater performances that
make up UCLA Live’s annual International Theater Festival.
Last year, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre came from London to
perform their production of “Twelfth Night.” UCLA
students could buy tickets for $20 each. To anyone else, the prices
were much higher.
The relationship between affordability and obscurity in L.A.
theater actually mirrors the famous what-came-first, chicken-egg
debate. Is theater here affordable because it’s so obscure?
That makes sense, since small productions can’t draw
audiences if they charge too much for tickets. Or is theater
obscure because it’s so affordable? That makes sense as well,
since high prices draw people’s attentions, especially in a
city where so many people have so much money available to
spend.
As Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof” would say, both
perspectives are right, and anyone who points out that they
can’t both be right is also right.
Ultimately, Tevye’s right. The point is that it’s
all true, and getting caught up in the details of how it works will
only confuse and distract you. Theater in Los Angeles is cheap,
plentiful, accessible and worth seeing, even if Ben Stiller
isn’t involved. Take advantage of it.
And stop laughing.
Tracer was last year’s film and television editor,
which, after writing this column, amuses him greatly. E-mail him at
jtracer@media.ucla.edu.