I was half-way through writing my second review of a play at the Theatricum Botanicum this season when it dawned on me that it wasn’t, in almost any sense of the word, a “small theatre”. When we first started discussing this site, much time was spent on what we would include, now and down the road. Would we accept invitations to review plays at the Mark Taper Forum? The Ahmanson?
As much as I would like free tickets to some of the bigger venues in town (can you believe I still haven’t seen Spamalot? Hell, I still haven’t seen Wicked!) that would, I think, be entirely besides the point. The inspiration for LATR was the shrinking amount of press for small theatre in Los Angeles and news media still find space for the larger venues. Getting a free ticket to see Mary Poppins (or Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Theatricum, for that matter) would not be in keeping with a mission to support small theatre.
I don’t think reviewing plays at, or writing articles about, the Music Center or the Pantages or, yes, even the Theatricum Botanicum, would necessarily hurt our magazine, but I do think it would dilute it. By keeping focus on the 99 and under seat houses, we are putting energy into that community in Los Angeles that has the passion, the talent, the desire, if not always the means, to take artistic risks and create new and meaningful work. And, perhaps, even old and silly work.
It will be a great pleasure for us when we have enough good writers (we’re working on it) to be able to review every play that opens in an Equity Waiver house in the Los Angeles area, and to review them within a week of their opening. When he have done that, we will feel like we have truly accomplished something worth while. Once we have accomplished that milestone, we may revisit covering the larger venues as a natural expansion of our original goals. Until then, we will put our energies into small theatre in Los Angeles.
On a completely different note, this month’s main feature is by our theatre book reviewer, Robin Galen Kilrain, who shares with us her love of theatre books with a (rather impressive) summer reading list.
