Tonys Cheer Taper, What’s It Mean? : Awards: The theater earns praise as ‘an essential part of the development of new American work’ for co-producing three of the four best play nominees.

Gordon Davidson was crowing.

“We’re the most active and productive theater in the area of new and challenging work in the United States,” claimed the artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum. “Somebody else can add ‘the world.’ ”

The most recent evidence in support of his boast: The Taper co-produced three of the four nominees for one of Broadway’s top awards, the Tony Award for best play.

In Tony records dating back to 1956, which is when producers were first listed with the nominations, never before has a single theater company been affiliated with three of the four nominees in a production category, according to a Tony spokesman. The only Tony precedent that might be considered as impressive was in 1977, when the New York Shakespeare Festival was affiliated with two of the best play nominees and two of the best revival nominees.

The Taper’s responsibility for this year’s nominees differed from play to play, and the productions seen in New York were not the same that appeared in Los Angeles:

* “The Kentucky Cycle.” The Taper helped develop the play in its New Work Festival. But Davidson didn’t decide to present a full production in Los Angeles until after he saw the world premiere at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle. The Intiman production was largely imported to Los Angeles, where the play attracted enough attention to win the Pulitzer Prize for Van Nuys-based playwright Robert Schenkkan. The Taper and the Intiman were among the co-producers on Broadway, for which Schenkkan somewhat rewrote the second half of the “Cycle.”

* “Angels in America: Perestroika.” Although the now defunct Eureka Theatre in San Francisco commissioned Tony Kushner’s two-part “Angels in America” and officially presented its world premiere, the Eureka premiere of the second half, “Perestroika,” was an incomplete staged reading. The Taper presented the first fully staged production of “Perestroika” in 1992, then was one of several co-producers of the Broadway production. “Perestroika” was somewhat rewritten between the Los Angeles and Broadway stagings.

* “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.” The Taper commissioned Anna Deavere Smith to create this work, based on the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and presented the world premiere last year. It was substantially re-edited before going to Broadway, where the Taper is among the co-producers.

South Coast Repertory producing artistic director David Emmes said the nominations were a “tremendous credit” not only to the Taper but also to “West Coast theater” and “the tremendous amount of new play activity that’s taking place out here.”

The Taper is “among the primary institutions” where playwrights want to take new work and has been since “Zoot Suit” in 1977, said critic Robert Brustein, who is also the artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. He said the Taper shares that honor with such theaters as the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Goodman in Chicago and Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Playwrights “go where their work will be produced well. But David Mamet isn’t going to send his work to the Taper,” Brustein added. Mamet severed ties with the Taper after a casting dispute in the Taper’s planned production of his “Oleanna.”

The Taper is “certainly an essential part of the development of new American work,” said Peter Zeisler, the longtime executive director of Theatre Communications Group, the organization that serves as an advocate and service group for nonprofit theaters. “I don’t know that many theaters could have given Anna Deavere Smith the resources the Taper did.”

But he criticized the Tonys for “restrictive procedures” that limit nominations only to shows on Broadway. In response to such criticism years ago, an annual regional theater Tony Award was created. The Taper was the second theater to win the award, in 1977. Other Southern California theaters that have won the award are the Old Globe, South Coast and La Jolla Playhouse. This year’s winner is the McCarter Theatre of Princeton, N.J.--where “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” was briefly presented in between Los Angeles and Broadway.

Brustein also discounted the importance of the Tonys: “You don’t have to be validated by New York. New York is collapsing.” The primary question should be whether any theater’s shows are of importance to its own city, he said.

Probably the Taper’s most consistently acerbic critic, director Charles Marowitz, hasn’t changed his tune in the light of Monday’s announcement. While conceding full credit to the Taper for “Twilight,” he said the “real risks” on the other plays were taken elsewhere, in keeping with what he called the Taper’s “timidity.”