Davidson: A Hard Act to Follow

Gordon Davidson was never sure how long his act would last in Los Angeles.

For the first two years he worked here in the mid-1960s, the 69-year-old theater producer and director confesses, he and his wife kept their New York apartment. And in 1967, when he slotted “The Devils” as the opening production in his first season leading the Mark Taper Forum, the theater company’s board was nervous enough about the story--it involves a priest, a nun and their sexual fantasies--to send board Chairman Lew Wasserman out to ask if Davidson would be willing to start with something less controversial.

Sorry, Davidson remembers telling Wasserman, it’s too late to change.

Amid complaints by church officials and county supervisors, the show went on, as have more than 200 Taper productions under Davidson’s leadership over the 35 years since then. Along the way, Davidson not only emerged as dean of a burgeoning regional theater scene, he won the West Coast a seat at the New York tables where serious theatrical conversations are held.

So Friday’s news that Davidson will give up his Taper and Ahmanson posts at the close of 2004 has theater people buzzing. And at the Taper and its downtown sibling the Ahmanson--both operated by the Center Theatre Group--the institutional soul-searching has just begun.

“He’ll be a tough act to follow,” said playwright Terrence McNally, who has had four productions staged at the Taper, most recently “Master Class” in 1994-95. “I can’t imagine theater in Los Angeles without him.”

Apart from the productions that won the Taper its greatest notice--shows like 1978’s “Zoot Suit,” 1979’s “Children of a Lesser God” and 1992’s “Angels in America”--Davidson brought to the theater a steady supply of works rich in social consciousness and high in plain entertainment value: Daniel Berrigan’s “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” (a 1971 world premiere), Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” (a world premiere in 1986-87); George C. Wolfe’s musical “Jelly’s Last Jam” (a world premiere in 1990-91); and Peter Parnell’s “QED,” a 2000-2001 world premiere.

Despite perennial rumors of his imminent departure, he outlasted five Los Angeles Times theater critics and sent more than 35 productions on to Broadway.

Since 1989, Davidson has also run the larger Ahmanson Theater. That stage, which seats audiences of up to 2,100, generally serves as a presenter of road shows born elsewhere, but occasionally presents world premieres or Broadway tryouts, such as this year’s reworking of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Into the Woods.”

“I think of him as the father of Los Angeles theater--although he has always seemed to me a young guy,” said Dan Sullivan, the Los Angeles Times theater critic from 1969 to 1989. “I thought that he was such a charming fellow that I could only afford to talk to him about once a year. We had a breakfast meeting once a year.”

But between breakfasts, Sullivan said, Davidson gave him and L.A. audiences a nourishing, provocative diet of theater that sought to address “all those worlds that comprise L.A. When I went to the Taper, I didn’t always have a good time, but I always knew that the show was there because Gordon thought it was interesting.”

Still, not everyone in theater circles is grieving over Davidson’s departure plans. Some critics have long complained that Davidson hasn’t given local talent its due and has worried more about exporting shows to Broadway than building a theater community at home. Seasoned theatergoers, meanwhile, trade tales of the times they’ve spied the silver-haired impresario nodding off in the audience of one show or another.

But few producers anywhere can rival the list of projects he has encouraged and productions he has nurtured. Davidson has staged premieres of works by playwrights Athol Fugard, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Jose Rivera, Anna Deavere Smith, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson. Together, Davidson’s productions have earned 18 Tony Awards and three Pulitzers.

“I thought Gordon would be there forever,” said playwright Neil Simon, who has twice been produced at the Taper, beginning with 1979’s world premiere, “I Ought to Be in Pictures.” “He has done an unbelievable job, to fill those two theaters constantly, and mostly with good things.” By the time Davidson took over the Taper in 1967, a national surge in regional theater had already begun. Most of its pioneers, including the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis (founded in 1963) and the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa (founded in 1964), focused on classical repertory, relying on ongoing troupes of actors.

Davidson, operating in the long shadow of the film and television industries, knew he couldn’t get that kind of time commitment from the top actors in Los Angeles. Instead of cultivating a troupe, he focused on performing new works. The first Taper season, in fact, included two world premieres and two West Coast premieres.

“I remember seeing that first production of ‘The Devils,’ and admiring the boldness of the choice,” said David Emmes, producing artistic director of the South Coast Repertory and one of the few theater professionals in the nation with more tenure than Davidson.

Emmes, 63, and SCR artistic director Martin Benson, 65, who started SCR in 1964, in November will open a third stage, giving the institution a 507-seat mainspace, a 336-seat second stage and a 95-seat studio space. Davidson, Emmes added, has “always been one who has thought deeply about theater and its responsibility to challenge and provoke.”

Although more than a few Hollywood names have found their way onto the Taper stage, sometimes in less-than-revolutionary productions, this emphasis on new work endured over time, and Davidson’s eagerness to enter the political fray became increasingly clear. Davidson himself staged two especially politically charged productions--”In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” in 1968 and “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” in 1971. And seven years later, Luis Valdez’s “Zoot Suit,” the first Taper production to address specifically Latino concerns, became an enormous hit in Los Angeles, though it later bombed on Broadway.

Two Davidson-staged Taper premieres of the ‘70s went on to Broadway success. Davidson won the Tony Award for directing Michael Cristofer’s “The Shadow Box,” a play about cancer patients in a hospice. It premiered at the Taper in 1975 and also received the Pulitzer Prize. In 1979, Davidson directed Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God,” the Broadway version of which won a Tony Award for best play. Set at a school for the deaf, “Children” was later turned into a Hollywood movie, but much to his disappointment, Davidson was not chosen to direct it. (In fact, Davidson’s lone effort as a film director is a seldom-seen 1972 screen version of “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.”)

In 1981, Davidson launched a modest springtime classical repertory company at the Taper. For seven seasons, two plays were presented in repertory each spring at either the Taper itself or the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood. After this expensive effort was discontinued because of financial cutbacks, Davidson still tried to keep the classical torch burning with occasional productions, with Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean company at the Taper in 1989 as well as Shakespeare productions staged by Sir Peter Hall at the Ahmanson Theatre, most recently, “Romeo and Juliet” in 2001.

Davidson took over the artistic control of the Ahmanson shortly after longtime producer Robert Fryer retired. From 1989 to 1993, the Ahmanson seasons were presented at the Doolittle Theatre, while “The Phantom of the Opera” occupied the Ahmanson. Following the 1993 closing of “Phantom,” Davidson spearheaded a $17-million renovation of the Ahmanson. Notable programming since then has included the theatrical dance productions of British choreographer Matthew Bourne.

In the early ‘90s, “The Kentucky Cycle” epic received its second production at the Taper and then became the first play to win the Pulitzer Prize without a New York staging. “Angels in America” received its first full staging at the Taper and then its first half, “Millennium Approaches,” won the Pulitzer. “Twilight Los Angeles: 1992” reflected on the L.A. riots and, after moving to Broadway, became the third Taper production to be among the four nominees for the best play Tony in 1994.

Oskar Eustis, who directed the Taper’s 1992 world premiere production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches,” said that show was a quintessential example of Davidson’s ambitions as a producer: a piece of epic storytelling, undertaken by a new writer, exploring American subject matter, intertwining personal and political themes. Eustis served as associate artistic director under Davidson in the late 1980s and early 1990s and now is artistic director at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I.

In recent years, the Taper has continued to develop many new plays, but the play development staff--much of it structured around ethnic- or disabled-specific labs--has grown restless because of the lack of opportunities to present mainstage productions. Davidson’s final big project--an $11-million conversion of a 1947 Culver City movie house into a 325-seat Kirk Douglas Theater by the end of 2004--is intended as a solution to that frustration.

Meanwhile, Davidson’s corner office overlooking Grand Avenue remains very much occupied. The walls are festooned with memorabilia for scores of shows and artworks from his son and daughter, now grown. In one corner lies a Brooklyn Dodgers cap; nearby, a hard hat from the mid-’90s renovation of the Ahmanson Theatre. Atop his computer monitor sits another hard hat, from the theater yet to be named in Culver City.

As for CTG, “everyone is looking forward to rethinking what CTG will look like,” said board President Richard Kagan. The leadership, he said, “could be two artistic directors and one CEO; one artistic director and one executive. The Taper needs an artistic director. The Ahmanson is more of a commercial theater. How much can you do creatively in a theater of that size? Maybe you need a businessperson to run the Ahmanson. At the Douglas, a big component will be children’s theater. Maybe we need an educator there.”

It’ll probably be 2004, Kagan said, before the search is narrowed to finalists.

“When an icon leaves a theater, the transition is always difficult. And other theaters have had problems replacing founder-leaders,” said Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse since 1997. “What he’s designed, with this long farewell, is a way to make a smooth and comfortable transition.”

The job of running the Taper and Ahmanson, Epps said, is both a huge responsibility and a bully pulpit that is likely to attract candidates of high caliber and ambition.

Asked if he would be interested in the job, Epps said only, “I’m always interested in new challenges.”

The Trinity Rep’s Eustis also sounded a cautionary note about the board members’ search for a successor. “I really hope they’re taking that job very seriously,” he said. “It’s very tricky to find someone who combines his artistic integrity with his common touch. The one thing the [CTG] board has never done is hire an artistic director. Nobody has the least bit of practice at it.”