The NY Times on LA Theater

The NY Times has an article on Michael Ritchie and CTG. It's a great piece that is appropriately critical and really clearly asks the right questions.

Rob Kendt, who was one of the best theater reviewers in LA (he recently moved to NY), has a wonderful and succinct response. He basically says, it's about time and why does it take someone from New York to do this?

And I think he's right, as is Margo Jefferson of the NY Times. Why hasn't there been more local coverage and why hasn't it been critical? Where are the responses from those fired? Jefferson draws a lot of attention to the fact that white people are only 30% of LA's population, so why are all of the playwrights white men? And she does indeed mention the fact that they are MEN. Not a single female playwright is represented on Ritchie's inaguaral season (although there is one female lyricist) and all of the women and people of color are ghettoized into a solo performance art festival. Jefferson's article has some good quotes from Brian Freeman and I absolutely love Chay Yew's comment that "Is the theater still doing an effective job of reflecting and representing the world we live in, or is it merely reflecting a select few? If so, we deserve the dwindling, aging audiences." Harsh, but brilliant. I bet all of these people have a lot of great, interesting things to say about this; they are playwrights after all.

So thanks to the NY Times for dealing with this, and doing it quite well. Keep holding Ritchie to the standards of Gordon Davidson and Joseph Papp; he's bound to come up short.