Culture Monster roundtable: Being in Hollywood isn't an advantage [VIDEO]

Panelists in the Culture Monster roundtable can tell you: Being in Hollywood isn't an advantage.

"I think there's a kind of a reaction that goes, 'aw, that's cute' -- as if it hadn't been an obsession of mine for 30 years in Los Angeles," Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins said of film colleagues' reaction to his work with his theater company the Actors' Gang.

While Los Angeles is home to a wealth of acting talent, Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie says, "for the most part they're out here to act in television and films because that's the major industry here."

Members of the panel, held Tuesday night in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School and moderated by Times theater critic Charles McNulty, agreed that it can be  tough for Los Angeles theaters to get a fair hearing in New York because of an East Coast-West Coast bias.

Los Angeles resident Marc Platt, producer of "Wicked," noted that his blockbuster Broadway hit was "completed nurtured in L.A."  "People sort of pooh-poohed it in New York, " he said, "because no one had heard of it...."

"The hurdle for us," Robbins said, "is to get the interest nationwide in a local piece that starts in L.A."

But while it's tough to make a living working on the stage, they stay with it.

"Things work on the stage that don't work on film," Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Beth Henley said. "I really love film. I've worked with only people that are really really lovely and gifted -- and also they give you money. You can't make a living in theater -- it's really really tough."

"All of our theaters," said Sheldon Epps, a Broadway director and artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, "not just us up here -- but Boston Court and Furious -- all of our theaters are full of people who working in the theater because they are passionate about the art of the theater. that's what they want to do."

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Video from the Culture Monster theater roundtable

Culture Monster roundtable contemplates state of L.A. theater

Is Los Angeles a 'theater town'?: A Culture Monster event

--Lisa Fung

twitter.com/lfung

Photo: Playwright Beth Henley speaks at the Culture Monster roundtable as Tim Robbins looks on. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

 

Culture Monster roundtable: The role of L.A. in the national theater scene [VIDEO]

Panelists in the Culture Monster round table came together Tuesday night at Zipper Hall in the Colburn School to discuss "The role of Los Angeles in the national theater scene."

Marc Platt, producer of the hit Broadway musical "Wicked," Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley, Actors' Gang co-founder and artistic director Tim Robbins, Pasadena Playhouse's Sheldon Epps and Michael Ritchie of Center Theatre Group looked at image problems facing Los Angeles theaters.

"L.A. is very much a 'company town', at least to the outside world, in terms of being the home of film and television," said Platt, who has also produced plays at the Odyssey and the Hudson theaters.

"New York sort of bolsters itself by still existing under the false belief that theater there is superior to theater in other parts of the country... especially when you look at the fact that a great deal of what winds up in New York -- successful or not -- is nurtured to get there by our theaters," said Epps, who staged this season's Broadway musical "Baby It's You." "It is the 'national theater movement,' which is resident theaters of all sizes all around the country, that creates for New York."

"The best we can do," Robbins said, "is keep plodding forward.

Charles McNulty, the Los Angeles Times theater critic, moderated the panel.

RELATED:

Culture Monster roundtable contemplates state of L.A. theater

Is Los Angeles a 'theater town'?: A Culture Monster event

--Lisa Fung

twitter.com/lfung

Photo: Sheldon Epps, left, discusses theater in Los Angeles as Michael Ritchie listens in. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times