‘Genius’ Label Doesn’t Get You Produced

When two playwrights affiliated with Los Angeles won MacArthur Fellowships--the so-called “genius” grants--last week, many local theatergoers probably asked “Who?”

Although the works of Luis Alfaro and Han Ong have often been set in L.A., they have hardly ever been produced here.

Both of the MacArthur winners have presented monologues at Highways in Santa Monica. Ong’s adaptation of “Woyzeck” was produced by the Actors’ Gang in 1992. One of Alfaro’s monologues was part of a triple bill in 1991 at Los Angeles Theatre Center--the only full production for either one of them at an L.A. theater that’s mid-sized or larger.

But their original plays that go beyond the monologue format have been seen here only by a relatively few devotees of staged readings and workshops--the people who attend the Mark Taper Forum’s New Work Festival or the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theater Projects works-in-progress.

Alfaro and Ong have both worked at the Mark Taper Forum. Alfaro co-directs the Taper’s Latino Theatre Initiative with Diane Rodriguez and has performed excerpts from his monologues in one-night-only events on the Taper mainstage.

Ong said last week that he was “a grunt” at the Taper from 1989 until he was laid off in 1991. In 1994, he moved to New York, where--just last Monday--he received his final notice to pay his phone bill or else. He said he wouldn’t quit his new job--transcribing tapes of such talk shows as “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Geraldo Rivera”--because the MacArthur’s $200,000 over five years wouldn’t begin to arrive for several weeks.

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So why haven’t Alfaro’s and Ong’s plays been produced at the Taper or anywhere else in L.A.?

“It’s a case of despising your own,” Ong said. “Everyone’s looking for the imprimatur of New York.” Ong’s work has received New York and London productions, but apparently the “imprimatur” is still missing. “I concede I don’t write plays that are necessarily producible on the [Taper] mainstage,” Ong said. “I’m not sure I could make their money back for them. I try to look at it from a pragmatic point of view and turn a blind eye to the politicking.”

Alfaro’s “Bitter Homes and Gardens” has been staged in Chicago and Phoenix, and he hopes his “Straight as a Line” may soon receive a production at a sub-100-seat theater here. After saying he would be “diplomatic,” he said he was “grateful for the development” his plays received in Taper programs. “I’m creating for the American stage,” he said. “Whether they get done here or not isn’t important.” He might even prefer a production at South Coast Repertory, which has commissioned a play from him, because it would avoid any questions of favoritism for a Taper staffer.

However, apart from his own plays, Alfaro said he’s “very disappointed” that no Latino Theatre Initiative play made the next Taper season. “Hopefully [the MacArthur] will encourage them to look homeward and inward for the talent. I have a lot of faith in [Taper artistic director] Gordon Davidson. I trust his vision, and I hope he’ll trust our vision.”

Davidson said that his hoped-for acquisition of a mid-sized space in Culver City would make it easier to produce plays like Alfaro’s and Ong’s. He “adores” Alfaro, he said, calling him “a popular producer/director whose appeal is potentially quite broad-based.” Ong is “an original whose work is very special” but “tends to require a more intimate venue,” Davidson said. “A relationship with an artist isn’t necessarily based on the number of times their work is performed in each venue. . . . You do them where and when you can.”

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THE FOURTH ARMENIAN?: Another cast member of the Mark Taper Forum’s “Nine Armenians” has announced Armenian roots, in addition to the two actors and one musician who were mentioned by Taper casting director Stanley Soble in last week’s Theater Notes. Cast member Zak Gavin, 11, told a meeting of Armenian community leaders that he, too, is Armenian. It turns out that one of his four grandparents is of Russian Armenian descent, while the others are of Iranian descent. The boy’s real last name is Ghanavatian, not Gavin. That may sound Armenian, but it’s from the Iranian side of his heritage.