‘We’re driving straight up the cliff’: Theater is back, but recovery proves perilous

Throughout the first long, agonizing year of the pandemic, leaders in the performing arts united around the hope of safely reopening and resuming live performances. “AB 5 is crippling the smaller theaters,” says Snehal Desai, producing artistic director of East West Players, adding that he had to hire an additional staffer just to handle bringing former contractors onto payroll. “I think what we’re seeing is our audiences are coming back, but they are being really selective, which makes it hard to stage riskier plays or challenging material — or to do new work or introduce new artists.” Even before the pandemic, a trend was emerging in L.A. in which the hits were getting bigger and attendance to everything else was sinking, says the Pasadena Playhouse’s Feldman. Demson, who is also the artistic director of Open Fist Theatre Company, which is in residence at the Atwater Village Theatre complex, says houses for the company’s most recent production of Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room: or the vibrator play” were about two-thirds full — a much lighter attendance than she expected. There’s no rhyme or reason.” “What we’re facing now is really thin audience numbers throughout the run,” says Wren T. Brown, producing artistic director and co-founder of Ebony Repertory Theatre, which runs out of the 400-seat Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Mid-City.