Calendar Feedback: Readers react to Center Theatre Group’s programming pause

Dark days for Center Theatre Group As a longtime supporter of the Center Theatre Group, I was distressed to learn of their current problems, but not surprised. Pausing the services that defined us — even in the face of extraordinary circumstances — would have been comparable in my mind to the L.A. Times pausing publication “for the foreseeable future.” I’ve got to believe that Taper management has a detailed plan to keep showing us that the theater is alive, present and producing dramatic art in our civic culture. Earl C. Adams Granada Hills :: I’m absolutely gutted to hear that Center Theatre Group will be pausing programming at the Mark Taper Forum as they try to navigate the treacherous path ahead through the wake of COVID-19, the always looming audience cliff, the ever-increasing and outrageous cost of producing even the most basic of plays onstage, a long-diminishing culture of donor and subscriber support across all regional theaters, and a general devalued sense of this most special of art forms. Organizations like Center Theatre Group were only possible because of government support and a shared belief across our country that theater was an intrinsic and vital ingredient in the cultural lifeblood of a city. My own reason for leaving the theater industry — I had previously worked as Center Theatre Group’s director of communications — was due, in part, to the realization that extremely turbulent times were ahead, and that the entire industry was near broken, financially, and otherwise.