Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Midsize Matters | LA STAGE BLOG

Midsize Matters | LA STAGE BLOG:

All this activity on the middle tier of L.A. theater often goes unmentioned when people talk about L.A. stages. At an organized roundtable following Mike Daisey’s performance of How Theater Failed America last spring at the Kirk Douglas, a couple of panelists blithely cited the vacuum that supposedly exists between the highest-profile theaters (Center Theatre Group, Pasadena Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, and presumably the big musical theater companies) and the many sub-100-seaters at the bottom. Following the formal panel discussion, during the now-the-audience-also-gets-to-pontificate segment, I raised the question (I’m paraphrasing here), “So what are L.A.’s midsize theaters - chopped liver?”