Lodestone Theatre Ensemble brings down the curtain

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Sometimes a theater can measure success by its misses as well as its hits.

For 10 years, Lodestone Theatre Ensemble has been L.A.’s ‘other’ Asian American company, providing a younger, edgier alternative to East West Players -- not to mention many of the mainstream stages in town.

This season will be Lodestone’s last, its founders having decided that, as they put it, ‘we’ve told all the stories we want to in this incarnation.’

Looking back, the ensemble seems almost as proud of some of its box-office bombs as it does its rave reviews.

‘An important part of Lodestone is that you can take a chance -- and fail,’ says co-artistic director Philip W. Chung, who notes that his company’s lean and nimble operating style has allowed it to absorb the costs -- artistic and financial -- of producing adventurous work.

Lodestone’s first play was Judy Soo Hoo’s ‘Texas,’ a wacky dark comedy about two brothers who share their trailer with a new boarder.

‘One of our big funders for that show was this group of older Korean business people,’ Chung recalls. ‘They loved ‘Texas.’ Our second show was my play, ‘laughter joy & loneliness & sex & sex & sex & sex.’ The title tells you pretty much what’s in the play. The businessmen were really offended. We lost their support. But we were OK with that. This is the kind of stuff we wanted to do.’

In 2001, Lodestone staged the premiere of Matt Pelfrey’s ‘Terminus Americana’ -- a piece so bleak its poster image was a crucifix made of guns -- even though the Sept. 11 attacks occurred during rehearsals.

‘We seriously debated canceling,’ Chung says, ‘but sometimes even when we knew a show would be hard to get an audience for we wanted to do it anyway.’ Hardly anyone showed up. ‘But we got some of our best reviews. We were proud of the work because it was relevant in so many ways.’

Read more about Lodestone Theatre Ensemble here and in Sunday’s Arts & Books section.

--Karen Wada