Ending art welfare

“The Reviews Are Already Coming In” offered five playwrights and their perspectives regarding Michael Ritchie’s decision to alter or eliminate a playwriting lab at his theater. It’s his prerogative, and obviously what he feels is the best direction for the health of that great theater.

Before this, no one observed noblesse oblige more generously over all the years of his service at the Center Theatre Group than Gordon Davidson. He too obviously believed in his own plan and actions, which were generosity itself to a great number of L.A. actors, directors and writers, et al. Now, Mr. Ritchie has been handed the responsibility of moving that organization forward in the 21st century. He has obviously chosen a course predicated on financial realities.

To those at the epicenter affected by his decision to discontinue the playwrights’ lab, it seems a dire course of action. They can only feel that they have had the spigot turned off, the teat torn from the gums of their sense of entitlement. It’s a trauma for the entrenched and the usual suspects should be making their appearance any time now. The not-so-disenfranchised, in concert with the combined forces of the multicultural storm troopers, politically correct Savonarolas and ever-present diversity crowd, suddenly realize that Daddy’s home, and he’s as serious as a toothache

Perhaps now some of those writers will repair to some solitary room to formulate ideas that they truly feel and believe, absent of the group validation they obviously think they must secure in order to create. It’s time that the arts’ welfare salt lick be stricken from the scene of this particular play, and may Mr. Ritchie thrive in his new responsibilities to L.A. theater life.

Al Alu

Los Angeles