by Ethlie Ann Vare
Santa Monica, CA (The Hollywood Times) 6/3/24 – “Nobody in L.A. celebrates a 50th birthday,” joked co-host Sharon Lawrence as she welcomed a glittering crowd of theater folk at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center… to celebrate a 50th birthday. This one, though, was hard-won and proudly worn. Through live performances, radio shows, podcasts, and streaming — even cassettes and CDs at the local library — the non-profit LA Theatre Works has brought the best in theater to the world for five decades.
“I’ve loved them forever,” smiled my tablemate, KPFK’s Donna Walker. “I personally believe that arts and culture will save us. It is our common humanity.”
LATW started back in 1974 as a prison enrichment program and soon morphed into a repertory company when 50 TV and film actors wanted the play to be the thing. They created what co-founder and current Producing Director Susan Loewenberg calls “the most prestigious collection of theater audio that has ever existed” — 600 staged recordings of plays ranging from Henrik Ibsen to Katori Hall and featuring actors including Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ed Asner, Marsha Mason, John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Julie Harris, Richard Dreyfuss, Amy Irving… we could go on and on.
Video tributes from LATW actors and playwrights were sprinkled throughout the nicely staged evening (kudos to the Broad Stage, a terrific Westside event space), as well as in-person anecdotes from Ed Begley Jr, JoBeth Williams, Josh Stamberg and Larry Powell. Possibly the briefest and most modest speeches of all were from the evening’s two honorees: Marcy Carsey and Susan A. Loewenberg.
Marcy Carsey (she reminds people that her parents, the Petersons, didn’t do that to her; she married into a rhyme) was being awarded for her philanthropy and civic activism. But she deserves to be awarded for her body of work alone. In my mind, Carsey did everything Norman Lear did, but backwards and wearing heels — to steal a line from Ginger Rogers.
“She broke the glass ceiling before there was a glass ceiling,” said her producing partner Tom Werner. The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun, That ‘70s Show, Cybill… her resume could fill a THT special edition. The president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, flew out from Delaware to present the plaque, and the honoree was gracious and brief.
“I love small but mighty organizations,” Carsey said, explaining her longtime support of LATW.
The evening’s other honoree was the person who turned small into mighty, dropping out of grad school to start a scrappy prison program which now reaches 8 million listeners weekly.
“Susan can persuade just about anyone to do just about anything,” said Ed Begley Jr. introducing Susan A. Loewenberg, although apparently, they had to persuade her to accept this award. She has been at the helm of LATW for 50 years and this was her first one.
The evening closed with two proclamations from Mayor Karen Bass, paying tribute to both Carsey and Loewenberg. I love the sound of breaking glass ceilings.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/la-theatre-works/
