How Theatre Can Change Your Life: Susan Albert Loewenberg at TEDxCulverCity

[Music]

Thank you so much. Um, I have to confess

to you something.

Um, I am hopelessly in love with the

literature of the theater. And the great

thing about it is that it has actually

been my constant companion uh over a

30-year period. And I've been with the

same company all this time. I guess I'm

one of those people that doesn't really

like to change in a way, but I love

change. And so I have been able to take

this wonderful wonderful thing the

theater and um it has changed my life so

many times and changed the direction of

what I do and what I think and what my

challenges are and I am in incredibly

grateful to the theater and to plays and

playwrights. Writing plays is very

difficult. David Mamemoth said something

very interesting once. He said, "When

you come into the theater, you have to

be willing to say that you're coming in

to undergo a communion.

If you're not willing to do that,

what you get is entertainment,

not art, and poor entertainment

at that.

And uh that's been something that I've

thought a lot about. Um I started off as

an actor. I was actually a professional

actor, a child actor. And um uh but when

I got into my 20s, I kind of realized

that I love the theater, but this wasn't

for me. I actually sort of went off to

graduate school and studied history and

thought I was going to become a

historian. And then I got pulled back

into the theater by a chance remark

somebody uh made to me at a party

talking about the theater. And wouldn't

it be interesting to try to make theater

in an unusual environment, perhaps in

prisons or jails? So, I found myself six

months pregnant,

working at the county jail with a couple

of colleagues doing theater games and

improvisation and working with inmates

to create plays.

And what I found was that it was so

interesting and involving and actually

at that time more interesting than

anything that I was seeing in the

theater. I also remember how gallant uh

they were all male inmates the um male

and reverential they were because I was

six months pregnant. It made a huge

impression on me actually. Um and that

kind of morphed into an informal and

then a formal organization which I

somehow found myself running. Uh we were

a group of theater artists. Some of us

were set designers, costume designers,

uh production designers, there was a a

writer, there were a couple of actors.

We called ourselves artists in prison

and we started working in prisons. Uh we

worked at the uh state level at the

California Institution for Women and

then the California Institution for Men

and we then started in at the federal

level at Terminal Island. And I I I

always remember the awful

appropriateness of that word terminal

island um for a prison. And we uh we we

used the sort of theater games uh

improvisation technique to create

original plays with the inmates.

And on those long drives, we used to

kind of plan and scheme and think like

what's our next project? What's the next

thing we're going to do? And I remember

once we were um we were on this drive

and we had an actress with us that we'd

hired. Her name was Miltcha Sanchez

Scott. and she started telling us about

her experiences working with um an

employment agency that hired women who

were Latinas uh as housekeepers. They

were mostly illegal and uh this was an

employment agency that placed them. And

then she sort of shyly revealed that

she'd written an outline of a play. And

I remember there were about six of us in

the car, one set designer, one director,

one actor, uh one uh one one writer, and

simultaneously all we all screamed,

where is it? We've got to see this. And

uh that's how Milta became a playwright.

And we became a producer of a play

called Latina, which ran in Los Angeles.

It was our first venture in the sort of

professional theater in Los Angeles. Um,

and being a producer is kind of like

being a doctor when you got a play

running, like being a doctor on call all

the time. And I remember once when

Latina was running, uh, about two months

into the run, about 7 o'clock at night,

I got a call from the stage manager and

she said, "Ex is not here.

She's been arrested. She's in county

jail for growing marijuana on her

balcony.

And I thought, "Oh, okay. Um,

okay, okay, okay." And then I said, "Um,

okay. I'm going to find a bail bondsman.

I'm going to go down to county jail. I'm

going to get her out. You go buy some

wine. Don't spend too much money. And

some cheese. And let's try to buy 45

minutes with our audience." and keep,

you know, keep them happy. So, I raced

down to the county jail. I did get her

bailed out and I brought her back. She

was pretty hysterical and I I kind of

tried to keep her calm with original

quotes like um the show must go on. Uh

anyway, we we threw her costume on and

um and uh and the show went on and um

and then uh we um we finished out a

successful run and um other things

happened along the way. I remember um we

uh we then started to get other ideas

about things we could do in the

community and we started doing plays in

the community. Um, and so the name

artist in prison didn't really feel

right anymore. And I we thought, well,

what's a great name that we can sort of

not lose artists in prison? So we came

up with artists in prison and other

places.

Now that's a brand for you. Uh, and uh,

and but we did actually do some pretty

interesting stuff. I remember we worked

with a group of Japanese men and we

created a play with them. We did a play

with um older and younger women ages 20

to 80. And we did a play called Not as a

Sleepwalker. And it actually came out of

a remark. One of the 80-year-olds said

to one of the 20-year-olds, "Whatever

you do, don't go through life as a

sleepwalker."

So we began doing that and it was a very

interesting way of exploring theater and

making theater with people in ordinary

people in the community. I remember we

made a film about um our experience

putting together a play at Terminal

Island called Jump Street. And uh at

that point we had somehow persuaded the

prison authorities that it would be a

great idea to furlow people because TI

was a minimum security institution. It

was also co-ed which is a whole other

interesting story. But um we convinced

them that they should furlow the

inmates. um they could come back to the

prison every night and but they would

actually perform for the community at

large. We did it at the John Anson Ford

Theater which is right across from the

Hollywood Bowl. So every night the idea

was the inmates would go out they would

perform and just like Cinderella

returning from the ball they'd come home

uh about two days before this huge

effort which took us four or five months

to put together this original show with

inmates.

The prison was put into lockdown.

Now, none of our guys and women were

involved in the actual incident that

provoked the lockdown. Lockdown means

everybody goes back to their cell and

nobody moves and nothing happens. Well,

you know, when you work in the theater,

the magic of the theater is that

everything is possible. That's the

magic. In prison, it's nothing is

possible. And that's the challenge. It's

also it's also what makes working in

that environment wonderful and

incredibly rewarding.

So, here we were with all this effort

and everybody's locked down. There are

no exceptions. And I thought to myself,

oh my god, what am I going to do?

And I I think my mind started clicking

and I thought

prison,

federal,

Congress, Senator, Senator Tunny. How am

I going to get to Senator Tunny? He was

a liberal Democrat. He was our senator.

Somehow I got to Tunny. He made a phone

call and the prison authorities decided

to let those inmates

uh

perform and they were allowed to leave

lockdown and we performed.

Um

after that period of time, we began to

think about really working in the

professional theater with playrs and and

the next phase of uh LA theater of what

became LA theater works was working in

the professional theater developing

plays with playwrights, foreign um a lot

of foreign playwrights and a lot of new

American playrs. And so we changed our

name from artists in prison in other

places uh to LA theater works and we

started working with plays and and

playwrights. And um I heard about this

very interesting fellow named Steven

Burkoff

and he was a a quite an interesting

avonggard artist in England and I uh got

in touch with him and read one of his

plays. I thought he was fantastic and I

brought him to the United States and

that began a very long association with

probably one of the most interesting and

original uh people working in the

theater during that time in the uh early

80s. And um I remember uh we had a huge

hit with with one of his plays called

Greek and we won all kinds of awards in

Los Angeles and I thought, "Oh, this is

great. I'm going to take Steven Burke

off to New York." And so we we raised

the money and we t tried to bring it to

New York. We produced the play in New

York and of course we got killed by the

critics. I'll never forget it. It was an

it was a crushing defeat and we kind of

came home and felt absolutely terrible

about the whole experience. But it was

one of those things that on reflection I

think it was my first what I would

consider my first big failure. And um I

probably learned more from that failure

and how you handle failure and risk than

uh probably anything else that I've ever

done. And somebody came to me and said

there are a group of actors in Los

Angeles who uh love the theater. They're

famous because of film and television.

They're here, but they really don't want

to travel around the country to work in

regional theaters to satisfy their urge

to do theater.

And it didn't interest me much because

my emphasis at that point was on plays

and new plays, new writing, interesting

work. Um, and and the idea of celebrity

didn't didn't interest me at all. But

somehow uh like a lot of good things

that have happened, I um I did allow

myself ultimately to be persuaded and uh

we assembled a group of 34 superb

actors. I mean people like John Lithco

and Edner and Marshia Mason, Julie

Harris, Helen Hunt, Hector Alzando,

Stacy Keat, Richard Drifus. It was quite

a group. And we had this dream that we

were going to form a theater company in

Los Angeles unlike any other that

brought in worldclass directors to

direct this illustrious group of 34

people. And um create a new equity

theater in Los Angeles. Um again it was

it was it was in some ways it was a

failure. We never were able to raise the

money that we needed for a variety of

reasons. And one day um but but the

group persisted and we did lots of

things. We did workshop productions and

had a good time with each other. And one

day Richard Drifus said um you know I've

always wanted to work in the u on radio

and how about doing a play on the radio

and I thought to myself there's an

interesting idea. I said well you know I

do know this woman who runs a public

radio station. Her name's Ruth Seymour.

It's called KCRW.

So I went to Ruth and she thought it was

a terrific idea. Um, so we decided we

would record Babbot

and Ruth said she'd air it and we spent

about a year and a half. We knew abs had

no idea what we were doing. We brought

it we brought it into the studio. We put

it up on a computer. At that time in the

eight in the mid 80s they you know

people weren't really using computer but

we found a kind of a com a theater

person who loved computers who put all

90 characters in the book up on a

computer and we actually over a period

of a year recorded the play just the way

you do a film in the studio. Um it took

us about six months to have a wonderful

editor edit it. Ruth premiered it as an

all day marathon on Thanksgiving Day and

uh for it was a 12 and a half hour

recording

and um it just exploded. It took off. Um

NPR picked it up and aired it all over

the country and then the BBC got in

touch with us. They heard about us and

said, "We're going to come over to

America. We'll pay for everything. We

want to do two plays with you. The

Crucible and are you now or have you

ever been? And we said yes. And here we

are 400 plays later. Um and LA Theater

Works was transformed into a recording

company. Um, we have recorded 400 plays,

but today we have uh we're in about a

100 markets all over the United States

with our with our radio show. Um, once

we started working on the radio, we

realized we had all of this sensational

content and we thought, well, what about

publishing this, you know, being audio

publishers? So, then we had to learn the

audio publishing business. We decided to

go back. We got all the rights. It was

not easy, but we got rights to actually

sell at that time it was cassettes. Um,

and we started selling cassettes to

libraries and to people all over the

country and all over the world. And so

we began to learn the audio publishing

business in addition to learning the

radio business, in addition to, you

know, trying to understand something

about the play business. And um as we

began to expand and uh learn about all

of these businesses, it it it occurred

to me um that I was such a lucky person

because I stayed with the same company

for my whole career, but I had such an

incredible opportunity to uh get into

all kinds of things that I had

absolutely no knowledge about, that I

was kind of a an

I had to go from being an amateur to

becoming a bit of a professional in each

of these things. And uh as we began to

accumulate new staff members with

different kinds of expertise, it became

more and more interesting. And then when

we started um expanding from radio to

audio publishing, um one of the things

we tried to figure out is how best to

get ourselves out there first all over

the United States. Um, and so we started

touring our show the just the way that

um that Garrison Keeler or um or uh Ira

Glass tours this American life. And so

we started touring around the United

States. And one of the things that we

did was to um was to take a show from

our catalog and tour it around the

United States. And so one of the things

that we have done is to take our show,

one show a year, and play maybe 40 to 50

venues around the United States. A

couple of years ago, um

I got the idea that we would do some

international touring. And uh so through

a series of crazy circumstances, we

ended up deciding that we would go to

China and tour a play in China. And we

chose a play that um

I guess people thought we were a bit

crazy to take. Um but it seemed to me if

we were going to do it, it had to be

worth doing. And so we took a play,

believe it or not, about freedom of the

press to China. Um

it's called Top Secret: The Battle for

the Pentagon Papers. and it is about the

Washington Post's decision to publish

the Pentagon papers uh after the New

York Times had published them for three

days in 1971 and been enjoined by the

government. Um it's a great play because

it's an easy to understand story. It's

one of the great standup and cheer plays

about one of the great moments in

American journalism. It has heroes, it

has villains. Um it shows uh American

democracy and the court system warts and

all. And so um we thought this would be

a great play to take to China. It was a

huge risk and um we uh brought the play

in 2011. We played three cities. We were

almost shut down um but we made it

through. And then we came back this year

uh in 2013.

And this time we were invited to play

the National Theater and six other

cities in China. We played to thousands

and thousands of people. We were sold

out everywhere we went. And the thing

that was so thrilling about it, let me

just take a look here. Yeah, here we go.

That's top secret.

That's our cast.

And those are some of the comments. Um,

and one of the great and and thrilling

things about it is the entire audience,

I would say everywhere we went were 35

and under, all young people, all

fascinated with this topic. Um, and they

came in droves. I'll never forget

standing in the lobby of the theater the

first time we got there after all the

problems we had trying to get the show

there and I thought what if nobody comes

and I'm sitting in the lobby and the

doors open and hundreds of young Chinese

streamed into the theater and I thought

this is worth it. This is worth

everything. Thank you.