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BLACK DAHLIA

Strong Stuff in a Small Package
by Rob Kendt

Why would some of America's hottest young playwrights be lining up to get their plays produced in a 30-seat storefront theatre wedged between auto-body shops and liquor stores on rough-and-tumble Pico Boulevard in central L.A.? "The best analogy is all the major writer/directors who move into independent films to protect their vision," says Matt Shakman, 29, who runs the theatre in question, the Black Dahlia, and frequently hears playwrights declaring that they've had their fill of the new-play development runaround at larger venues. "Our theatre has a little bit of the independent cinema vibe," he confides.

It's not just that the overhead and risk are smaller (actually, the peril of bad reviews right in the film industry's backyard is all too real), but that in less than four years Shakman's theatre has built a reputation for top-notch L.A., West Coast and even world premieres of well-made plays by the likes of Austin Pendleton (Orson's Shadow), Adam Rapp (Nocturne), Stephen Adly Guirgis (Den of Thieves), Oliver Mayer (Ragged Time) and Richard Kramer (Theater District).

"The Black Dahlia picks up where other theatres leave off," says playwright David Schulner, whose An Infinite Ache was commissioned by South Coast Repertory, developed at Connecticut's Long Wharf Theatre and had its L.A. premiere at the Dahlia in September. Schulner was initially wary when Shakman approached him, but he soon recognized that amid L.A.'s vibrant but predominantly actor-driven theatre scene, the Dahlia stood out as one of few theatres that takes new writers seriously. It's also a place where, as the 30-year-old Schulner puts it, he can "speak to an audience of my peers," in demographic terms.

Indeed, Schulner's New York agent encouraged him to give the Dahlia a shot—a telling recommendation, given how little money is involved. The theatre has no paid staff and works under Equity's L.A. 99-Seat Plan. Shakman says its annual budget, less than $100,000, is raised by ticket sales, donations and rentals.

Cheap rent is what convinced Shakman, along with fellow alumni from Yale, to start a theatre in part of a former furniture store, and since the Black Dahlia opened, this unprepossessing stretch of town has sprung to life: Two art galleries have opened nearby, and a local coffeeshop extends its hours for theatre patrons. (Gentrification, appropriately enough, is among the themes of Keith Josef Adkins's Farewell Miss Cotton, slated at the Dahlia for early 2005.)

"In such a small space, you can build only so big a set, and put only so many people in there," Shakman says. When it comes to making intimate, literate live theatre thrive in a film town, the Black Dahlia—named for a famously unsolved L.A. murder—is on the case.

Rob Kendt is a freelance arts writer based in Los Angeles.

Next: Blue Forms Theatre Group, Columbus, Ohio

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