Susan Albert Loewenberg
In this episode we connect with Susan Albert Lowenberg, founder and Producing Director of L.A. Theatre Works. L.A. Theatre Works has produced and recorded over 600 audio plays over almost 40 years. All recordings are available with a subscription or individual purchase. Susan shares how the organization was formed with the encouragement and participation of some very well known actors. She discusses the educational opportunities that theatre provides and how L.A. Theatre Works curates based on each productions ability to entertain, enlighten and educate.
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Guest
Susan Albert Loewenberg is founder and Producing Director of L.A. Theatre Works, a non-profit media arts and theatre organization. Ms. Loewenberg has produced award-winning radio dramas, plays, and films in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and London.
Under her supervision, LATW has created the largest library of plays on audio in the world, garnering numerous awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Writers Guild, The American Library Association, Publishers’ Weekly, and others. Ms. Loewenberg also serves as host and is the Executive Producer of LATW’s nationally distributed syndicated radio series, “L.A. Theatre Works,” broadcast on NPR stations nationwide.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has served on innumerable boards and panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Fund for Independence in Journalism in Washington D.C., and was co-chair of the League of Producers and Theatres of Greater Los Angeles.
"...when you engage with theater, there's a visceral reaction. There's an emotional response as well as an intellectual response. The best theater has all of them..."
Credits
Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.
This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.
Guest: Susan Albert Loewenberg
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward
Transcription
[00:00:04] Susan Albert Loewenberg: When I listen to the impact of these plays on the students, it's actually quite a remarkable thing. I will get letters from students who say, "I never understood this play," or, "I never understood what was going on here, and now I do. Now I do." It really makes a difference to them. For us, it's very gratifying to be able to deliver information in such a beautiful, and challenging, and stimulating way.
[00:00:39] Host: Welcome to the fourth installment of The Chapters podcast series. I'm your host, Jon-Barrett Ingels. In our Chapters series, we focus on stories surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and internment of Japanese Americans, but with all that is happening in our country right now, in this historic moment ripe with the potential for change and growth, we are expanding our scope and amplifying the voices of organizations and individuals who are trying to make a difference, who are standing at the convergence of art, education, and social justice.
With this series, we honor those who have struggled and suffered in the past, and question, "How are we still here? How have we not come any further than this?" In this episode, we connect with Susan Loewenberg, founder and producing director of LA Theatre Works. LA Theatre Works is home to the largest collection of professionally produced audio theater in the country, an incredible resource for entertainment and education. Here is Susan Loewenberg.
[00:01:45] Susan: I got a call in the early '80s from a woman who was married to a famous actor, René Auberjonois. Her name is Judith. She said that there was a group of actors who were very well-known actors, and they'd always admired LA Theatre Works and they were looking for a home, with the idea of perhaps becoming a resident theater company in Los Angeles with their own space, et cetera, et cetera. I was pretty skeptical. [chuckles] I thought, "Okay." She starts naming them - Richard Dreyfuss, Edward Asner, Marsha Mason, Héctor Elizondo - and I'm going, "Oh, this is not real." Anyway, it took her a while, but she did convince me.
I actually was so leery about the whole proposition, I said, "Well, if you're serious about that, everybody has to contribute--" I can't remember what it was - $3,500 or $5,000 - and they did. [chuckles] This incredible company of amazing actors, I think they're 35 in all, many of whom are still with us to this day. Sadly, some have passed. We were all excited, it was terrific, we met, we had a little space we met in and so forth, we did a huge benefit, it was very glamorous, et cetera, et cetera, but we never were able to find a space. It never worked out in that way.
One day, Richard Dreyfuss said, "You know, I've always wanted to do a play on the radio." I'm like, "Okay. It's an interesting idea," and I said, "Well, I know the woman who runs KCRW, Ruth Seymour." I called her up, and she had just been listening to this extraordinary radio play in Dublin. It was the Abbey Theatre. She said, "Yes, let's go for it, but let's do something big. Let's do a book." Anyway, I went back to the actors and told them that she was up for it, but that they'd like to do a whole book. One of my favorite novels of all time was Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt. I loved that book when I read it when I was a kid. I went back and read it, and I said, "This is the piece. This is what we're going to do." "Who's perfect to play Babbitt?" Ed Asner. Everybody agreed, and I said, "The one thing that has to happen is everybody in this company has to be in it in some way or another."
Long story short, it took us about a little over a year by the time we recorded it and it was edited, et cetera. All of the actors played a part, or parts, and they all divvied up the narration. We had a terrific person to edit it. Ruth aired it as an all-day marathon on Thanksgiving Day in 1984, I believe-- '84 or '85, I can't remember. It was a huge hit. The BBC got in touch with us and said, "We want to come and record with you. We'll pay for everything." NPR picked it up and aired it nationally in three-hour segments.
We were launched. We became radio stars overnight. The BBC came over, and that's when we recorded The Crucible and Eric Bentley's Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, which is the documentary mate to The Crucible. The Crucible remains to this day our largest seller. That was it. 600 plays later, 600 recordings later, here we are, with a national radio show that's on every week on NPR.
We also have-- we broadcast in China because in 2011 and '13, we toured China with a play called Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, which is a wonderful piece by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons about The Washington Post decision to publish The Pentagon Papers after The New York Times had published for three days and been enjoined. Steven Spielberg later made a movie. Basically, the movie is our docudrama.
We went to China. We played all the big performing arts centers all over China; a huge hit. I met the woman who was running the Radio Beijing Network, which is kind of the NPR of China. She's a woman who'd been to America, she knew a lot about theater in America, et cetera. She asked me if she could listen to a couple of the recordings. I gave them to her, and she said, "We would like to air your show, but we want to air it every day." I looked at her and said, "Okay." This was in 2013.
Since that time, they have aired LA Theatre Works plays. They do Act One twice on a Monday, Act Two twice on a Tuesday, and Wednesday, it's a third play. Needless to say, [chuckles] they have gone through my 600-play collection, and they pay us. We have 15 million monthly listeners in China. They're all 40 and under because their parents lived during The Cultural Revolution and they never had an opportunity to learn English, but all these kids speak English or-- various degrees of competency, but it's wonderful to have that audience. That's the weekly broadcaster, a great thing that we love, and daily in China.
Then we publish our plays and sell them all over the world. I think we work with about 35 distributors all over. We also did a big project. We have a lot of recordings that are geared toward the junior high school and college curricula. We have relationships, for example, I give about 2,000 teachers free recordings, and then school districts in all over the country buy our recordings.
On the college and university level, we did a project thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation, where a group of librarians and dramaturgs indexed 300 of our plays for content. If you were a physics professor and you wanted to illustrate something about an aspect of physics, you could query the database and it would give you scenes or a whole play that would address the issue you wanted to illustrate. That database has been either given-- It was given, actually donated, to all of the historically Black colleges, and purchased by most of the major universities. I think they were in about 200 universities and colleges with that database. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, et cetera. That's been a fabulous project.
We record plays in two ways. In the studio, obviously - and during COVID, needless to say, it was all in the studio - but we also have a live recording series in Los Angeles at UCLA. We do seven plays a year, and we have a subscription audience. Every play is recorded four times before four different audiences. It's edited so that we get the best scenes from each production.
[00:09:43] Host: So there is a live element still?
[00:09:45] Susan: Yes, there's still a live element. It's lots of fun and it's nice because some of the plays, obviously, are going to have the laughter, the tears, [chuckles] the applause, the groans, whatever from the audience.
"...one of the things that I always say to my actors when they're up there on the stage, I said, when you're smiling, it's great for the live audience, but unless that smile is in your voice, no one is going to know."
[00:10:02] Host: What are some of the other challenges that you've come across with audio recordings as opposed to a live stage performance?
[00:10:15] Susan: Well, when you say challenges, what do you mean, actually?
[00:10:19] Host: Well, I know that most plays are written for a performance. There will have to be some reading of stage description, there will have to be some elements of, I guess, a narrator or some role to let the listening audience know what they would be seeing.
[00:10:46] Susan: Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. Well, a lot of it we take care of with sound effects. Occasionally, we'll add some narration that the author will give us, but very rarely. We find a way to make it clear to the listener, to the ear, but one of the things that I always say to my actors when they're up there on the stage, I said, when you're smiling, it's great for the live audience, but unless that smile is in your voice, no one is going to know.
They all have to think that way. They must think everything they do physically, they need to translate into something that's auditory. It takes a while for the people who do these-- we have a lot of people who have done many shows for us, and so they get it, but for the first-time person, it's a challenge because you have to think very, very differently when you are performing a play for the year.
[00:11:59] Host: I studied theater in college. Back when I was a young person, I had this hottie idea that I understood theater, but there's one thing that still sticks with me, and I believe theater should accomplish what I called one of the three E's. It should either educate, entertain, or enlighten. Then great theater accomplishes all three. It seems the work that you choose to produce accomplishes all three.
[00:12:30] Susan: Well, thank you. We try.
[00:12:33] Host: I would love to know how important it is to use theater as an educational tool to share histories that might not be taught or perspectives that might not be shared. Yes, we want to be entertained. It would be great to be enlightened from a production, but education from this medium is so vital, I think.
[00:12:59] Susan: Well, I think the thing that strikes me about using theater for those purposes is that when you engage with theater, there's a visceral reaction. There's an emotional response as well as an intellectual response. The best theater has all of them, and getting your information, whether it's a student or just a person in everyday life, there's something about the theater that communicates ideas and emotions and feelings around the ideas in a way that nothing else can.
When I listen to students or teachers tell me about the impact of our plays on them, it's always stunning to me that people are so entranced really with how they're getting this information. For example, I produced The Crucible in the mid-80s. It's still our biggest seller. Literally, hundreds of thousands of students and teachers have listened to The Crucible. It's not an easy play to read, but when you hear it and if you watch a film of it, it's not as good for a student because audio requires a kind of concentration and it requires you to use your imagination in a way that a film doesn't, because a film gives it all to you.
When I listen to the impact of these plays on students, it's actually quite a remarkable thing. I will get letters from students say, "I never understood this play, or I never understood the what was going on here, and now I do. Now I do." It really makes a difference to them. For us, it's very gratifying to be able to deliver information in such a beautiful and challenging and stimulating way.
[00:15:22] Host: With support from California State Library's Civil Liberties Public Education Project, LA Theatre Works produced a collection of plays memorializing the history of Japanese American Incarceration. Sisters Matsumoto, written by Philip Kan Gotanda, No-No Boy, written by Ken Narasaki and For us All and Hold These Truths both written by Jeanne Sakata. We had the honor of connecting with Jeanne Sakata for a previous episode, and talking to her about her stage production of Hold These Truths. I'd love to know how you were introduced to Jeanne Sakata and her work.
[00:16:03] Susan: Well, the first introduction to Jeanne was when I wanted to do the Sisters Matsumoto. That was the first play we did, which is a play that has been performed a number of times around the country. We recorded it, and it was a terrific experience. We did it in our live series. Then Jeanne and I and Anna Lyse Erikson, our associate artistic director, we had a rapport with Jeanne, and we said to her we'd love to do more with you.
That's how both Hold These Truths and For Us All, both by Jeanne, came about. We were able… it was just very fortunate at that time that the California Civil Liberties Group had decided they wanted to focus on the Japanese American experience, so we were able to get very lovely generous grants to do both of those pieces.
"I think the thing that they most appreciated was that opportunity to really learn more about that time and about the plight of people, of Japanese-Americans who were their neighbors, who were their friends. In many instances, families did not like talking about it. A lot of the children and grandchildren had a hard time learning about the past because people just didn't want to think about it again and remember it again."
[00:17:15] Host: Now, tell us a little bit of the story. Jeanne and I, we spoke of Hold These Truths. Tell us a little bit of the story of For Us All.
[00:17:24] Susan: For Us All is based on the life of Fred Korematsu. Fred Korematsu, he resisted going to the internment camp, and he was arrested. He served some time in jail and he tried to get the Supreme Court to overturn the conviction, and it didn't happen. It wasn't until 30 years later that this actually happened. What happened, he had resigned himself to it. He went on to live his life, et cetera. There was a scholar named Peter Irons.
I can't remember where he taught, but it's in San Diego or California, San Diego, I can't remember where. Peter, who knew nothing about this whole thing, came across some files or stories about this incident, this piece of history. He was so intrigued that he got in touch with Fred. Fred at first was reluctant. He didn't want to relive it, he didn't want to think about it, but anyway, agreed to see Peter. Peter came away from that meeting determined to do something about this and get it heard by the Supreme Court.
He got in touch with a group of lawyers. I think he started with somebody that knew somebody who knew somebody in LA and found a young Japanese American attorney who obviously had parents who were in the camps, et cetera, et cetera. There was their network of young Japanese American lawyers all up and down the West Coast, and they ended up with a group of lawyers, four lawyers, one from San Francisco, one from Los Angeles, one from Seattle, I believe one from Portland. They took this on themselves, and they managed to get the case heard by the Supreme Court, and they got it overturned. It was quite a feat. It took until the 1980s to have this happen. Can you imagine?
[00:19:58] Host: Right, 40 years.
[00:20:00] Susan: 40 years, but they did it. It's a very, very inspiring story. That's what For Us All is about. It's about how they made that happen.
[00:20:11] Host: What was your audience's response to this piece and the other pieces in the Japanese American Civil Liberties collection?
[00:20:19] Susan: Oh, they loved it. I think the thing that they most appreciated was that opportunity to really learn more about that time and about the plight of people, of Japanese-Americans who were their neighbors, who were their friends. In many instances, families did not like talking about it. A lot of the children and grandchildren had a hard time learning about the past because people just didn't want to think about it again and remember it again. The wonderful actor George Takei was in the camps. He was a kid. He was two, three, four years old when he was there. He was on a panel for us and talked about his early remembrances.
"The crazy thing about this, you think about it, the only good word I can use, a Jewish word, chutzpah of the American government, putting their parents and sisters and grandparents in these camps and asking these young men to fight in the war, in World War II. It's mind-boggling when you think about it."
[00:21:18] Host: I think that just goes back to the power of theater to be able to humanize history, to be able to put a voice and a heart to history so it's not just text that you're reading, you're actually getting that human experience.
[00:21:39] Susan: Absolutely. It's been a wonderful collaboration with some, not only with Jeanne, but with Ken Narasaki who did No-No Boy, which is, again, another wonderful piece about a young man who served time in prison because he refused to go into the army. The crazy thing about this, you think about it, the only good word I can use, a Jewish word, chutzpah of the American government, putting their parents and sisters and grandparents in these camps and asking these young men to fight in the war, in World War II. It's mind-boggling when you think about it. Some of them just said, "Heck with you, I'm not doing this." No-No Boy is really a story of one of these young men. This young guy comes out of prison and he's got to make a life for himself.
[00:22:53] Host: Two years ago you talked about it briefly before, but 2020-2021 all live theater came to a screeching halt with the pandemic. How did that shut down, how did that pandemic affect the work that you do with LA Theatre Works?
[00:23:15] Host: Well, the immediate effect, very immediate effect, it was late March, we were in Minnesota because one of the other activities of LA Theatre Works is every year we do a national tour. We take our show on the road, we do it more elaborately than we do it in Los Angeles, because in Los Angeles the actors have script in hand. The idea is to get a great recording. They don't wear costumes really. They wear things that are maybe appropriate to the character, but not real costumes, and there's no elaborate lighting or anything like that.
When we tour, there's fabulous lighting, there are images behind the actors, they don't use scripts. They're in full costume, but they are working to microphones. It's a very theatricalized version of what we do in Los Angeles. We were in Minnesota. The state of Minnesota, I think, had bought five engagements. We were going all over Minnesota doing our show. Shut down! Everything's shut down. Boom! Put the actors on a plane, they come home. Tour interrupted. Of course, we couldn't tour for the last two or three years.
But, we are biting the bullet and we're going out on tour this January. We're nervous about it because anything can happen, but we finally decided we have to tour again. We're touring a show about the transfer from radio to television of I Love Lucy. It was written by Greg Oppenheimer who is the son of Jess Oppenheimer, who was the third most important person in the Lucy-Desi partnership. He was the producer, he was the chief producer, and he was responsible for everything.
It's a very interesting story about how she was on the radio and how they transitioned to television. It's quite a fascinating thing. Desi was a very smart guy and very visionary. CBS wasn't quite as visionary. He said to them, "Well, Lucy and I would like to own the show." They said, "Yes, sure, fine. We don't care. You're just doing the show and that's it." Never thinking about reruns. That concept hadn't been realized.
[00:25:45] Host: Was so new at that time.
[00:25:47] Susan: Desi knew. He knew what the future was going to be. As a result, the family owns everything, not CBS, which is pretty amazing. Part of that is in the story. It's a terrific piece. We did it first, of course, at LA Theatre Works a number of years ago. We always choose something that we have done that we think would work well on tour. We're nervous about it because anything could happen. COVID could come back with a vengeance, but we feel we've got to go forward and do it.
[00:26:22] Host: For audiences without the opportunity of going to see live theater, did you notice an uptick in hungry-theater fans seeking out audio recordings?
[00:26:35] Susan: Yes. Actually, our audio sales increased during that time.
"The plays are heard all over the world. They're listened to all over the world. In fact, at one point many years ago, I formed an organization with a group of about eight English-language radio stations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, et cetera. We called it World Play."
[00:26:40] Host: Theater is such a ephemeral entity. It is of a place and of a moment. Even when you see these grand touring shows from Broadway, they're still never the same as what that original cast or that original-- but the audio recordings, they create legacy. In the show we were just discussing, For Us All, the late great Ed Asner was one of the voices and one of the-- probably the last things that he worked on, I would assume.
[00:27:15] Susan: Yes, it was. It was one of the last things he did. I feel very privileged to have the voices of some of America's most esteemed actors, and Brits, by the way. We do a lot with the Brits. The plays are heard all over the world. They're listened to all over the world. In fact, at one point many years ago, I formed an organization with a group of about eight English-language radio stations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, et cetera. We called it World Play.
Every year we picked a theme and we all contributed a play based on that theme and each country aired all of the recordings from our group. It was a wonderful, wonderful collaboration. It lasted about five years. We still have a relationship with the BBC. We've done many co-productions together. The aim is really to engage a worldwide audience as well as our national audience.
To that end, we actually have a new project, which is very ambitious. Crossed fingers it will succeed. We are going out. We've hired a marketing company and we're designing ways to do all of this. We are marketing a subscription series of our plays to a worldwide audience. It'll be all over the world. We know there are listeners who want to listen to English language programming. We're hoping to get listeners from the Middle East, from Europe, from Asia, from South America. It's going to be a huge campaign.
The goal is 10,000 digital subscribers, worldwide subscribers in a year. For a small fee, they can have access to our whole library plus other features because we do interviews with wonderful actors, with directors, with playwrights. We do interesting Zoom events and so on. Hopefully, this will widen our audience. It's a gamble, but we think it's worth taking.
[00:29:56] Host: We want to thank Susan Albert Loewenberg. For more information, visit latw.org. Chapters Podcast is produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.
