Stern, 49 today, is relentless in his pursuit of the
perfect scene. The results are films such as "Into Thin Air," a 1985 CBS
movie-of-the-week starring Ellen Burstyn, and plays such as Lyle
Kessler's "Orphans," which had its world premiere at the Matrix before
heading on to success off-Broadway and as a major film from Alan Pakula.
Former actor Stern is no industry executive dabbling
in theater from time to time. He manages an ongoing and consistent presence in both arenas. He is also among
the most outspoken and passionate advocates for 99-seat theaters here. A
self-appointed—and often pugnacious-conscience for local theater, he has
taken on everyone from Mark Taper Forum artistic director Gordon
Davidson to Actors' Equity western regional director Edward Weston.
Stern rushes to the scene—invited or
uninvited—whenever he or Los Angeles theater appears threatened. "All of
my fights have been in service of this community," says Stern. "It
doesn't mean I am right about everything but it means that's my button.
Theater is so fragile."
Until this season, Stern kept his economic risks down
by producing just one or two plays a year and leasing his theater out
the rest of the time. Rentals helped subsidize such Stern hits as Harold
Pinter's "Betrayal," Lyle Kessler's "Orphans" and Simon Gray's "The
Common Pursuit," a play that premiered in England, then was reworked
here before becoming an Off-Broadway hit.
But, early this year, after a visit to the Los
Angeles Theatre Center, Stern decided to step up his producing tempo. "I
saw all the activity and it conjured up an old, yearning feeling: I do a
play, it's very successful, then there's nothing to follow it. There was
no continuity, and it was very frustrating."
Never mind that he was winding up production on
"Dad," a new film starring Jack Lemmon. On weekends he read and selected
plays. And when "Dad" shooting stopped, rehearsals at the Matrix began. The first
play, "Wenceslas Square," opened to rave notices at July-end, and his
second play, the recently opened Russian contemporary drama "A Man With
Connections," was also well received.
Watch Stern buzz around, answering box office phones,
hustling subscriptions and overseeing rehearsals. "I like the action,"
shrugs the small, intense Tom Hayden look-alike. "I like putting up
stuff and going against the critics. I like putting it on the line. I
like to be judged."
Stern grew up just two blocks from where the Matrix
Theater is now, joined Fairfax High's Thespian Society, then went on to
Los Angeles City College and UCLA and a few local acting jobs. After six
months in the Army, he headed off to New York. By the time he left 10
years later, he had been in dozens of shows, capped with a long stint
replacing Judd Hirsch in "The Hot L Baltimore."
He came back to Los Angeles, pursuing a movie deal
that never happened. Now theater took second billing to the industry. He
was a line producer on "Cagney & Lacey" and a production executive on
"Winds of War." He turned out six movies of the week, five TV pilots,
two full-length features.
But while the screen fed his family, theater fed his
soul. He credits acting buddy William Devane with pushing him into
producing as a career. "He had a natural talent for putting things
together and keeping them together," says Devane, who co-produced
"A Whistle in the Dark" off-Broadway with Stern in 1969. "He didn't have
a junkie's addiction to acting. He was good at it, but it wasn't the
first thing in his mind."
Soon after he moved back to Los Angeles in 1974,
Stern helped produce "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...?" Based on
testimony from House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, the
1975 production got national attention and lasted 14 months.
In 1980, Stern started producing at the Matrix, a
place he bought with money borrowed from his father, a barber and
beauty supply salesman. (Devane, a partner in the Matrix, until Stern
bought him out in the early 'SOsTalso borrowed money from Stern's
father.) Extensive remodeling turned the Melrose Avenue theater into
one of the plushest 99-seat houses in town. And on its long, narrow
stage, a stage as wide as a Broadway house, Stern enticed the best
actors around to work for him.
"In film and TV, there's often somebody else you
can blame," says Stern. "Since you're not the ultimate boss in that
medium, it's never totally your head on the line. Here it is on the
line, and I like that."
"Joe wants it to be his vision," says Sam Weisman,
who directed "Betrayal," "Common Pursuit" and other plays for Stern.
"If people can play out his vision with him, that's fine. If they
can't, there will be somebody else."
Stern is willing to wait. He didn't produce "Two
Small Bodies" at the Matrix for two years, for instance, because he
didn't have the director or actor he wanted. "I read a lot of very
well-known actresses," he says, "and I couldn't find what it was. But
when I saw Judith Ivey and director Norman Rene I knew he had solved
the play and she was the right person for it. And I brought them out
here. You didn't do that in waiver then—but I gave him $1,000 and her
$1,000. It was a lot of money. I gave her my mother's car."
When Charles Gordone's Pulitzer Prize-winning play
"No Place to be Somebody" was floundering in previews a few years ago,
Stern flew the playwright out from New York to help out, then shelled
out the money for an extra week of previews. He also extended previews
when John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence" ran into problems prior to
opening." 'Inadmissible Evidence' would have been a flop if it had
opened as originally scheduled," says that show's director, Kristoffer
Siegel-Tabori.
"The most important thing in Joe's mind is doing it
right," adds Tabori, now directing "A Man With Connections" for Stern.
"There's never been a time in my experience that his work the last
week hasn't made a profound difference. He makes you look better. He
saved me on 'Inadmissible Evidence,' and he saved me on this one."
Everyone queried for this story lauds Stern's
ability to spot talent. Stern agrees this is among his virtues. "I
have never given anybody their talent, but my ability has always been
to recognize it before others," he says. "I don't need to surround
myself with people who make me comfortable. If I did that, the
productions would only be as good as I am and I want the productions
to be better than I am."
That doesn't mean he won't take risks.
He first hired Deborah Raymond and. Dorian
Vernacchio, his resident design team, shortly after they arrived in
Los Angeles, going on the recommendation of Virginia Raymond,
Deborah's mother and Stern's former agent. "It was pretty much an act
of faith," says Vernacchio. "We met and we talked. And he took a
chance."
Many of the actors in Stern's early plays were
people he knew in New York, but that circle too has widened. "You'll
find some of the best acting in Los Angeles at that theater," says
Susan Dietz, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse. "He's
managed to attract actors very serious about their craft and who have
a great love of the theater."
Lawrence Pressman, for instance, thinks his work in
"Betrayal" at the Matrix was "the most daring work I've done on
stage." Adds Penny Fuller, who also starred in that production:
"We get plays that stretch our muscles, but it's
not like it's done to please the audience or to indulge the actors.
The two take the journey together into a new place, and Joe is
responsible for igniting that."
Stern couldn't have said it better himself: "Life
is dangerous, and theater is about danger. You can't be dangerous
enough in the theater. ... I'm going for the jugular every time. Kill
the audience. Don't let 'em get out of their seats. Just absolutely
affect their lives."
"Who I am is, I cannot roll over," says Stern. He
pushed Olympic Arts Festival director Robert Fitzpatrick to give money
to local theater producers as well as to foreign ones. He chastised
one colleague in print for what he considered excessive ticket prices,
took on another he felt was not being fair to his actors when he moved
a play to a bigger house, and has often said some fairly provocative
things about Davidson and the Taper.
"Joe has been prickly," responds Davidson. "He
likes to take pot shots. But I feel friendly toward him. I admire the
work he's done. And I know there have been things he's seen here that
he likes."
Stern's greatest wrath has been heaped on Actors'
Equity. "There's a relationship between the fact that the union here
doesn't recognize small theater— and never has— and the fact that New
York has never recognized Los Angeles theater. There's the perception
that what we are doing is amateur. The union propagandizes this theory
and New York takes it up, which invalidates our work."
Equity executive Weston responds that "I find it
nonproductive to comment on these continuous and gratuitous attacks,"
but Stern isn't likely to stop. For Stern, small theaters like his are
sacred grounds where "heroic" attempts are made to create magic on a
tiny budget. "Do you think you're going to see a better production of
"A Man With Connections" in New York? Better actors than Charlie
Hallahan and Carolyn Seymour? Who's kidding who?
That's how Stern talks, his conversation peppered
with talk of personal journeys, revelations and defeats. Stern seems
both astonished and wounded when people don't play the game the way he
does.
Two of his most bittersweet experiences were his
work on "Orphans" and "Common Pursuit." Both shows brought some
attention to the Matrix and huge attention to their authors. Stern
will readily tell you not only how much money his theater lost on each
production but also how much money—and career advancement—he figures
that each of the two playwrights made on the same plays.
His anger at "Common Pursuit" author Gray, for
instance, comes mainly from Gray's minimizing the contributions of not
just the Matrix but of the play's actors and director here. Stern has
kept New York press clippings of Gray largely dismissing the
production here and refuses to read Gray's book, "How's That for
Telling 'Em, Fat Lady?," about the experience: "These actors were
getting $25 a week. They were co-writing. They made the play with
him."
It wasn't only that he spent $65,000 on the 10-week
production—a fortune in small theaters— but that he feels Gray didn't
share the win. "I get off on people succeeding. The whole thrill for
me is to win together. The only thing I wanted out of those
experiences was to be there on opening night, have a drink afterwards,
go home and have the theater get its recognition."
Stern can admit being wrong, however. Actor
Pressman quit in "Betrayal" just before opening night because he felt
Stern "wronged" him, Pressman says. There was a misunderstanding.
Stern confronted Pressman "with second-hand information, I took great
umbrage and quit. But as soon as it was clear to him what happened, he
clarified the situation and I opened in the play."
Yet Pressman can still say that Stern's "flaw" as a
producer "is that he's not enough of a killer. He will make enormous
allowances for someone's possibly psychotic personality or drugs, for
drunks and just plain bad guys... in order to nurture the artistry
that Joe knows is in them."
Stern refers to this season's four directors as a
sort of family, and family is very important to Stern. He's been
married for 25 years to his college sweetheart Peppy, who manages Kehillath
Israel Synagogue and who puts together the Matrix's opening night
parties. Their oldest son, Joshua, 24, who has an offstage role in
"Connections," started out tearing up tickets when he was 11, and
younger son Luke, 19, is one of the Matrix's two house managers.
Stern's brother and mother come to all his shows, as did his father
until his death in 1984.
He clearly tries to foster similar closeness at
work. He gives the actors in his plays books, jewelry or other small,
personalized gifts. And besides each directing a play this first
season, directors Tabori, Shallat, Michael Arabian and Peggy Shannon
will also act as Stern's "lieutenants," offering aid and succor to
each other's productions.
Stern and his directors read "at least" 100
scripts, did readings of six, then selected the four plays in their
"double double bill." Actress Olympia Dukakis, whom Stern met on the
"Dad" set and who runs the Whole Theatre in Montclair, N.J., turned
him on to two of this season's four plays and helped stage a reading
here of George Walker's play "Better Living"; when the play opens here
in October, Stern will use two of the actors who appeared in it at the
Whole Theatre.
To keep tickets affordable, Stern charges just
$12.50 a ticket—with subscriptions bringing that down to $9 a show.
Even with minimal sets, he figures the four plays will cost $120,000
to mount and run, and says he's already over budget. Supplementing box
office receipts will be rentals the Matrix amassed over the last two
years and "a few" government grants.
Director Shannon, who has also been named Stern's
first associate artistic director, says she hopes to widen the
Matrix's activities, staff and revenue base—if Stern allows her to.
"My orientation is not institutional," responds Stern. "I brought
Peggy in because hers is, and somewhere in the middle we'll meet."
Stern can't predict if there will be another
season—"I don't know where we'll be next summer"—but he is clearly
relishing this one. After "Connections" opened a few weeks ago, he
felt the same old let-down when he got home, he says, but "I told my
wife that this time it was different—both plays are up and running and
two more are ready to begin. We're a real theater."
