Perhaps unsurprisingly for a playwright who has always written juicy, complicated parts for women, Monica Menlo-the name he gives the Gibson character, played by Jenny O’Hara-emerges as a signature Tanner creation, an avatar of need, pique, and pain as hilarious as she can be horrifying. 8, 2023, is an only very slightly fictionalized roman à clef about both his debt to Diana Gibson and the strange forms of psychological torture she put him and his colleagues through as he found his playwriting voice, as much in spite of as because of her. Little Theatre, opening tonight at the Matrix Theatre, in a Rogue Machine Theatre production through Jan. Now Tanner has returned with a show he had in him all these years. (Photo by Ed Krieger)Ī lot has happened since those halcyon days: a coup that saw Tanner and Daley take over the theatre from Gibson, only to have it close a year later a period when Tanner wrote a late-night sketch serial called The Strip at the Evidence Room (for which, full disclosure, I served as music director) a soap parody on YouTube, Avenue 43 Gibson’s death in 2014 and a series of new Tanner plays ( Voice Lessons, Procreation, Day Drinkers, Space Therapy, El Niño) as well as revivals of his older works ( Teen Girl with Zoe Perry). On couch: French Stewart, Laurel Green, Ellen Ratner, Dana Schwartz, Justin Tanner. Kneeling behind couch: Beth Ruscio, Jon Palmer.

Back row: Andy Daley, Gill Gayle, Diana Gibson, Jon Amirkhan, Mary Scheer, Lisa Beezley. But the main thrust of Mikulan’s story, as its title indicated, was that Tanner felt both indebted to and trapped by Gibson’s influence, and was finding it increasingly difficult to write anything that would fit her exacting standards. There was a financial entanglement to the story-Tanner had accepted a job writing for Universal TV, but under the strange condition that he would continue to work out of the decrepit offices of the Cast, and that Gibson would be paid as well, with the idea that she was crucial to his writing process. The picture that emerged was of a dysfunctional mother-son relationship, with Gibson as the taskmaster parent and Tanner the needy boy genius. It wasn’t until Steven Mikulan wrote an LA Weekly cover story, “The Prisoner of El Centro Avenue,” that some of the backstage drama behind this creative hothouse got a public airing. But as a theatregoer and critic, I only saw upside. I did sometimes hear grumbling from other local playwrights, for whom the Cast had once been a place they could submit their work, at its becoming the de facto Justin Tanner Playhouse.

Among the things I took for granted about that remarkable theatre and its output was this odd arrangement: What other theatre in Los Angeles, let alone the U.S., produced the work of a single playwright? Not even theatres with Shakespeare in their name exclusively do Shakespeare. I’ve written before about the unique magic of Tanner’s slacker comedies and the indelible oddball ensemble they employed, and how, apart from the many joys of the work itself, in the aggregate these productions taught me to embrace the bittersweet ephemerality of theatre, and schooled me in my small role in the bargain, which ultimately amounts to my saying, “This happened here and I saw it.”įrom that garden, in fact, I could sometimes catch a glimpse into the Cast Theatre’s offices, the secret den where artistic director Diana Gibson held court, along with managing director and resident set designer Andy Daley and the shy, bespectacled Tanner himself, who didn’t just write and direct the plays-long-running hits like Pot Mom and Zombie Attack!, as well as Bitter Women, Teen Girl, Happytime Xmas, and Heartbreak Help-but also seemed to live at the theatre, like some unholy combo of auteur and dogsbody.

In my case, I remember with special fondness the modest beer garden-really, just an outdoor concession stand with a thatched covering, Christmas lights, and a bench to sit and smoke on-next to the Cast Theatre on El Centro Avenue in Hollywood, where I spent many an hour before, after, and between seeing shows by the theatre’s resident Bard throughout much of the 1990s, Justin Tanner. We also think of the bar next door where we had a knockdown argument or a passing flirt, the lobby where we ran into an old friend, the parking garage where our car got keyed. Theatre is, among other things, a social activity, and when we think of the plays we’ve loved or companies we’ve followed, I’d wager none of us recall only the transporting traffic of the stage.

Laurel little theatre