Charles Dillingham

Nothing about Charles Dillingham’s decision to leave Center Theatre Group after 20 years was planned, nor is it retirement. “I don’t use the ‘R’ word,” says Dillingham, dressed in blue jeans and a blue blazer and sipping coffee outside the Mark Taper Forum.

Dillingham steps down from his position as managing director on June 30 to join Arts Consulting Group as vice president. He’ll be replaced by the president of the Music Center Foundation, Edward L. Rada, who is also a former CFO of CTG.

“My wife says I’m graduating,” notes Dillingham. “I wanted to stay active and this was the perfect thing. I wanted to use the experience and expertise I have to help other arts organizations, and I’m a good fit at ACG because while they have some people with theater experience, many don’t, so I am bringing more expertise with large theaters.”

Dillingham says he knows almost everybody in the League of Resident Theaters, the organization of about 75 of the largest nonprofit theaters in the country. “CTG, Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, ACT – all the large ones. That’s the main asset I’m bringing to the company — my knowledge of the field and my acquaintance with the people in it.”

To be clear, Dillingham says he is not leaving CTG because of his new gig. In fact, he says ACG’s president, Bruce Thibodeau, reached out to him only after he announced last September his intent to leave Center Theatre Group.

Dillingham had one job during his 20-year stint at CTG — managing director. Nothing about his tenure, specifically, inspired his resignation. “It wasn’t about wanting to leave at a round number, but when you get to be my age [68], you start thinking about when would be a good time to move on. I tried to time it, and I do think I was successful in this, when I would still feel capable and would like to stay.”

In other words, leave them wanting more. “There are many things the company’s planning that I would like to participate in, and a time when people would rather I stay than go. I think the timing on both those fronts has been auspicious.”

Steven Ehrlich, Kirk Douglas, Ann Douglas and Gordon Davidson at the Kirk Douglas theater dedication photo by Ryan Miller

Dillingham’s accomplishments are not his alone, he says. They are the company’s. Twenty years ago, Mark Taper Forum founding artistic director Gordon Davidson had recently also become the artistic director/producer of the Taper’s sibling theater, the Ahmanson. He added the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City to the CTG domain before Michael Ritchie took over as CTG artistic director at the beginning of 2005. Dillingham oversaw it all, balancing the artistic and pragmatic sides of each production in each space.

“Every theater has to do that. Gordon was superb at that. Michael is superb at that.”

Risks

Furthermore, every artistic director, Dillingham believes, must be willing to tolerate risk. “I think one of the main things they’re paid to do is assess risk, analyze it, try to hedge against it if possible and then take the plunge. Only with risk is there great art. Certainly one of the trademarks that Gordon had was an eclectic range of material at both theaters and then in the first season at the KDT. Michael continues that eclectic outlook.”

Dillingham, then, can take credit for keeping CTG solvent over the past 20 years, in spite of some productions that were financial bombs. “I don’t remember those,” he says with a smile. He does acknowledge tensions exist when an artistic director is intent on a certain production that Dillingham, as the money guy, cannot support.

Chris Pine and Brett Ryback in "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" photo by Craig Schwartz

He says of Davidson and Ritchie, “Both were very focused on the cost consequences of shows, and there have been times we’ve had those discussions. There have been shows that we haven’t done or shows that got postponed until we could find a way to finance them. That was the case with [Martin McDonagh’s] The Lieutenant of Inishmore (planned for the 2008/09 season), and Gordon postponed or canceled shows at the Taper on more than one occasion.”

Lieutenant of Inishmore was postponed, Dillingham says, even though its cast is small. “The expense was in all the prosthetics and blood! To clean up all that blood every night was done on overtime – that alone was enormously expensive. We had a cat and needed to have a cat minder. The cat was more expensive than having a child and a teacher. You had to have an understudy cat! There were two scenes, one interior, one exterior. Everything conspired to make it very expensive, but [once mounted in 2010] it was one of the most successful shows we’ve done in my 20 years here. I was enormously proud of it.”

Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman in "Oleanna" photo by Craig Schwartz

Sometimes, he observes, postponements or cancellations led to productions that were perhaps more interesting than the originally planned shows. In 2009, Uncle Vanya was replaced “with [David Mamet’s] Oleanna, which went to a run on Broadway. I’m not saying the production was better than Uncle Vanya would have been, but we had casting difficulties, and you don’t want to do Uncle Vanya without the right cast. We had the perfect cast [Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles] for Oleanna.”

Dillingham credits Ritchie for predicting The Lieutenant of Inishmore would inspire healthy audiences for The Cripple of Inishmaan, which Ritchie wanted to mount this spring at the smaller Kirk Douglas Theatre. “Michael, when offered to present that tour, jumped at it. He knew the production from the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, which originally co-produced it with the Druid Theatre, would be quality. And then, less than a year later…it was one of the most successful productions we’ve had at the Douglas, both artistically and financially.”

Nancy E. Carroll and Dermot Crowley in "The Cripple of Inishmaan" photo by Craig Schwartz

There is nothing in Center Theatre Group’s mission, Dillingham points out, that mentions money. “Our mission is to put on the best quality work we can in an art form that’s very important and that we feel can have a very positive influence on people. We also want to have an education program that will acquaint and teach young people about this particular art form so they’ll be familiar with it when they grow up.

Still, he recognizes no organization can exist unless, over time, it balances its budget. “Watching for that is my principal occupation and watching for the quality on stage is Michael’s principal occupation.” Somewhere in the hallways and during meetings and via emails, the two collaborate across those lines.

Rewards

Dillingham’s 44-year professional theater career includes stints as executive director of American Ballet Theatre when Mikhail Baryshnikov was artistic director. He was CEO of The Entertainment Corporation USA, presenting the Bolshoi Ballet, Bolshoi Opera, Kirov Ballet, Kirov Opera and Royal Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was the managing director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Theatre Company and general manager at both the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He also has served on the board of LA Stage Alliance and is the vice president of the National Corporate Theatre Fund.

“One thing I learned over time is that theater is a collaborative business. You need to get along with a wide variety of people –  from perhaps difficult, anxious artists to graphic artists and marketing people. Development people have their own sensitivities, and as a manager, part of your job is to get all of these people to collaborate and work toward shared goals that they believe in.”

Michael Ritchie and Charles Dillingham photo by Steve Cohn

Ritchie has called Dillingham “an invaluable partner in leading the organization. He has helped us in the best of times and in more complicated times with the same steadiness, wisdom, work ethic and sense of humor.”

The “best of times” with Ritchie, Dillingham says, was the ultimate production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore after so many roadblocks. “Also, one of the things that Michael has brought to the company is, almost every season, a new pre-Broadway musical at the Ahmanson. That’s something we hadn’t done before,” and something he says audiences had requested.

“The other triumph, really, is finding the audience and establishing the Kirk Douglas Theatre as an ongoing venue that people know. Gordon’s first season at the KDT was immensely successful, but then you have to settle into a long-term success and I believe we’re doing that.”

"Angels in America" producers celebrate 1993 Tony Award Win. Front Row (L to R): Benjamin Mordecai, Steven Baruch, Gordon Davidson, Jon B. Platt, Robert Cole. Back Row (L to R): Richard Frankel, Paul Libin, Tom Viertel, Tony Kushner, Steve Martin (Tony presenter), Margo Lion, Jack Viertel, Rocco Landesman, Susan Quint Gallin

As for good times with Davidson, Dillingham fondly recalls his first year and a half at CTG. “We produced The Kentucky Cycle, both parts of Angels in America and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 with Anna Deavere Smith. That was 1992-93. In the spring of 1994, those three plays were three of the four Tony-nominated plays in New York. That’s a triple play that will probably never be repeated, particularly because it had been quite some time since Center Theatre Group had had that kind of recognition. So it was a triumphal moment for Gordon and something I thought he really deserved.”

Ellen Laughlin in "Angels in America" photo by Jay Thompson

Of his 20 years at CTG, Dillingham says the past two or three have been the most economically challenging, even though most of CTG’s audience is not comprised of people whose jobs were in jeopardy. “Yet we’re still feeling the effects. We’re coming out of it but we’re not out of it yet.”

And it raises the question of how to move forward given the nationally uniform decline in subscription sales. “Michael and I somewhat disagree about the future of subscriptions. Michael sees it dwindling to almost nothing. I don’t see that. Certainly all three of our theaters have fewer subscribers than they had a few years ago. But it seems to have stabilized and I don’t see subscriptions going away altogether. That said, we are certainly more dependent on single ticket sales than we were five years ago, and thank God for social media. Email has been an enormous help in meeting that challenge.”

Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini in "God of Carnage" photo by Joan Marcus

It’s a double-edged sword — the very technology a theater depends on to reach potential audiences is also the platform that delivers instant entertainment that keeps people home. To combat that, Dillingham believes, “You just have to do really good plays very well. All the social media and networking won’t help you with a bad play. With a good play, like God of Carnage [which broke CTG’s sales records], you can’t beat people away with a stick.”

While Dillingham moves on to advise other theaters on business matters, he remains open to working with CTG and helping to resolve the question commonly asked by theater board members: Why can’t you predict better? “And our answer to that is, if we could, we would be working in Hollywood for a lot more money.”

HEADER PHOTO: Michael Ritchie, Kate Burton and Charles Dillingham