THEATER : Striving for a Stand-Up Ovations Show : Theatre LA's awards are on a clear path to growth, but there is still the problem of including outlying theaters.

By Don Shirley

Nov. 12, 1995 12 AM PT

<i> Don Shirley is a Times staff writer. </i>

The reception for Ovation Award nominees last Sunday was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel--the sort of ritzy palace where you might expect the Emmy or the Oscar nominees to be feted.

Yet Ovations are L.A.’s peer-judged theater awards. The entire annual budget of L.A.’s home-grown theater scene probably isn’t as big as that of “Waterworld.” Nonetheless, as the second annual round of competitive Ovations (following three rounds of Ovations presented for lifetime achievement only) are presented Monday at the glittery Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the awards are displaying notable signs of growth. As well as a few growing pains.

Surveying the Ovation nominees at the Beverly Wilshire last week, Center Theatre Group artistic director/producer Gordon Davidson--who has occasionally accepted Tonys--said it might take a while for the Ovations to reach the “critical density” necessary to attract big-time TV coverage. He also questioned whether this is a worthwhile goal: “Awards ceremonies shouldn’t be televised. Then it turns into a TV show, not an awards ceremony.” Sure, a Tony can help a winner at the box office, but Davidson pointed out that most of the Ovation nominees have already closed.

Such opinions notwithstanding, this year’s Ovations ceremony will, in fact, be on TV. But don’t search the listings for a prime-time network slot. The show will be seen--in January--by subscribers of Continental Cablevision in Downey, La Mirada and nearby towns, and subscribers of CVI, a Long Beach/Signal Hill cable system.

Cable producer Larry Dusich plans to use four cameras to record the two-hours-plus event, then splice together a 90-minute or two-hour version. He’ll also make it available to other local cable systems, and he’ll give a tape to Theatre LA, which sponsors the awards. William Freimuth, Theatre LA executive director, said he hopes to use the tape in his search for a more established television outlet for future Ovations nights.

The cablecast isn’t the only way Theatre LA wants to reach out to more far-flung audiences with this year’s Ovations. The location of the event, far to the southeast of most of L.A. County’s theaters, is designed to show off the breadth of the theater community, as well as the snazzy Cerritos facility itself. It’s so far away for many Ovations participants that Theatre LA is chartering buses to take Ovationeers to Cerritos from L.A. basin and San Fernando Valley sites (fare: $10).

This year’s lifetime achievement Ovation is going to Martin Benson and David Emmes, who run South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa--a location that, for many Ovation voters, makes Cerritos seem relatively close. Emmes and Benson are being honored as models and mentors who transformed their small theater into one of the country’s most distinguished--the kind of journey that many Theatre LA members would like to make.

Still, South Coast is not a member of Theatre LA, which has raised a few eyebrows among some who are. South Coast’s unwillingness to join hardly helps Theatre LA’s announced ambitions to grow into a four-county operation.

“Theatre LA does a terrific job serving its L.A. constituency,” Emmes said, when asked why South Coast doesn’t join. “When they expand and can offer services of benefit to us, we would reconsider.” But for now, Emmes said, “If there were a Theatre Orange County, would the Mark Taper Forum join? It’s as clear to me as that.”

T he difficulty of fully includ ing outlying theaters in Theatre LA was illustrated last month when Shashin Desai, artistic director-producer of International City Theatre in Long Beach, pulled his theater out of next year’s Ovation Awards consideration because none of his shows was seen by enough of this year’s voters to qualify. In a letter to Freimuth, Desai said his group this year “spent hundreds of dollars in faithfully following the regulations of registering shows, paying fees, mailing to the almost 90 voters,” to no avail.

“We’re sorry that happened,” Freimuth said. “They did get nominations [in 1993-94]. We do everything we can to encourage voters to go everywhere.” However, an idea to require voters to attend a certain number of shows within each of several concentric circles on the map was considered but rejected because it would be “nightmarish to police,” he said.

The Ovations voting procedures are already extremely complicated.

Seventy-nine voters cast ballots for the 1994-95 shows. Voters, who must have some professional theater credit within the last 10 years, are drawn primarily from the ranks of Theatre LA members, with nine at-large voters thrown into the 1994-95 mix. Shows also are drawn from the 136 Theatre LA members, but each show must be individually registered with both Theatre LA and with Actors’ Equity. This year 183 shows registered for Ovations, up from last year’s 169.

Each voter must see at least 25 shows in the Ovations year, which lasts from September through August. Scoring sheets are distributed at the box office and are supposed to be mailed back to the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick within 48 hours after seeing the show. The scoring sheet includes all of the names submitted by the producer, in a variety of categories; scores are from 1 to 10, with one decimal place allowed.

At least 80% of the shows seen by each voter must be in sub-100-seat theaters, or else a voter will be disqualified from the 14 categories (out of 26) in which smaller and larger theaters compete. This requirement, designed to make sure that the many smaller theaters aren’t pushed aside by the few large ones, has been lowered to 75% for the coming year’s awards.

A computer eliminates any award candidate who wasn’t graded by at least eight voters. For the other candidates, the highest and lowest scores are dropped and the rest are averaged. Within each category, the top five average scores are announced as nominees.

Customized ballots are then mailed to each voter. In the final round, voters may vote only in those categories for which they’ve seen all five nominees. Because of this requirement, some voters may not vote at all in the final round--or in only one or two categories.

T his year’s champion voter was Dick Dotterer, who saw 159 shows and was eligible to vote in the final round in 24 out of 26 categories. This year’s worst voters were 10 (of the original 89) who didn’t bother to send in even one scoring sheet. These people weren’t invited back for the 1995-96 round.

Last year, no one was eligible to vote in the final round of at least one category; in that case, the computer gave the award to the top scorer on the first ballot. But this year at least one voter voted in every final round. This means that theoretically one voter could determine an award, Freimuth acknowledged (though he said he didn’t know the exact number of final-round votes in each category). But he said this is still more fair than just letting the computer pick the final winner, because voters who saw only one nominee and gave it a very high grade could skew the results of the raw scores.

In any peer-based awards, conflict of interest can be dicey. Ovations voters can’t vote for productions of the companies they’re officially representing--the computer will reject their ballots. But no mechanism exists to monitor whether voters worked on shows at other theaters. No one keeps tabs on whose spouse is working on which show, who donates money to which production, who was rejected at an audition for which show. “You shouldn’t vote for any individual with whom you have a relationship of love, blood or money,” Freimuth said. “We encourage voters to rat on other voters.” But this seldom happens, he added.

Two new categories appeared this year: new translation/adaptation and ensemble performance. The former category, plus the one other writing category, are restricted to world premieres. Writers of plays that were earlier presented elsewhere are ineligible.

The shows that received the most nominations this year: “Beauty and the Beast” (13), “Sweeney Todd” (12), “Master Class” (10), “Angels in America” (nine), “Forbidden Hollywood” (eight) and “Counsellor at Law” (seven).

Among the celebrities who are scheduled to present the awards: Beatrice Arthur, Kate Mulgrew, Joan Van Ark, John Rubinstein, and the producer of the recent Oscar shows, Gilbert Cates, who also runs the Geffen Playhouse. Mariette Hartley will again emcee, and numbers from seven of the 10 nominated musicals will be presented. Corporate sponsorship of the event has more than doubled since last year, Freimuth said, so the party after the event is expected to be lavish.

“THE OVATION AWARDS,”Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. Date: Monday, 7:30 p.m. Price: $15-$125. Phone: (800) 300-4345.