Across Temple Street from The Music Center, downtown’s celebrated performing arts complex, sits an unassuming structure known as the Annex. There, among the rehearsal rooms, crowded storage areas, vending machines, and a warren of small offices and communal workspaces, is the private office of Michael Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theatre Group.
“It’s a working building,” Ritchie said during a recent Business Journal visit.
The nonprofit Center Theatre Group is one of the Music Center’s four resident performing arts companies, joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Opera. CTG is comprised of the Ahmanson Theatre and Mark Taper Forum on the Music Center Plaza, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
Some Music Center executives have offices in the group’s various performance halls, but Ritchie said he’s happy to be closer and accessible to the actors and theater artists who bring productions to life on CTG’s stages.
“Comfort and congeniality drive our particular art form,” said Ritchie, who took the reins from founding artistic director Gordon Davidson in 2005.
“Whether or not that is a trait of mine or something that I’ve assumed, I am happy if people come in and lie down on the couch and have a conversation. You can put your feet up on anything here,” he said.
Indeed, Ritchie’s office seems more like a living room than backstage at a theater. He prizes warmth in the color and texture of his furnishings.
“I don’t know if it’s conscious, but I do know I would like to walk into a place like this if I had something to discuss or a problem to resolve.”
One thing he avoids in his office, however, is drama — literally and figuratively.
“In the theater, most people have posters and a lot of show memorabilia,” he observed. “There isn’t a piece of stage scenery in here. These are all my personal things. I bought all of them secondhand.”
Ritchie devotes one wall to record album covers featuring legendary vocalists, including Lena Horne, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee. Ritchie said he considered doing a rotation — all jazz one year, all rock bands another — but “I’ve gotten comfortable looking at these people — and having them look at me.”
Theater artists do make an appearance in the office, however, through the many gifts they’ve given to Ritchie over the years: a desk from actor Roddy McDowall; a compass from playwright John Guare; and a treasured copy of Ben Jonson’s plays, once owned by Ritchie’s late father-in-law, Richard Burton. (Ritchie is married to actress Kate Burton.)
Ritchie counteracts the necessary chaos of the theater with a meticulous personal devotion to order. During the conversation, he reached up to make sure the framed album covers were perfectly even. “If you look around you, you’ll see things that are lined up (and) stacked,” the executive said. “I need cleanliness. It’s hard for me to think straight unless my environment is straight.”
