Forgiveness, produced by Jennifer Welsh, continues Thurs.-Sun., 8 pm; through April 11. Tickets: $25. Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; 800.838.3006 or thedahlia.com.

The average person on the street probably doesn’t know the name Elizabeth Short; if it should ring a distant bell, he or she might hazard any number of guesses ranging from fashion model to TV celebrity to politician’s wife-or mistress.  Mention the Black Dahlia, however, and it’s sure to register a hit as the victim of one of Hollywood’s most famous unsolved murders.

Now there’s a relatively new Black Dahlia in town which is growing in public awareness as it garners laudable headlines, gains prestigious awards and galvanizes its patrons into exciting word-of-mouth buzz about its offerings. If its founder and artistic director Matt Shakman has his way-and so far he’s rolling along with the unerring accuracy of a bowling ball toward the kingpin in its lane-he’ll soon eclipse the memory of that decades-old homicide and replace it with new exciting images of storytelling brilliance. He’s already well on his way as American Theatre Magazine dubbed the Black Dahlia Theatre one of “a dozen young American companies you need to know.”

Why a theatre named after a cold case crime casualty? Shakman explains, “I didn’t start out with that name specifically in mind but I’ve long had a love affair with old Hollywood so I was intentionally looking for a space somewhere in that general vicinity because I wanted to make use of an old Hollywood connotation in the kind of theatre I presented.”

In helping to open his friend Steven Klein’s Firefly Theater, he had familiarized himself with the area. “We opened the Firefly right down the street (on Pico) in an old telemarketing office. We turned it into a black box theatre where we produced several good plays. The Firefly is still going. It no longer has a brick and mortar presence but it’s still a producing entity for both plays and films. Steven splits his time now half and half between LA and New York and he continues to work with us here at the Dahlia in both a producing and acting capacity.”

In 2000 Shakman began his search for a space of his own, reconnoitering the neighborhood and rummaging through all the cultural references he could recall to christen his venture. “I had liked the James Ellroy novel a lot. Even though it was his fictional re-imagining of the Elizabeth Short murder, he fused it into the death of his own mother as a way of wrestling with his demons.”

(Chronologically it unfolds like this: Elizabeth Short’s body was discovered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park in 1947, the then 10-year-old Ellroy’s mother was murdered in 1958 in El Monte where he and she were living after his parents’ divorce, Ellroy wrote The Black Dahlia in 1987, and Shakman appropriated that name for his undertaking as this latest century began.)

“I found this affordable space on Pico and Hauser, not far from the Black Dahlia crime scene. I knew then I had also found the name for my new theatre. It had it all: the proper connotation I desired, the location, the unknown perpetrators of two unsolved murders which in turn led to endless speculations and theories and stories about those events.”

Now all Shakman had to do was buckle down to the hard work of bringing his own stories to life onstage in enough of a compelling, arresting manner that ticket buyers would line up to keep his doors open. He fell back on his experience to achieve this next step in his goal. His internet listing at IMDB identifies him as a director of Ugly Betty, House, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brothers & Sisters, Everybody Hates Chris, Men in Trees, Everwood, Six Feet Under, Boston Legal, One Tree Hill, Judging Amy and Weeds to single out an even dozen of his recent TV successes. Before that he scored acting roles on Highway to Heaven, Diff’rent Strokes, Night Court, Webster, Growing Pains and 47 episodes in a two-season run on Just the Ten of Us to list another half dozen recognizable titles. So what propelled all this activity in the beginning?

He remembers, “I grew up in Ventura where I fell into acting when I was discovered at age 3 ½ for commercials and bit parts.” Quizzed about this statement, he elaborates in greater detail. “My brother Andrew was the trailblazer back then. He had played roles with the Plaza Players Community Theatre. We had very sensible parents. Our father was a doctor, our mother a homemaker but they were both artistically inclined and dragged us off to see plays constantly. Our grandfather had played with John Philip Sousa’s band and served as Sousa’s business manager for a time as well. That’s where our father acquired his passion for the arts but being a practical man and the head of a household, he felt he had to pursue a more stable career to earn money to pay the bills.”

Shakman seemed to inherit certain traits from both generations preceding him. “I was much more interested in theatrical acting than film or TV,” he says. “When they first talked to me about it, I said ‘I don’t want to be in that little box.’”

But be in the little box he was although he never forsook the stage. “I directed plays all through high school. My brother moved over into lighting design and later went into business.” After graduation he attended Yale University where again he immersed himself in the dramatic arts. “I did a double major in art history and theatre. The faculty encouraged that approach. They seemed to think it attractive to study something other than or in addition to theatre. I think it had to do with a liberal arts bias against theatre.”

He met Steven Klein there his sophomore year, graduated in ‘97 and stayed on awhile afterwards on the east coast. “I worked as an assistant director in New York after college. I fetched coffee for lots of good directors.”

Eventually along with Klein he made his way west again where they established the Firefly and the Black Dahlia. Over the last decade Shakman’s Dahlia productions have won numerous LADCC, GLAAD, Ovation, Garland and LA Weekly Awards while staying true to his stated intention of “the Black Dahlia is dedicated to the development and production of new plays by both established and emerging writers.”

Morlan Higgins and Lee Garlington

He kept his word when he selected three out of four plays from a 2006 workshop to receive a full production on his stage. They were Farewell, Miss Cotton by Keith Josef Adkins, Secrets of the Trade by Jonathan Tolins and the currently running Forgiveness by David Schulner, world premieres all which prompts him to discuss the next Black Dahlia evolutionary advance.

“Our new mission statement,” he says, “is so recent we haven’t yet posted it on our website but we’re only going to do world premieres by local writers. I feel we owe that to our local neighborhood.”

How is that concept working so far? Well enough that Tolins’ Secrets of the Trade will soon travel to Primary Stages in New York for its off-Broadway and east coast premiere with Shakman again directing its LA cast of John Glover, Amy Aquino and Bill Brochtrup. He relates, “This came about through Ted Snowden, the producer who’s taking it to New York.  He’s a fantastic theatre lover and a great admirer of John Tolins’ work.”

So how should those local writers make contact with Shakman for consideration? “Our basic submission guidelines are through agents or managers or someone we’ve had a previous relationship with. If none of that is possible, the next avenue would be a brief synopsis of the play mailed with a cover letter to Ruth McKee who handles our submissions.”

Meanwhile Schulner’s Forgiveness under Shakman’s direction has elicited another round of glowing critical reviews. The story sees Jill (Emily Bergl) taking her fiancé Ben (Peter Smith) home to meet her parents for the first time. Less than 60 miles from their destination she shares the information that her father (Morlan Higgins) raped her when she was a teen. The play, as its title implies, poses the questions of how and when and to what extent the act of forgiveness is possible in such family dynamics.

Shakman, when confronted with the very real possibility that at least one audience at one performance might contain some lady who had experienced the trauma of rape in her own life, admits he kept that thought in mind throughout rehearsals. “Yes, I definitely considered it,” he states. “I tried through my direction and numerous discussions with my cast to handle all sides of this issue with respect. I never want the Black Dahlia to be offensive in the stories we tell.

Peter Smith and Emily Bergl

“Instead I want to touch on human feelings in a way that resonates and inspires people to ask questions although we may not deliver complete or definitive answers. One of the best things about theatre, I think, is that it can stimulate conversations on car rides home whereas movies tend to want to wrap things up in neat packages at the end. In this story the victim is professing she has forgiven and is moving on with her life while her fiancé insists he can’t. We’ve staged it so the audience never looks at any actual scenes of molestation. I hope we’ve presented it in such a way it’s not a drama of molestation as much as a drama about healing but of course the central question remains: Is it possible for forgiveness to occur in all situations?

“Again I don’t believe there’s a final answer to that question which can ever fit all circumstances. It’s my hope, though, we can help advance discussions. Also all of our press releases and our website have tried to relay the content and tone of the play so no one attends uninformed about the subject matter of what they’re about to see.”

What about the Black Dahlia’s future? “We’re more into growing our business infrastructure than our physical space at this time. Our next step over the next couple of years is to hire one or two employees: a general manager and a technical director. First though we want to grow our business wings sound enough to last a long time and become the best run organization we possibly can.”

If Matt Shakman has his way, his Black Dahlia Theatre will remain under investigation by old-and new-Hollywood theatergoers for a long while. And that’s no crime.

Story images by Kurt Boetcher

Article by Gary Ballard