As producer Diane White of the Los Angeles Theater Center gets into her car, watched by two bulky parking-lot security guards, a rat scurries across the back alley toward the courthouse-like former bank building that houses the L.A.T.C. A block away, streetlights glint on the grimy marquee of a shuttered porno cinema. A few evenings before, L.A.T.C. artistic director Bill Bushnell was accosted by a gang of toughs as he left for an opening-night party, but he got away without incident. Although patrons rarely encounter trouble, it is little wonder that even Bushnell refers to the theater's environs as "Skid Row."
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