From the outside, Center Theatre Group headquarters, a nondescript building across the street from the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles, is spectacularly unimpressive, the kind of place your mind wouldn’t even register as existing. But inside, the buzz of puzzle-solving energy might make you think you’ve stumbled onto the set of “Oppenheimer.”

CTG Managing Director and Chief Executive Meghan Pressman and recently appointed Artistic Director Snehal Desai aren’t cracking nuclear codes. But they are working out a theatrical Rubik’s Cube that is harder than ever to solve.

This month, CTG will announce its 2024-25 season and the big news is that its Mark Taper Forum, which suspended programming last summer amid a spiraling budget crisis, will be back in business (likely by next winter and possibly as early as the fall). The exact timeline and number of productions are still being worked out, but the idea is to consolidate offerings under one CTG banner rather than spotlight separate seasons at each of CTG’s three theaters.

CTG artistic director Snehal Desai, left, and CTG CEO and managing director Meghan Pressman.

(Kim Newmoney)

This strategy is a sign of constriction, but it’s also an indication that old habits and expectations have to give way to stringent new realities.

Gordon Davidson, the founding artistic director of Center Theatre Group, built Los Angeles’ flagship theater organization in a vastly different era. The three venues — the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City — each with its distinctive profile and following, don’t easily cohere in the best of times, and this period is one of the most difficult in the company’s history.

The Ahmanson in recent decades has dedicated itself to Broadway touring productions, with an emphasis on musicals. The Taper, the place where Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” had its two-part world premiere, has long been the city’s most coveted stage for public-minded drama. And the Douglas, the smallest of the three venues and the one with the shortest history, is the Westside outpost that’s most hospitable to theatrical risk-taking.

As the money-making operation, the Ahmanson helped make possible the artistic ambitions of its less practical brethren. But those days were waning even before COVID-19 wreaked unfathomable havoc on performing arts institutions.

The post-pandemic picture is improving but from such a low that no one can feel confident about moving forward. Theater attendance hasn’t yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, production and administrative costs have skyrocketed with inflation, and donor fatigue has turned to exhaustion.

Nonprofit theaters nationwide are contending with this perfect storm. But CTG has an additional set of challenges that stem from its disparate three-part structure.

The Ahmanson can no longer be counted on as the cash cow, as the subscription model has become less reliable and competition for Broadway tours has grown more intense.

Playgoing has suffered acutely since theaters have reopened. Serious drama without a celebrity draw is an extremely tough sell in this era of entertainment-on-demand and social media hypnosis. For a large playhouse like the Taper, with punishing built-in costs and an audience that has grown understandably fickle after seasons of muddled vision and earnest mediocrity, the producing picture can seem like a fast track to insolvency.

Finally, the Douglas is facing a temporary closure of its own. An impending construction project of a neighboring property will force the theater to halt operations for a few months next year, making programming extremely difficult to plan.

No wonder Pressman and Desai have the air of emergency aid workers who have settled into the long daily haul of rebuilding after the initial phase of catastrophe.

Progress has been made on the $8-million projected budget gap that prompted CTG to postpone the premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s play “Fake It Until You Make It” and suspend plans for the 2023-24 season at the Taper. But this is no time for phony exuberance.

It seemed almost impertinent to ask whether they believed a sustainable path for CTG was feasible in this uncertain environment, but the question needed to be asked. Pressman answered in the affirmative, but before she did, there was a pause as lengthy as any in a Harold Pinter play.

“I think it’s feasible, otherwise I wouldn’t want to ask for people’s money right now,” Pressman eventually replied with quiet conviction. “I believe in the art we’re doing. I think (a sustainable path) is feasible, but I just don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like.”

A battle plan, however, is being refined. The Taper hasn’t been dormant in this period of hiatus. Experiments in the form of special events, community gatherings and legacy celebrations have been tried. The most high-profile of these offerings, comedian Alex Edelman’s solo show “Just for Us,” was such a big hit that it has already had two return engagements.

“We’re introducing shorter and more nimble programming models,” Pressman said. “We’ve been exploring different ways of engaging the community. I think those are all elements of a future sustainable Center Theatre Group, but we just don’t know how it will all settle.”

Desai, who formerly served as producing artistic director at L.A.’s revered East West Players, said the new season will make CTG’s priorities clear. It will center L.A. artists, adjust the balance of how much CTG is producing versus presenting and expand co-productions.

Building the audience for the Desai era is not going to happen overnight.

“It will take three to five years to establish,” he said.

A strong advocate of CTG’s “significant civic role,” Desai wants the Taper to once again be a forum for public dialogue. But he knows he can’t do it alone.

“We were just in London,” he said. “And they were telling us that theater in London is back. The numbers are higher than they were pre-pandemic. But they don’t have to compete with the 405, right? It’s also cold and rainy there. We just have a different ecosystem. I do hope we live in a city where the theater can be central.”

McNulty writes for the Los Angeles Times.