I thought about this as I digested the news from last Friday – that Reprise has canceled the remaining two of its three mainstage productions that had been scheduled for 2011-12, amid talk of assessing “future programming and the funding of that programming.”

I checked the company’s website to see how it defines its own role. Click on “About us” on the Reprise home page, and first you encounter this breezy little statement:

A scene from the 2011 Reprise Theatre Company production of "They're Playing Our Song"

“We believe in great musical theatre. We live for chorus lines, jazz hands and spotlights. We believe the hills are alive with the sound of music, anyone can whistle, and that the sun really will come out tomorrow. We know that musicals can take you to a place where bursting into song and dance is not only expected but encouraged. That’s why we do what we do. And let’s face it: in these times we can all use a little escape. Whether you’re a jet or a shark, a funny girl or a jersey boy, we’re here for you.”

That’s mildly charming, but it’s also mildly misleading. According to the list of past Reprise shows, also on the website, Reprise has never produced any of these musicals that are specifically referenced in that paragraph: A Chorus Line, The Sound of Music, Anyone Can Whistle, Annie, West Side Story, Funny Girl, Jersey Boys.

So I kept looking and found this very bland but official mission statement, a shorter version of which also appears on the home page:

“Our mission is to produce musical theatre of the highest quality for Southern California audiences while making this unique American art form accessible to new audiences through education and outreach programs. We produce an annual subscription season of musical theatre revivals, ongoing concerts, stage-readings, and special events as well as education and outreach programs.”

The problem with this statement, besides its yawn-inducing quality, is that it could describe just about any musical theater company. Here, for example, are the goals of Musical Theatre West in Long Beach, as outlined in its online mission statement:

Musical Theatre West “enriches the cultural life of the community through musical theater; preserves musical theater as a unique American art form, cultivates and educates the audience of tomorrow through education and outreach programs.”

Anyone who has followed Reprise might have noticed by now that the primary way in which Reprise is somewhat different from other musical theater companies isn’t even acknowledged in its mission statement.

Sophina Brown serenades Scott Bakula in the 2007 Reprise Theatre Company production of "No Strings"

The common perception is that Reprise reprises, or revives, certain musicals that might otherwise be difficult to see. And so, while looking through the list of past productions, you see such titles as Fiorello!, Call Me Madam, Mack & Mabel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and No Strings. I’m pretty sure that the only time I’ve ever seen any of those shows was when I saw them in Reprise productions.

I’m grateful to Reprise that I had the chance to see them – and in virtually fully staged versions. Reprise renditions are considerably more advanced than the concert stagings of musicals that we get in very brief runs from the Musical Theatre Guild (and often the Guild’s titles are even more obscure than the more obscure Reprise titles).

Of course most of the shows on this level are not exactly long-lost masterpieces. Most of them have books that are weaker than their scores. Revivals like these call for audiences who are interested not only in the short-term experience available at a particular performance but also in a longer-term appreciation of the history of American musical theater.

In other words, they require a certain level of tolerant sophistication from audiences. This isn’t the kind of sophistication that appreciates only the latest advances in the art form. These productions are almost like exhibitions in an ongoing musical theater museum.

Because the audience for this kind of show is so much smaller than the audience for more familiar musical theater titles, Reprise also produces some of the latter, presumably in part to generate more revenue from surefire hits in order to support productions of the lesser known titles. This policy wasn’t introduced by the current artistic director Jason Alexander, although the recent LA Times commentary — in which Charles McNulty blames current artistic director Jason Alexander almost entirely for Reprise’s woes — might lead you to that conclusion. In fact, Reprise’s founder Marcia Seligson programmed The Threepenny Opera, 1776 and Company — shows that haven’t been all that difficult to see at other theaters around LA.

Brent Spiner and Julia Migenes in the 2009 Reprise Theatre Company production of "Man of La Mancha"; Davis Gaines and Lesli Margherita in Musical Theatre West's currently running production of "Man of La Mancha", Photo by Ken Jacques

In his commentary, McNulty praises two such Reprise productions, Cabaret from last fall and Man of La Mancha from 2009. Meanwhile, he knocks two “forgettable commercial works that were better off left for dead” – I Love My Wife and They’re Playing Our Song. And he acknowledges that he didn’t much care about seeing the two shows that have now been canceled – The Baker’s Wife and The Apple Tree.

Yet Cabaret and Man of La Mancha are, of course, sterling examples of shows that are frequently revived by other companies – in fact, the aforementioned Musical Theatre West is currently presenting Man of La Mancha in Long Beach, in a moving production with the stellar leading actors Davis Gaines and Lesli Margherita (albeit with an unnecessary opening dance and an anachronistic elevator into the dungeon instead of a drawbridge).

I doubt that anyone would argue that the four shows McNulty dissed are on the level of Cabaret or Man of La Mancha. But does that mean that they are “better off left for dead”?

I recall getting some solid laughs from the Reprise versions of I Love My Wife and They’re Playing Our Song – in part because Alexander himself brought his own flair for “light-hearted musical comedy” to his performances in them (McNulty wrote that Alexander should stick to those kinds of roles, which is in fact precisely what Alexander has done – he hasn’t used his position to cast himself as Sweeney Todd).

Jason Alexander, Lea Thompson, Vicki Lewis and Patrick Cassidy in "I Love My Wife"; Photo by John Ganun

I’ve seen smaller LA productions of They’re Playing Our Song and The Apple Tree. But I’ve seen I Love My Wife only via Reprise, and I have never seen The Baker’s Wife, the Stephen Schwartz/Joseph Stein show, which was received better in subsequent revivals (not in LA) than it was in its original production.  I was looking forward to letting Reprise introduce it to me.

Reprise should not abandon its productions of lesser-known titles. It has a distinctive position in between the companies such as Musical Theatre West, which stage mostly familiar titles (with occasional LA premieres of new musicals) in larger theaters, and the Musical Theatre Guild, which semi-stages obscure titles in very brief runs with actors on book.

Reprise’s position should be appealing to foundations and other funders, as well as to audiences who sometimes enjoy exploring admittedly imperfect artifacts from musical theater history. While I have no first-hand knowledge of how Reprise has presented itself to those potential donors, an acknowledgment of that distinctive position in Reprise’s mission statement might be a good place to start.

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS ON STAGE: In LA, we don’t see many plays about Israel, the Palestinian Territories or their dispute. Some readers may recall my disappointment that one of the few plays we have seen recently on this subject is the slight, superficial, one-sided and American-centric solo show My Name is Rachel Corrie, which the Theatricum Botanicum produced last summer.

Terry Davis in "Sarah's War"

Now, however, we are blessed with Valerie Dillman’s Sarah’s War, a new play that fictionalizes the same Rachel Corrie story (Rachel becomes “Sarah”) but presents it from the viewpoint of many more people.

The list includes Sarah (Abica Dubay), of course, and introduces us to her fellow volunteers for the International Solidarity Movement. One of them in particular (Marley McClean), while sharing Sarah’s opinions, treats her with some disdain. We briefly meet the Palestinians Sarah thinks she is defending – but even they (especially a young woman played by Dina Simon) have mixed feelings about what she’s doing and why.

Then we also meet the Israeli soldier (Will Rothhaar) whose bulldozer strikes Sarah, his commanding officer (Avner Garbi), and one of his friends who’s a peace activist. Meanwhile, back in the USA, we get to know and appreciate the perspectives of Sarah’s relatives – her mother (Terry Davis) who supports her, her uncle (Allan Wasserman) and aunt (Ann Bronston) and sister (Adria Tennor Blotta) who don’t – for somewhat different reasons, and her father (Lindsey Ginter) – who sits uncomfortably on the fence.

We feel the shock of the attacks on Israel that precipitated the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza, and we witness the harrowing conditions of life in Gaza while Israel strikes back.

In other words, Dillman sees the complexity of the situation, and she uses all that complexity and ambivalence to intensify the drama. Matt McKenzie’s staging thoroughly respects and delineates the play’s many layers and even manages to pull off a coda that, on paper, might seem somewhat precious.

Abica Dubay and Terry Davis

Although the play was developed at Pacific Resident Theatre, this is a production of Freedom Theatre West. The producer Jordan Elgrably, who led a talkback after the performance of Sarah’s War I saw,  was also on a talkback panel after the performance of My Name Is Rachel Corrie that I saw at the Theatricum last summer. Both talkbacks became somewhat heated, with partisans of varying viewpoints speaking out. Yet in contrast to the Rachel Corrie talkback, the talkback after Sarah’s War wasn’t nearly as interesting as the play that preceded it.

Sarah’s War, Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thur-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm. Closes March 18. www.Plays411.com/sarahswar. 310-657-5511.

***All Sarah’s War production photos by John P. Flynn

A couple other productions that deal with the same part of the world as Sarah’s War are still playing, although they appear to be approaching the ends of relatively long runs.

Yafit Josephson in "New Eyes"

The better of the two is New Eyes, which has the same inherent liability of being a solo show that My Name Is Rachel Corrie has. But at least in the case of New Eyes, its co-writer (with Suzanne Bresler) and star Yafit Josephson plays many different characters, besides herself, and she has a nimble, chameleonic quality that creates considerable comedy as she bounces among them, as directed by Sammie Wayne.

Josephson is an Israeli who did a tour of duty in the Israeli army but spends a larger part of the play evoking her experiences as an Israeli actress in Hollywood, where she is mostly asked to play stereotyped Middle Eastern roles. In her handling of this challenge, she discovers a new pride in her origins. But I was puzzled by one aspect of the show – not only Josephson but also her entire family appears to have lived in LA for quite a while, to the extent that I wondered if LA isn’t her home almost as much as Israel (in a talkback after the show, she revealed that she is a USC grad). Although she has already performed New Eyes more than 100 times, a clarification of when and why her family moved to LA might strengthen its narrative core.

Stephanie Liss’ On Holy Ground, at the Met, doesn’t have much of a narrative core. It consists of  two not-especially-well-related one-acts. The first is a dramatically inert monologue in which Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold discusses her life. Salome Jens brings her illustrious presence to the role, but the text and staging bring her down, not even allowing her to leave her chair as she talks.

Abbe Rowlins and Lisa Richards in "On Holy Ground"

The second Liss one-act is a set of contrasting monologues. On one side of the stage is a grieving but relatively rational Modern Orthodox mother (Lisa Richards) of a suicide bomb victim, and on the other is the defiant and fire-breathing mother (Abbe Rowlins) of the bomber. They briefly and implausibly meet at the end, but the script is more of a screed than a play. Rowlins is stuck with the kind of heavy-handed role that Josephson – in New Eyes – mocks, and Rowlins’ vaguely British accent is no help.

New Eyes, Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. Sunday March 4, 2 pm. May extend. www.neweyesplay.com. www.plays411.co/neweyes.  310-500-0680.

On Holy Ground, Met Theatre (downstairs), 1089 N. Oxford Ave., LA. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm. Closes March 4. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/211058.  800-838-3006.

TCG and ITI/US Announce March 27 World Theatre Day

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for non-profit theater and home of the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute (ITI-US), invites all theaters, individual artists, institutions and audiences to celebrate the 50^th annual World Theatre Day on March 27.  Each year, a renowned theater artist of world stature is invited by ITI Worldwide in Paris to craft an international message to mark the global occasion. This year the message will be written by award-winning actor, director and producer John Malkovich. Upon its release in March, the message will be translated into more than 20 languages to reach tens of thousands in the international theater community.

Through World Theatre Day 2012, TCG/ITI-US will celebrate the power of theater to strengthen cultural exchange and mutual understanding across borders. There are many ways to join this celebration, including:  Generation Without Borders, a call for early-to-mid career theater practitioners and students to submit essays envisioning our global theater movement 50 years from now (http://www.tcg.org/international/essay.cfm); SHINSAI: Theaters for Japan, a nationwide fundraising event on March 11, the first anniversary of the earthquakes, involving more than 50 theaters to raise relief funds for the Japanese theater community affected by the disaster (http://www.tcg.org/shinsai/); I AM THEATRE, an online platform for theater people across the world to share their stories and express the diversity and vitality of the international theater community (http://www.tcg.org/international/iamtheatre.cfm); and an interactive world map to track the growing number of World Theatre Day 2012 activities (http://www.tcg.org/international/events/wtd.cfm).

“Having the 50^th Anniversary of World Theatre Day fall within the same year as TCG’s own 50^th Anniversary is a wonderful symbol of the growing interdependence of our global theater movement,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG. “We look forward to celebrating this occasion with other ITI centers across the world, to champion our core value of global citizenship and continue our support of cultural exchange across borders.”

On March 22, John Malkovich will deliver his international message at UNESCO in Paris at a gala event that will include readings of play excerpts with Malkovich and other theater artists. The message will be available on the TCG website in March at http://www.tcg.org/international/events/wtd.cfm.

John Malkovich won an Obie for Steppenwolf’s True West in 1983. The following year, he appeared with Dustin Hoffman in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, which would earn him an Emmy when it was made into a television film in 1985. He received Academy Award nominations for Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire and burlesqued his own public persona in the films Adaptation and Being John Malkovich.

The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau in 1962. Succeeding honorees include Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010) and Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011).

Tom Dugan in "Nazi Hunter"

Playwright/director/actor Tom Dugan is in the process of writing his sixth one-man show, The Ghosts of Mary Lincoln.  “I’m not playing Mary,” he says, “but I could.”

In the meantime, Dugan is busy preparing his successful show Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal, which ran at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40 last year, for a run at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura.

Simon Wiesenthal was an Austrian Jew who managed to survive the German concentration camps of World War II, but he and his wife lost 89 members of their family in the Holocaust. After the war, he devoted his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals and helping bring them to justice.

Despite all the horrific evidence to the contrary, there are still people who insist that the Holocaust never happened.  “There are Holocaust deniers out there who never stop,” Dugan says.  “So if I can continue Wiesenthal’s work of education and tolerance, I’ll have done what I set out to do.  That’s the point of this work, Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal.”

Playwright, actor, director Tom Dugan; Photo by Cynthia Citron

“I’m Irish-Catholic myself,” Dugan continues, “but my wife is Jewish, and we now have two beautiful Jewish boys, Eli, 10, and Miles, 8.”

It was Dugan’s father, a decorated soldier who helped liberate one of the Buchenwald camps, who stimulated his interest in the Holocaust, “and it has fascinated me all my life,” he says.

“My father wouldn’t talk about his experiences in the war,” Dugan explains.  “But when I would ask him about them, he would give me an age-appropriate response.” It was only much later “that I finally got the full story from him, and as a playwright I feel an obligation to pass on the important lessons his generation learned.”

To play Wiesenthal, Dugan the actor shaves his head and wears a fat-suit that adds 50 or 60 pounds to his weight.  And as Dugan the playwright, he doesn’t whitewash the perceived contradictions that some biographers have seen in Wiesenthal’s character and his reports of his exploits.

“For example, he used to tell of coming within inches of catching Adolf Eichmann,” Dugan says.  “But later he acknowledged that the man he chased down the street may have been Eichmann’s brother.  Wiesenthal had a big ego, but he was willing to change his facts when he discovered new information.”

Tom Dugan

Wiesenthal was also criticized for supporting Kurt Waldheim (United Nations Secretary General from 1972 to 1981 and Austria’s president from 1986 to 1992), who was accused of having been a Nazi war criminal.  “You can’t blame anyone without absolute proof,” Wiesenthal said, and even though Waldheim had been a German officer in World War II, Wiesenthal claimed that there was no proof that he had committed war crimes.  “Having been in the SS does not make you a criminal,” he said.

Dugan says, “Wiesenthal insisted that the legal process had to be respected.  His attention to detail is why we’re talking about him now.”

He also notes that Wiesenthal was almost unintelligible in the ‘60s when he spoke about his work, “but later he was okay in English.”  Dugan worked with dialect coach Joel Goldes to capture Wiesenthal’s Austrian accent.  “An accent needs to be somewhere between accuracy and intelligibility,” he says, adding that Austrians who came to see his show gave him a “thumbs up” for his accent.

Dugan is also proud of the “thumbs up” he received from Civil War scholars for his script and portrayal of Robert E. Lee in Robert E. Lee-Shades of Gray.  “His is a fascinating story,” he says.  “Lee was actually against slavery and was pro-Union.”  To understand Lee’s history, Dugan studied the Civil War general’s letters and documents housed in the Museum of the Confederacy, which is located in the garden of the massive White House of the Confederacy in Virginia.

Another of Dugan’s one-man shows is a presentation called Oscar to Oscar, which, contrary to what you might expect, does not deal with the humor of Oscar Wilde and Oscar Levant.  Instead, it chronicles the two times that Dugan snuck into the Academy Awards ceremonies without an invitation.

Tom Dugan

Oscar to Oscar marked Dugan’s return to the stage after suffering what he calls “the dirty little secret of actors—stage fright.”  He defines that malady as “the fear of forgetting your lines on stage.”  To combat it, his acting coach, Robert Klein, suggested that he make up and perform a scene without dialogue, “which forced me to face my fears head on,” Dugan says. That tactic worked, and “after that, stage fright was not a dominant factor in my life,” he concludes.

His theater credits have included leading roles in The Man Who Came to Dinner, Misery, Amadeus, and Dublin Carol, and his TV and film credits include Bones, Friends, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Practice, Chicago Hope, and Dave, among many others in his 25 years as a professional actor.

For Nazi Hunter, he is particularly pleased to have veteran director and Rubicon’s artistic associate Jenny Sullivan in charge.  The daughter of actor Barry Sullivan, she has won awards for her direction of Rubicon productions You Can’t Take It With You, Hamlet, Art, and Dancing at Lughnasa, as well as directing many other plays and films around the country.

Dugan notes that he holds a talkback with his audiences after the presentation of Nazi Hunter.  Asked if he gets feedback from Holocaust deniers, he says, “It’s not to their advantage to come to this play.  It’s an emotional arena and they have no legs to stand on.  Besides, they don’t listen.  Listening is the last thing they do.

“Only the highest-minded people come to plays,” he continues.  “And to this play we get a lot of Holocaust survivors and the children and grandchildren of survivors.”

Tom Dugan

He notes that at one talkback during Nazi Hunter’s run at Theatre 40,  a woman spoke up who had apparently grown up in a “household of denial.  She knew nothing about the Holocaust and wasn’t allowed to talk about the war,” he says.

She identified herself as the great-granddaughter of Adolf Eichmann.

Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal was nominated last year for three Ovation awards: best play in intimate theater, best actor (Dugan) and best director (Sullivan).  Dugan also has also been nominated for best solo performance by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.  “We’ll know about that one in March,” he says.

Dugan has performed this show at a 1,000-seat theater in Toronto and a 7,000-seat theater at Bob Jones University. He notes “it also did well in Davenport, Iowa, even though they didn’t understand the word meshugena.”

The play does well, he believes, because he has followed the advice given to him by his friend, actor Jack Klugman.  “Something’s gotta happen,” Klugman said.  “There has to be a sense of urgency onstage.”

Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal, produced by Rubicon Theatre Company. Opens Feb. 18.  Plays Wed at 2 and 7 pm, Thur-Fri at 8 pm, Sat at 2 and 8 pm, and Sun at 2 pm. Through March 11.  Tickets: $39-$59, Students $25.  Rubicon Theatre, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. 805.667.2900. rubicontheatre.org.

***All Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal production photos by Ed Krieger

• The cast of The Jacksonian (Bill Pullman, Bess Rous, Glenne Headly, Amy Madigan and Ed Harris) along with director Robert Falls and playwright Beth Henley celebrate the world premiere opening night at the Geffen Playhouse.

   

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• Cast member Amy Madigan and CSI actress Marg Helgenberger celerate the world premiere opening night of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian at the Geffen Playhouse.

   

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• The Jacksonian director Robert Falls and playwright Beth Henley celebrate the world premiere opening night at the Geffen Playhouse with actress Frances Fisher.

   

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• Cast member Ed Harris and Geffen Playhouse Managing Director Ken Novice celebrate the world premiere opening night of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian at the Geffen Playhouse.

   

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• The cast of Beth Henley's The Jacksonian (Bill Pullman, Bess Rous, Glenne Headly, Amy Madigan and Ed Harris) celebrate the world premiere opening night at the Geffen Playhouse.

   

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• Montage Beverly Hills pastry chef Richard Ruskell shows his The Jacksonian themed cake to cast members Bill Pullman and Bess Rous, celebrating the world premiere opening night of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian at the Geffen Playhouse.

   

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• Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls with Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Randall Arney and cast member Glenne Headly (both Steppenwolf alums) at the world premiere opening night of Beth Henley's The Jacksonian at the Geffen Playhouse, directed by Falls.

   

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The Jacksonian, presented by Geffen Playhouse. Opens Feb. 15. Plays Tues.-Fri. 8 pm; Sat. 3 pm and 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm and 7 pm. Through March 25. Tickets: $94-99 through Mar.17; $94-139 for March 18-25 extension). Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood. 310-208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com.

Bradley Benjamin, Seán Martin Hingston, Meg Gillentine, Lesli Margherita, Tom Hewitt, Jennifer Brasuell and Justin Jones in "Kiss Me Kate"; Photo by Ed Krieger

Reprise Theatre Company is canceling the third show of the 2011-2012 season, The Apple Tree, in addition to its earlier cancellation of its second show The Baker’s Wife. According to a statement from the company, the board is “entering into an exploratory phase in order to assess its future programming and the funding of that programming.” The Apple Tree had been scheduled for April 17-29.

Subscribers are being contacted to arrange refunds for The Apple Tree portion of season tickets, as they were previously when The Baker’s Wife was canceled.

A reprise special event, Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructing Broadway on February 23, will be performed as announced, and tickets are still available by calling the UCLA Central Ticket Office at 310/825-2101 or visiting www.reprise.org <http://www.reprise.org/> . During this exploratory phase, the board plans to continue with these Reprise special events.

Reprise managing director Christine Bernardi Weil said, “Based on analysis of recent sales trends, we have projected that we will be unable to meet the required ticket sales and fundraising to responsibly mount the rest of our 2011/12 Season. We have decided to go on a hiatus from actively presenting productions. During this time, we will explore our business model and funding, with the goal of creating a more financially sustainable plan for our future work.”

Artistic director Jason Alexander said, “Despite enormous critical and community praise, Reprise is being forced to reconsider the realities of our producing model. But we are extremely excited about several of the possibilities that we are currently exploring as they may result in a company that is more vital not only to our community, but to theater in general.”

Zina Bethune and pas de deux partner

A SAD FAREWELL… Dancer/actress/choreographer Zina Bethune, a longtime member of  Colony Theatre, was killed by a hit-and-run driver when she stopped to assist an injured animal in Griffith Park on Sunday morning, Feb 12. I recall a Saturday morning in 1985, observing this hauntingly patient and supportive lady, a former dance soloist with New York City Ballet, instructing a small group of physically impaired children while I accompanied them on guitar. At the conclusion, she hugged each of the children, turned to me and said, “That was lovely.” Yes, she was…

Oksana Dyka in "Madame Butterfly"

MORE 2012 SEASONS… Burbank-based Colony has unveiled its 2012/13 season, which includes an impressive number of premieres, beginning with the West Coast debut of the 2007 Catholic-Pentecostal comedy The Savannah Disputation, by Evan Smith (June 16). Next up are the West Coast premiere of Blame It on Beckett, a behind-the-scenes comedy about a nonprofit theater, scripted by John Morogiello (Aug 11); the LA debut of Stephen Tomlinson’s 2007 one-person play American Fiesta (Sep 29); the West Coast premiere of  the 2010 one-act, two-hander The Morini Strad by Willy Holtzman (Nov 17); the LA premiere of Canadian playwright Peter Colley’s psychological thriller I’ll Be Back Before Midnight (Feb 9, 2013); and the premiere of Falling for Make Believe, a musical scripted by Mark Saltzman, chronicling the career and troubled life of Lorenz Hart and using the songbook that the lyricist wrote with Richard Rodgers (Apr 27, 2013)…Dorothy Chandler Pavilion-based LA Opera also reveals its 2012/13 season, beginning with the company premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s The Two Foscari, opening Sep 15, conducted by James Conlon, helmed by Thaddeus Strassberger, starring LA Opera general director Plácido Domingo. The season continues with: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Sept 22), co-conducted by Conlon and Domingo, helmed by German director Peter Stein, starring Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo; Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (Nov 17), starring soprano Oksana Dyka, conducted by LA Opera resident Grant Gershon, helmed by Ron Daniels; LA Opera debut of Icelandic baritone Tómas Tómasson in the title role of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (Mar 9, 2013), conducted by Conlon, helmed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff; Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (Mar 23), conducted by Conlon, helmed by Spanish director Joan Font; and Puccini’s Tosca (June 8), starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, conducted by Domingo, helmed by Broadway pro John Caird…Long Beach’s Carpenter PAC-based Musical Theatre West is celebrating its 60^th Anniversary season with a lineup that includes: 42^nd Street (Oct 26),  Oklahoma! (Feb.15, 2013), A Chorus Line (Apr 12, 2013) and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1994 adaptation of Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 tinseltown film saga, Sunset Boulevard (July 12, 2013)…

PREMIERES… After a year in development, Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe, “a  premiere multimedia theatrical event,” featuring the songbook of 
Louie Pérez and David Hidalgo of multi-Grammy-winning band Los Lobos, is debuting May 12 at Bootleg Theater in downtown LA, scripted by Theresa Chavez, Louie Pérez and Rose Portillo, helmed by About Productions’ Portillo and Chavez. Musical direction is by Scott Radarte from the East LA band Ollin.  Set during the 1968 East LA student walkouts, the production focuses on a young Chicana’s journey of self-discovery within and outside her neighborhood…And Padua Hills Playwrights founder Murray Mednick is premiering his latest work, The Fool and the Red Queen, experimenting “with archetypes to explore human nature and the processes of theater;” but the action still focuses on Mednick’s perennial down-on-his-luck actor Gary, who has permeated a slew of Mednick works. Helmed by the scripter and Guy Zimmerman, it opens May 19 at Lounge 2 Theatre in Hollywood…Closer at hand, Ovation-winning Troubadour Theater Company is debuting another mash-up of the Bard and an iconic ’60s rock band.  Two Gentlemen of Chicago, helmed by AD Matt Walker, opens Mar 23 at Falcon Theatre in Toluca Lake, chronicling the misadventures of pals Proteus and Valentine as they give up a “Saturday in the Park” and head for the big city…

Leslie Jordan

AROUND TOWN… Founded in 1974 by producing director Susan Albert Loewenberg, LA Theatre Works (LATW) has offered its virtual theater radio broadcasts nationally and locally since 1985.  LA area broadcasts, which originally aired on Santa Monica-based NPR outlet KCRW, before moving to Pasadena’s KPCC, have now found a home at KPFK (90.7FM), Pacifica Radio outlet for the Greater LA area, beginning in mid-March (date & time TBA), according to KPFK.  LATW continues its theater-for-the-air recording series with Michael Hollinger’s Opus, the string quartet play that the Fountain introduced to LA in 2010, this time featuring Adam Arkin, Sarah Drew and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Recorded before a live audience, it opens May 17 at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater.  The director and remaining ensemble member are TBA…Leslie Jordan is giving a special Feb 19, 2 pm matinee performance of his currently running solo Fruit Fly, in support of Celebration Theatre’s ambitious production of the 2005 Tony–nominated tuner The Color Purple, which opens Mar 9…Impro Theatre is bringing its improvised on-the-spot Jane Austin Unscripted to Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse, Mar 3, helmed by company AD Dan O’Connor and Paul Rogan. Based on audience suggestions, Impro ensemble “creates and performs a never before seen, all-new Jane Austen story right before your eyes.”…LA-based Festival of New American Musicals (FNAM) is launching 2012 Show Search, looking for the next generation of musical theater composers, the first national competition for high school and college-age new musical writers.  Complete submission info can be found at www.lafestival.org…On the extension front, the premiere of Michael Hyman’s two-handed Expecting To Fly, helmed by Kiff Scholl, starring Casey Kringlen and Justin Mortelliti, is reaching out through Mar 25 at Elephant Space in Hollywood…And in NoHo, Road Theatre Company is extending the LA premiere run of The Water’s Edge, scripted by Theresa Rebeck, helmed by Road AD Sam Anderson, through Mar 24…

Richard Chamberlain

PLAYHOUSE NEWS… Richard Chamberlain will play the father of The Heiress in the Pasadena Playhouse production of Ruth and Augustus Goetz‘s adaptation of the Henry James novel Washington Square, opening April 29. Heather Tom will play the title role and Julia Duffy will play her sister. Damaso Rodriguez will direct…Two weeks after Pasadena Playhouse’s announcement of the departure of executive director Stephen Eich, Charles Dillingham has been announced as interim executive director during the transition period following Eich’s departure, while the national search continues for a new executive director. Dillingham’s services are being underwritten by Arts Consulting Group (ACG), a national consulting firm where he serves as vice president. Until he joined ACG in June 2011, he had been managing director of Center Theatre Group in LA for 20 years… Long Beach Playhouse (LBP) is forgoing its previously announced search for a new executive director, instead creating a new structure administered by a producing artistic director in the leadership role and a business and operations manager position responsible for the administrative duties. Andrew Vonderschmitt, who has been with the Playhouse for four years as technical director and technical/artistic director, has accepted the producing artistic director position. Liz Lydic, who served as interim executive director, is staying on as business and operations manager through the end of March. A search is underway for someone to permanently fill the position. And in an effort to “return to staffing levels more in keeping with the needs of a community theater,” LBP is reducing its 12-member staff to six full-time and two contract positions. “This doesn’t affect the timetable for our production season at all,” promises Vonderschmitt. “We are still presenting The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane in April in the Studio Theater and we’re on schedule for the 2012/13 mainstage season which will debut in mid-October (TBA).”

Gary Grossman

THE THING IS… “I always think I want to come up with a set season, but it never happens. Our schedule always centers around the plays themselves and what they need.  We’re more about developing and workshopping. If a play is not ready, we’re not going to produce it. But we are productive. Last year we did 15, a mix of one-person shows and full-length plays.  At the moment, we are scheduled to do at least six solo performance works this year and at least three mainstage shows over at our Skylight space in Hollywood. And at the Beverly Hills Playhouse (BHP) we are looking to do our playwrights festival, which is seven full-length plays that were written within our play lab (TBA). And we’re looking to do two workshops at BHP in the Research Space.  Altogether we have four performances outlets, including the Skylight Mainstage and the smaller Skylab. In fact, in May and June we will actually have four productions going on at the same time. We are also open to partnerships and co-productions with other companies.  Last year we offered BHP to extend the run of Rogue Machine’s Small Engine Repair.  Upcoming, we are hosting the extended run of Inkwell Productions’ Fairy Tale Theatre, 18 and Over, which will be moving from the Matrix Theatre to the Skylight in March. We could never just be a straight rental [venue]. I want to work with the people I want to work with.” – Gary Grossman, producer/artistic director of Katselas Theatre Company, is currently overseeing the premieres of two one-person plays opening at the Skylight Theatre on Feb 24: The Yellow House, written and performed by Burke Byrnes, helmed by Michael Kearns (8 pm); and Special Delivery, written and performed by Harry Hart-Browne, helmed by Mark Bringelson (9:15 pm)…

Conor Walshe

I WAS ON STAGE WHEN… “I was appearing in Conor MacPherson’s The Seafarer a few years back in Australia. I was in this scene with an actor playing my brother, and he’s complaining that there is no toilet roll. So, in the next scene, as part of a comedy setup, I come back carrying about 40 roles of toilet paper tucked into every part of me including under my chin. In the process of trying to enter the scene, I hit one of the boards that supports the walls of the set. It starts to collapse onto the stage. In trying to recover, I drop some of the rolls onto the floor which I proceed to kick across the stage, causing them to unravel, making even more of a mess. I knew the actor playing my brother was about to enter right into the middle of this.  Fortunately, a couple of the stagehands where able to re-set the wall and we just muddled through it. – Conor Walshe is currently appearing in Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West at Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica

Tyrone Power, Sr.

INSIDE LA STAGE HISTORY… By the year 1916, the population of the city of Los Angeles has grown to approximately 450,000.  Despite being dwarfed by New York City’s 5.6 million, Angelenos consider their town to be a metropolis. A steady infusion of top-level international artists and touring companies give upwardly mobile local citizenry the desire to make the town a center for the arts that will transcend their snobbish neighbors to the north in San Francisco. The artsy folks living around the Beachwood Canyon area in the Hollywood Hills decide to make a real statement. After five months of preparation and rehearsals, Beachwood Canyon hosts an epic staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for one night only on May 21. Beachwood, a natural amphitheater where every sound is amplified exponentially, is an ideal location. The bowl shape of the future Beachwood Village provides the perfect contours of a theater. Conceived as a tercentennial commemoration of the Bard’s death, the production involves 5,000 players, including the student bodies of Hollywood and Fairfax High Schools. It features Tyrone Power Sr. as Marcus Brutus and Douglas Fairbanks as Young Cato. Other notables in the cast are William Farnum (Cassius), DeWolf Hopper (Casca) and silent film ingénue Mae Murray, who gives her all as a barbaric dancer. The Battle of Philippi is re-created by sword-wielding actors who fight their way up Beachwood Drive onto a vast stage constructed on the future site of Beachwood Village. The burgeoning Hollywood film industry lends its support. The lavish sets come courtesy of D.W. Griffith, Jesse Lasky, Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett and Universal Film Corporation. Easily accessible via the Franklin Ave. Streetcar, the play attracts an audience of 40,000 and is a huge success, with $2,500 profit from ticket sales donated to the young Actors’ Equity. An encore performance, produced by Griffith and Sennett, is held a few weeks later at the Majestic Theater downtown.  The success of the 1916 Julius Caesar leads directly to the Theosophical Society’s 1918 production of The Light of Asia, a pageant based on Edwin Arnold’s epic poem on the life of Buddha which is also a hit.  The Theosophist folks search for a permanent amphitheater for large-scale pageants. Renaming themselves the Theatre Arts Alliance, they come upon an acoustically perfect natural glen in an area along Highland Avenue known as Daisy Dell. At a cost of  $47,500, the Alliance buys 59 acres of what becomes the site of Hollywood Bowl in 1919…

…The Julio Martinez-hosted ARTS IN REVIEW, broadcast Thursday (2:30  to 3 pm) on KPFK (90.7FM), spotlights the best in live theater and cabaret in the Greater LA area. Upcoming on Feb 23, ARTS IN REVIEW hosts KPFK’s winter membership drive…

Amy Madigan, Bess Rous and Glenne Headly; Photo by Eric Schwabel

The three women gather in Geffen Playhouse artistic director Randall Arney’s office over a tray of fancy finger sandwiches—mostly vegetarian—and a plate of cupcakes, home-baked by Arney’s wife. Glenne Headly digs unceremoniously into the sandwiches. Amy Madigan goes straight for a cupcake. And Bess Rous curls catlike on the sofa, not yet tempted. The trio is appearing, along with Bill Pullman and Madigan’s husband Ed Harris, in the premiere of The Jacksonian, by Beth Henley, opening tonight.

The title refers to a Jackson, Mississippi, motel where Bill Perch (Harris) is staying while separated from his wife Susan (Madigan). Rous plays their daughter Rosy. Pullman and Headly play the motel’s bartender, Fred, and maid, Eva, respectively. The play has been set in several different years in the 1960s. The first version was in 1963 when Mississippi was still segregated. It bounced around in time a bit and is now set in 1964, which is the first year the state was desegregated.

Playwright Beth Henley

Although she now lives not far from the Geffen itself, Henley was born in Jackson and lived there during the turmoil of the early ’60s. In a January 2008 interview in the New York Sun, Henley said, “I’m trying to write a play now that takes place in a motel in 1965 in Jackson, and I think it’s going to deal with much more of the truth.” She added, “I have this desire to deal with the evil.”

“Mission accomplished!” Madigan crows, after this quotation is read aloud. The others agree. Madigan (A Lie of the Mind at the Taper, title role in Stevie Wants to Play the Blues at LATC, Oscar nominee for Twice in a Lifetime) sees this evil as something that seeps into everything. “The idea of Jackson, Mississippi, and the idea of the South is that in the soil itself, in the DNA of the place, there is so much blood, pain, racism, discrimination, death, deception.” Her character, Susan, has never traveled and knows nothing else. She ignores the evil around her under the cover of gentility, refusing to see the ugliness until it “comes up and smacks her in the face. And Susan still tries to push it aside.” Madigan hopes the audience finds some universality in that quality in her character.

Rous (recurring roles on Mad Men and Gossip Girl, recently seen in The How and the Why at the McCarter Theatre) equates evil with the pain Rosy feels. Because of her youth, Rous feels Rosy’s relationship with the pain is different from that of the adults in the play. “When you’re very young, you reach down to the bottom of your soul and try to stop the pain and turn the pain back and try to make pretend smiles,” Rous speaks softly but passionately. “I don’t want to say too much; I’d rather have the readers come see it.”

Ed Harris and Glenne Headly in "The Jacksonian"

Headly (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two-time Emmy nominee, recently seen at the Geffen in a live radio reading of It’s a Wonderful Life) thinks her character is evil. In fact, the role has made her sick. She has nightmares, but that won’t stop her. “It would be really false to not show what people really talked like. It would be wrong not to show what was really happening.” Headly speaks vehemently about the resistance to desegregation in Mississippi, including the governor’s refusal to comply.

The women—and, indeed, the men, as well—have appeared in multiple incarnations of the play, although not all together until now. Headly and Madigan participated in two salon readings in Henley’s living room, in 2008 and 2009, with very close friends, including Harris and Pullman. Henley cast Madigan and Headly in their roles, and there has been no thought of switching.

Following these readings, Henley sought feedback from her friends. Headly asked Henley what she was trying to say in the play. Henley explained that she wanted people to understand that “Mississippi was hell for her—and for many people—in the 1960s,” Headly recalls. “She said, ‘There was so much hate.’ And I said, ‘Hate of what?’ And she said, ‘Hate of everything.’”

Bess Rous, Glenne Headly and Bill Pullman

Headly encouraged the playwright to add more of this hate into the play, because many people, herself included, don’t know what desegregation was really like. She is loath to take credit for the changes, but does admit that her character has become more and more racist as the play developed. “It wasn’t quite as intense when we first did it.”

“Glenne is really good at getting down, cutting through it and asking those kind of questions,” Madigan chimes in. “Which I appreciate. In rehearsal she is, too.”

Rous was in a staged reading at Ars Nova in New York City, spring 2009, and a week-long workshop and reading at New York Stage and Film/Vassar College Powerhouse Theater in August of the same year. Pullman played Rosy’s father in both. Rous says Rosy is deeper and richer that when the process began. “It is a glorious thing to see Rosy grow and change and deepen,” she says. Rosy’s monologues have changed the most. “The old monologues were very black and white, cut and dried, what you see is what you get,” Rous explains. As the language got more poetic, it was helpful to have had the more concrete versions first. “It’s important for me to honor where she’s [Henley] coming from and why she chose those words. She could have said anything, but she said those words specifically, so I stay on myself to honor her and welcome her vulnerability.”

“We are fortunate to have the same Rosy, which sometimes doesn’t happen,” says Madigan. “That’s in the DNA of the process—Bess has brought all that past with her.”

Amy Madigan, Bess Rous and Glenne Headly; Photo by Eric Schwabel

Headly doesn’t bring it up, but Madigan is eager to point out that “this production would not be happening if not for Glenne.” Headly pushed Henley to continue working on the play after the first reading, and kept asking until the playwright finally agreed to let her send the script to their mutual friend Robert Falls, artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. They didn’t hear back right away. Henley was certain he hadn’t responded because he didn’t like the play. Headly assured her that Falls hadn’t read it yet. And she was right. In fact, Falls liked it so much he wanted to direct it himself.

Not only did she bring director Falls onto the project, Headly also brought the play to the Geffen and coordinated everyone’s schedules. She says she thought, “Ew, I don’t want to write all those letters and make those phone calls,” but realized that if it was going to happen, “Glenne, it’s going to have to be you, kid. And once I got into it, I used all the energy I do with my kid on the project.”

Bess Rous and Ed Harris

Why all this effort? “I wanted Beth to get the recognition she deserves,” Headly says. “People see her as a ‘lightweight,’ and I want them to see the depth and lyrical beauty of her work. Beth has a very complex side, and I think you see it in this play.” Madigan and Rous agree that Headly is this play’s champion.

Falls and Henley started working on the play before rehearsals began, and he encouraged her to participate and be vocal in rehearsal, a situation the actors find both unusual and helpful. “She’ll give us the metaphysical subtext when we’re all kind of going like this,” Madigan twists up her shoulders, arms, head, and face, “and it’s like, ohh that helps.” She relaxes. “Now I can get my head on right. It’s a delicate balance, I think. Beth really has a talent for knowing when to get in there and when to recede. It’s enormously helpful because it’s a very personal play.”

Originating a role creates a sort of pressure very different from the pressure of reprising a familiar role. “Well, they don’t compare your ass,” Madigan says, and the others laugh knowingly. “But you put more expectations on yourself to really get down there and use all those intelligent and soulful and creative sides of you. You don’t have another marker that’s put out there, so it’s freeing—a clean canvas. You have only the words with you. It’s very exciting, very risky in a glorious way.”

Bill Pullman and Amy Madigan

Headly also finds her role “very risky, because I find her beliefs so horrible. My character is meant to show what existed there [Jackson, Mississippi].” Because she sees Eva as an embodiment of hate rather than a complete person, Headly approaches the role differently than she usually would, in terms of what the character wants or needs. “This character is part of a social statement,” she explains. “Beth is showing something very dark.”

The Jacksonian is about very distinct things for these three actors. For Headly, it’s about showing a very personal point of view on life in Mississippi in the 1960s, and about the lengths that people will go to for their survival. “I think the play will inspire conversation. I think it’s very explosive, and I hope it inspires the audience to think about that time. It feels so far away, but in many ways it’s not. There are [two] people in Congress now who were serving then.”

The play is also about survival for Rous, but she frames it differently. She says that, for both Rosy and her, the play is about “the idea of being in a malignant environment and keeping my head above water and finding a way to breathe, no matter what.

Madigan sees it a bit more broadly. “The personal is political and you can’t have something political unless it is personal; I believe that strongly. For me, personally, to work with Beth and to work with Ed—and we really like working together—and to work with these other actors is an extraordinary experience. There’s nothing like working on a play, and through that the political side comes out, and that’s rare.”

Amy Madigan and Ed Harris

The women are all active politically in their own lives. Rous was a committed volunteer on the Obama campaign. Headly is passionate about the environment. Madigan works in the political arm of the pro-choice movement. They wish there were more opportunities to express their convictions artistically. “To say that women’s reproductive health is in the worst state it’s ever been is putting it mildly, so I’ve been able to do some projects about that,” Madigan says. “But they just don’t come up… you have to self-initiate them.”

Headly pushed for the production of The Jacksonian because, “I just got tired of hearing about people saying they had things they wanted to do that couldn’t be done.” There is a pause, and you can hear the wheels turning, the gears falling into place. “Maybe in the future that’s what I should do, initiate the things I think are really important for the world.” Headly looks thoughtful. “It would be good if I did that.”

The Jacksonian, presented by Geffen Playhouse. Opens Feb. 15. Plays Tues.-Fri. 8 pm; Sat. 3 pm and 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm and 7 pm. Through March 25. Tickets: $94-99 through Mar.17; $94-139 for March 18-25 extension). Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood. 310-208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com.

***All The Jacksonian production photos by Michael Lamont

Jamison Jones, Cassie Beck and Katrina Lenk in "Elemeno Pea"

This article marks the debut of a new LA STAGE Times peer-to-peer interview series featuring conversations between two high-profile theater artists. We asked director Bart DeLorenzo to kick things off by talking to Marc Masterson, South Coast Repertory’s new artistic director, who recently made his SCR directing debut with Molly Smith Metzler’s Elemeno Pea.

Masterson is in his first season as artistic director of South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, after 11 seasons as artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville and, before that, 20 years as artistic director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh. At the Actors Theatre’s Humana Festival, Masterson directed the premieres of Craig Wright’s The Unseen, Eric Coble’s Natural Selection, Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley, Charles Mee’s Limonade Tous les Jours, and Richard Dresser’s Wonderful World, among others. He also directed many classics in Louisville. He was founder and chairman of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance. Masterson is a California native.

DeLorenzo is the artistic director of the Evidence Room company, where he directed and produced more than 50 plays during the last 16 years. Recent credits include: Day Drinkers, Margo Veil (LADCC nominee), The Receptionist, A Number (Odyssey Theater Ensemble); Legacy of Light, Around the World in 80 Days (Cleveland Playhouse); Voice Lessons (Zephyr Theatre, Sacred Fools); King Lear (Antaeus Company);  bobrauschenbergamerica (TheSpyAnts); The Projectionist (Kirk Douglas Theatre) and Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress (Geffen Playhouse).  At South Coast he directed the premieres of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Doctor Cerberus and Donald Margulies’  Shipwrecked! An Entertainment (SCR), the Southern California premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, as well as developmental work in the Pacific Playwrights Festival and NewSCRipts series. He has received five LA Weekly Awards, three Backstage Garlands and the LA Drama Critics Circle Award.

Marc Masterson

DeLorenzo: You and I first spoke when you had just arrived at SCR before the season began and you were just settling in.  Now that you’ve had some time, what are your thoughts about moving the theater forward?

Masterson:   I’m interested in going two different directions simultaneously.  I’m interested in going deeply local and finding out what it means to be an arts organization in this place and in this community. That can be done through programming, through programs that we do in the community and with the community, through our school, through various other things and the stories that we tell.  What are the stories that are of interest and that resonate here specifically?

But then also I believe that we live in a global culture and that SCR should reflect that, that our work should include artists of international caliber and be known outside this region somehow. Primarily the way that’s happened in the past is through the work that has premiered here being produced elsewhere. That’s wonderful and important to continue, but I think there may be other opportunities that we might take advantage of, in the coming years, to increase our international profile.

DeLorenzo:   Do you feel like teasing us with what any of these opportunities might be?

Masterson:    They’re all things that are in process, so I can tease you but it would be an empty tease.

DeLorenzo:   Okay.  Just working in different cities, I’ve observed how different one audience can feel from another.  Does this audience feel different from your Louisville experience?

Melanie Lora and Cassie Beck in "Elemeno Pea"

Masterson: This audience has been attracted to this theater with a steady diet of fairly substantive work.  Many theaters including Actors Theatre of Louisville had components that were more commercially-oriented.  There were annual revivals of, for example, a production of Dracula, and shows that would sell a lot tickets and that help to subsidize the core mission.  SCR, with the exception of Christmas Carol, hasn’t really done that. The audience seems to have an appetite for serious drama and has, over a long period of time, valued literature, which is a great thing for an artistic director to feel.

DeLorenzo: I noted that you directed a lot of Shakespeare in Louisville.  Is that something that continues to interest you?

Masterson:   Yes absolutely.  I love doing Shakespeare.  I ran a contemporary theater for 20 years in Pittsburgh and we didn’t do Shakespeare.  I was pretty hungry to do classics, so at Louisville I did Oscar Wilde and I did Shakespeare.  I did a number of classic plays in the main season and then new plays, so I was directing two or three shows a year.

DeLorenzo:   Looking at what you did in Louisville, I also noticed a lot of, shall we say, “non-traditional work,” for example, those collaborations with Anne Bogart and Chuck Mee.  Do you see a future home for that sort of work at SCR?

Masterson:   Yes, possibly, and at the same time there were reasons why that made sense there. Anne Bogart had a relation with Actors Theatre of Louisville and with me independently. She’s actually the person who got me there and we’re old friends. So it had more to do with those relationships than it did with “Let’s do something experimental.” Anne directed a production of Hay Fever, of all things. That is one of my favorite things we ever did, and it was pretty much straight ahead Noel Coward but done in a Mies van der Rohe house.

Bart DeLorenzo

DeLorenzo: Yes, I saw her Once in a Lifetime and it was a blast.

Masterson:   Yes, and Picnic. Things like that that I just really love.  She is a curious and talented director who sees things through a particular lens of her own, and that’s what I find interesting about it, whether it’s very avant-garde or not.  I think that the avant-garde doesn’t exist in the same way that it used to, and that right now it’s just a different way of telling a story, and I love that.

DeLorenzo: Like what SCR has been doing with its new Studio Series.

Masterson:   But the studio series is dedicated to be being local, and we’re defining local as Southern California. So it’s about work that is a little bit outside the mainstream of what SCR has traditionally done but also about building some relationships with artists and ensembles around this region, bringing them into our space, expanding their audience, expanding our audience’s capacity of understanding. It’s been phenomenally successful for us, and we’ll definitely continue to build on that.

DeLorenzo:   Yes, I’ve seen several of the pieces that you guys are bringing in and it’s terrific what you’re doing.  And I know you produced some site-specific work back at Louisville.  Any thoughts about doing that here?

Masterson:   I’ve probably done four different site-specific projects, and they’re a killer.  They’re hard to do, and it takes a little extra effort, and you’ve got to build some experience with the staff.  But what’s interesting about site-specific work is the sense of event that it creates and the way that it can serve as a way to introduce our work to people who have never come through our doors, but who might walk by and get drawn in.

DeLorenzo:   I remember Naomi Iizuka’s At the Vanishing Point [part of ATL's Humana Festival in 2004, it was a play performed in a vacant warehouse in the Louisville neighborhood where it was set]

Masterson:   Oh, it was beautiful.

Jamison Jones and Melanie Lora

DeLorenzo: So do you think there will be any changes at SCR about how you will develop new plays?

Masterson:   The model here of staged readings with three days of rehearsal is already being tweaked and challenged by something like the work that we’ve been doing on Cloudlands [the Octavio Solis/Adam Gwon musical that premieres in April], which has now had two two-week developmental workshops, a longer than normal rehearsal period for PPF [SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival] presentation last year, and several private readings and workshops. So the amounts of resources that have been poured into the development of that piece are very different from what SCR has traditionally done.  But the ability to see something, see its strengths, weaknesses, give notes, go back into a writing period, come out of that writing period, show it, discuss it, give notes, go back into a writing period, that’s something that’s new here. and I think something that we may model again, not for everything but for plays and projects that seem to warrant it.  I think we want to develop the right process for each project.

DeLorenzo:   SCR has a strong track record of supporting Los Angeles artists, and in your first season here, I notice that you’ve hired a lot of local actors and designers, but I also couldn’t help but notice – and many in the LA theater community noticed, and I can’t say I don’t have a dog in this race – that you didn’t hire any Los Angeles directors.

Masterson:   Well that’s not entirely true.

DeLorenzo:   Well, for the children’s plays I know you hired  –

Masterson:   We hired three for those shows. And then the other tricky thing here is [SCR's founding artistic directors] David [Emmes], Martin [Benson] and myself are all now local, and not to play the local against the national card too heavily–

DeLorenzo: I’m just making an observation.

Katrina Lenk and Jamison Jones

Masterson: And I’m just responding.  It’s okay.  But what that really means is if we do 13 plays a year including Christmas Carol, the majority of our work is actually being directed by LA-based artists.  I understand that people might be nervous about how things might change, and most of my experiences were out of the New York market or at the Philadelphia or Chicago region, and those are relationships that matter to me too.  So clearly we will continue to make space and room for LA-based artists and that won’t change, but it’s also good to bring in some new blood.  We do have a responsibility to our community and to our audiences to produce the best work that we can and that includes artists from here and artists who are not from here.  In my experience, when there is a new artistic director, people will look very carefully to see if there is a trend in some direction and small shifts will feel like huge shifts.  I am aware that people are sort of hyper-aware at this moment in time.

DeLorenzo:   Did that awareness figure into your choice of the first play that you would direct in Southern California?

Masterson: Well, I suppose I chose Elemeno Pea because it’s a new play by a promising writer [Molly Smith Metzler].  I’m excited by her work. I also thought that it didn’t get a completely fair shake when we produced it in Louisville, so I wanted to give it a second chance.  From a subject standpoint, it’s a comedy that deals with class, and not knowing anything really about the audience here, yes, I was curious to see how people would take it, whether they would recognize these people and whether they would think they were funny or not.

DeLorenzo:     When I chatted with the playwright at the opening, she talked about how much of the play had changed.

Playwright Molly Smith Metzler

Masterson: She did a phenomenal amount of work on this production.  It was like doing a new play, just draft after draft after draft throughout the rehearsal period.  It was interesting because the second day of rehearsal we talked about making one change, and it was like a couple of lines, and she said, “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea, and you realize that if I make that change, I’m going to have to rewrite the entire role.” It was like pulling the thread on that favorite sweater.  She pulled that and it was a chain reaction, and fortunately she was able to do it fairly seamlessly.

DeLorenzo:   I’m wondering… when I was an artistic director I would have favorite moments in a production that I had directed that I would sneak in and watch from time to time.  Do you do that?  Do you have a favorite moment in your production?

Masterson:   It’s funny.  I don’t really feel that way.  Once a show like this opens, I feel like I’m not part of it anymore.  I feel like I’ve let go of it and sometimes, it’s not this necessarily, but sometimes it’s kind of painful for me to go back and watch it again, because I feel like they don’t need me anymore and that the audience has taken over my role.

DeLorenzo:   They can be a very good director, the audience.

Masterson:   Or a bad one.

DeLorenzo:   Yes, it’s true. So as a director, was there a particular production that you thought was a turning point in your work?

Masterson:   Probably the biggest turning point in my career was the second show I did in Louisville, which was a production of the Scottish play with three actors and masks and multimedia. It was this ritualized event.  It was a big concept production, very edgy and very dark.

A scene from the Actors Theatre of Louisville's production of "Macbeth"; Photo by BE JOHNNY

DeLorenzo: Did you adapt the play yourself?

Masterson:   I did. It was a huge risk for me to take, and I was up most nights as the result of sticking my neck out that far. It was more than some people could take, but it did extremely well. I put a stake in the ground when I got to Louisville and it basically said, this is different. This is not the old Actors Theatre of Louisville.  I didn’t do that here, and I’m not sure it would be the appropriate thing to do.  I like to kind of jump around stylistically like that.

DeLorenzo:   And how do you rehearse in the room?  Do you have certain tendencies about table work, when to start staging, etc?

Masterson:   It varies by the project but, yes, I usually spend two or three days around the table, when everybody has their script out, you can kind of figure it out together.  Primarily what I do is ask pesky questions of the playwright and of the actors. If you ask the right questions, everybody figures it out, and then when you get up on your feet, it just kind of takes care of itself, and that’s what happened in this case.

DeLorenzo:   Do you stage in your mind first or do you just sort of let it happen?

Masterson:   I do stage in my mind.  I used to stage everything in my script before I got up, but it’s a habit I developed early in my career and I guess I was trained that way. What I try to do is either get the actors to discover what I think I already know, or even better is when they discover something is better than what I thought I knew, and so to be able to recognize that is half the battle.

DeLorenzo:   So what do you look for in the material that you chose to direct?

Melanie Lora and Katrina Lenk in "Elemeno Pea"

Masterson: A challenge.

DeLorenzo:   Okay, and what do you look for in an actor?

Masterson:    Somebody who I want to spend a month with in a room. And that can be anything from “You just blew me away in your audition, and I’m really curious to see what else there is there and how deep that goes” to someone who has the ability and seems to be a pleasant person and we can have fun together.

DeLorenzo:   Do you know what you’ll direct next?

Masterson:   I do know I want to be in the Argyros [SCR’s 336-seat stage], just because I’m only directing one show a year here. I’ve been directing three a year prior to this, and so I realize that I want to know what it’s like to work in that other space.

DeLorenzo:   That’s a beautiful theater to work in.  Have you managed to get outside the theater much?  I know you came to see my show [Margo Veil] at the Odyssey last summer, and I thank you for that, but have you been out to see a lot of other shows?

Masterson:   Yes. Prior to going into rehearsal, in the summer I was going once a week, and lately but prior to rehearsal, it was like once every two weeks.  I know that it’s important for me to get out and about, and some of the things that I saw we’re now doing in the Studio Series.

DeLorenzo:   Are you developing a sense of the SoCal theater scene?

Masterson:   LA is a great theater town, and I’ve seen really quality work wherever I’ve gone. There’s only one or two things that I’ve seen that I thought maybe weren’t quite worth the drive, but my batting average is much lower in New York City.  Honestly, truly it is.  The whole [99-Seat Plan] theater movement is a new thing for me. I haven’t really lived in a city that’s had a scene like that, and I’m trying to understand it because I’ve seen good work at warehouses, but the idea that no one has really been paid is a nagging worry to me. Yet it seems to be the culture of the way a lot of theater happens here.

Cassie Beck, Melanie Lora and Jonathan Nichols

DeLorenzo: So what’s next in the American theater? Where are we all going?

Masterson:   Well, this will sound funny coming from a guy who’s running a flagship institution, but a little American theater history trajectory here to try to answer your question. The big thing that happened in the ’70s and the ’80s was the growth of these institutions [like SCR].  Then in the ’80s and the ’90s, it was the mid-sized companies that were coming up.  And in the last 20 years, it’s been the proliferation of the small and mid-sized theater movement in the United States, as well as the ensemble companies that have learned to work together over 10, 15, 20 years now and developed an aesthetic of their own and have built a following and have toured internationally and have done all of those things that really didn’t exist before. Those are the most significant things in the American theater in the last 20 years, I think.

The economics of that are not great, because those companies don’t pay people very well. On the other hand, they’re important aesthetically, and from an artistic standpoint because they give people work that feeds their soul. The theater really does survive, I think, on the strength of that.  I think that those companies, particularly the young and the flexible and the nimble ones, will find new models beyond the subscription model, different ways of keeping things in repertory, keeping the projects alive that are doing well, retiring the ones that aren’t.  Those kinds of thing will, I think, be the next wave.  The large institutions have a lot to learn from the small ones.

DeLorenzo:   Last question. What is important to you about your work? What do you think is your contribution?

Cassie Beck and Katrina Lenk

Masterson: Well, it’s keeping a place like this vibrant and alive and growing and open to new ideas and new artists and new ways of doing things and telling stories. I feel like I have a responsibility in that regard.  I’m trying to take what I learned from running those small companies and bring that into this model and see what I can do with it.  I don’t know exactly how, but I know it has to evolve. So we’ll see what happens.

Elemeno Pea, presented by South Coast Repertory. Plays Tues.-Weds. 7:30 pm; Thurs.-Fri. 8 pm; Sat. 2:30 and 8 pm; Sun. 2:30 and 7 pm. Through Feb. 26. Tickets: $58-68. South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa 92626.  Call (714) 708-5555 or visit www.scr.org.

Elemeno Pea

Chris Takemoto-Gentile, Kaliko Kauahi, Mapuana Makia, Blake Kushi, Kelsey Chock and Jared Asato in "The Three Year Swim Club"

“Da Pidgin Guerrilla” strikes again — this time on the mainland. He’s known as Lee Tonouchi outside of Hawaii, and his play The Three Year Swim Club is about to open at East West Players.

The literature professor and Pidgin advocate’s play tells the true story of Olympic coach Soichi Sakamoto and his team of plantation kids turned Olympians – with a bit of artistic license, of course. With three years until the next Olympics and World War II fast approaching, Sakamoto taught them to swim in an irrigation ditch.

Coach Soichi Sakamoto

“[It's] based on a true story of coach Soichi Sakamoto [and] takes place in Maui, 1937,” says Tonouchi, speaking with a light Hawaiian Pidgin accent. “The goal was to make Maui plantation kids go to the Olympics in 1940, so that’s why he called it Three Year Swim Club. [He] did never have one pool to train ‘em in. So, he was gonna make ‘em swim in the plantation irrigation ditches for their training.”

As true as it is, the story is still relatively unknown even to Maui residents.

“It’s amazing that…I never heard about it in elementary school, in community school, high school, even in college at UH – I never heard about the story. My family, all from Maui too. My grandparents – all raised in Maui. My dad was from Maui. Yet nobody told me this story,” says Tonouchi.

“This is a story that’s not getting passed down? I asked all my friends. All my friends my age – they never heard the story too, even the ones from Maui…I said, ‘Oh. I guess since I’m a writer, I guess maybe I’m the one who gotta write the story then, huh?’”

There are six characters in the EWP production, each equipped with a set of different personal obstacles.  Sakamoto’s include the coach’s own interracial marriage, plantation life, and being hapa-haole, or half-white.

Lee Tonouchi

“Bill – he’s an outsider from Honolulu, trying to fit in with this group in Maui. Then there’s Halo, who is sort of a joker but also very competitive and really wanting to do something more with his life and falling short of that,” says director Keo Woolford. “There’s Keo Nakama, who is in some ways brainwashed into thinking that this is the way but ends up being the underdog that really takes it all the way. There’s ‘Fudge,’ Fujiko Katsutani, who is the only girl in the show, who really makes something [of herself]. [She] comes from a family of all boys, is told that girls have to be a certain way and she comes and breaks all those stereotypes as well.”

Tonouchi originally wrote the play as a 50-minute show for youth theater. It premiered in 2010 at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth and toured across the islands. But the play he was hoping to write didn’t come into view until EWP’s literary manager Jeff Liu sought out the project. Soon after, producing artistic director Tim Dang suggested that Woolford – who was first tapped to play the coach (he’s also an actor with a hula background) – direct it. Like Tonouchi, Woolford is also from Hawaii but had never heard the story.

“The first thought was, ‘I want to be involved in this somehow.’ Because it’s a story, a true story I’d never heard of. A true story that puts Asian-Americans [and] that puts Hawaii in a positive light,” says Woolford. “This man has made an impact…I would have been super happy to be playing a role – I just really wanted to be involved, once I read the script.”

Blake Kushi, Chris Takemoto-Gentile, Mapuana Makia, Kelsey Chock and Jared Asato

However, the inspirational play had its challenges. One is that it’s written entirely in Pidgin English.

“I guess having plays in Pidgin is always a challenge because people always ask, ‘You know, do people understand Pidgin? And does having the play in Pidgin limit your audience, Lee?’” says Tonouchi. “That’s being true to the story too because that’s how they talked during that time, so to me, if we were to write the play in all English, then that would be a false thing to do.”

Tonouchi is called Da Pidgin Guerrilla for his activism for the recognition of Pidgin English as a language. He wrote Da Word, an acclaimed collection of Pidgin short stories, as well as Living Pidgin:  Contemplations on Pidgin Culture and other essays and magazine contributions about Pidgin. Currently, he’s a stay-at-home dad by day and a Pidgin literature professor by night, teaching an upper level course at Hawaii Pacific University.

Pidgin English isn’t only a challenge in relaying text to an audience. It also requires actors who can pull off a proper Pidgin accent.

Keo Woolford

“It was really, really important for the actors to bring that essence to it,” says Woolford. “So, it was important for me to cast people from Hawaii who understood that, because Pidgin is really difficult to do correctly. I even have several actor friends who are wizzes at languages but can’t pick up the Pidgin accent. Then on top of that, to make language understandable to an audience who is not familiar with that and especially back in the day when that was really thick – it was a different Pidgin back then than it is today.”

A formidable, albeit subtle, challenge that’s in the play is racism. Immigrants and their children were not allowed to use the pool designated haole, or white – much the same way African-Americans could not eat with or share facilities with white Americans until after integration in 1954, followed by another decade of assassinations, violence, unrest, and activism. However, some worried that the play suggested reverse racism.

“Some comments I got from people who saw an early version of it, the earlier drafts, were concerned about the play being anti-haole. Anti-haole means anti-Caucasian because there’s like a haole pool that only the plantation owners could use, yea?” says Tonouchi. “It’s not like that’s something made up…If we were to [leave out] that fact, then that wouldn’t be true to the story. So, in the original, I guess that made some people feel uncomfortable, yea?”

Blake Kushi, Chris Takemoto-Gentile, Mapuana Makia, Kelsey Chock and Jared Asato

Another challenge, and probably the most obvious one, is how to tell a story about swimming on stage, which Dang and Woolford got around by using hula movement – not dancing – as a metaphor, with a lot of help from the tech crew:  set and projection designer Adam Flemming, sound designer Denis Yen, costume designer Ken Takemoto, and lighting vet Jeremy Pivnick.

“That is the million dollar question,” Woolford says. “When Tim had suggested it, I just thought it was so clear to me that hula was the metaphor and hula motion – I really, really want to clarify this – it was really hula motions versus hula dancing. Because hula, for it to be hula, requires accompaniment. It requires a composition or a piece of poetry that the moves are interpreting. So there are hula motions with rhythm and also the movement that the kids are doing because it’s a play. And this is another thing that’s kind of hard to explain – that it’s a play that has movement in it. So it’s fantastical at times. So for a lack of better term, it’s like a dream sequence, but there’s dancing to portray their swimming.”

Besides being able to pull off swimming by using lights and hula movements, Woolford’s favorite part of the play is how the characters overcome the odds that are stacked against them.

Kelsey Chock and Jared Asato

“It’s like the bad news bears. They are a band of underdogs that really put nose to the grinder and come out on top. I love inspirational stories like that, especially when they’re true,” says Woolford. “It’s when they go through the different stages of learning to get better, to winning, to almost falling apart, then to overcoming – not almost falling apart, but because of things that are happening in the war, their dreams being squashed and then still persevering against all odds of age, of race, of geographical location, still making it to the top.”

Despite the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics due to WWII, Sakamoto and some of his students did go on to represent and win medals for the United States at the 1948, 1952, and 1956 Olympics. Tonouchi, who also loves the inspirational nature of the story, particularly wants to show others that Hawaii can represent the country just as well as the mainland.

“To me the story was inspiring because being from Hawaii, we always think that we’re second class to the US continent. We always think that things and people from the continent are better than things from over here. But then [I] thought, here’s some guy, Soichi Sakamoto, he [created] new swim techniques that people from the mainland wasn’t using at the time,” says Tonouchi.

Blake Kushi and Kaliko Kauahi

“They thought he was crazy for using those techniques, you know? Because there’s so much success, people started copying those techniques, yea? Just to show that people from Hawai’ can be just as good too…but for kids growing up now, I think it’s different. Kids growing up now, they have [President] Barack Obama they can look up to now. It’s different from my generation because I didn’t have like a ‘from Hawaii, can-grow-up-to-be-President-of-the-United States role model,’ right?’”

Three Year Swim Club is definitely not a musical.

“Everyone should know it is not a musical. There is movement. Because I get that question all the time, ‘Is it a musical?’” says Woolford. “’No, it’s a play.’ That’s why it really breaks convention. It is a play, but there are parts in it that just switch and you’re [transported] into this swimming world that is not like the other parts of the play. They should come see it.”

Three Year Swim Club, presented by East West Players. Opens Wednesday. Plays Wed.-Sat. at 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm. Tickets: $26 – $36. Through March 11. David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Little Tokyo. 213-625-7000 x20. https://eastwestplayers.secure.force.com/ticket.

***All Three Year Swim Club production photos by Michael Lamont

These are not musicals. Both plays employ “classical” music (in the broad, colloquial sense of the word), but Dissonance is set just a few years ago and Old Wicked Songs is set in 1986.

Skip Pipo, Elizabeth Schmidt, Peter Larney and Daniel Gerroll in "Dissonance"

LA theatergoers are not likely to have seen Dissonance. However, they might have heard that it’s about a string quartet and might then confuse it with another play about a string quartet – the play that the Fountain Theatre produced to considerable acclaim in 2010. But that one was Michael Hollinger’s Opus.

While the Fountain’s Opus was the first time that many of us saw a play about the backstage backbiting among the members of a string quartet, not all plays about the backstage backbiting among the members of a string quartet are the same.

Dissonance is the better play – its narrative turns don’t feel contrived in the same way that some of those in Opus did.

Lanigan is a British writer who now lives in Brooklyn, and his subject is an apparently British-based quartet now preparing for its New York debut. The group is named after and run by the first violinist James Bradley (Daniel Gerroll). The violist Paul (Skip Pipo) is also British, but the second violinist Hal (Peter Larney) and the cellist Beth (Elizabeth Schmidt) are younger Americans — former students of the boss.

Daniel Gerroll and Peter Larney

James is a witty but cruel tyrant, and Paul his most submissive target. Hal, on the other hand, talks back, immediately challenging the tempo of the group’s rendition of Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet in the first scene after the first (recorded) music stops. It’s the first indication of the many sources of tension that swirl below the surface of this seemingly well-coordinated unit.

Both James and Hal have a previous romantic or sexual history with Beth. This old wound suddenly gets scratched when Beth gets a side gig as a tutor/consultant to a rock star, Jonny (Jeffrey Cannata), who has left his own group to begin a more introspective solo career. He’s interested in adding a cello – or an entire string quartet – to his arrangements.

Another issue is whether a former mentor of James will attend the concert. James feels that he hasn’t quite reached the level of his mentor and he’s sensitive about it.

As in Opus, the quartet’s playing is mimed. But in Dissonance, one additional musical number is performed live — Cannata sings and plays a song from Jonny’s repertoire (actually by Warren Malone, with new lyrics by Lanigan).

Whether recorded or live, the music reflects and reinforces what’s happening in the play, with a dose of Britten near the end eloquently expressing the apparent imminent dissolution of the group. Crispin Whittell’s staging is in harmony with Lanigan’s script at all times. Gerroll repeats the role he played in the Williamstown premiere and later in New York with total command, but the others rise to his standard. I can’t remember a better non-Troubie production in the history of the Falcon.

Dissonance, Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank. Wed-Sat 8 pm, Sun 4 pm. Closes March 4. www.FalconTheatre.com. 818-955-8101.

***All Dissonance production photos by Chelsea Sutton

The script of Dissonance contains a few references to the mixed emotions that often surge through great music, and that’s also a topic of Old Wicked Songs, the Jon Marans masterpiece at the Colony. This play hasn’t been seen much in LA County since it was introduced to LA at the Geffen Playhouse in 1997, and it’s well worth either a discovery or a re-visit..

John Towey and Tavis Ganz in "Old Wicked Songs"

A brilliant young American pianist, Stephen Hoffman (Tavis Danz) who already feels burned out at age 25, arrives in Vienna in 1986, hoping for new inspiration from a master teacher. However, the (offstage) teacher requires this consummate solo technician to first study accompaniment for a few weeks with Josef Mashkan (John Towey), whose methods involve making the pianist sing as well as play – perhaps in order to get him to think more clearly about the broader context of the music he performs. Stephen, whose arrogance is on the level of the much older James in Dissonance, isn’t happy about this assignment.

But Old Wicked Songs is about much more than music or about the familiar arc of the old-timer and the young whippersnapper who finally learns that he doesn’t know it all. It’s set against the context of former Nazi Kurt Waldheim’s campaign for the Austrian presidency in 1986 and the fact that both of its characters are, at first, pretending not to be Jewish. The play is at least somewhat autobiographical – as was explained in an LA Times interview with Marans in 1997.

Tavis Danz and John Towey

For a play that isn’t explicitly about the Holocaust, Old Wicked Songs packs considerable power in dealing with its indirect impact. And, once again, the music is – pardon the pun – both instrumental and vocal in accomplishing this goal. Near the end of the play is a riveting scene in which Mashkan finally speaks about his experiences from decades ago – but we don’t hear his words or even see his face. We hear the music while we’re watching Stephen’s face. I would say that this is an unforgettable scene – if I hadn’t, in fact, forgotten it. But in retrospect I’m glad I forgot about it, because its power in this production was more of a revelation.

The Colony’s director, Stephanie Vlahos, is a former professional opera singer herself, and her knowledge of the interplay between teacher and student is probably more authentic than you’ll encounter in most revivals of Marans’ work. She has found two actors in Towey and Danz who convincingly play and sing their own music without relying on recordings – and they are no less convincing in their spoken dialogue.  This is a remarkable revival of a play that appears to be close to achieving classic stature.

Old Wicked Songs, Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St, Burbank. Thur-Fri 8 pm, Sat 3 and 8 pm, Sun 2 pm. www.ColonyTheatre.org. 818-558-7000.

***All Old Wicked Songs production photos by Michael Lamont

Perhaps I shouldn’t have referred, above, to Old Wicked Songs as Marans’ masterpiece without having seen all his plays, but I have seen his The Temperamentals (last year at the Blank Theatre), Jumping for Joy (at Laguna Playhouse) and now his latest, The Cost of the Erection, at the Blank. I liked The Temperamentals, but I can’t say that either it or the other two is likely to be remembered as a masterpiece.

Robin Riker and Michael E. Knight in "The Cost of the Erection"; Photo by Michael Geniac

It’s possible that Marans is still working on The Cost of the Erection. Besides the Blank Theatre’s just-opened production, a concurrent version in Pennsylvania has a different title – A Raw Space. So perhaps it’s still a raw script. Whatever it is, it’s nowhere near the level of The Temperamentals and it’s a far, far cry from Old Wicked Songs.

In Erection/Space, architect Mark (Michael E. Knight) and his wife Susu (Robin Riker), who is an independently wealthy publicist for architects, have just bought a Manhattan apartment with a spectacular view but without any interior design – in other words, a raw space. For reasons that are never sufficiently explained and never approach a threshold of plausibility, Susu asks over rival architect Rod (James Louis Wagner) and his wife Brenda (Kal Bennett), with whom she has bad blood – and then she asks both men to come up with designs for the space in what amounts to a competition.

Kal Bennett, Robin Riker and James Louis Wagner in "The Cost of the Erection"; Photo by Rick Baumgartner

Marans also tosses in a dead child, infidelities, an unlikely scene in which Brenda is caught snooping in Mark’s office, and a shower in an area of the apartment which had been considered as a possible shower site but which we thought was still “raw.” Scenes are played twice from different perspectives, and the raw stage is eventually filled out with curtains as dividers and a couple of brightly-colored pieces of furniture – but without any increase in credibility or any well-expressed larger point.

The two couples are cast here by director Daniel Henning as being at least a decade apart in age, but any generational differences hardly crop up in the actual script. The West Coast title is a pun – get it? – that’s about on the same level as Marans’ naming a character Rod and then giving him a low sperm count and eventual impotence.

It’s time to go back to the drawing boards.

The Cost of the Erection, Blank Theatre, 2^nd Stage, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. www.theblank.com. 323-661-9827.

Speaking of designing a raw space, you should see what Desma Murphy did with the Road Theatre Company’s little venue. She designed one extremely realistic, detailed set that serves equally well for two plays that aren’t connected by author or characters.

They are connected, however, by a little more than the rustic lakeside setting, with a back porch of a house on stage left and trees on stage right, and the lake itself unseen off the  stage right side.

Chet Grissom and John Gowans in "Finding Fossils"

Both plays are also about fathers and their children.

The off-night play, Ty DeMartino’s Finding Fossils, is mostly about an middle-aged son (Chet Grissom) and his distant, crotchety and recently widowed dad (John Gowans), who lives out at the family’s lakeside summer home. The son, who is a director of TV soap operas in Manhattan, is gay, but the father-son alienation apparently started long before anyone realized that. A third character, one of the father’s friends (Mark Costello) who never married, tries to mediate.

The play is predictable but also poignant, with authentically lived-in performances by all three men, under the guidance of Suzanne Hunt.

The main weekend attraction, Theresa Rebeck’s The Water’s Edge, is as much about the mother as the father. It’s a modern take-off on the ancient Greek story that featured Queen Clytemnestra even more than King Agamemnon, with their surviving children Orestes and Electra resenting their father’s long absence and his role in the death of their sister Iphigenia.

Nicole Farmer, Paris Perrault and Patrick Rieger in "Water's Edge"

In Rebeck’s version, Richard (Albie Selznick) returns to his family’s country home in the hills above New York, after 17 years of absence in the wake of the drowning of a young daughter in the lake. It was entirely an accident, he maintains, but his wife Helen (Nicole Farmer, alternating with Stephanie Michels) won’t accept that. She’s distressed by his homecoming, as is daughter Eric (Paris Perrault), but son Nate (Patrick Rieger) appears more open to the idea – and to the fact that Richard is accompanied by a younger girlfriend (Lauren Birriel).

Although anyone who knows the original knows how badly this is likely to end, Rebeck’s dialogues and Sam Anderson’s staging keep us interested anyway. Although some have interpreted this 2006 play as a case of male-bashing, I was impressed with Rebeck’s efforts to make us understand Richard’s point of view – in fact, it’s more comprehensible than Helen’s ultimate act of revenge.

The depiction of the two adult children features some new wrinkles. Nate displays behavioral tics that might indicate some kind of mental illness, perhaps as a way of preparing us for the horrific final scenes. But despite his halting speech patterns, he also comes across as awkwardly appealing in his own way – his conversation with his father about his job at a bookstore is, strangely enough, one of the play’s most compelling moments. Meanwhile, Erica – although memorably bitter – is almost totally free of guilt in the play’s final moments. This is one of the best Rebeck plays I’ve been – clearly on a level above the Taper’s Poor Behavior last year.

Road Theatre’s rep, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Finding Fossils plays Wed-Thur 8 pm, Sun 7 pm. Closes March 25. The Water’s Edge plays Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 2 pm. Closes March 24. www.RoadTheatre.org.  866-811-4111.

***All Finding Fossils and The Water’s Edge production photos by Chris Goss

A TV SERIES ABOUT CTG? By the way, Rebeck of Water’s Edge and Poor Behavior fame is now the writer and most active producer behind Smash, the new NBC drama series about the making of a Broadway show. She also was the interviewer to whom Center Theatre Group artistic director Michael Ritchie offered his unforgettable exclamation, “Fuck subscribers!” last year.

With the ratings success (last week, that is) of Smash, perhaps Rebeck’s next TV series will examine the behind-the-scenes drama at a Hollywood-adjacent non-profit theater company, with a dashing artistic director who resembles, say, ex-presidential candidate Jon Huntsman?

Hey, NBC, it’s right under your nose. You can send the finder’s fee to my agent.

Kim Huber in "The Sound of Music"

Kim Huber knows kids. She has two of her own. And she’s currently playing the world’s most famous governess turned stepmother — Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music.

This time, her do-re-mi rituals are in the service of 3-D Theatricals’ The Sound of Music, which opens this weekend at the Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, with Tom Schmid as Captain von Trapp. But Huber’s no stranger to playing Maria or being a leading lady. Although she is perhaps best known for her turn as Belle on Broadway and in national touring companies of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, her credits read like a greatest hits list of musical theater ingénues.

Tom Schmid and Kim Huber

Huber played Maria in Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars production in December 2009 opposite George Dvorsky.  But she couldn’t sound more enthusiastic about doing it again, and in Fullerton. “The Sound of Music is certainly one of my favorite shows to do,” she says, “and Maria is one of my favorite roles. It’s so much fun and I get to play with the kids and sing amazing songs. But this production is going to be really beautiful. 3-D Theatricals has done nine professional contracts in the company…along with 18 pieces in the orchestra and all of the sets and costumes that they’ve created…It’s just going to be this wonderful production, along with all of the people I get to work with. These children are just astounding.”

Her maternal instincts play a prominent role in her life both on and off the stage these days. “I have a daughter who is 11. Her name is Paige and she’s done theater in town and plays all-star soccer, so we’re busy running her around. I also have a 2½-year-old son named Adam and he keeps me busy, too. My husband, Roger Befeler, is an actor as well. He used to star on the Broadway tours of Beauty and the Beast and Phantom, and now we’ve come back home to have a normal life and be in theater. I do theater for fun. It’s a balance to do the things we love and make some money and be home for the things we don’t want to miss.”

Kim Huber and husband, Roger Befeler

Huber is a Southern California native, and it was actually family that enticed her to trade in Broadway lights for a drop of golden sun. “I was in New York for about 10 years working, and I was pregnant with my daughter.  I was in Marie Christine with Audra McDonald at the time, so I told my daughter that she’s already made her Broadway debut. I was one of the first of my friends to have children, and I felt like I was going to be isolated. My whole family is here, I grew up doing theater here, and I decided to come back for a while. And then before you know it, 10 years have gone by. Luckily in the meantime I’ve filled it with lots of great roles and theaters around here.”

As it turns out, Huber’s homecoming was the fulfillment of a self-proclaimed prophecy. “A friend of mine told me a long time ago that I had once told him ‘I want to go to Broadway and do a bunch of shows and then come back home and do it for fun and play all the roles I’ve always wanted to play.’ I think I’ve made that come true, not necessarily consciously, but I have actually gotten to come home and play a lot of the roles that I’ve always wanted to do.”

Kim Huber, Tessa Grady, Carter Thomas, Cozi Zuehlsdorff, Hadley Miller, Jenna Lea Rosen, Jaidyn Young and Griffin Runnels

Due to their strenuous demands, a career in musical theater and having a family are often thought of as mutually exclusive by some actresses. Huber admits that priorities do sometimes come into question.  “What women in musical theater don’t know about having kids is that it’s not so much about the idea that it would impede the work, it’s sometimes even wanting the work.

“I’ll look at some seasons of things and go ‘Oh, that runs the weekend of my daughter’s school play, do I want to miss that?’ Or now with a 2-year-old, it’s about the logistics of who is going to watch him, and with my daughter it’s about who is going to get her to the things that she needs to do. My parents were really involved with my career when I was a kid and getting me to the things that I wanted to do after school, and there’s a part of me that feels it’s now my turn to put the building blocks of her life first. I think that’s what surprising to people. I’m really good friends with Shannon Warne, and we’ve really bonded over the things we’re learning about being moms in the theater and trying to balance both and be both parts of ourselves. ”

Indeed, a year ago Huber and Warne were colleagues in the new musical Having It All at NoHo Arts Center — which dealt with the conflicting demands women sometimes face.

Kim Huber in "Having It All"

As for keeping up with the physical and the vocal demands of Maria on top of everything else, Huber attributes it all to her strongest supporter. “I can do all of that because I have a really amazing husband. My husband has been really great. I actually started the run with an infection and had to get on medicine. He let me sleep and took care of getting the kids to school. It’s all about sleep, water, eating well, and having a really good ENT.”

As a child, Huber grew up in the Southern California civic light opera scene, and she remarks that working back in the theaters where she got her start has brought her career full circle.  “I grew up doing a lot of the CLOs when it was La Mirada, Fullerton Civic Light Opera – I did Annie there, also at the old San Gabriel Civic Light Opera. It was really a family, it was a place where when I wasn’t fitting in at school, I couldn’t wait to go to rehearsal and be with all of my people who were like-minded and did what I did.

Km Huber as Belle in the 1998 Broadway production of "Beauty and the Beast"

“I went to UC Irvine for their drama program, and they have that satellite program that takes students to New York. I went my junior year, and they had a class with Jay Binder, who was casting Beauty and the Beast at the time. I kind of got discovered from that. What’s really neat coming back here now, is that I’m having such a strange time rehearsing for Sound of Music at the La Mirada rehearsal hall, because it’s like all of these lives are intersecting. I met my husband doing Into the Woods at [the organization that would become] Musical Theatre West when it was at La Mirada 20 years ago  [its name then was Whittier - La Mirada Light Opera]. I’m now back in the same rehearsal hall where I met my husband. All these different parts of my life are kind of in this room. It’s really neat.”

As an Angeleno who made it all the way to the Great White Way and finds ample work here in town, Huber’s main advice to the aspiring musical theater performers of SoCal is to just get out there. “I say ‘go see a lot of shows’. Get to know people by seeing things and seeing the places that you want to work and find out how to audition for those companies. I think sometimes just being seen is a great way to start.”

On the other hand, “I’m probably not the best person to ask, because I’m not as connected as I was, as far as going to parties and meeting the people who can open those doors. I’m a homebody with my kids. If I’m not at rehearsal, I’m at home, and your circle gets smaller that way. I think the most important thing, especially in Los Angeles, seems to be that this is a very tight community. We help each other out, and so making friends with those people really helps.”

Jenna Lea Rosen, Hadley Miller, Tessa Grady, Carter Thomas, Tom Schmid, Kim Huber, Cozi Zuehlsdorff, Jaidyn Young and Griffin Runnels

Even though she doesn’t seem to be having any trouble being cast as the ingénue (after all, Maria begins the play as a 17-year-old nun), Huber isn’t one to shy away from mature roles or dread the prospect of playing them. “There are some really tantalizing roles that I would love to do, like Next to Normal. As I’m growing out of these ingénues, I’m looking forward to growing up a bit. There are some really exciting and dynamic women to play in musical theater as you grow older.”

The Sound of Music, presented by 3-D Theatricals. Opens Feb. 10. Plays Thur-Sat 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm (Added performances on Feb.19 at 7 pm; Feb. 25 at 2 pm). Through Feb. 26.Tickets: $28-56. (with special children’s prices of  $22). Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Parking is free in the structure across the street. www.3dtshows.com. 714-589-2770.

***All The Sound of Music production photos by Alysa Brennan

Robin Riker, Michael E. Knight, James Louis Wagner and Kal Bennett in "The Cost of the Erection"

With a career that spans more than 16 years, Jon Marans has plenty of insight about becoming a working American playwright—tips that cover healthy reality checks, the danger and wisdom of feedback, and a continual pursuit of obsessions.

Marans makes it seem easy, his demeanor kind and cordial. But don’t be fooled for a second — this playwright works for a living, which means constantly managing expectations and working through the financial and emotional ups and downs of any artistic career.

“Until the curtain comes up,” he states with a laugh, “I don’t actually believe one of my plays is even happening.”

Tavis Danz and John Towey in "Old Wicked Songs"

But Marans doesn’t have much to worry about right now in LA. A revival of his Old Wicked Songs is already open (at the Colony Theatre running through March 4), and his new play The Cost of the Erection is very close to its opening on Saturday at the Blank Theatre’s 2nd Stage in Hollywood.

He continues his lesson on the tricky business of getting produced in the theater world. “Sign the contract. But at the end of the day it still doesn’t mean anything until you’re watching your play with an audience.”

Marans alludes to how frequently projects that are in gestation fail to materialize. He has also experienced the phenomenon of close scrutiny with national attention and an almost-not-quite outcome.

In 1996, Marans’ autobiographical Old Wicked Songs was on the short list for a Pulitzer Prize.

“I think I thought I was going to change from that event,” Marans reflects, with an even keel. “But in reality you’re still just as good as your newest play.”

When the juggernaut musical-phenom Rent by the late Jonathan Larson won the Pulitzer that year—and nearly every other theater award for which it was nominated—it hardly trounced Marans’ pursuit of story or the continued commitment to his craft. The nomination alone changed his outlook.

Tavis Danz and John Towey

“It certainly gives you the confidence to explore things, if you haven’t had the courage to do so,” Marans says, describing the kind of writer he has become. “I try not to think about what’s commercial.”

Old Wicked Songs went on to be America’s second most produced play in 1997–1998 and is still produced around the world. Not bad for someone who makes his living in the world of make-believe after describing himself as being “a very serious child.”

With his plays produced multiple times around the country over the years—and after a few dabbles in television and film projects—Marans has done what very few playwrights in this country have statistically been able to achieve — Marans currently makes 100% of his living as a playwright.

What’s the key to writing a good play?

“Every play should be a mystery from the first page to the last,” Marans offers. “I feel like every play is a ride and you don’t want to take a safe ride.”

The title itself of his newest play (The Cost of the Erection) offers strong evidence against anything safe. The double-entendre in it refers to the challenge undertaken by two of the characters — competing architects working to re-imagine a design-challenged raw space in an exclusive Manhattan neighborhood. But are they competing for the professional accomplishment…or the senior architect’s wife?

James Louis Wagner and Kal Bennett in "The Cost of the Erection"; Photo by Rick Baumgartner

The Blank’s production is one of two openings for Marans’ humorous relationship tale. The same play premiered on February 3 under the alternate title A Raw Space, at the Bristol Riverside Theatre in Bristol, Pennsylvania.

As a play that challenges conventions of narrative with heightened theatrical style and experiments in time and space, Marans is grateful for the opportunity to see it produced twice and so close together with two directors, two design concepts, two completely different casts.

“It’s hard to read on the page,” he says.  “Because it’s a play about staging and design and then about people designing their marriages.”

The Blank production, directed by Blank’s founding artistic director Daniel Henning, will feature Michael E. Knight (three-time daytime Emmy Award Winner from All My Children) and Robin Riker (The Bold and the Beautiful). Actors Kal Bennett and James Louis Wagner round out the acting ensemble.

Marans describes the slow burn of his creative engine. “When I’m unable to work on something in my own life, I tend to work on it in my writing. We all have obsessions; we work them out in our work. I’m not a spur-of-the-moment kind of writer. I need to go home and think about things.”

What about constructive feedback from others?

Mark Shunock, John Tartaglia, Erich Bergen, Dennis Christopher and Patrick Scott Lewis in "Temperamentals"; Photo by Rick Baumgartner

Marans engaged both the Bristol Theater and the Blank in multiple readings of Erection after first getting to know both theaters with previous productions of his work. His comfort level with both theaters is rooted in a respectful, collaborative relationship. The Blank produced Marans’ The Temperamentals last spring.

Marans relishes any time to watch rehearsals and observe the director working with the actors, contemplate staging and challenge character motivations.

“I keep going back to Writing 101,” Marans acknowledges. “I re-write incessantly and cut a lot. I get bored. I’m always finding ways to tell the story faster.”

But even with clear development processes—readings, script-in-hand stagings, re-writes— Marans takes a wary approach to open feedback or critique. His opinion of critique is strongly influenced by one of his writing mentors, John Ford Noonan, who often discussed the perils and destructive force of feedback for writers.

“Sometimes with other writers it’s the story they want to tell instead of the story I want to tell,” Marans comments, referring to the common writing group format. “You have to make sure to hold on to why you wanted to write this story and what you wanted to say.”

Marans has found his own way to navigate feedback and workshop experiences, and to find the right dramatic solutions when he hits a road block.

Michael E. Knight, James Louis Wagner, Kal Bennett and Robin Riker in "The Cost of the Erection"

“I have a few core friends,” he continues. “They won’t start talking about how to fix it. They’ll talk about questions and points of confusion.”

What’s the best advice for aspiring playwrights?

“If anyone had asked what I would have done differently…” Marans thinks a moment, “I would have gotten out more and made more connections with actors and directors.”

Although this shortcoming doesn’t seem to have hurt Marans at all in building a career on plays true to his own voice and inspiration, he continues to develop his producing partnerships with theaters like the Blank. Marans and the Blank will devote a week to workshopping his current in-progress play while he’s here for Erection.

“When you find people on your wavelength you want to hold on to them,” Marans comments on his relationship with the Blank.

The Cost of the Erection continues to evolve for Marans. “The play is about New Yorkers with larger than life personalities, and LA has its own such personalities,” he notes. “The LA show features a group of truly fearless actors.”

Old Wicked Songs, presented by the Colony Theatre. Plays Thur-Fri, 8 pm; Sat 3 pm and 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm. Through March 4.  Tickets:$20-42. The Colony Theatre, 555 North Third Street (at Cypress) adjacent to the Burbank Town Center. www.ColonyTheatre.Org. 818-558-7000 ext. 15.

***All Old Wicked Songs production photos by Michael Lamont

The Cost of the Erection, presented by the Blank Theatre. Opens Saturday. Plays Thu.-Sat. 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm. Through March 18. Tickets: $26-30.  The Blank Theatre’s 2^nd Stage Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood. www.TheBlank.com 323-661-9827.

***All The Cost of the Erection production photos by Michael Geniac, except where noted