Opus opens June 19; plays Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through July 25. Tickets: $25-$30. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles; 323.663.1525 or fountaintheatre.com.

Michael Hollinger

Pennsylvania playwright Michael Hollinger hits town with his own specialized four-letter word taking place onstage at the Fountain Theatre. His word-Opus–is also the title of his play, making its LA premiere during the theatre’s 20^th anniversary season. Boasting such alluring marketing tag lines as: “Sex, drugs and chamber music!” or “A behind-the-scenes look at a high-strung string quartet,” Opus tells the tale of the Lazara String Quartet which has been signed for a prestigious performance at the White House but discovers its brilliant but unstable violist has disappeared, prompting the remaining trio to hire a woman as his replacement.

Hollinger mines his source material close to home both figuratively and literally. He says, “I grew up [in Lancaster, PA] very involved in community theatre. My parents acted in it, directed it, designed scenery for it so I was comfortable with running lines in a script and the mechanics of script format from early on. In fact in high school I often fulfilled my research paper requirements with essays on the theatre. I even caught myself blowing off music practice a lot of times to work on plays.”

He still managed to muster enough practice hours to earn his Bachelor of Music in viola performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music but later veered into theatre for his Masters degree from Villanova University. Tracing his academic route, he recalls, “I acted awhile before graduate school and worked as literary manager and dramaturge for two companies, the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays which is no longer in existence and the Wilma Theater which is still going. I read hundreds of plays I sent back not out of unkindness but because they weren’t yet ready for production. That whole process aided me greatly in determining what does and does not work for the stage.”

Having captured the Masters, Hollinger never left Villanova. He goes on, “I taught adjunct classes and slowly began reducing my dramaturgy duties to a half-time job.”

Eventually he seesawed out of those theatre companies altogether and into a full faculty position as associate professor in the Villanova theatre department. “Mine was not the typical academic path,” he admits.

Nor did he limit his creativity to classroom instruction only. He also penned a number of plays for adults (An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf, Red Herring, Tiny Island, Tooth and Claw, Incorruptible, A Wonderful Noise), for young audiences (Eureka!, Hot Air, Boxheads) and for PBS three short films plus the feature length Philadelphia Diary co-authored with Bruce Graham and Sonia Sanchez.

His writings won him a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award, the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Fund for New American Plays, the F. Otto Haas Award for an emerging theater artist and multiple playwright fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

With both one of the longest titles this side of the unabbreviated Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss and one of the briefest titles this side of Margaret Edson’s Wit, what importance does Hollinger impart to his naming process? “My titles help shape the concept of my plays. Sometimes the title comes early on. Sometimes not. I find it frustrating if it arrives late because once I have the title it helps frame my revision process. I want my play to justify my title. David Mamet has examples of both effective and non-effective titles, I think. His Oleanna says nothing to an audience coming in to see the play or leaving the theatre after they’ve seen it. His American Buffalo on the other hand neatly summarizes the arc of that story.”

Daniel Blinkoff and Christian Lebano

What about Opus? “I was drawn to that title because of its simplicity. My previous play had been Tooth and Claw which had 10 actors and many settings both indoor and outdoor so I wanted to contrast the next play. This one has four chairs, four music stands and five people. It is musical chairs literally. Someone always has to stand. I wanted to create a play about a piece of chamber music but have the play itself evolve with the same rhythms as chamber music. Also the word ‘opus’ means work, the thing those of us in the theatre do but can’t hold on to because it’s so ephemeral. Film actors have reels. Recording stars have tapes. But theatre actors have only the moment. A construction worker can say, ‘See that bridge? I worked on that bridge.’ But for us in the theatre it disappears as soon as it’s done.”

Hollinger remains adamant about reworking his plays on the page before bringing them to the stage. “I’ve been teaching playwriting for 20 years to all levels from the very young to undergraduates to graduate students. I’ve found the story lines still revolve around topics like love, family or politics but technology has added a new wrinkle. Society is so much more wired than when I first started. People are not interacting with each other on a day to day basis as much as earlier generations did. We’ve become more detached with all this technology which makes rewriting easier but less appealing at the same time.

“Rewriting is hard but it’s a welcome process. Students often underestimate the necessity and value of revision. My own attention to revision is rather vigorous. I’m dogged about it. My years in dramaturgy taught me a play can be 92% ready but to compel a theatre eager to jump into production with a play it needs to be 96% ready. So I keep striving to make it better before submitting it anywhere. If I do submit it and it comes back, I keep working on it to make it better still.”

In the case of Opus at the Fountain Theatre Hollinger never submitted it. They came looking for him. Artistic Director Stephen Sachs explains, “I first heard about Opus in 2007 when I was at Primary Stages in New York with our production of Exits and Entrances. The staff there kept talking about this next play they had coming up.”

Sachs read the play and began pursuing the LA rights immediately. “It took us three years to get the rights,” he says. “Those rights were held up because first there was an effort to open it on Broadway and then larger theatres here kept investigating it as well. I’m really proud our perseverance paid off. It’s an illustration too how the perception of intimate theatre has improved so now we’re considered a viable option to the larger venues in town. When Deborah [Lawlor] and I founded the Fountain Theatre 20 years ago, if you mentioned on the phone you were connected with small theatre in LA, you heard a quick click and dial tone in your ear. That’s no longer the case.”

In fact the intimate Fountain enlisted and received active assistance from the vast Walt Disney Concert Hall. Sachs relates, “When we got the rights to the play, we got the script of course but we also got the music which is prerecorded. The actors have to mime the playing of that music so it looks authentic. We hired two musical advisors from the LA Philharmonic to help us with that. They arranged for our actors to attend a private rehearsal at the Disney Hall with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the orchestra. It’s the same principle as casting an actor as a hired assassin. You want him to learn how to dismantle an assault rifle in the correct manner. Our quartet needed to learn the proper finger movements, how to sit, how to hold their arms, how to clean their violins and all about the rosins and rags and cases, all that technical stuff so everything seems second nature to them.”

Jia Doughman and Christian Lebano

Director Simon Levy concurs with the need for onstage authenticity but tosses in a touch of dissonance in his casting. He believes, “Every actor has a tonality to him or her. I wanted a mix of tones in this play to create a sound complementary to the playwright’s work but reflective of real life. I wanted a contrapuntal quality to our normal expectations.

“For example, we often think of a cello player as a big round person but that’s a cliche. When we attended the Philharmonic rehearsal, we saw these were just a lot of regular people. They were not cliches. So I cast a normal kind of guy as our cellist.” The “high strung” string quartet stars Daniel Blinkoff, Jia Doughman, Gregory G. Giles, Christian Lebano and Cooper Thornton.

One suspects playwright Hollinger considers himself as one of those normal kind of guys although to the rest of us he appears extraordinarily talented or at least preternaturally disposed to the hard work required for dramatic success. He’s presently readying his next offering for the stage. Entitled Ghost-Writer, it begins with an archivist preparing an anthology of an author’s work while that author, now deceased, hovers over the proceedings. Hollinger’s full concentration is focused on this one for, as he says, “My next play always requires more attention than my last one.”

He refers to the doggedness he mentioned earlier about his penchant and passion for revision. How does he know when to finally let go of a play? He answers, “The French poet Paul Valery said, ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned.’ That being said at some point you have to let your perfectionism drop and say, ‘Enough.’ It’s also probably not wise to revisit something you wrote years ago with the idea of updating it. You do so at the peril of the piece. Are these bright new ideas you’re imposing on the play actually organic to the story you wrote 20 years ago?

“Death of a Salesman was a contemporary play at one time. Then it went through a period of datedness. Now it’s considered a perfect ’40s play. I do want my work to have a shelf life with enough universality to outlive their time and possibly me as well but if you write well and truthfully, there’s no dishonor in writing for a particular period. It’s honorable enough to write for your own time.”

Michael Hollinger has orchestrated his own time to our shores with an operatic aura ennobling his Opus.

Feature image of Christian Lebano, Cooper Thorton, Gregory G. Giles and Jia Doughman and production photos by Ed Krieger

Article by Gary Ballard