When small theater companies expand above the 99-seat level, does it invariably lead to “two-to-three character plays with a penchant for crowd pleasing,” as Steven Leigh Morris argued last week in the LA Weekly?

A decade ago, such expansions “often meant smaller cast sizes, fewer performances of fewer productions, and more surefire commercial material,” chimed in former Angeleno Rob Weinert-Kendt on his blog The Wicked Stage.

I disagree.  Considering that both of these valuable observers of the L.A. stage were reacting to my latest defense of midsize theaters, maybe that isn’t too surprising.

A half-dozen companies made that leap over the 100-seat hurdle. It’s possible that the average cast size shrank at two or three of them - most likely the Colony, which shed most of its previous acting company in the process, and perhaps at East West Players.  But I doubt that’s the case at such classical companies as A Noise Within and Independent Shakespeare. If the average cast sizes decreased at International City and the Falcon, which never operated as actors’ ensembles, it certainly hasn’t been obvious.

The number of opportunities to see each production might have slipped slightly at some of these companies, but the larger size of their venues probably means that they now play to total audience numbers that are at least as large, or larger, than they did in their 99-Seat-Plan days.

As for the notion that they’ve gone excessively “commercial” and “crowd pleasing” (in a bad way), I don’t see much evidence. None of these companies ever claimed to represent the cutting edge of innovation, even before they grew. Since they’ve grown, none of them has become notably more conservative. None of them has resorted to casting Marie Osmond in The Sound of Music.

As I noted here, International City Theatre presented one of the most adventurous seasons in L.A. in 2009 (not so much this year). The two midsize classical companies continue to venture beyond A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The incorporation of the Troubadour Theater into the Falcon programming made the place more “crowd pleasing,” yes, but also a lot livelier - and better - than it was in its 99-seat infancy. East West Players presents some predictable material, but it’s less Japanese American-centric than it was in its smaller space - and it’s hard to imagine the company’s earlier leaders presenting a play with the title My Tired Broke Ass Pontificating Slapstick Funk, as East West did soon after its expansion.

Now let’s get to the Colony. I’ve seen some plays at the Colony that seemed “crowd pleasing,” as in “unchallenging” - for example, last fall’s Better Angels offered nothing surprising about its iconic subject, Abraham Lincoln. So I wasn’t expecting too much from Free Man of Color, the Colony’s latest drama set in 19^th century America, also staged by Better Angels director Dan Bonnell.

Kareem Ferguson, Kathleen Mary Carthy and Frank Ashmore in Charles Smith's Free Man of Color

Yet Free Man of Color is one of the most absorbingly nuanced historical dramas in a long time.  Charles Smith’s play isn’t only about an admirable young ex-slave (Kareem Ferguson) who defied expectations by attending Ohio University in the 1820s.

It’s also about the university president (Frank Ashmore) who invited the young man into his home, against the wishes of the president’s wife (Kathleen Mary Carthy). Then it’s about the young man’s discovery that his benefactor wants to groom him to lead newly colonized Liberia - and in the process to expedite the shipment of freed slaves back to Africa - which makes him feel as if he’s been duped into a higher-toned variety of servitude. Finally, it’s about the discovery of reasons for the wife’s deep-dish bitterness, with a glance at the new nation’s tortured relationship with Native Americans added as one more layer.

“Crowd pleasing”? Perhaps, if that means that the audience, at the performance I saw, seemed to enjoy engaging with these characters’ struggles and learning something new in the process. But it isn’t “crowd-pleasing” in the pejorative sense of flattering or failing to challenge the audience.

Looking around the nearly packed house at the Sunday matinee, I saw only a half-dozen people - out of maybe 275 - who appeared to be African American. Most of the crowd was white. Yet this is a play in which the supposedly well-intentioned white university president is exposed as condescending as best, manipulative at worst. Even more surprising, I learned here, is that the play was commissioned by Ohio University to commemorate its bicentennial. How many universities would commission a play that ends up tarnishing (albeit in a somewhat fictionalized fashion, I gather) the reputation of one of the school’s founding fathers?

In short, I don’t buy the idea that fitting more than 99 people into a theater necessarily means that those people will appreciate only mindless, feel-good pap.

As Morris pointed out, these theaters (and the others that operate above the level of the 99-Seat Plan) won’t thrive without a degree of stronger financial support than is necessary at smaller theaters - because they pay their actors and other artists better and incur the greater overhead costs of larger spaces. That’s precisely why these theaters should be a top priority of L.A. theater lovers, especially during tough economic times.

Free Man of Color, Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank. Thurs-Fri, 8 pm; Sat, 3 and 8 pm; Sun, 2 pm. Closes Sept. 12. 818-558-7000. www.colonytheatre.org.

Last week I traveled briefly to the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, primarily to observe the continuing development of Great Expectations, the musical.

The musical opened in 2008 at L.A.’s Hudson Backstage, then moved to the Odyssey.  That’s where the Utah brass saw it, at the final performance. It’s now receiving a splashy production at the 769-seat Randall L. Jones Theatre (on a LORT-B Equity contract for the six Equity actors and the stage manager). Jules Aaron is still the director, and Ellen Crawford and Dave Barrus remain as Miss Havisham and Joe Gargery, respectively, from both versions of the L.A. cast. The adult Pip is now played by Jack Noseworthy, and the young Pip by Anthony Skillman, who also played the role at the Odyssey. The cast now numbers 22 instead of the 15 at the Hudson or the 18 at the Odyssey. The orchestra has 10 musicians, not the previous three.

The stage is much larger, and therefore so are the choreography and the set - a two-level, cobwebbed structure that has a scrim that flies up. Yet Aaron says that he’s still emphasizing the storytelling, not elaborate scenic effects.

Ellen Crawford, Emily Trask, Jack Noseworthy in Great Expectations

It’s a great story, of course, but it’s also a long and complicated story (also soon to be seen at A Noise Within, in a non-musical adaptation that will be different from the version the same company did in the ’90s). In Cedar City, the first act builds considerable steam, in the adaptation by Margaret Hoorneman, Steve Lozier and Brian VanDerWilt. But the second act still seems excessively plot-heavy, although the production remains top-notch.

The Richard Winzeler/Steve Lane score sounds better than it did in L.A. Aaron reports that the lyrics were changed in “Love By Definition” to better distinguish between the viewpoints of the trio that sings it, and “Making of a Gentleman” was reworked for better integration into the first act.  An overture has been added, but it’s in the old-fashioned style of choppy excerpts from throughout the score - and parts of it sound jarringly upbeat, when juxtaposed to the ghostly set-up scene that occurs on stage while it’s playing.

Is this Great Expectations too “commercial” and “audience pleasing”? Well, it’s probably more so now than it was at the 99-seat level, but only because the Utah festival has the resources to please audiences on a more professional level. The production wasn’t sanitized or artistically compromised by its move - if anything, thanks to more detailed design, the grimmer aspects of Dickensian England are more convincing in Utah than they were on L.A.’s micro-stages. More sub-100-seat productions should try to develop the great expectations of upward mobility.

Great Expectations, Randall L. Jones Theatre, College Avenue and 300 West, Cedar City, Utah (three hours northeast of Las Vegas by car). Plays in rep with five other productions; Aug. 18, 21, 23, 26, 8 pm; Aug. 20, 25, 28, 2 pm. 800-PLAYTIX. www.bard.org.

Free Man of Color photo by Michael Lamont.

Great Expectations photo by Karl Hugh.

Season Wraps With Extensions and an Abrupt Closing

STRETCHING IT OUT…Success breeds extensions.  The Fountain announced the second and final continuance of the LA premiere of Opus by Michael Hollinger until Sept. 26. It has to make way for the US premiere of Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver, due Oct. 16…The Celebration Theatre’s LA premiere (in association with David Elzer) of the hit Broadway tuner [title of show] will play on until Sept. 11…The cozy NoHo-based Secret Rose is extending Stephen Karam’s teen angst comedy Speech & Debate through Aug. 29…In Pasadena, The Theatre @ Boston Court and Circle X Theatre Co. premiere of Brit playwright Moby Pomerance’s The Good Book of Pedantry and Wonder is sticking around until Sept. 5… Across town, Justin Tanner’s Procreation is staying put at West LA’s Odyssey Theatre Ensemble until Sept. 4….In Venice, Pacific Resident Theatre extends its LA premiere of Becky’s New Car by Steven Dietz until Sept. 19…

Henry Jaglom. Photo courtesy of Rainbow Films.

CLOSING IT DOWN…But up the road at Santa Monica’s Edgemar Center for the Arts, the frequently extended Just 45 Minutes From Broadway (opened Oct. 2009) by ultra prolific writer/director Henry Jaglom was abruptly shuttered after the Sunday, Aug. 8 matinee.  According to an Edgemar rep., the show had lost one of its leads to a major film and decided to “close on a high note.” But Jaglom readily states he closed the show due to “intolerable demands” made upon him by Actors’ Equity Association. “Even though I was paying each actor $500 a week (even when performances went from 4 to 3 a week), which is monumentally over AEA minimum, paying for their parking and buying them dinner after every show, Equity kept increasing their demands. The kicker for me was Equity telling me I was paying the actors too much and that a percentage of the money I was paying to the actor should be paid to Equity instead. When I told the union I would continue to pay the actors $500 and pay Equity the difference out of my own pocket, they refused, stating that was an increase in pay therefore more needed to be paid to Equity. I regrettably felt I had no choice but to close the show. I am going to start filming the movie next month.”  The AEA office in Los Angeles had no comment, referring this writer to the New York office.  Speaking by phone, New York-based Maria Somma, spokesperson for AEA, responded, “Mr. Jaglom’s comments are without basis.  The production (Just 45 Minutes From Broadway) was operating under an Equity 99 Seat Plan (Los Angeles area).  This is not a contract; it is a ‘code’ which stipulates once a production has reached 60 performances, the option to continue requires the signing of a Hollywood Area Theater (HAT) contract, which sets minimum wages, as well as pension and benefits.  Mr. Jaglom’s statement that we told him he was paying the actors too much is unfounded.  The HAT contract states minimums. If a producer wants to pay his or her actors more, then more power to the actor.  Equity contacted the producers of this show last June and we began negotiations to put the production under a legal Equity contract. Those negotiations were ongoing when Mr. Jaglom decided to close the show.  That was his decision, not AEA’s.”…

DOUGH FOR THE SHOW…With funding of $125 million, groundbreaking for the Valley Performing Arts Center begins Aug. 18 on the campus of California State University, Northridge. The planned 166,000 square foot complex will include a 1,700 seat, multi-purpose concert hall designed to support orchestra, opera, Broadway, film and dance. In addition, the Center will house a 175-seat black box theatre, backstage support, classrooms, 230-seat lecture room, rehearsal and events space and a new broadcast facility for KCSN public radio. Designed by HGA Architects & Engineers, the facility’s gala opening is planned for Jan. 29, 2011…On a smaller but still appreciated monetary note, The New LA Theatre Center-based Robey Theatre Company is the recipient of a continuing grant from CBS of $10,000…

Brooke Shields

PREMIERES…Slightly adjusting its previously announced schedule, Downtown’s CTG Ahmanson Theatre is preeming the tuner Leap of Faith, starring multi-Tony winner Raul Esparza and Golden Globe nominee Brooke Shields. Based on the Steve Martin pic, featuring the talents of eight-time Academy Award-winner Alan Menken (score), Janus Cercone and Glenn Slater (book) with lyrics by Slater, previews begin Sept. 11…Also Downtown, East West Players launches its 24^th season with LA premiere of Mysterious Skin by Prince Gomolvilas, based on novel by Scott Helm. EWP Artistic Director Tim Dang is at the helm…A little further south of Downtown, 24 Street Theatre, in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month, is offering the US premiere of La Razon Blindada (a co-production of el Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, Mexico), staged by internationally acclaimed Argentine writer/director Aristides Vargas (Sept. 18), presented in Spanish with English supertitles…Back in Hollywood, Joseph Stern’s Matrix Theatre Company offers up the West Coast premiere of Neighbors by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, helmed by Nataki Garrett (Aug. 28), focusing on the travails of an upwardly mobile African American academic and the family of black actors who move in next door…Attic Theatre and Film Center, supported in part by the LA County Arts Commission, is presenting the 19^th Annual Denise Ragan Wiesenmeyer One Act Play Festival (Sept. 2-19), showcasing new works by Lee Blessing (Into You), Frank Anthony Polito (Blue Tuesday), Wendy MacLeod (Undescended) and Allison M. Volk (The Last Two People). Directors are James Carey, Jim E. Tempo, Brian Shnipper and John Azura, respectively…On a solo note, Sonia Maslovskaya stars in the premiere of Anais: An Erotic Evening with Anais Nin (Sept. 10) at the Sherry Theatre in NoHo, scribed and helmed by Michael Phillips, produced by Larry Minion… Intermingling opera and aerialists, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, a contemporary chamber opera by award-winning composer Veronika Krausas, premieres Aug. 26 at West Adams Blvd.-based Fais Do-Do, directed by Yuval Sharon, choreographed by former Cirque du Soleil aerialist Bianca Sapetto, featuring soprano Michelle Jasso, actor John Walcutt, guitarist Michel Kudirka, as well as aerialists Karl Baumann and Gregory Curtis…

EVENTS…Sacred Fools Theatre Co. is holding a Sacred Fools Creepy Carnival to launch its 14^th season, Saturday, Aug. 28 (7:30 pm to midnight) at its Heliotrope Ave. facility in Hollywood. Tantalizing glimpses into its upcoming array of dramas, musicals, comedies and horror shows will be punctuated by excursions to the Dunk Tank, Voyeur Room and Opium Den (drinks only)…Comedic actor Larry Miller headlines a fundraiser for venerable Theatre 40 at the company’s Reuben Cordova Theatre in Beverly Hills, Sept. 12…At Glendale’s Alex Theatre, Musical Theatre Guild opens its 15^th season of concert- staged presentations of not-seen-much-anymore tuners with 70, Girls, 70 (Sept. 20), wrought by John Kander and Fred Ebb. John Bowab directs… NBC4’s much lauded weatherman Fritz Coleman is bringing his latest one hander, On the Fritz - An Evening With Fritz Coleman, to NoHo’s El Portal Theatre Mainstage for a weekender (Aug. 19-22)…

Mickey Rooney and Olivia de Havilland in Midsummer

LA STAGE INSIDER HISTORY…August 1934, the great Austrian director Max Reinhardt staged his epic adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl, featuring 13-year old Mickey Rooney as Puck and the stage debut of 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland as Hermia. Interviewed for Drama-Logue magazine in 1987 during his tour of A Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum, Rooney recalled, “Max’s staging at the Bowl was sheer magic but the film version (which also featured Rooney and the film debut of de Havilland) that Warner Bros. put out a year later was a piece of crap. Warner replaced most of Max’s professional stage actors with studio contract players who didn’t know the Bard from a turd.” On Sept. 23, the inimitable Rooney turns 90.

A Wither’s Tale, produced by the Troubadour Theatre Company, presented by the Falcon Theatre, opens Aug. 20; plays Wed.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 4 pm; through Sept. 26. Tickets: $27-$42. Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Dr., Burbank; 818.955.8101 or falcontheatre.com.

The Troubadour Theatre Company, or the Troubies as fans have come to know them, has been around for 15 years now. Best known for their loose adaptations of the classics mixed with commedia, clowning, improvisation and music, they’ve cultivated quite the following and reputation.

Their latest installment is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. They’ve matched the play with the music of Bill Withers, thus creating A Wither’s Tale. Artistic Director Matt Walker says they hope to eventually perform Shakespeare’s entire canon.

Matt Walker

“I think this will be our 13^th Shakespeare,” says Walker. It’s “part comedy, part tragedy, part psychological drama, part wrenching your guts out and stomping on them and then, hey, happy ending everybody.”

The play has a lot of drama and depth, says Walker. A stark contrast to their last show CHiPS The Musical which parodied the popular 1970s TV show.

How did they pair A Winter’s Tale with Bill Withers? It “was sort of just born out of the idea of if we’re going to do all of Shakespeare at some point then let’s attach a pop music band or artist to each title and see what we can come up with. Probably a year ago I think A Wither’s Tale was spun as well as I think an Edgar Winter’s Tale - which we thought would be too short a show with not having too many Edgar Winter hits.

“But then the pairing for title’s sake sort of gave way to wow - the soul music of Bill Withers, which really does embody the themes of the play:  jealousy, betrayal, love, lost love, redemption - all of those things are in A Winter’s Tale too so we really chose to follow that thread. We use the music to enhance and really help set the tone for the play.”

Over the past 15 years, the Troubies has built a diverse and multi-talented ensemble comprised of clowns, improvisers and comedians, musical theatre performers, classically trained actors, etc. Walker hopes audiences recognize the breadth of talent the Troubies employ - and that they have a unique experience.

“You don’t get to see a lot of people wearing Shakespearian garb and speaking the speech trippingly on the tongue. It’s nice to be able to show off that color as well.”

He adds, “Pulling off A Winter’s Tale in the middle of August in a California summer is going to be interesting. You know, transporting the audience, taking them on a journey, the escapism of it, the being able to transform a theatre into a Shakespearean castle. Just the sense of make-believe is really alive and well in this production - as much as any Troubie show. Although, we are trying to mature in a way.”

People might not be that familiar with Bill Withers’ music but there are definitely a few songs that everyone is sure to recognize. Walker sings snippets of songs - “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone,” “Lean on Me,” “Lovely Days” and “Grandma’s Hands.”

Mike Sulprizio, Lisa Valenzuela, and Brandon Breault. Photo by Chelsea Sutton.

He touches on the fact both Bill Withers and A Winter’s Tale are a bit more obscure to general audiences. “That combination is unique in a way that Hamlet: The Artist Formerly Known as the Prince of Denmark isn’t. People have associations to the play and to that music. They remember if they conceived their son or daughter listening to Prince in the back of a car,” he laughs.

“But Bill Withers doesn’t necessarily have those associations so to be able to use both of those that people don’t necessarily know well and to combine and give our own spin to it, means we have a little more license to be creative. And not worry about the audience’s expectations.

“The music of Bill Withers people don’t know - songs like “Who Is He?” which is a jealous anthem and “I Wish You Well” which is a celebratory song - those songs serve the play well. And they’re beautiful.”

One of the musicians walks on stage and tunes his instruments, prompting Walker to talk about the band. “We have just a kick-ass band we call the Troubadourchestra.”

He continues on about the complex simplicity in Withers’ music. “A lot of Bill Withers’ music uses just three chords over and over again. Some songs don’t even have a chorus, it’s just the verse repeated. The complexity of the themes and what the songs say - how they say it - I felt like that needed to be given the best possible incubator. We’re finding a nice synergy between the actors and the musicians.

“When the Shakespeare is flowing out of your mouth and then all of a sudden you’re underscored by a cello, you feel that reverberation in your core while you’re saying these 400 year old lines that have stood the test of time. It’s moving in a lot of ways.”

The original play takes place in the fictional Sicilia and Bohemia. “For our purposes, we’ve bastardized into Toluca and NoHo. The play is very seasonal, very temporal. It deals a lot with time. The two different places, I would say, attach themselves to the two sides of Bill’s music. ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ and ‘Lean on Me,’ those kinds of ballads are Toluca where the emotional crux of the play happens. As time passes and the seasons change to late summer, early fall, we move to NoHo - Bohemia. And we hear ‘Use Me,’ which embodies the funky, sexy, harvest, land of plenty.” Although the settings have been changed they are keeping it in Elizabethan era - asking, “What would NoHo and Toluca Lake be like in the 1600s?”

There is some debate whether A Winter’s Tale was completely written by Shakespeare because of the stark contrast between the places in the play. “There’s this psychological play; then there’s this buffoonish, comedic play with the clown and overblown, ridiculous rube characters.” For creating A Wither’s Tale the company read the play in its entirety. Then they hashed out the identifiable storyline and themes.

Joseph Keane and Matt Walker. Photo by Chelsea Sutton.

“Once we have the script cut down, we bring it into rehearsal and that’s where the dog pile happens and people start to suggest ideas. Normally, like with CHiPS, it’s 10 percent script and what can we do to the script and attach ourselves to it. This has really been the opposite - it’s 90 percent what’s here and adding layers.”

Walker says his process as a director is all about getting the right people together. “Everybody kind of shares disciplines and I think that’s what makes the company so vital. We’re all learning and growing from each other. The sense of play or the sense of safety we have in front of an audience - actors know they’re going to be supported. Even if they’re working in a way they haven’t worked before.”

There are four new actors for this show. “We like to constantly bring in new people and keep our blood fresh - new ideas and youthful points of view. Mixed with that are the veterans, people who have been around for 15 years - that the audiences know - and they know the style in which we play. That shared vocabulary takes you a long way before ever getting to the first rehearsal because everyone is looking at the script the same way.”

Over the years the audience’s expectations of a Troubie show have certainly grown. Known for calling out late comers and phones going off he says, “People do get here on time so they can see late comers. Some even leave their phones on and tell their friends to call them in the middle of the show - that’s actually happened,” he smiles.

Clowning is a staple for any Troubie show. In the late ’90s Walker went to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Clown College. After completion he performed as a clown for The Greatest Show on Earth. This training informs the way he approaches any Troubie show. Clowning is also evident in his impish grin, which offsets his soft-spoken demeanor.

“Most of it with clowning is the willingness to fail good-naturedly. That’s what we apply to the work as a whole. If we fall and are able to brush ourselves off and laugh about it, I think that’s what endears us to people. That’s the spirit we try to play in. Really no matter what you do, if you hit the wrong note, we’re going to call you on it in the moment. The audience knows you didn’t hit it and we know and the band knows - and maybe you didn’t mean to hit it and the two minutes of spontaneous dialogue that followed you not hitting the right note were really scripted because we found that in rehearsal one day. In those ways, clowning is applied.”

He admits clowning is also about showing off skills. “The craftsmanship of it, what I teach my students, the technique and perfection of the skills that a clown has. Whether it’s hat tricks or juggling or stilt walking. That’s really part of the clown too - that practice, that work ethic. That need to perfect something. All good clowns have that. The willingness to be open as the clown. That’s the biggest thing about the Troubies; to not let anything go by.”

Brandon Breault and Katherine Malak. Photo by Chelsea Sutton.

That openness to address whatever happens in the moment is really what makes a Troubie show so exciting. “The audience knows there is accessibility there; there’s a truth happening right there in front of them - and that’s what theatre is to me. Not just the illusion of the first time but the first time. So they can see something that’s been rehearsed for eight weeks but also spontaneously happening in front of them with the actors feeling that as well. That shared exhilaration is as palpable as a sporting event when you see someone kick a goal or make a basket and you know that’s happening right there.”

Last year the Troubies were honored for “Best Season” at the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards with Alice in One Hit Wonderland 2 - Through the Looking Glass, As U2 Like It and It’s a Stevie Wonderful Life. Walker also garnered an Ovation for “Best Director” for As U2 Like It.

Walker says being a part of the theatre community that night was more gratifying than the actual awards. “We sort of had our head down in the sand for so long working on the product that we lost sight of the community around us. And that’s what I appreciate about Los Angeles, having created theatre here for over 20 years, 15 with the Troubies.”

He commends the Ovations and LA Stage Alliance for the effort to “consolidate and coalesce the theatre to give us an identity, give us a community of artists and shared experience and challenging each other with our work.”

He continues, “It was exciting and exhilarating to be recognized that way. And to share in everybody else’s work. Reconnecting with people. I look forward to that night and the participation. Just being a part of the community.”

For A Wither’s Tale what does Walker hope audiences take away? “A t-shirt,” he laughs. “And a CHiPS CD because we ordered a thousand of them and I think we’ve sold a hundred so far.”

Actually answering the question he says, “If they saw CHiPS then I hope they take away the breadth and depth of the company. The ability to pull off anything. If this is their first [Troubie] experience, then I hope they take away something they’ve never seen before; by a company, the likes of which, they have never seen before. The uniqueness of it, the freshness of it.”

Feature image of Mike Sulprizio, Matt Walker and Beth Kennedy by Chelsea Sutton.

Article by Ashley Steed.

Opening:

The Foursome
8/18/10, Little Fish Theatre, Beaches
Four former college buddies navigate 18 holes of golf fueled by old rivalries and beer for breakfast.

Elizabeth Shakespeare and The Astute Detective
8/20/10, Santa Monica Playhouse, Beaches
Who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays? A battle of wills & Wills (w/ a little romance along the way).

The War Cycle:  Nation of Two
8/20/10, Powerhouse Theatre, Beaches
Go! - LA Weekly

Be sure to visit LAStageAlliance.com for more information of shows and half-price tickets.

Re-posted from antaeuscompany.wordpress.com

Antaeus’ Founding Artistic Director, Dakin Matthews, wrote a satirical response to Sunday, August 8th’s LA TIMES article, “Dialogue: Critics Charles McNulty and Steven Leigh Morris discuss the state of L.A.’s small theaters.”

Over a tube of Pringles recently, actor-martyr Genisio Santo and director Meiningen Sachs began a dialogue on the state of theatre reviewing in L.A.; and this give-and-take, subsequently pursued over a second tube of Pringles, seemed worthy of a larger forum.

MS: I think it’s a shame the way not just the major critics like Nutty McCharles tend to be marginalized, but even the-shall I call them minor?-critics like Maury Lee Stevens.

GS: For the record, we don’t tend to think of the latter as “minor”-we prefer “waiver journalists.”  But be that as it may, how do you mean “marginalized,” Meiny?

MS: Well, literally.  I mean, they have to write in columns, they have to stay inside the margins. It’s sad, really; they’re treated like three-year-olds forced to stay inside the lines in coloring books.  I’d love to see their stuff spilling all over the page.  Wacky fonts!  Occasional gibberish!  I mean, what about their creativity?

GS: I hadn’t looked at it that way.

MS: I blame the marketplace.  They’re required by their public to write syntactically and coherently-

GS: Well, I’m not sure that’s true. . . .

MS: And to pander to that 99.5% of their readers who actually read, by having to conform to the stifling, old, traditional spelling and punctuation rules.

GS: Yes, what about that other half a percent who can’t read?  They’re the real cutting edge.  They’re the future.

MS: Yes, print reviewers these days can’t really write what they want; they’re so font- and format-whipped by their editors.  I look forward to the day when they can really cut loose, you know, dump those style sheets in the wastebaskets and write something I could honestly call a McCharles review or a Stephens review instead of that conformist boilerplate stuff that passes for reviews these days.

GS: I agree.  I mean, come on, who needs paragraphs?  What’s in a paragraph?  A screed by any other name, , , ,  But now, Meiny, let’s think even further outside the box.  I’m thinking interdisciplinary reviewing.

MS: Hmmm. How would that work, Genisio old chap?

GS: Well, all the big papers have websites-why shouldn’t Nutty or Maury sing their reviews in streaming video?  Or better yet, write them and then have somebody else deconstruct them, you know, pick out a line here, a line there, reassemble them into a collage, and then stage them as puppet shows?

MS: Yes, Travesty Presson might be just the person to do that!

GS: Whoa, wait-here, let me open that second tube of Pringles, Meiny old boy, I’m a trained actor.  What if we throw away the box entirely, and let the reviewer go to one play and review another one entirely?

MS: But don’t they do that already?  I mean, I often get the impression that they tend to review the play they wanted to see or thought they should have seen-or the one they would have produced (if they actually were in the producing business)-instead of the one they actually saw.

GS: Okay, then how about this-they don’t even see plays.  They just write reviews.

MS: Now you’re talking.  I’ve always thought the ideal situation would be for a reviewer to call me when a production was announced and I could explain to him my concept and what I wanted to do, and he could just review that, without have to deal with all those pesky playwrights and actors.  (Beat.)  No offense, Gen.

GS: None taken.   I mean, who do we think we are?

MS: Or, back to the interdisciplinary idea, how’s this for a picture? All the reviewers in spandex tights with lots of artificial fog, posturing their reviews to pretentious music-Critique de Soleil!

GS: Or-wait a minute-how about a mime review-live and in streaming video; and you could print it in the paper as well.

MS: Yes, fabulous!  And then-no, wait a minute-a mime review in the paper?  Then it’d just be a blank column.

GS: Exactly.

Various plays run through Oct. 31. Four works of Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, Henry IV Part One, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Others: Pride and Prejudice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, She Loves Me, Throne of Blood, Well, Ruined, American Night: The Ballad of Juan José. The Courtyard Stage (no charge) offers various performances in The Green Show. Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 15 S. Pioneer St., Ashland, OR 97520; 800.219.8161 or osfashland.org Prices begin at $20.

Ask Bill Rauch, Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) since 2007, his most important goal and he’ll tell you, “It’s that we’re building on 75 years of work and delivering productions that make people want to come.” The evidence, he says, lies in a ticket sales rate of 96% in a recent week. (Tickets remain available.)

OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch.

“OSF has commissioned new plays for several years,” Rauch says, “but we’ve certainly accelerated the number and development processes for these plays.” On average, OSF stages four Shakespeare plays per season among its 11 offerings. This year OSF has premiered American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle.

“Alison Carey, who along with me co-founded Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles, runs American Revolutions which is the program through which we’re commissioning 37 new plays over several years that look at moments of change in our past. Culture Clash is the first.”

Richard Montoya founded Culture Clash with Herbert Siguenza and Ric Salinas 25 years ago in Los Angeles. Montoya says, “A few years ago we sat in a living room in Silver Lake with a bunch of other playwrights and culture makers, folks from Actors’ Gang and Cornerstone, to talk about Bill Rauch who’d just accepted his job in Oregon. One of the ideas being floated was, ‘Could there be a new cycle of plays up there?’ Bill was taking a really detailed temperature if there was an interest and overwhelmingly everyone had a very positive reaction to the idea of reframing our country’s history. Not long after that we were invited to Oregon and it was decided Culture Clash would be first out of the gate.”

Montoya set to work on American Night: The Ballad of Juan José.

“We were writing at a clip having just finished Water & Power and getting ready to do Peace with Bill Rauch at the Getty and Palestine, New Mexico at the Taper. Even two years ago we knew it would be about immigration but we didn’t see Arizona coming along as it has, so that has really heightened the piece. It seems appropriate the first play in the cycle deals with immigration and the immigrant.”

American Night is told through the dream of a Mexican man about to take his test for US citizenship. He feels ill prepared. Fail this, he knows, and he is doomed to return to Mexico. Along his journey, he encounters historical figures and becomes one himself.

“This is a man who dreams himself signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the very document that will make an outlaw of him, some 200 years later when Mexico surrenders land [that eventually becomes Arizona].”

Richard Montoya.

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, signed this summer by Governor Jan Brewer and temporarily tamped down by a federal judge, would have granted law enforcement officers the right - and responsibility - to inquire into a person’s immigration status as long as the officer had a legal right to question the person. They may be criminal suspects, drivers pulled over for traffic offenses or crime victims.

“Sometimes,” says Montoya, “you are following the culture and sometimes the culture follows you. The art couldn’t imitate the life fast enough. Even strange things, like Culture Clash’s name appearing on a list of banned books at Tucson High School. We didn’t even have to go to Arizona to be drawn into the culture war.”

On another stage in Ashland (there are three, along with a free outdoor stage) mysterious spirits work their macabre magic on Washizu, a warrior in the remote, ritualized world of feudal Japan. It’s the first-ever staged adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s landmark 1957 version of Macbeth. The haunted woods in which Washizu and his woman walk are not unlike the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

“There might be a lot of laughs in American Night,” Montoya notes, “but we remind ourselves everyday that it’s life and death in the Sonoran Desert and if the photo in the New York Times recently didn’t drive home the point about bodies being warehoused in morgues outside of Tucson and Phoenix, people are going to die because of this issue. They already are. I’m not trying to be melodramatic about it but we have a very topical show with lots of satire and lots of humor. We don’t want to lose sight of the fact it’s a very desperate situation out there.”

Juan José, in his dream, encounters a multitude of figures in realistic, fantastical and impressionistic scenes. Among them is a braces-wearing Sacajawea, a radio play troupe, and Marielito refugees in a raft, floating toward the Florida coastline from Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the 1980s. Everyone’s always on the move.

“It is, by all accounts, a complex subject,” Montoya says. “There are problems along the Mexican border, least of which are the narco trafficantes in Mexico. A lot of my friends point to the guns and drug appetite coming from America. That may be. Part of that is true. But there’s a culture of death in Mexico that wasn’t invented in America. It’s invented with the monies and corruptions in Mexico. When do we begin to take a longer, darker look at that? And on those issues, you may even find a strange kinship with some [conservative] members in our audience. Where we disagree is the extreme nature of the immigration laws, the profiling.”

Richard Montoya in American Night.

While researching the play, Montoya drove through Arizona with his wife. He laughs as he recalls the story. “I remember getting stopped. I couldn’t tell if it was because my back taillight was taped over with red tape or because we fit a certain description. It can be frightening and if you’re not as articulate as the next guy or have a slight accent or are nervous under the questioning, then no telling what could happen. The border officer who stopped us happened to be a Mexican American who was tougher on us. I said to my wife if we get pulled over again, I hope it’s a white border officer because we might have a better chance.”

It’s not that the border agent was a caricature - or character, to Montoya’s mind - like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He’s the lawman admittedly eager to enforce Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070. “Arpaio is a character,” says Montoya, who describes the Sheriff as a gun slinging, holster wearing guy in a cowboy hat. “A bad Hollywood joke. He’s a guy from Massachusetts who’s remade himself in the Old West, very much like an immigrant might be trying to refashion himself.”

Montoya had his sites on Arpaio “for over a year. We knew the bill was coming. We knew the sentiment was there. What fascinates me about Joe Arpaio is that he’s the son of Italian immigrants. So ‘give me your meek, your huddled masses’ seems to apply to only certain members of our community and that seems extreme and unjust. When that argument gets rejected, then we take it to the next level: the play submits to the audience that we may be talking about a morality issue here.”

For Montoya, the rhetorical question is, “If Jesus is walking toward you in the desert and he’s dark and he’s dirty and he’s speaking with a thick accent, do you turn your back? Give him water? Arrest him? Joe Arpaio would likely arrest Jesus if he were walking in the Sonoran Desert. There’s humor in that, satire in that but more than a couple kernels of maize in that.”

Do current events force the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to be culturally responsive? Artistic Director Bill Rauch says, “I think artists have to be both proactive and reactive at all times and I think we have to be that in Oregon, in this isolated, rural, beautiful place.”

Rauch considers his plans as the country emerges from “this great recession and I don’t mean great-as-in-terrific.” OSF has had its share of fiscal challenges. “Compared to a lot of our sister and brother theatres across the country we’re doing quite well because audiences are so excited by the work,” says Rauch. “Many people are packing in to see the plays.”

Last year, for example, Don Quixote, a world premiere adaptation, “did better on our outdoor stage than did the two Shakespeare plays. I think the audience is so hungry for artistic adventure and artistic variety and what we talk about as the kaleidoscopic energy of rotating repertory. The audience is so in tune with that.”

Tickets are nearly gone for American Night, even though it runs into October.

Richard Montoya says he’s proud of humanizing Mexican male immigrants. “They are the most vilified people after Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. So to humanize him and give him song and give him voice and give him narrative that parallels the narratives of many of the grandparents and great grandparents sitting in the audience. It’s a reminder that, oh, this is a tradition: people come here.”

And not everyone comes here to commit crimes or sell drugs, notes Montoya. “I’ve never understood where the stereotype of the lazy Mexican comes from. Every Mexican in Ashland has about three or four jobs including this Mexican who’s also a playwright.”

Feature image of Richard Montoya, René Millán and Herbert Siguenza in American Night by Jenny Graham.

Article by Steve Julian.

Dear Readers:

LA Stage Insider is a new weekly column by long-time writer Julio Martinez which we feel will add to your reading enjoyment.

It will feature news on upcoming theatre productions in the Los Angeles and surrounding areas. It is another LA Stage outlet to inform theatergoers about noteworthy items that may not be available elsewhere. Readers can assist Julio by letting him know about events they are associated with or to which they have “inside” information before becoming public knowledge.

You may email Julio at insider@lastagealliance.com with comments or news tidbits.

Lee Melville

Editor-in-Chief

_______________________________________________________________________

Stephen Rider and Jed Reynolds. Photo by Carla Larissa Fallberg.

SHIPS PASSING…South Pasadena-based Fremont Centre Theatre is launching Suzan-Lori Parks‘ Pulitzer winning Topdog/Underdog on Aug. 21, directed by James Reynolds, featuring son Jed Reynolds and Stephen Rider. The production overlaps the Lillian Theatre’s current staging of the same play, running through Sept. 12…Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House (directed by caryn desai) sails into Long Beach’s International City Theatre on Aug. 27, following the recently docked, highly successful Odyssey Theatre Ensemble staging (closed July 22)…And Arthur Miller’s ever popular Tony winner, All My Sons, speeds into Santa Monica’s Ruskin Group Theatre on Aug. 14, helmed by Edward Edwards, starring Paul Linke, Austin Highsmith and Dominic Comperatore, following the critically lauded NoHo-based Raven Playhouse production (closed July 25)…

Brenda Strong.

A CLASSICAL SUMMER…That relentless purveyor of Shakespearean rock n’ roll Matt Walker is once more guiding his Troubadour Theater Company through a union of the Bard and a rock icon, this time infusing A Winter’s Tale with the soulful sounds of Bill Withers. A Wither’s Tale opens Aug. 11 at Garry Marshall’s Toluca Lake- based Falcon Theatre…Over in Culver City, John Farmanesh-Bocca, still glowing from last summer’s critically triumphant “physical theatre” staging of Pericles Redux at the Kirk Douglas Theater, is muscling up another work of the Bard under the producing auspices of Circus Theatricals (CT). Titus Redux opens Aug. 29 at the Douglas featuring CT founder Jack Stehlin in the title role. SAG Award-winner Brenda Strong (series regular narrator voice of ABC’s Desperate Housewives), along with three-time daytime Emmy winner Margeaux J. London (formerly Jennifer Landon, daughter of Michael Landon) also star. Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin is producing…On a Hellenic note, J. Paul Getty Museum is presenting its fifth annual outdoor stage rendering at the Getty Villa’s acoustically delicious Barbara and Lawrence Fleishman Theater. Carey Perloff, artistic director of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (ACT) is helming Sophocles’ Electra (opening Sept. 9), featuring Annie Purcell in the title role, Olympia Dukakis as the Chorus with Pamela Reed as Clytemnestra and newcomer Manoel Felciano as Orestes…

PREMIERES… Mark Roberts (Rantoul or Die) offers the West Coast premiere of his new play Parasite Drag at Elephant Stage, opening Aug. 13 with Elephant Stageworks Artistic Director David Fofi at the helm and Lindsay Allbaugh producing… Hollywood-based Eclectic Theatre Company is launching Martyrdumb (opening Sept. 10), “a new dark comedy about terrorism,” by the writing/ producing team of Jason Britt and Kerr Seth Lordygun. Maria Markosov is directing…CTG Artistic Director Michael Ritchie has announced the 2010-2011 Kirk Douglas Theatre season, beginning with Venice (opening Oct. 7), a futuristic musically eclectic perusal of the aftermath of a 20-year war. This adventurous tuner is wrought by Eric Rosen (book & lyrics) and Matt Sax (music & lyrics). Rosen also directs. Additional music is provided by Curtis Moore…

Justin Okin and Andy Hirsch. Photo by John Flynn.

THE LATE SHOW…Rogue Machine’s Off the Clock late night series returns with its mandate to cater to the edgier, more artistically daring theatre crowd. Joshua Conkel’s Milk Milk Lemonade (for adults only) with Andy Hirsch and Justin Okin is running Fri. & Sat. at 10 pm (extending until Aug. 28)…Not to be outdone, Celebration Theatre’s Late Night Program continues LA Tool & Die by film writer/director Sean Abley (Socket), a full frontal spin on ’70s gay porn film, running Fri. & Sat. at 10:30 pm, until Sept. 11…

LA STAGE INSIDER HISTORY…Sixty-three years ago this month, German expatriate Bertolt Brecht teamed with American actor Charles Laughton to premiere Galileo at the Coronet Theatre in Hollywood, directed by Joseph Losey. Also starring were Hugo Haas and Frances Heflin. On October 30 of that year, Brecht was called before the HUAC.  He left the U.S. the next day…

Are you trying to decide what to see this weekend? Consider an Ovation Recommended production.

These productions have been ranked in the top 20% of all registered shows in the ‘Overall Production’ voting category by the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Voters.

CURRENTLY RUNNING OVATION RECOMMENDED PRODUCTIONS

Click on the titles for more information. Click on the O! to read the LA Stage story.

PLAYS:

BECKY’S NEW CAR - Pacific Resident Theatre - O!

THE GOOD BOOK OF PEDANTRY AND WONDER -  Theatre @ Boston Court/Circle X - O!

KING LEAR - The Antaeus Company - Closing August 15 - O!

LENNY BRUCE IS BACK (AND BOY IS HE PISSED) - Theatre 68 - O!

MOTHER - Elephant Theatre Company

OPUS - Fountain Theatre - O!

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG - M.D. Walton & Robert Papazian - O!

YELLOW - JD3atrical @ The Coast Playhouse - O!

MUSICALS:

THE WHO’S TOMMY - Chance Theatre - Closing August 15 - O!

For more information on Ovation Recommended, CLICK HERE.

For information on the Ovation Awards, CLICK HERE.

A Tale Told by an Idiot, presented by Psittacus Productions in association with Son of Semele Ensemble Theatre, returns for a limited engagement playing Fri.-Sat., 8/13-14 at 8 & 10 pm. Tickets: $20-$22. Special offer for LA Stage readers: $10 on-line with discount code: SCLAfans. The Son of Semele, 3301 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; 646.425.4615 or psittacusproductions.org. Direct link for tickets: sonofsemele.secure.force.com/ticket.

In a city pegged for its legendary film industry, it is easy for theatre to find its identity somewhat wrapped up in that of the silver screen. With over 500 theatres scattered about greater Los Angeles and near-by counties, plays often lean toward the “kitchen sink drama” of reality TV and sitcoms, showcasing the talent rather than the story.

Psittacus Productions thinks it’s time for a new approach.

“Kitchen sink drama is exactly what we are reacting against,” says Psittacus Executive Director Louis Butelli. Just as Psittacus suggests, Butelli and co-founders Chas LiBretto (Managing Director) and Robert Richmond (Artistic Director) are spreading their wings and taking flight on a journey to give the theatre its own identity in Los Angeles.

Chas LiBretto, Darin Dahms and Casey Brown

Psittacus Productions began in February 2010 when Butelli, LiBretto and Richmond, who have a history of collaboration, decided they needed a distraction after their move to the West Coast. “In a city with so many artists it was surprising to us to find theatre was less theatrical so we realized there was room for us at the table to do the work we want to do,” says Butelli. “We all said, well in the absence of anything to do, why don’t we start a theatre company?”

So the three set out to create a company centered on work that is abstract, physical in nature, story heavy and epic. “When people come to our theatre, it is different than watching the preponderance of reality TV because people are coming to see a heightened reality beyond their own, to see others live through the most important day of their lives,” says Butelli.

The emphasis on story and the “epicness” allows the power of the ensemble to help Psittacus battle the bemoaned “kitchen sink drama.”

“We wanted to do theatre for theatre’s sake,” says LiBretto. “We take stories that are part of our classic tradition and make them part of our everyday conversations.”

In their most recent piece, A Tale Told by an Idiot, which uses a comic book-style to deconstruct Shakespeare’s Macbeth, many critics commented that instead of talent basking in the spotlight (as is the status quo in many LA theatres), the directorial vision was the focus of the evening. “I don’t know about that,” says Butelli. “But I can say the kind of work we have done in the past, and what we hope to do in the future, is very ensemble based; it’s the main thrust of the evening. We are really not looking to make a star out of any particular person.”

But Butelli doesn’t want the director to steal the show either. “At the same time we don’t want the director to be the star; we want our story to be the main thrust so I guess we are actually very actor-driven but not with one actor, with all.”

Louis Butelli and Daryl Crittenden

LiBretto agrees the mission of Psittacus is never isolated to one person. It is about the whole. “Our work is about who we were then and how that affects who we are now.  We reconfigure and retell classic stories in a way that breaks it down for people and really touches them; it’s not ever solely about the performance.”

Along with the emphasis of ensemble on the stage, Psittacus is looking to expand this sense of community with their work beyond the four walls of their theatre. Utilizing the sense of community built online in social forums like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Youbroadcast, Psittacus is not only acknowledging the presence of technology in art, they are celebrating it.

For each performance of A Tale Told by an Idiot, there is a live streaming version available online for the world to see and discuss. “A lot of theatre artists always bemoan the fact the cat’s out of the bag with technology and people are so detached and whatnot but I think there is a real analogy between the online community and theatre,” says Butelli.

The instant streaming of the show immediately provided a new sense of community in theatre, says Butelli. But this time people didn’t have to be sitting in the house to engage in it; they had a whole new kind of participation.

For example, during the streaming people could discuss the show as it happened in chat rooms, therefore increasing the amount of dialogue and interactivity with the piece.

While the biggest challenge of LA theatre is getting audiences, Psittacus hopes this new form of presentation will click with people and make them more willing get involved and interested in theatre; maybe even come to the live show.

“The thing that’s hard is not creating, it’s sharing,” says Butelli. “People crave activity, communion and interaction but it’s still hard to convince people this is something really worth their time.”

Darin Dahms, Elizabeth Saydah, Daryl Crittenden and Ensemble

After spending many years in the New York theatre scene, Butelli says The Big Apple easily forgets there is other worthwhile art off the island of Manhattan. However, he says Los Angeles is a different story. LA is curious, interested, vibrant and alive. And because of this eager, probing nature, LA has an excellent chance of discovering some wonderful theatre as it attempts to find its own identity apart from both East Coast theatre and the film industry.

Regarding the recent Sunday LA Times article about LA’s small theatres, in which Psittacus was singled out, Butelli says, “We really couldn’t be more honored to be mentioned together with such outstanding companies as Antaeus, Son of Semele, Theatre Movement Bazaar and Zombie Joe’s. We’re newcomers to Los Angeles and, in our opinion, these companies represent a gold standard in innovative, small theater. It’s a bit like waking up inside of a dream to be taken seriously alongside them. To be validated in this way is a real treat.

“We are kind of lucky LA has not figured out how to have a theatre scene yet because we haven’t figured out how to have a theatre company yet,” he continues. “We are just completely overwhelmed, shocked and touched we get to do what we do. As we go along we hope to make good theatre and return the favor of all we’ve received so far.”

Feature image of Madeleine Hamer, Nicole Flannigan, Elizabeth Saydah by Wenona Cole-Mclaughlin.

Article by Greta McAnany.

Free Man of Color, presented by The Colony Theatre Company, opens Aug. 14; plays Thurs.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 3 & 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through Sept. 12. Tickets: $20-$42. Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank; 818.558.7000 or colonytheatre.org.

“Only the educated are free,” spoke Epictetus in his famous Discourses sometime in the first century AD after he obtained his freedom from slavery and began to teach philosophy in Rome.

John Newton Templeton exemplified that doctrine both through his circumstances of birth and subsequent journey through life. Born an American slave in the early 1800s, he gained his liberty in 1813, enrolled at Ohio University in 1824 and became only the fourth black college graduate in our nation’s history in 1828, a full three decades before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

For its bicentennial celebration in 2004 Ohio University commissioned playwright Charles Smith to dramatize Templeton’s story. His play, Free Man of Color, received the Joseph Jefferson Award for Outstanding New Work in Chicago. Now the Colony Theatre is presenting its west coast premiere as the second production of its 36^th season. Cast are Frank Ashmore as university president Robert Wilson, Kathleen Mary Carthy as his wife Jane and Kareem Ferguson as Templeton with award-winning director Dan Bonnell helming the production.

Says Bonnell, “Free Man of Color is a big play with a lot of weighty material in it. It also has moments of humor although it’s not a yuk-fest by any means. It’s fun but no walk in the park.”

Dan Bonnell

Bonnell earned this present assignment from having guided Wayne Peter Liebman’s Better Angels in another west coast premiere for the Colony last season. That play dealt with the Lincoln war years. Bonnell says, “Barbara [Beckley, the Colony Theatre's artistic director] was aware of my work from other shows around town and asked me to take a look at Better Angels. It interested me right away. How often do you get a chance to work on a play about Abraham Lincoln? Too, I like history which is the basis for both these plays. It was interesting going backwards from the Lincoln presidency in Better Angels to the time of Templeton’s college years not least of which because his whole story has been largely forgotten or ignored. He came after the Revolution but before the Civil War. Wars and battles tend to grab the headlines and inspire the books more so than everyday struggles to better ourselves.”

Ferguson agrees, “There’s so much in history still to be discovered. I didn’t know or at least I didn’t remember about the efforts of white Americans to repatriate ex-slaves to Africa.”

“People like James Monroe and Andrew Jackson formed the American Colonization Society,” explains Bonnell. “It was an organization established to promote and oversee efforts to send freed blacks to Africa.”

Ferguson wonders, “What was that all about? They were going to send the free ones back but keep the slaves here? Was it their idea to employ reverse immigration and release a few more every year? So many of the themes in this play resonate with current-day events like nation building or colonization or segregation. Did these white leaders want to return blacks to Africa out of a sense of guilt for having enslaved them in the first place?

“According to the play the abolitionists had a love for the whole separate but equal philosophy but of course the separation never added up to equality over the decades. In the play there’s a scene which brings out the fact my (Templeton’s) family has been here for five generations while the master’s family has only been here from Europe for two generations which leads to an intellectual debate on who’s really the American here and how dare you.”

Bonnell directed Ferguson once previously in the play Stage Directions at [Inside] the Ford, leading to a mutual respect between them. Prior to that their backgrounds varied greatly before converging.

Bonnell grew up in Mishawaka, Indiana near South Bend. He says, “In her early years my mother had been a dancer but with the role expectations of society at the time she became a housewife. My dad was a professional jazz musician. You remember those old 33 1/3 records? We had a collection of those, musicals like West Side Story I listened to all the time.”

Those years influenced him to seek a BA in theatre and drama from Indiana University after which he headed to New York to try a plunge into the acting pool. “I joined Circle Repertory there under Lanford Wilson and Marshall Mason and began to find out certain things about myself; that I’m sort of a private person not entirely comfortable with revealing my inner emotions. But I liked watching William Esper, a disciple of Sandy Meisner from the Neighborhood Playhouse, teach in class. I connected emotionally with how he could take these great actors and help facilitate their storytelling abilities into deeper levels of characterization.”

It wasn’t long before Marshall Mason encouraged Bonnell to try his hand at directing and provided him the place to do it. Bonnell hasn’t looked back since.

Kareem Ferguson

Ferguson meanwhile, born in Belize, describes an incident in his childhood “when I had my Olivier moment. We didn’t get much American TV there but I was watching some American show. It may have been The Muppet Show or something; I don’t remember. But all of a sudden for whatever reason I just began to wax poetic for about 30 seconds. My mother thought it was just wonderful.”

Although he recalls the incident with much warmth from the affection it engendered from his mother, it didn’t automatically lead toward the performing arts as his personal interests took wing-literally—in a whole other direction. He says, “I love all things dealing with aviation. I started flying when I was 12 years old and became a pilot at 17. Then I went to Westminster College in Salt Lake City for their aviation degree program.”

One of the few academic institutions to offer hands-on flight instruction through the cooperation of the Salt Lake City International Airport, the college also offers majors and minors in over 40 other disciplines so while Ferguson was earning his Bachelor of Science in air operations, a chance conversation led to a new career flight path as well. He recalls, “I was talking with some girls in the dorm who were all excited about auditioning for the musical their department had coming up. They were theatre majors and kept urging me to audition with them. I said okay. To make a long story short I got cast as Prince Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress and I said ‘this feels good. I wanna do more.’”

He’s since gone on to amass professional film, TV and stage credits even while maintaining his enthusiasm for flying and says, “I want to be like Morgan Freeman and John Travolta and buy my own plane some day. I’m still passionate about my home country too so it’d be great to be able to wheel up in Los Angeles and wheel down in Belize whenever I got ready.”

Bonnell meanwhile has relegated those former acting aspirations of his aside in favor of a steadily growing career as a stage director. He says, “At a certain point I got interested in TV but found it’s not right for me. I love being in a rehearsal room with actors. I thrive on those three or four weeks in a room with a group of people digging into texts in an exploration process. I like actors who bring in choices. In fact I will tell my actors, ‘Don’t show me the same thing four rehearsals in a row.’

“I’m always informed by what they bring in. I examine their work like an editor almost. I’ll look at the whole palette of colors they show me-the reds, blues, yellows, greens, purples-and I might say, ‘You know, I like that shade of yellow you had day before yesterday. Let’s work on that.’ In that way I’m a contributor to their vision, a facilitator of their instincts.”

Kareem Ferguson, Frank Ashmoreand Kathleen Mary Carthy.

Ferguson appreciates that approach. He declares, “We say these words all the time about somebody we’ve worked with before: ‘He or she is awesome.’ But I love Dan because he’s kind. He provides a safe space. He becomes a collaborator in the truest sense with no great pressure to reach immediate results.

“I’m proud to say he’s the first repeat director I’ve worked with on stage. All actors have egos. Hopefully we have healthy ones. But I’m such a talker I could be a lawyer. I’d be good at it. So I’m always gonna press my case by speaking up and letting my opinion be known. Sometimes I’ll think afterwards, ‘This theatre ain’t ever gonna hire me again.’ So here’s Dan giving me my second opportunity to work with him.”

Bonnell believes their production will unravel layers but must not bow to veracity in favor of dramatization. He explains, “This play is not a mystery but each character in it goes on a personal journey of examination that’s not apparent in the beginning. Ultimately it’s the story of John Newton Templeton’s discovery of himself. Sometimes history can get in your way when your story springs from real life. Our job is not to tell the historical version of what happened but the story the playwright has given us which always has some element of fiction involved. I rely on the playwright’s script, not the footnotes of history. I think the audience will find it an engaging evening both intellectually and emotionally as they take this trip with these fully dimensional people. They’ll be provoked in the best sense of the word and walk out feeling like they’ve enjoyed a really good meal.”

Ferguson seconds those thoughts and adds some observations. “One of the beauties of being an actor is to explore different experiences. I can indulge in schizophrenia without people telling me I’m crazy. In this way we help our audience to check out various issues and lifestyles as well. I trust Dan. I know he trusts me. And we’re hell-bent on telling a good story.”

Tracing those illustrious legacies of free men from Epictetus in the first century through John Newton Templeton in the 17^th century, to the 21^st century of Dan Bonnell and Kareem Ferguson helps us color our lives with the dramatic vibrancy of inspirational storytelling.

Feature image of Kareem Ferguson, and Kathleen Mary Carthy by Michael Lamont.

Article by Gary Ballard.