BACK STAGE WEST

April 11, 2002 

        

THE WICKED STAGE

 

by Rob Kendt

Not since a production of The Hasty Heart starring Gregory Harrison was moved directly from the 99-seat Cast Theatre to the cavernous Ahmanson Theatre back in 1982 Has there been a transfer so momentous: Deaf West Theatre's Big River, which last year added levels of cross-cultural resonance to Roger Miller's beautiful Huck Finn musical, under director Jeff Calhoun, will dock at the Taper next holiday season. You can read more about it in our news section--I'll just register here my sincere congratulations to Deaf West, a world-class theatre company working out of a small North Hollywood storefront, and my wish that there won't be casting changes galore, especially not in the lead roles: James Black as Jim, Tyrone Giordano as Huck, and Bill O'Brien as Mark Twain and the speaking voice of Huck. (And who else but Troy Kotsur could play a sign-language Papp Finn so fiercely?) I also wonder if a big musical is going to become a Taper holiday tradition, what with last year's Flower Drum Song and now this. If Gordon Davidson wants to originate musicals on his more intimate in-the-round stage rather than at the Ahmanson, where he mostly plays host to big musicals coming or going from Broadway, who can begrudge him?

 

¥ Another 99-seat event with multiple levels of resonance will have a life beyond L.A.: Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, the Cornerstone Theater Company/ Actors' Gang co-production of 1996 that miraculously put all three plays on one stage at the same time, will open James Bundy's first season as artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Conn. Billed as the "world premiere" of a "new version," it will be directed, as before, by Cornerstone's Bill Rauch and the Gang's Tracy Young (actually, she's not with the Gang anymore, but that's a whole other story), but it will be significantly recast.

 

¥ Another L.A. export, Murray Mednick's autobiographical Joe and Betty, another major production of 2001, will open at New York's JosŽ Quintero Theatre on May 28, produced as it was at 2100 Square Feet in L.A. by Padua Playwrights Productions and directed by Guy Zimmerman. The $5,000 award the play just received from the American Theatre Critics Association won't hurt. The presentation occurred last weekend at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival. Look for a full report on that annual new-works fiesta from crack reporter Jennie Webb in our Apr. 18 issue. Her early word on the festival choices this time out: "safe." Read on.

 

¥ Is Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theater Projects bound for New York? Is it giving up new play development? These are the sorts of rumors that have been flying about this L.A.-based theatre development organization--whose annual Common Ground Festival is an indispensable showcase for local and national playwriting talent (and a rare paying gig for local performers and directors)--ever since Mead Hunter, A.S.K.'s director of literary programs, announced he was leaving. They're nothing but rumors, said A.S.K. executive director Kym Eisner. For one thing, she explained, A.S.K. has always been conceived as a national organization with an L.A. home base (that's where Audrey and her husband, Charles Kenis, reside), and it's currently "fine-tuning" the way it can "best serve the field" of theatre. Speculation and gossip are bound to continue until June, which is when, Eisner said, the results of the fine-tuning will be in. Anyone hunting for clues to A.S.K.'s new focus need look no further than a recently launched program of producing partnerships, called "New Plays/New Ways," to develop new works with Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, Princeton, N.J.'s McCarter Theatre, Minneapolis' Children's Theatre Co., and Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co. Does this trend represent a heightened or a diminished commitment to independent new play development, and what does it mean for L.A. theatre? We may have said too much already, but we can't help A.S.K.ing.