BACK STAGE WEST
April 24, 2003
by Rob Kendt
Christianity and
the theatre are not two topics you'd expect to talk about on the noisy,
bustling exhibit floor of Showbiz Expo, the L.A. Convention Center's annual
gear-fest, where one can survey the latest digital editing software or
production rental equipment. But that's the place where, in 1995, I wandered
the floor in the company of David Schall, then the producing director and
publicist for Actors Co-op, the theatre company run by and for Christian actors
on the property of Hollywood Presbyterian Church.
I recalled this
unlikely conversation last week--Easter Week, appropriately enough--because of
the unexpected sad news that Schall died the previous weekend of a massive
heart attack, just an hour before the opening of the Co-op's new production of Uncle
Vanya. He was a mere 53.
I'm told he'd enjoyed the show's two previews and particularly a last bit of
pre-opening rehearsal under the direction of the Fountain Theatre's Simon Levy.
"He was doing stuff he'd never done before," said one Actors Co-op member.
"He was very excited about the work he was doing." He was off to a
nearby Mayfair Market for a pre-show salad when he reportedly pulled over,
looked both ways, and quietly put his head back. The TV show The Guardian was shooting across the way, and two
on-set cops observed Schall's graceful exit--otherwise, Co-op members say, they
might not have known where David had gone.
My stroll with
David eight years ago through booths of camera cranes and video monitors came
about because I'd asked him to speak on a Showbiz Expo panel I was hosting
called "Getting the Word Out: Maximizing Your Play's Press." In my
short time at the head of Back Stage West I'd been impressed by his ingratiating, courtly courting
of the media, particularly given his theatre company's unique mission. (The
other panelists included the L.A. Times' Don Shirley, the Taper's Nancy Hereford, and two
publicists who've since departed from the L.A. theatre scene, Rick Miramontez
and Ellen Friedberg.) He talked about how Actors Co-op's first few productions
were dismissed by critics for being too overtly religious--he particularly
relished Steven Leigh Morris' early dis of one play as "militant Christian
propaganda"--and how the company realized it needed to change its approach
if it was to be taken seriously. Its mission became to produce plays "that
celebrate the positive aspects of humanity, exploring such themes as
redemption, healing, hope, and forgiveness." Over the years, the Co-op has
assayed a wide range of plays within that mandate--from an award-bedecked
production of Terra Nova
in 1997 to last year's lauded Fools, from the Diane Venora-directed Seagull in 2000 to the current Vanya. I recall fondly its 1994 production of Into
the Woods, as good a
99-Seat Sondheim as I've seen on L.A. stages, and especially its hit '94
production of The 1940's Radio Hour, in which Schall played the show's avuncular announcer with
perfect period slickness; he was a showbiz sharpie, but there was a touch of
lovable Frank Morgan bluster about him. And the stage snow blowing outside the
"studio" convinced me, for moments at a time, that I'd been
transported.
¥ Theatre can do
that, which is why for years I've told myself, with a touch of defensiveness,
that the theatre has become my church: my ritual gathering with a community of
believers (for what are theatregoers but believers in the theatre? Few are
casual walk-ins) to share the same space for a few hours and be enlightened,
moved, challenged, even entertained. The defensiveness comes because I am a
member of a church, Hope Lutheran in Hollywood, to which I am too often a
stranger. (It's not a showbiz church, though Barbara Passolt sings in the choir
and Ron Dennis has been a member.) Those late Saturday nights at the theatre
"church" tend to wreck my Sunday mornings. Determined to wreck my
Sunday mornings for the foreseeable future is the return of The Strip, the Evidence Room's late-night serial,
every Saturday at 11 p.m., for which I've again signed on as a musician.
Writers Justin Tanner, Patty Scanlon, and Hugh Palmer have returned, along with
some of the favorite characters from last year's long Strip run--Brian
Newkirk's flaming Stevie, Tad Coughenour's Teutonic fashionista Romeo, Kevin
Costigan's plug-dumb porn star Rail Splitter, and the irreplaceable Laurel
Green as foulmouthed 8-year-old Sunshine. New to the mix with a narrative
called "American Nympho" is Michael Sargent, the pulp-culture-surfing
savant whose plays tend to be disarmingly straight-faced genre parodies.
"Nympho" has a Russ Meyer/Valley of the Dolls/soft-porn sensibility, with Liz Davies as
a breathless ditz who can't get enough and Keythe Farley as her cop husband,
scheming to satisfy them both. Farley--Actors' Gangster, co-author of Bat
Boy: The Musical, and
busy animation voiceover director/teacher--is also, I've learned, an ordained
Presbyterian elder; he directs worship at that great old battleship on Wilshire
and Western, the Wilshire Presbyterian Church. The father of two critters with
costume designer Ann Closs-Farley, Keythe can obviously get by on less sleep
than some of us.
¥ Speaking of the
Gang and religious themes, up next on the mainstage is Brian Kulick's take on
the medieval Mystery Plays, which tell Biblical stories as folk dramas. Farley said he
thinks the production might bring back some of the Gang's old hands, some of
whom have been on unofficial hiatus in the past year. Tom Fitzpatrick, seen at
the reopening of The Strip, was considering a part. (And why not Jack Black, also glimpsed
at the reopening? This Gangster of yore may have his plate full with those big
Hollywood movies and that band of his.) Incidentally, last year Angelenos were
supposed to see a contemporary take on the Mystery Plays via Cornerstone Theater Company, which
signed up the playwriting/screenwriting priest Bill Cain (Standup Tragedy, Nothing Sacred) to adapt the medieval texts as part of
Cornerstone's project with Catholic immigrant communities. Cain, though,
objected to what he saw as anti-Christian bias in Peter Howard's play Zones, and withdrew. The immigrant project,
staged in and around the Cathedral of St. Vibiana's last summer, became the
indelible Crossings,
in which various writers--including Howard, with a heartbreaking Book of
Ruth-based piece--told Catholic immigrant stories using Biblical analogies.
¥ A hit at the
Gang's El Centro space is Progressive Chain Bowling (through Apr. 26), which uses a
beguilingly deadpan framing device: that we're watching the theatrical
"thesis statements" of graduates of the San Fernando Valley Life
Studies Institute, a fictional self-help group that's trumpeted in the program
and promoted by the ticket table. I loved everything to do with the framing
device--including an onstage table of audio equipment, from which cast members
switch on quirky cues--but found the actual geek-love-triangle story within the
frame too thin to sustain interest. The performers are all smirkingly adorable--Ken
Palmer, Elizabeth Dement (who suggests a young Cheryl Hines), and the gangly
author himself, Haynes Brooks. The sport of the title--a Brooks-conceived
notion, in which teams move down a lane after each frame, playing havoc with
bowling strategy and score--had never been tried until this week. As Brooks
told BSW critic
Jenelle Riley recently, the cast tried it out at the cozy eight-lane Montrose
Bowl, rented for the occasion by a curious theatregoer who had approached
Brooks and "wondered if it was a real sport or not, and was kind of
embarrassed to ask. I explained I just made it up," said Brooks, "but
he wanted to do it." The match went down on Apr. 22, after presstime. Last
week, Brooks effused in anticipation: "It's sort of cool, because a sport
is born. Nobody knows what it will be like until we try it."