May 09, 2002
by Rob Kendt
Things are tough all over these days: According to most actors and
agents, this has been another TV pilot season in which non-name actors could
barely get a foot in the door. What else is new? One thing that's new is that
Eric Stevens, an agent at Bobby Ball, earlier this year renamed his
"Equity" department the "Stage and Screen" department. And
it wasn't just a redecorative name change: It represents both the relative
dearth of well-paying stage work originating out of L.A. and Stevens' concerted
effort to land lucrative film and TV work for his talent pool of seasoned
theatre actors. Of course, the opportunity to secure on-screen work is what
draws talent, a lot of it theatre-trained, to Los Angeles in the first place;
but most stage-oriented actors find themselves torn between non-paying L.A.
stage gigs they can mostly land on their own and the work their agents are
seeking for them in features, series, and commercials. They are often told by
their agents, as Alfred Molina recently recounted to us, that doing theatre in
L.A. is a bad career move ("Why would you want to advertise that you're
not working?" Molina's first L.A. agent reportedly asked him), or, more
benignly, that it's OK as long as it doesn't interfere with auditions for
"real" work, as Tracy Middendorf recently put it to me. You won't
hear Stevens saying that to his clients: Late last year he looked at a client
base of stage-savvy Equity members, most of whom had no other representation
(for commercials, film, or TV), and saw "a huge waste of talent."
With the go-ahead from BBA owner Patty Granna Miller, Stevens has been seeking
work on both fronts for clients like Misty Cotton, one of the Side Show twins from
the recent Colony Theatre hit; Richard Israel, former artistic director of the
Celebration Theatre and an actor we enjoyed in, among other things, West Coast
Ensemble's Company, who's now shooting the feature film Cooler with Alec
Baldwin; Annalise Van Der Pol, a perennial Evita who debuted in the role at age
15 (and reprised it most recently at San Gabriel Civic Light Opera), who's
landed a series regular role on Raven Simone's new series; Carol Lawrence, whom
Stevens "packaged" into next fall's International City Theatre
production of Amy's View along with director client Jessica Kubzansky (and
non-client Susan Egan), as well as cabaret/musical talents Darlene Love and
Laura Branigan. Stevens' pitch, which should be obvious to anyone who follows
the L.A. acting scene but apparently can't be drummed into Hollywood
decision-makers' heads enough: "Theatre people can do more than just work
onstage. And they take direction well." The same is not always true in
reverse: "People who work on-camera can't necessarily work onstage."
Are stage actors sometimes "too big" for the camera? Two coaches Stevens
recommends to show clients the on-camera ropes are stage/screen vets Richard
Kline and John Kirby. And of course Stevens isn't giving up on the theatre
bookingsÑit's just that there aren't many Southern California opportunities for
paying stage work. He's got clients on tour with Aida and Jesus
Christ Superstar, but as the Ahmanson's two most recent openings, The Full
Monty and Into the Woods, affirmed, Broadway-based productions
have seemingly little interest in L.A.-based musical theatre talent (Monty, in fact, was
fined by Equity for not holding local Equity open calls before taking agent
submissions). "The money's fine," said Stevens of his touring
clients' take. "But it's not lucrative. I had three actresses on Ally
McBeal, and they made in two days what they would have been paid on a
tour for a week." Then there's a client like Bets Malone, a musical
theatre actress who had "three weeks off" in 2001, what with gigs at
Performance Riverside, San Gabriel Civic Light Opera, and, most recently, I
Do! I Do! at Utah Music Theatre.
¥ As the Evidence Room readies its local premiere of David Edgar's
Pentecost (opening May 25), the English playwright has been commissioned by
Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival to write two new
plays about American politics with what Berkeley Rep director Tony Taccone
calls Edgar's "informed objectivity." Under the title Continental
Divide, Edgar's two playsÑtitled Daughters of the Revolution and Mothers
AgainstÑwill deal with Democratic and Republican political families,
respectively. It will premiere at OSF in Ashland, in February 2003, then go to
Berkeley in the fall. It seems fair to ask: What are Edgar's politics? New
Labour? Not likely. Paranoid America-bashing, like that spouted by novelist
Arundhati Roy or the tirelessly cranky Harold Pinter (who recently raved in
print that the U.S. is "the most dangerous power the world has ever
knownÑa full-fledged, award-winning, gold-plated monster" that "knows
only one language: bombs and deaths")? We don't suspect Edgar would bother
to take the commission at all if he shared such bottomless contempt for these
old colonies.