First Look Festival continues now through September 14th at the Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Thurs, Fri, and Sat at 8pm, Suns at 7pm; Sat and Sun matinees at 3pm. Single show ticket $23, two show ticket $30, pass to all four productions $45; donation suggested for readings. For Tickets call 323-882-6912 or visit www.openfist.org for the full schedule of featured shows.

In an economic recession where the tried and true classics dominate most theatre’s seasons, Open Fist Theatre has given eight weeks to introduce audiences to new plays and music. The aptly named First Look Festival, which opened July 23rd and continues through September 14th, features full productions and staged readings of new work.

LAStageBlog.com caught up with producer/director Charles Otte (Fernando), writer/director Neil LaBute (Helter Skelter), director Marya Mazor (Goliath), and director Randee Trabitz (St. Joan and the Dancing Sickness) to see how the festival was going.

LAStageBlog.com: How did you get involved with Open Fist and the First Look Festival?

Fernando

Charlie Otte: I’ve been involved with the Open Fist now since 1999 as a director/producer and designer, and when we were trying to decide what to do this summer I pushed forward the idea of a New Play Festival.  Los Angeles is filled with so many great writers and the Fist tends to do more classical or modern classical work, so I thought it might be nice for us to really concentrate on writers for a change.  I took on the task of being the Festival producer, and shepherded most of the work forward.  The last time I did a rotating rep this big was at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.  We are producing 4 shows in rep and 5 highly staged readings that perform on the weekends.  It’s been an ambitious task, but it all seems to be playing out with great performances of equally great work.

Neil LaBute: I have had an association with the theater for a few years now, since they staged my play “Autobahn.” They approached me about having a piece of writing in their festival this year and I agreed to two short pieces; I also asked them about my directing one of the pieces since I would be in town during the festival.

Marya Mazor: I became involved with the Open Fist through company member Laura Flanagan, who contacted me to direct Goliath on the recommendation of playwright Karen Hartman.  Karen and I had worked together in New York, as well as on a reading at the Boston Court Theater in Pasadena, and we were thrilled at the prospect of furthering that collaboration.  Because I have been such a passionate believer in Karen’s work for many years, and I had heard so many wonderful things about the Open Fist actors from other directors I knew in L.A., I knew immediately it was something I wanted to do.

Randee Trabitz: Through Charlie Otte probably referred by friend Chris Wright.

LAS: What has your experience been with the festival thus far? In what ways does this festival get a new work the attention it deserves?

MM: It’s been an absolutely amazing process.  Karen’s play is fascinating and challenging and has kept all of us working at the top of our game.  It’s wonderful to work on a new play, because there is no predefined idea on the part of either myself or the collaborative team about what the play has to be… it’s truly a process of discovery.  I think Karen is enormously brave in taking on the challenging topic of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict - a subject that everyone has an opinion on and no one can agree on - and yet she finds a way to bring that conflict home and make it deeply personal.  This play has had quite a number of readings and staged-readings at theatres including the Public in New York and the McCarter in New Jersey, as well as Voice & Vision’s Envison Lab at Bard College — so it was time to get it’s on it’s feet and take it to the next place.  And it’s such an incredibly poignant, funny, smart and sad play all in one - that I feel privileged that this theater took the chance to give it the resources it so richly deserves.

RT: It’s been very exciting to find a company with the guts to take on this ambitious work.  It’s tough and ragged to work with such minimal and shared resources but the spirit and passion of the Open Fisters to just work harder to make things happen is quite remarkable and infectious.

NL: It’s important for me to be able to reinforce established connections in the community and to also work with new people, to extend my network of associates and audience as a writer/director. It’s great to work with people that you’ve already worked with and to also add new creative voices to your team.

CO: This has been a truly rewarding experience in so many ways.  Tonight, for example, we had 5 different productions in rehearsal. Karen Hartman’s Goliath is in tech rehearsals at the theatre preparing to open on Friday, Both, a musical built from Beatles music is rehearsing in a studio in the hills and will open on Saturday, Neil Labute is having a first read-thru of his play, Bjorn Johnson is having a first read-thru of another Neil Labute play, and St. Joan is preparing for an opening at the end of August.  All in all it is very exciting.  The great thing about all this work happening, is that not only are individual plays given a chance to see a stage, but that the sheer volume of material creates an excitement about the plays.  Audience members will come back to see something later, having enjoyed what they just saw.

LAS: What inspired you to work on the play you’re involved with? What is the story or message its core?

RT: I’m directing a very gorgeous and ridiculously large production by Julie Hebert.  St. Joan and the Dancing Sickness retells the story of St. Joan by setting it in pre-Katrina Louisiana.  I think everyone involved in this production is caught up in a communal fever dream.  We all know the play is tough, the cast is huge and the imagery is elaborate, but nobody seems able to walk away from it.  The themes are about sacrifice and exploitation and also the ability to recognize the truth.  Big stuff.

CO: Fernando is a piece that Steven Haworth has been working on for a while in workshops and readings.  The script is a dark comedy that speaks about love and art.  I’ve wanted to do it for a while now.

NL: Both of the pieces [Helter Skelter and The New Testament] we’ll be presenting are clashes of desire - one is work-related and one of a more personal nature. Both stories center around misunderstandings that grow out of unhealthy unions. One is meant to be funny and one tends to grow more serious as it progresses.

MM: Goliath takes place on the Gaza strip during the Israeli pull-out of 2005.  It’s a rich story, which intricately weaves the layered conflicts of Jewish Soliders, Jewish Settlers, and Palestinians.  To me, Goliath brings these seemingly distant conflicts home by exploring how basic the human need for home is, how our sense of place is intertwined with our identity — and how wrenching it is when external forces tear us from that home and identity.  That is true for both Palestinian Jews and Israeli Settlers, but also true for so many other dislocated people around the world.  And most of us, in these shifting times, can identify with the impact of dislocation and displacement.   On an intellectual level, the play manages to do a remarkable job of engaging us in the complexity of the issues involved without ever becoming didactic — and that’s a rather amazing feat for a playwright.

LAS: And the production process? What has it been like collaborating and preparing the piece for its first staging?

CO: As always, working with a writer on the first production of a piece is a wonderful and daunting experience.  The writer has a production in his or her mind, and hears and sees the play in as a fully formed piece.  When you add real actors, designs and direction, there are always unexpected and new colors that appear in the piece.  These often add a lot to the show, but are not perhaps what the author originally thought that they wrote.  This discovery is what is so wonderful, and allows writers to add, change or modify the script - to bring out new ideas and insights through the performance.

NL: We’re just getting started in production so everything is golden and hopeful and exciting - hopefully we’ll have fun doing it.

RT: I’m working with an extraordinary cast of talented, generous and extremely busy actors, designers and producers. Scheduling rehearsals and meetings between the close to 30 people involved is not for the faint of heart.

Goliath

MM: We’ve had the most dedicated team of actors and designers, that are so deeply passionate abut the play and fiecrly committed to making it work, that it has just felt like a wonderful, challenging joint venture - one in which every single day is chock full of new discoveries about what the layers of story are and how to best tell them. Again, it’s a tribute to the richness of the writing that it has brought out such a profound engagement on the part of each person involved.  It’s physically and emotionally demanding for the cast, and they have risen to those challenges with absolute commitment and grace.

LAS: How would you pitch the festival to a potential audience member?

CO: This is a festival of wonderful work that is unlike anything else in Los Angeles right now.  Putting this much work together in this short a time is wonderfully exciting, and I would encourage theatre goers to come see multiple productions.

MM: Some of the top playwrights in the country are participating in this festival - it’s really an incredibly ambitious feat for a small theater to pull off - presenting the first productions of ambitious new plays by leading American playwrights.  It’s really a tribute to the talent within the company that these nationally esteemed artists are entrusting the theater with their words.  From what I have experienced of the Open Fist, that trust is well-founded.

RT: All I can say is that I spent 10 or so hours at the theater yesterday. I rehearsed from 9-2, saw Charlie’s production of Fernando at 3 and a staged reading of George Brant’s Elephant Graveyard at 7. When I finally got home, I was more turned on than tired.  Why would anyone want to miss this?  Get out your reading glasses and scrutinize the tiny print on the postcard and see as much as you can before it’s gone.  This is a tremendous opportunity and one-stop shopping.

NL: Any time an audience can see and nurture new work in the theatre they should run to do it - this is one medium where you can actually feel your influence on a particular piece of writing. Moment to moment, an author can tell when an audience is with them or now, and I think most playwrights take great stock in this. I hope they do, anyway. It’s a living thing, a theatrical performance, and I highly value what the audience has to tell myself and the performers each night.

Feature image courtesy of openfist.org. Story images by Starbodhi Productions.