Check out the first meeting of Oedipus (Justin Huen) and Jocasta (Marlene Forte) in Luis Alfaro’s new Oedipus El Rey, at the Boston Court. The sexual electricidad ignites the room.

Emphasizing that aspect of the production in a marketing campaign might sound, well, crass or sophomoric - sort of like those written come-ons that start with a bold-faced “SEX,” and then proceed with “Now that I have your attention…”

Yet such an emphasis would hardly be gratuitous in this case.  One of the strengths of this Oedipus, in contrast to Sophocles’ original, is that it unequivocally demonstrates the source of the two lovers’ sexual connection. Of course, this is long before they discover - I’m assuming that no spoiler alert is necessary - that they’re not just your average younger man and older woman. They’re son and mother.

They remove all their clothes by the end of the scene. But the dialogue that leads up to it - in which they transcend initial suspicion to discover a common yearning that goes far beyond the physical - is as incendiary as the nudity.

Most of this scene works like wildfire. But I was confused by one odd exchange, early in the scene. Discussing their respective names, they send mixed signals as to whether they have any familiarity with the original oedipal story. I wasn’t sure what Alfaro was trying to establish with these lines.

Justin Huen and Marlene Forte in OEDIPUS EL REY

Generally, however, his intentions in Oedipus El Rey are clear. By plopping the narrative down in the barrios of contemporary California, he’s giving the musty saga a new lease on life for his immediate audience.

At first I wondered why Alfaro places young Oedipus and, in this version, his adoptive father Tiresias, in prison - North Kern State Prison. This Oedipus has been in and out of Youth Authority facilities and then prison for much of his life.

By the end of the play, however, I realized that Alfaro sees a prisoner’s relationship with his keepers as a metaphor for Sophocles’ generally despairing concept of the relationship between human beings and the gods.

After Oedipus has been out of prison for awhile, creating his own “kingdom” as a wheeler-dealer on the streets of Pico-Union, he returns to visit Tiresias in prison, hoping to get some answers to the big questions that now plague him. He declares he will break any divine curse. When Tiresias declares it isn’t possible to defy the gods, Oedipus replies, “Not in here, Papa, but out there…,” referring to life beyond the prison walls.

Tiresias answers: “My son, don’t you see? In here is out there.” No matter where he is, Oedipus’ burning desire to build his own kingdom is constricted by factors over which he has no control. Alfaro brilliantly honors the essence of Sophocles’ world view, even as he changes so many of the details.

Alfaro adapted another tale of classic Greek drama, Electra, to contemporary L.A. in Electricidad, at the Mark Taper Forum in 2005. It was exciting, but some nay-sayers felt that it was diluted by too many flip laugh lines. I doubt they would feel that way about Oedipus El Rey. It’s sleek and streamlined. Although some allusions to contemporary L.A. and the 21^st century are passingly amusing in this context, they don’t sound as if they were designed to break up the somber mood, as a few of the lines in Electricidad did.

The connection between the two plays is strong. In Electricidad, a member of the chorus dismisses L.A.’s barrios as “border towns.”  In Oedipus El Rey, Jocasta tells Oedipus, in an attempt to tamp down his ambitions, “we’re border people.” A few minutes later, she repeats a variation of the phrase, referring to Pico-Union with “This ain’t downtown - it’s the borderlands.”

She explains: “We’re the stuff under the cement…In this barrio - we still lay hands and kill chickens and go to church and do what the shaman says. Look at the way we look, like our ancestors. We haven’t changed…This is the way we live. You might think you have the power to make the world you want to make, but there’s someone upstairs pulling your strings.”

Soon after she speaks these words, however, Oedipus begins to transform her from a fatalist into a dreamer. It’s a beautiful vision - but it can’t last.

Or could it? In Greek, Steven Berkoff’s adaptation of the same Oedipus story to lower-class London in the ’80s, he suggests that modern human beings aren’t necessarily bound by all the old-fashioned rules, that Oedipus and Jocasta might have a future together, even knowing what they know.

If I had a magical producer’s wand, I’d re-assemble L.A. Theatre Works’ 1982 production of Greek (originally at the Matrix Theatre) in a festival along with Oedipus El Rey. Then I’d throw in a traditional interpretation of the story - say, A Noise Within’s 1999 production of Kenneth Cavander’s translation of Sophocles’ original. And I’d add Neil LaBute’s Wrecks, seen at the Geffen Playhouse with Ed Harris a few weeks ago.

It would be thrilling to see all of these productions side by side, having a conversation with each other.

Failing that possibility, at least you still have time to see Jon Lawrence Rivera’s dynamic staging of Oedipus El Rey at the Boston Court. It’s part two of a rolling three-part premiere that began last month at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and will continue to a production at the Woolly Mammoth in Washington. Alfaro is making a few changes along the way, and the casts are different. Here in L.A., for those of us who saw Electricidad, the casting provides an additional line of continuity between the earlier play and this one. Hue, who played Orestes in 2005, is now playing Oedipus. Winston Rocha, who played Orestes’ godfather and mentor at the Taper, is now playing Tiresias.

Of course, in an ideal world, Oedipus El Rey itself would be at the Taper or at least the Taper’s sister CTG theater, the Kirk Douglas. That way, everyone would get wages commensurate for their talent and skills and hard work, and the larger CTG audience would be able to track Alfaro’s work from 2005 until now.  However, as I’ve noted here, CTG appears to have lost interest in producing locally-set plays by local playwrights. CTG’s loss is the Boston Court’s gain.

Oedipus El Rey, Boston Court Performing Arts Center, 70 N. Mentor, Pasadena. Thur-Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 2 pm. Closes March 28. 626-683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org.

Meanwhile, in Forgiveness at the Black Dahlia, the perils of another inappropriate parent-child relationship take center stage - but this time it’s a father (Morlan Higgins) and a daughter (Emily Bergl).

Peter Smith and Emily Bergl in Forgiveness

David Schulner’s play lacks the vibrant theatricality and mythological resonance of Alfaro’s, but it substitutes a small-scale realism to address this sad case. The father raped his teenage daughter years ago, went to prison, stopped drinking, found Jesus, remarried - but still lives in a world of regret. The daughter, now in her early 30s, has apparently forgiven her father. She wants to introduce her fiancé (Peter Smith) to him and to her stepmother (Lee Garlington) and teenaged stepsister (Kendall Toole), although she doesn’t inform her fiancé of the backstory until they’re practically at the father’s doorstep. The arrival of the newcomer, who must absorb all this history in one weekend, sets off dangerous reminders of the bad old days.

Matt Shakman’s staging is packed with telling nuances. It’s the kind of script that might be easily adapted into an indie film. I got a charge out of watching it up-close and personal in the tiny Dahlia space on the same night that nearly everyone else was watching the Oscar ceremony.

Forgiveness, Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. Thur-Sun, 8 pm. Closes March 28. 800-838-3006. thedahlia.com.

Sunday, March 7th
Ovation Fellow Alessandra Brown shares her “Sad Song.”
Steve Julian is popular with Kay Cole and the Broads!

Monday, March 8th
Director Thomas Colby is on Cloud 9 at the Lyric.
Playwright Jamie Pachino scores a Primus with Splitting Infinity.
Rick Culbertson’s first person Produces discussion on a Better Business Bureau.

Tuesday, March 9th
Rick Culbertson’s part II: Building Better Producers.

Wednesday, March 10
Furious for Survival: the theatre’s effort to continue after the closing of the Pasadena Playhouse.

Thursday, March 11
Frances Conroy shares on The Subject of Roses.

Friday, March 12
Rocco Landesman takes his spring break on an NEA tour of the west coast.
A Noise Within moves within another space.
John Pollono Rants and Raves about Rogue Machine.
A Dialogue between LAStageBlog.com and Francesca Fanti

Join LAStageBlog.com next week to get stories like these as they break!

Feature image of Frances Conroy in The Subject was Roses by Craig Schwartz.

Francesca Fanti is in the middle of “the best rehearsals of my life” for the play Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client, directed by Mark Kemble at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena.  The reason, she says, is Eric Murdoch, her costar from New York currently making his West Coast debut in this production.

Francesca Fanti and Eric Murdoch

“There is so much chemistry between us,” Fanti says, “that it makes it really comfortable to do this very intimate play with him.”

Fanti, who came to Los Angeles from Rome in 1995, is the quintessential Italian actress, resembling a young Anna Magnani as she waves her arms around to emphasize her enthusiasm.

“And I’m so lucky to be working again with Dacia Maraini, one of the most famous writers in Italy for the past 40 years and the most free mind on the planet,” she adds. Maraini, a prize-winning novelist and feminist theater personality, “understands the actor,” Fanti says, “and she attracts the nicest people as her associates. Her joy is contagious!”

This isn’t the first time Fanti has appeared in one of Maraini’s plays. They met at the Italian Institute of Culture here in LA when the playwright came to accept an award and Fanti expressed an interest in performing Maraini’s play Love Letters (”Lettera d’Amore”). “I first presented it as part of a larger program so I had to cut it to 15 minutes,” Fanti says with a laugh. “But she trusted me to do it! And of course I had a flood of questions so our correspondence flew back and forth. It was so wonderful talking to the writer and getting answers to all my questions.”

Love Letters, Fanti says, “is a very intense one-person show about a woman who is trying to resolve her complicated relationship with her recently deceased mother and discovers a packet of erotic love letters among her mother’s effects.” The letters in the play were real letters written in 1860 by Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio which Maraini used as the foundation for her drama.

In the 1970s, when Maraini was the companion of Italian novelist Alberto Moravia (they lived together from 1962 to 1983), she wrote Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client. “The two people in it are right there,” Fanti says. “Dacia has a deep understanding of the life of these characters and she has created them fully and completely.”

Fanti in Dialogue

In January of 2009 Maraini took her to Chieti, a small town in Italy, to perform Dialogue in a very old 400-seat theater, the Teatro Marrucino, which now serves as an opera house. And Fanti is looking forward to performing the play four or five times in Italy this summer and in Italian Institutes of Culture in cities all over the United States.

Fanti came to Los Angeles originally in 1992 to attend a seminar given by Dominic DeFazio, an acting teacher, and she later began to study with him. “He realized acting was my passion,” she says, “and he helped me to let go and open up.” She then worked with Susan Perry, a Method teacher from the Actors Studio. “I needed a tool so I embraced the Method,” Fanti notes. Finally, it was Jeff Corey, who became not only her teacher and friend, but “also a father to me.”

“With Corey I reached a different level,” she says. “I went beyond the Method and opened myself to infinite possibilities. I realized I no longer needed to work from my past experiences. He told me, ‘It’s you and you have everything there to do it with.’”

No stranger to Los Angeles audiences, Fanti appeared in 1998 in Dario Fo’s Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo, a one-woman show written by the man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.  She was then asked to do the show for one performance, on International Women’s Day, in San Francisco. But the audience was so receptive the show was extended and played for three months to sold-out houses and won her the Bay Area Critics Award for Best Solo Performance.

“I was pregnant at the time,” she says, “so one night I stuffed a big pillow under my costume and played the four different characters in the play as pregnant women, just for fun.”

She also tells of surviving every actor’s worst nightmare. “One night at the end of my first monologue in Orgasmo the lights began popping off one by one until I was standing onstage in total darkness. All the electricity went off and none of the background sound effects worked. So I offered the audience the choice of getting their money back or having me go on with the show. The audience elected to have me go on and out of 120 people only eight left. And I did the whole show with the lighting technician following me around holding a flashlight over his head.

“Actually, it worked perfectly. My next monologue was set at 5:30 in the morning so the lighting was just right,” she says. “Those are the nights the audience gives so much—almost more than you do on stage.”

After that she took time off to be with her new son, Matteo. “I loved the maternity experience,” she says, “and I didn’t want to miss one second with my baby.” In the interim she appeared in commercials for a number of car companies, Kellogg’s, Bank of America, in an Elizabeth Arden ad (with Elizabeth Taylor) and many others. And when Matteo turned four she responded to “the artist inside me” and accepted a role on the big screen, appearing with Daniel Day-Lewis, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard and Kate Hudson in Nine.  Not too shabby a company to work with when you decide to resume your career!

Article and feature image by Cynthia Citron. Story images by Pina De Cola.

One the greatest things about Rogue Machine is that it’s a collaborative place where we are encouraged to creatively utilize the space. In addition to plays, we produce acoustic concerts, readings, 24 hour play festivals, comedy shows, etc. A night that has no event is a night wasted. And if that night brings in new faces, money and costs virtually nothing…that’s a no-brainer.

About a year ago, I was approached by fellow company member Roxanne Hart. Her idea was to create a writer/performer series. Knowing I was a writer (Roxanne performed in my play Razorback) and that I had produced a lot of content at the theatre, she asked if I’d like to collaborate. We came up with a very rough format (eight writers, a prompt and a time limit), dubbed it Rant and Rave, recruited our host (company member Ron Bottitta whose wit and edgy humor consistently pull the whole night together on stage), made an email flyer, gave our writers some general feedback and just let that first show sort of take its own shape.

Rant and Rave Chapter 1: MONEY was a great success. We had a big house that night, everyone immediately sensed we were tapping into something special. We began hosting an R&R every month, each time with a new prompt. And as the buzz spread, so has the audience. They know they are going to see something unique… something that exists for one night only. Because it’s Rogue Machine, they know it’s going to be edgy and honest.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

• One of the smartest things we did was let the show evolve. We listened to the audience and the writers and let our experiences inform the shape of the show. In fact, it’s still evolving.
• It’s all about connection. We tell our writers this isn’t a “reading” of prose. It’s a performance and, no matter what style they write in, take time to connect with the audience. This is a crucial element to creating that community.
• Write from the heart and the guts. We create a safe environment for our writers and they don’t hold back. The audience appreciates the confessional, intimate and personal nature of the pieces.
• Flow is key. One of the elements Roxanne and I mull over the most is the order of the pieces. It’s definitely an art and a science and, again, we go with our guts here. The pieces all link together and create an ensemble performance.
• Choose writers wisely. Sometimes it feels like Rant and Rave is like a ’70s era game show where we have our favorites who keep coming back. The more we do this, the more we get to know our writers and pull them into shows where their specific voice really adds to the night.
• The Audience! This is the most important element to the success of our show. The Rant and Rave audience, which has grown each month, is an integral part of each show. They are smart, funny, energetic and they lift the writers up and inspire them to give the best performances possible.

Monday, March 15 at 8 pm will be Rant and Rave Chapter 9: SECRETS. We are close to being filled with pre-sales. In addition to our incredibly talented company members (Henry Murray, who wrote last season’s critically acclaimed Treefall) we have pulled in an eclectic mix of writer/performers from all over the city.

This is a remarkable event to attend and be a part of. I invite writers and performers from Los Angeles to check out one of our shows and if you feel inspired, email Roxanne and me at rantandrave@roguemachinetheatre.com to see if you can participate. Join the Rant and Rave theatre community.

Striking the $10 million mark enables the company to move forward with plans that the couple hardly imagined in 1992 (see rendering, left).

Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott started A Noise Within (ANW) that year with $3,000 from their savings. “Now, with more help than we can begin to mention, we can realize this dream of a state-of-the-art theatre and learning facility,” Rodriguez-Elliott says. Groundbreaking could occur as early as mid-April. “It all comes down to getting that final permit from the city of Pasadena.”

When ANW looked for space to rehearse its first production in 1992 (Tennessee Williams’ Period of Adjustment), the Elliotts were put in touch with Robert and Dennis De Pietro, whose family owns the c. 1930 Masonic Temple building. The two agreed to let ANW rehearse there while it staged the performance at the Boy Scouts’ auditorium. Once that run ended, and the Elliotts asked the De Pietro’s for permission to rehearse Shakespeare’s simple, little play, Hamlet, Dennis and Robert said, “You’ve got the keys, why not just perform here, too?” The arm-twisting was minimal, Geoff Elliott says, and ANW had its home.

In his pre-show address Saturday, Elliott acknowledged the De Pietro family in the audience. “If it were not for these wonderful friends, partners, and patrons,” he said, “we literally would not be here today. We owe our history to them.”

The new theatre will provide about three times as many seats as the current venue. Those 300 seats will provide enough space for the Elliotts to continue to engage students, one of the company’s top priorities.

Rodriguez-Elliott says, ”We currently serve 10,000 students from 6th grade to college. Our new space will let us double that number, giving students greater access to education resources for the great works of classic literature.”

ANW will house an education resource center - The Classics Live! Learning Center - for teachers and students. It will include a library of audio-visual resources, study guides, reference material, and curricula all designed to bring the classics to life. There will be an opportunity to explore the plays, language, history, and culture of Shakespeare’s England through weekly courses with A Noise Within resident artists.

While there is a once-popular ballroom upstairs, the Masonic Temple was never intended as a theatre. ANW sets are constructed in the basement, then disassembled into four-foot by eight-foot sections, and then carried by hand up several flights of stairs, where they’re reassembled on stage. The new facility will make set construction far easier.

Pens are out, not to rewrite history, but to amend it. ANW’s board, Elliott says, is actively pursuing the remaining $3.3 million required to fully fund construction of the Pasadena theatre. In the meantime, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott says she’s too busy, really, to think much about what they’re leaving behind. “Memories, a lot of those,” she says.

Feature Image by Craig Schwartz

Reposted from Steve Julian’s blog http://stevejulian.wordpress.com/

The host for Landesman’s San Diego visit is Mayor Jerry Sanders and Victoria Hamilton, executive director of the City of San Diego Commission on Arts and Culture. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Arts Council of Silicon Valley will host the events in Oakland.

The chairman is traveling to these cities to learn how the arts work in California communities with a particular focus on the role of the arts in education and in creating and sustaining livable, vibrant urban centers. The Los Angeles events on Monday, March 15, include:

Frances Conroy

Frances Conroy is no stranger to kitchen sink drama. After all, her Six Feet Under character Ruth famously threw a pot roast across the floor in the HBO cult hit series pilot after hearing her undertaker husband had just died while driving their brand new hearse. Now she paces a linoleum floor eight times a week as Martin Sheen’s unfulfilled, Bronx-trapped wife in Frank D. Gilroy’s 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning embodiment of the genre, The Subject Was Roses, directed by Neil Pepe.

When asked whether Nettie or other classic female leads such as Eugene O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone were cued up in her theatrical wish list, the veteran Broadway and Off Broadway Tony Award nominee, Drama Desk and Obie Award winner frames her answer in household terms.

“I don’t think that way,” Conroy states via phone one morning before a Tuesday performance. “I don’t have these, ‘Oh, I have to do that role.’ It’s hard enough to get through the day and get the dishes washed! I think when the next project comes up, whatever it is, it’s always a big thing to take hold of and immerse yourself in.”

With more than 50 stage credits ranging from the New York Shakespeare Festival to the Guthrie Theater to Lincoln Center, the 56-year-old actress has had plenty of rich opportunities to do so. While Six Feet Under earned her a Golden Globe Award, four Emmy nominations and a new mass audience, the red-headed Juilliard graduate has long been a favorite of iconic playwrights and directors. She toured with John Houseman’s The Acting Group, made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1980 production of Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque, directed by Alan Schneider and starring Irene Worth, tackled Kate at Stratford in 1985’s The Taming of the Shrew under Zoe Caldwell’s direction and won a Drama Desk Award for David Hare’s 1989 The Secret Rapture.

Conroy became Arthur Miller’s go-to-gal in the ’90s with The Last Yankee (Obie Award), Broken Glass and the movie of The Crucible before culminating in a Tony nomination as Patrick Stewart’s WASP-ish wife in the playwright’s The Ride Down Mt. Morgan in 2000. Conroy was performing in the comedy when she was asked to fly to Los Angeles after a Sunday matinee to do a Monday morning network audition for Alan Ball’s new funeral parlor foray into cable television. She learned she had landed the role en route back to New York later that day.

“Arthur was the dearest man in the world,” she says. “He and Inge [Morath] were these wonderfully vibrant people who loved to laugh and were living very important lives. I loved them. She had this twinkle in her eye and so did he. Arthur loved wearing blue jeans. He was such a tall man and had terrible posture and would suck hard candies when he was in rehearsal. He’d just sit there happily listening. He would never step on the toes on the director. Never. Arthur would always let the director speak first and then he’d say well, I have a couple of thoughts. Then he would carefully read all these notes he had quietly written down as he watched. They were the best notes an actor could ever hope to have: simple, easy to understand and very to the point.”

A Rose to New York Life

When Martin Sheen’s son Ramon Estevez approached Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie to mount a revival of The Subject Was Roses, he had no idea Ritchie had a long history with Conroy that dates back to his stage manager days at Lincoln Center in the late 1980s. The two had both been part of productions such as Our Town and Americans Abroad, plus had tried to work together during Ritchie’s tenure at Williamstown. Ritchie called Iris Grossman at ICM and she contacted Conroy.

According to Conroy, Estevez had been talking to his father about revisiting this play for quite some time. Sheen had originated the role of Timmy in the 1964 Broadway production starring Jack Albertson and Irene Dailey and had gone on to reprise his part alongside Albertson in the film version with Patricia Neal. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Albertson picked up a Tony for Best Featured Actor and Sheen earned a Tony nomination. The show launched Sheen’s career. When he decided to play the father, Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker) became an early choice for Timmy.

“Martin, Ramon, Brian, Kelley Kirkpatrick from CTG and I met over at the office they [Estevez Sheen Productions] have at Warner Bros. about three weeks before rehearsal so that basically Martin could talk to me,” recalls Conroy. “It was a nice meeting and we talked about this and that. I realized he had first met Brian when Brian had a role in Emilio’s movie Bobby. Martin was very, very fond of him. There was a real kind of father-son bond there. It was sweet. So that’s how it came about.”

LA audiences last saw Conroy on stage in 2006 at the Kirk Douglas in David Greig’s Pyrenees.  Her previous Taper production was the 1999 world premiere of Neil Simon’s The Dinner Party. Prior Southern California appearances include Heartbreak House (South Coast Repertory), The House of Blue Leaves (Pasadena Playhouse), Mrs. California (Coronet Theatre and Taper’s New Festival for Now), Romance Language (Mark Taper) and Richard III (Old Globe).

Conroy had never read The Subject Was Roses, seen any of its revivals or watched the movie — a fact she admitted to Patricia Neal at the opening night party. She even resisted looking at mementos Sheen brought into rehearsals or peeking at the commemorative brochure for sale in the Taper lobby.

“I love seeing movies from that time period but I’m glad I never saw the film,” she admits. “Martin brought in all this memorabilia from the first production and I never looked at it. I was so focused on figuring out what in the world we were doing in this production. Lines and what each scene was about. About a week ago I looked through the brochure you can buy with the beautiful photographs in it from Martin. And I’m glad I didn’t even look at that. I didn’t want anything in my mind because it has no relevance to me whatsoever.”

The play takes place in 1946 and centers on the return home from World War II of John and Nettie Cleary’s son Timmy. Their marriage has long ago settled into its own dysfunctional battle between bitterness and resigned disappointment with both pinning hopes on their son’s arrival to bring a much-needed respite. The crash of 1929 stopped John’s rocket-like rise from dirt poor Irish Catholic to successful cock-of-the-walk coffee merchant. His middle class wife Nettie, raised by a nurturing hotel man father who took his daughters to the opera, feels trapped in their Bronx apartment and is forced to ask him for money for household expenses. She sets up Timmy as her ally against his father in response to John’s philandering and lack of emotional empathy.

Conroy with Brian Geraghty and Martin Sheen

“I think she’s aware she’s been suffocating for awhile,” Conroy offers. “All the things she said about what she had growing up. The fact she tells her son she hates the Bronx. It’s just a life that’s been made more and more isolated. I think Nettie’s father had a very interesting life. These stories he brought home from the hotel opened up worlds to her and her sister Sophie of different countries and people who, as she puts it about John as a young man, ‘were going places.’ He was devastatingly handsome and very glamorous and unlike anyone she had ever known.”

Because the play is autobiographical, Conroy wondered what caused Gilroy’s family to move to the Bronx. By Conroy’s estimation, the New York apartment the bi-coastal actress has possessed since 1981 in Washington Heights sits roughly parallel to the fictional Cleary’s Bronx location across the Harlem River. Her character grew up both in Yorkville and the upper west side. Places where Nettie could walk everywhere, unlike the Bronx where you had to take a bus or train.

“Mine is one of those old buildings with the marble floors downstairs and the whole bit,” explains Conroy of her apartment. “I’m sure it’s similar to the building they lived in so it’s not like you have much privacy. I remember Martin being astounded because we were talking about Timmy running to the bathroom to throw up and all the times he got sick in the two-three days he’s home. I say, ‘yes, he’s in the bathroom.’ Martin said, ‘you mean there’s only one bathroom?’ Sure, it’s an old New York apartment! One bathroom. He’s like, oh my god!”

A key moment in the play happens when Nettie abruptly leaves the apartment with her coin purse without disclosing her destination and doesn’t come home for 12 hours. When faced with an angry John and worried Timmy upon her return, she purposely provides vague answers. Did Conroy come up with her own backstory to explain Nettie’s absence?

“I tried to think of what kind of a time it was then in the world. She was out of the Bronx. She had the modern equivalent of $500 on her. I’m sure she went downtown. It was right after the war had ended. There were sailors and soldiers all throughout the city who had just gotten back and had survived the war. There must have been an unbelievable feeling in the air in New York.”

Conroy says she understands a little bit of that feeling because her parents were married in Manhattan during exactly the same month and year the play is set - May 1946. “With any character, it’s a world you’re entering but certainly the fact I’ve lived in New York for so many years plus my parents met and lived in Manhattan. I have a sense through them what the city was like at that time. My god, just to be downtown! Nettie could have gone wherever.”

While she didn’t believe delving into too many details would ultimately prove beneficial, Conroy had considered a few options. “I thought, what can I cross off the list? She doesn’t bring anything home. She doesn’t have any new clothes on. She doesn’t have any new jewelry or physical manifestations of anything she could have bought. She says it all by saying ‘it’s the most freedom I’ve ever had in my entire life in these last 12 hours.’ That’s what it bought her.”

Despite Nettie’s lack of options, opportunities for women in the late ’30s coincided with the imminent advent of WWII to bring massive migratory changes to family life, Conroy points out.  Her mother, who grew up in Monroe, Georgia and majored in art at the University of Georgia, joined two older sisters in New York right after college in 1938.

“She loved New York,” Conroy shares with pride. “She had these fabulous jobs. She worked for Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who threw a party every Friday for his staff. She worked for Republic Airlines out in Bay Shore, Long Island at the age of 26. We’ve got this beautiful photograph of her with everybody she worked with in front of a plane there. She was what was called a ground hostess for TWA at the East Side Airlines Terminal. I mean who flew then? My father flew because he was a VP of TWA but flying was a big deal. There was just a tremendous amount of energy in the air then. Huge shifts going on in the world.”

Conroy says she’s interested in seeing how the play “breathes” during the run. “I remember reading an interview Martin gave where he said it was an athletic event. And it is in its own way. You’re just getting it down the whole time you’re doing it. It reaches different moments as you go along. Each night is its own moment. That’s what is so mysterious about the theatre.”

A Local Theatre Devotee

Conroy is a fervent supporter of LA’s intimate theatre scene. Her husband, actor and solo performance artist Jan Munroe, has appeared in numerous local productions including Don Carlos, Hard Times and The Blacks: A Clown Show at the Evidence Room, Glengarry Glen Ross at the Egyptian Arena and Michael Sargent’s Black Leather at the Unknown Theatre last fall.

“Jan’s done a lot of beautiful productions in these theatres,” she enthuses. “I love these tiny theatres. I love to be able to sit in such an intimate setting and hear and see everything so easily. To watch these productions that people somehow miraculously find the time to rehearse when they’re working full time jobs and not being paid a dime, which I don’t believe in quite frankly. I just appreciate all that everybody does in any given piece I’ve seen.”

Conroy

Conroy admits her theatre attendance was limited during the Six Feet Under years because an episodic television show is “an endurance contest. I think of the people who do it as running a marathon. I remember crawling out from under a rock after each season and thinking, oh my god. I’m so tired. But the show was such a gift. How that all came together was such an act of love on Alan’s part. Being so careful in how he constructed and created and cast it. Peter [Krause] and Michael [C. Hall] had both gone to NYU and Lauren [Ambrose] had studied singing and acting on the east coast, so it was very interesting we all had theatre backgrounds.”

Her balance for that intense schedule was riding an older horse she’d purchased from the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. Munroe had given her private riding lessons in New York as a birthday gift at the start of the show, which led to an encompassing equestrian life in LA even after the show’s demise.

“I really lived that life. Jan would say don’t you want to do something? I’d say I have to go to the barn. Muck the stalls out and then ride my horse. I was taking dressage lessons and when he was too old for all that nonsense I would lead him around like a big dog. That’s just to say it was an all-involving thing I loved. I miss it now because my horse died two years ago. I have his ashes here in a big box in my house. That’s why there are many plays I haven’t seen here. My mornings and evenings were being over at the barn in this very interesting society devoted to taking care of these beautiful huge animals that are so fragile. So going to the theater now has been a lovely thing and my time in the evening has been very different since he died.”

Conroy has kept busy since. Soon to be seen projects include a turn as Robert DeNiro’s wife in the upcoming film Stone and a wealthy matriarch whose family employs and basically owns most of Happy Town, a new mid-season drama debuting in late April. “It’s kind of like Twin Peaks but not that peculiar.” With eight episodes shot, her life is on suspension waiting to hear if a pick-up instigates back-and-forth flights to Toronto again. In the meantime, Conroy plans to enjoy the city’s cultural scene.

“Whenever anyone gets to go to a museum or a dance piece or a play, it is such an incredible thing to be part of,” Conroy sighs. “I bought tickets for us to go hear the pianist Richard Goode at Disney Hall when we were still in rehearsal. It was so beautiful. I thought what a wonderful gift we’ve had tonight. Jan bought champagne at intermission. What a lovely thing. It was sort of like having a late Christmas present. Any time anyone can go experience something in the arts, it’s all good.”

Photos by Craig Schwartz. Article by Deborah Behrens.

As its first decade draws near a close, the Furious Theatre Company proves once again its savvy leadership and sharp ensemble can withstand the vicissitudes of the unsettled and unsettling world of live theatre. Several years under the patronage of the Pasadena Playhouse gave the company financial breathing room and artistic license to thrill in the Playhouse’s 99-seat annex the Carrie Hamilton Theatre.

Alan Brooks and William Salyers in Men of Tortuga

The company was in the midst of planning the west coast premiere of the Chicago theatrical phenomenon Men of Tortuga when the sudden shut-down of Playhouse operations spun the Furious folk into serious disarray. Still, no one from the company admitted despair, just nervous wonder and great hope. Artistic Director Dámaso Rodriguez continues to be upbeat: “It was swift - even though we were aware of struggles. The time from the announcement to its actual closing was very quick. Our first priority was what to do about Men of Tortuga.”

Company members swung into action and, though the future is still uncertain, the present is clear and Men of Tortuga went into production - just a bit later than originally planned. The play by Chicago-based actor-playwright Jason Wells, about assassination and the bungling of power-brokers, is a tightly written comedic thriller, first developed through the New Plays Initiative by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and was presented as part of that company’s First Look Repertory of New Work in 2005.

Directing is Alexis Chamow, a major example of the cross pollination between the Playhouse staff and Furious Theatre. Her last job at the Playhouse was Artistic Associate/Director of Education but she first came to the organization by invitation from Director of Artistic Development Kappy Kilburn to direct in the Hothouse Play Development Series.

Chamow recalls her introduction to the play development department. “We struck up a friendship and began speaking about education programs which I had a lot of experience doing. I ended up consulting with the Playhouse, then joining the staff. I continued to direct Hothouse and in one play I cast much of the Furious Company. They determined they enjoyed working with me and I was already working closely with Dámaso at the Playhouse. I am only the second director they have approached outside the company to direct for them. They really vetted me - but I appreciate that. You want to know that who you are working with is of like mind.”

She began work on Men of Tortuga with four of the five cast members already attached. Then the Playhouse fall began. “Suddenly,” she says, “the Playhouse got a new executive director and everything was up in the air. The show got postponed but was finally rescheduled for February. It was a quick turnaround but I thought it would work. The only issue was a couple of the actors were not available. We retained Dana Kelly and Bob Pescovitz, then went through regular auditions for the other three roles. I feel we got so friggin’ lucky it is not even funny. At the first read everyone was laughing their faces off or suddenly stunned into silence. My job was, apparently, just not to screw up!”

Chamow began her flirtation with theatre at age six. She continued throughout her youth and immediately joined Equity after college. But living solely as an actor did not quite fit her self-proclaimed Type-A personality. “I did bits of television and film. I remember shooting an Aaron Spelling pilot, sitting in makeup next to Lara Flynn Boyle - it was fantastic. But when it was over I went to my trailer overwhelmed by the thought, ‘Now what? Tomorrow I have to send out my resume again.’ I had achieved something for a week but what do I do the other 360 days of the year?” So Chamow decided to shift her focus away from acting and towards other aspects of the business. “I did arts consulting and started a company, which is where a lot of new play development came into the picture. I had done a good deal of literary development in grad school.” Chamow had her choice of Yale or the University of Texas for graduate school.  “Yale is obviously very focused and saturated in acting but in Texas I was going to be able to also direct and teach and work in film. So I went to Texas, where I met a lot of great writers. My work has always been something of a patchwork but the balance shifted toward giving me more control.”

Alexis Chamow

The job at the Playhouse delighted her but its end does not destroy her momentum. “I suppose I have never seen myself on an upward arc toward a single goal as much as a kind of patchwork of a life. The Playhouse worked for me. During that time I had a baby and so having a place that was my home and a regular paycheck was perfect. It was so nice to have long range plans, a luxury you don’t get going from project to project. I was there at Playhouse for this chunk of time. It was a beautiful gift to have been given that and to meet these people. Who knows where those things will lead? It’s not like I throw my hands up and say, ‘now what!’ As much as, ‘Okay. That part is gone for now.’” She plans to keep the relationship with the Furious. And the Furious continues looking for its new home while still hoping the Playhouse will come back.

Rodriguez says confidently, “There is a real sense the Pasadena Playhouse won’t be dark very long - that we are going to fix this problem. The Playhouse was dark for 16 years last time it closed its doors but this time there is tremendous support from the city. Perhaps several months from now we’ll find ourselves still here. Sheldon Epps and others are talking about this as an ‘intermission.’ The city and community and the Pasadena Playhouse Organization, which is still restructuring, don’t want us to leave. We don’t either.”

Feature image of Robert Pescovitz, Alan Brooks and Dana J. Kelly, Jr. by Anthony Masters. Article by Tom Provenzano.

In Los Angeles it’s very common to find a person producing a show because he or she wrote, starred in, or directed it.  A few weeks ago I received a phone call from one such “producer by default” who was in the middle of an 8-performance run of a show that he wrote.  He called me looking for advice on how to fill his theater with paying patrons and get the word out about his play.  Unfortunately for him, he had spent little to nothing on marketing and PR.  Given his limited budget and where he was in the run, there wasn’t much I could tell him.  With so little time left, even if he managed to somehow come up with 10-20K for a marketing campaign, there would have been no way to make it back even if he sold out his remaining 4 performances.  I told him that all he could really do at this point would be to offer “pay-what-you-can” and discounted  tickets through facebook and similar channels. Maybe he could try buying one e-mail blast from a marketing agency.

Of course, if this producer had called me before he started his run my advice would have been very different.  I would have told him to budget for and hire a top quality PR company and to put aside money for a marketing campaign.  We could have talked about goals and the results he wanted to see come out of his production.  We could have tailored his budget and spending in order to achieve those goals, or change the goals to fit the parameters of what he could afford.

This story is so common in LA.  So many writers/actors/directors produce their own work simply so that they can work as a writer/actor/director.  But so often they don’t know how to produce. Worse yet, they don’t end up producing at all, but rather, begrudgingly managing the production. Producing is not easy, and neither is directing, acting, or writing.  And when you do two (or more!) at the same time it’s even harder.  Especially when you really only want to be directing, acting, writing- not producing.

One of the underlying problems this creates is that many shows, often referred to as showcases, are produced in the same theaters as bigger shows that are not showcases. When these showcases are produced poorly or mismanaged, they tend to reflect poorly on the quality of that particular rental theater (not to mention reflecting poorly LA theater as a whole). Unknowing patrons do not distinguish between a showcase and higher quality productions.  Because of this, for those of us who are not producing showcases, it is in our best interest to mentor, support and work with people who are producing showcases.  We need to help them produce smartly, efficiently, and realistically.  Because at the end of the day, their product reflects on our product.

A producer’s organization could help foster and nourish these types of relationships between producers. New producers could join the organization and gain access to resources, support and advice.  We could create databases, helpful guidebooks and producing templates.  We could explain the way budgets work, not to mention de-mystify ROI’s and recoupment schedules.  We could teach best practices for marketing and PR, and we could help new producers identify when they need a lawyer, accountant, and bookkeeper and when they don’t.  This collective knowledge base would be more than just a phone book of designers and rental theaters.  It would be a network of real people with real experiences who can really help.  And if a new producer needs further help, we could provide a list of producers for hire (or general manage).

It’s silly for every new producer in town to have to reinvent the wheel.  And its damaging to all of us. Why not help each other along the way and in so doing, raise the bar on theatre in Los Angeles as a whole?

Reposted from http://rickculbertson.com/

Feature image of Rick Culbertson and wife Erin Kambler.

Well, what if we all worked together to hold unethical companies accountable? What if we had a Better Business Bureau of Theater that would take complaints? What if all the producers got together and started to rate companies/people based on producer feedback?

If we had a producer’s organization, we could set up a database that could track every company/person a producer hires. It could work like this: at the conclusion of each show, a producer could rate the various companies/people who were hired on the project. If there was a problem with a ticketing company or a theater, then you could give them a low score. If your PR Rep or Marketing Rep did a great job, you could give them a high score. Over time, we would be able to see a pattern emerge: companies who are behaving ethically would likely retain higher scores, while companies that aren’t would clearly show lower ratings. Producers could then look at the ratings and steer their hiring practices toward companies that are rated highly, thereby avoiding companies that are not delivering.

The more producers that participate, the better the data would be. And securing this data is exactly how we, as producers, can hold  companies, theaters, and people we contract with accountable.

When a company constantly receives a low rating then the Producer’s Organization would reach out to them and try to understand the cause. The Producer’s Organization could set some guidelines as to what we (the producers) expect from companies and people who we hire. If the company works to correct the issues, then great! The rating would naturally go up, allowing that company to start anew. If they refuse to change, however, then the members of the Producers Organization would likely avoid using that company in the future, thus limiting their business.

Let’s shine some light on the business side of theater. If we do it together, then we can illuminate a lot. In the end, I think we will find a large number of very reputable people providing excellent services in the LA theater scene- people who deserve our raving reviews, and who deserve to make a profit. We will probably see a few undeserving ones as well. And we can make sure that those companies are held accountable.

Reposted from http://rickculbertson.com/

Feature image of Rick Culbertson and wife Erin Kambler.