In one of L.A. theatre's hippest yearly gatherings, the 19th Annual L.A. Weekly Theatre Awards strutted and fretted on the stage of the Tom Bradley Theatre at the Los Angeles Theatre Center this week. Hosted by the unhinged Fabulous Monsters and the game Linda Purl, the three-hour tour spread the wealth among L.A.'s under-100-seat theatre community for its best work in 1997. The evening's highlight came early, when the inimitable Chris Wells, accepting a supporting male performance plaque for his turn as Lady Bracknell in the Monsters' Importance of Being Earnest, held his plaque aloft and went James Cameron one better, exclaiming, "I'm the queen of the world!"
And the winners are:
Production: Morphic Resonance, Eclectic Company Theater/Matrix Theatre. Revival production: The House of Blue Leaves, West Coast Ensemble. Musical: Bat Boy: The Musical, Actors' Gang. Direction: Leo Geter/Dan Bonnell, Morphic Resonance. Comedy direction: Florinel Fatulescu, The Lesson, Stages Theater Center. Playwriting: (tie) Pamela Forrest, Valsetz, Celebration Theatre, and Murray Mednick, Dictator, Theater of NOTE. Original music: The company of The Arabian Nights, Lookingglass Theater Comapny at Actors' Gang Theatre.
Lead actor: Armando Dur‡n, Dictator. Lead actress: Robin Johnson, An Unhappy Woman, Moving Arts. Supporting actor: Chris Wells, The Importance of Being Earnest, Fabulous Monsters at Glaxa Studios. Supporting actress: Lisa Fortƒ, The Lesson. Ensemble: James DuMont, Lea Floden, Christopher Grove, John C. McLaughlin, and Francesca Rollins, Morphic Resonance. Comedy ensemble: (tie) Keana Hall, Debra D. Holt, Rif Hutton, Greg Poland, David Roberson, Stuart K. Robinson, and Angela Teek, Cheatin', Theatre/Theater, and Priscilla Pointer, Jacqueline Schultz, Robert Symonds, and Malachi Throne, Fighting Over Beverley, the Fountain Theatre. Sketch comedy/improv: Eliza Coyle, Loretta Fox, Melanie Hutsell, Joe Liss, Brett Paesel, Sam Pancake, Patrick Towne, and Benjamin Zook, Margot's Bush, Pedro's Grill. Solo performance: Alec Mapa, I Remember Mapa, Taper Too/East West Players.
Costume design: Sherri L. Grider, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Stella Adler Theatre. Lighting design: Kathi O'Donohue, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Set design: Lisa Hashimoto, The Taste of Kona Coffee, East West Players. Production design: The Bacchae, A Rebours at the Complex.
Career achievement: Rachel Rosenthal.
Off the Wire
TEXAS-- The Big Stinkin' International Improv & Sketch Comedy Festival 3 will be held Apr. 19-25. Participants in the third annual fest include ACME Theatre, L.A. Theatre Sports, the Second City, Improv Olympic's Del Close, TheatreSports founder Keith Johnstone, Groundlings founder Gary Austin, and Commedia D'ell Arte's Carlo Mazzoni, among many others. (512) 912-7837 or www.bigstinkin.com
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA-- Nobel Prize-winning Italian political satirist Dario Fo and his artistic partner and wife, Franca Rame, will send a personal greeting (via broadcast) to those attending FoFest, the multi-site festival celebrating their work. FoFest is currently presenting screenings and live performances in the Bay Area through May 12. (415) 441-3687
Tickets to American Conservatory Theater's mainstage performances are now available online through ACT's website at www.act-sfbay.com.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA-- Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre has announced its 1998-'99 season, beginning Sept. 9-27 with William Luce's Barrymore starring Christopher Plummer, who will recreate the role of the legendary matinee idol which garnered him the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards. Next, a new musical Fosse: A Celebration in Song and Dance, will play Oct. 14-Dec. 6. Conceived by Richard Maltby Jr. and Fosse protegƒ Chet Walker, the show includes rarely seen dancing and musical numbers from the choreographer's earliest works, as well as many numbers that have never been seen onstage. Jan. 10-Feb. 28, the 1997 Tony-winning musical Titanic docks, at the beginning of the show's national tour. Matthew Bourne next follows up his remarkably successful rethinking of Swan Lake with the exclusive U.S. engagement of Cinderella, Apr. 2-May 23. Bourne sets Prokofiev's ballet in WWII, as Cinderella spends one night with a dashing young RAF pilot before they're parted by the horrors of the London blitz. Finally, acclaimed British director and Royal Shakespeare Company founder Peter Hall will present a new production of Shakespeare, either Measure for Measure or A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring a company of American actors in June, 1999. (213) 628-2772
The 1998-'99 season at the Mark Taper Forum of the Music Center of Los Angeles County was also announced recently. Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together, starring Carol Burnett, will kick off the Taper's 32nd season, Oct. 22-Nov. 28, 1998. The season will also include Ellen McLaughlin's Tongue of a Bird, starring Cherry Jones, Jan. 14-Feb. 7, 1999; Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive (which at presstime had just won the Pulitzer), Feb. 25-Apr. 4; playwright/performer Anna Deavere Smith's House Arrest, May 2-July 13; Athol Fugard's The Captain's Tiger, June 27-July 25, and the world premiere of The First Picture Show by Obie award-winning Ain Gordon and David Gordon of New York's Pick Up Performance Company and composer Jeanine Tesori, Aug. 12-Sept. 19. (213) 628-2772
Beginning Apr. 19, tickets go on sale for the entire 1998 La Jolla Playhouse season, which opens May 19 with Nora, Ingrid Bergman's adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, and continues with Karen Trott's Guitar Lessons; Athol Fugard's The Captain's Tiger; Improbable Theatre's 70 Hill Lane; Moss Hart's Light Up the Sky, and Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, directed by Playhouse artistic director Michael Greif. (619) 550-1010
A.S.K. Theater Projects will present two labs this spring: "The Rights of Dramatists: Are We Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic?," featuring executive director of the Dramatists Guild Richard Garmise, Apr. 20, and "Genesis," a lab on finding inspiration for a new play led by dramatist Josƒ Rivera, May 7-8. (310) 478-9275
According to a recent report in Variety, Fox Searchlight is trying to secure a writer and lyricist to turn its Oscar-nominated sleeper hit The Full Monty into a Broadway-bound musical. The project is the passion of Searchlight president Lindsay Law, who has strong stage ties from his days heading PBS' American Playhouse
The Gay & Lesbian Comedy Night will be held at the Comedy Store in West Hollywood on Apr. 22, with 50 percent of the proceeds going to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. Margaret Cho, Scott Silverman, and Jeff Scott are among the scheduled performers. (213) 993-7434
Director Louis Fantasia will teach the Bertolt Brecht Workshop at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, Apr. 21-May 26, featuring a unique collection of film documents about Brecht and his acting and directing style. The series aims to show as authentic a picture of Brecht as possible and hopes to dispel the various rigid and dogmatic views surrounding the "political Brecht." (213) 525-3388
The Organization of Black Screenwriters presents Dennis Goode, one of the few African Americans working in the field of motion picture and television special effects, Apr. 18 at the Golden State Mutual Building in Los Angeles. Goode's credits include Titanic, Hunt for Red October, and the series The Pretender. (213) 882-4166
The Yale Connection presents New Plays in Concert, the second annual festival of performance readings, Apr. 20-26, at the Ivy Substation in Culver City. Shows include Red Shoes by Stephen Keep Mills, The Four Sisters by Tony Scully, Post Coitals, Pre-Nuptials by Alexander Woo, and A Couple of Turns Around the Block by Jim Inman. (310) 456-5895
In a rare personal appearance, writer/raconteur Quentin Crisp will perform his one-man show, An Evening With Quentin Crisp, at Highways in Santa Monica, Apr. 16-19. (213) 660-8587
In Women in Theatre news, Back Stage West editor Rob Kendt will speak about Los Angeles theatre at the group's monthly luncheon, Apr. 18 at 11:45 at Hampton's Cafƒ in Hollywood. And award-winning producers Joan Stein (Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Promises, Promises) and Susan Dietz (Uncommon Women and Others, The Mystery of Irma Vep) are slated to speak at WIT's quarterly meeting, Apr. 20 at the Screen Actors Guild's Los Angeles office. Admission is free, but WIT will be accepting donations for Teen Canteen, a drop-in center for runaway youths. (818) 763-5222
Le Colonial in Beverly Hills will host another "Spoken Interludes," a salon-style evening of dinner and new spoken works by Anne Beatts, David Ripley, and Jamie Rose, on Apr. 19. (213) 957-4688
Gas/Food/Lodging, L.A.'s first short fiction/performance series will present Swap Meet by Nicole Panter, dir. by Maria O'Brien; City of Rocks by Susan Hayden, dir. by Kate Baggott, and Starving in Malibu by Diane Sherry Case, dir. Robert Burgos, on Apr. 22 at the Lost Studio in Hollywood. (310) 392-0200
The Japanese American National Museum will present The Neighborhood Project, a play exploring the various perspectives of family, community, and neighborhood, for three free performances at the museum in Los Angeles, Apr. 17-19. Also, author Dorinne Londo will discuss her book About Face, which features interviews with David Henry Hwang and designer Rei Kawakubo, discussing performing race in fashion and theatre, Apr. 16 at the museum. (213) 625-0414
Frustrated that you rarely get a chance to see the Oscar nominees for live action and animated short films? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be screening this year's nominees for those categories as part of its 1998 Academy Standards Series on Apr. 17. Screenings will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (310) 247-3600
The Geffen Playhouse is offering sign-interpreted performances for The Father on Apr. 19 and All in the Timing on June 14. (310) 208-5454
National Community Theatre Week, Apr. 18-25, a program of the American Association of Community Theatre, will be celebrated locally by the Palos Verdes Players Apr. 18 at a performance of Doug Duane's new play, Dallas to LaGuardia R.T., followed by a gala reception. (310) 326-2287
California's State Outdoor Play, The Ramona Pageant, will celebrate its 75th year as the oldest continuous outdoor drama in the United States. Based on Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona, the play will be presented by close to 1,000 volunteer performers again this year in the San Jacinto Valley, Apr. 18-May 3. (800) 645-4465.
--Jamie Painter/Scott Proudfi