THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 1, 1994 TAG: 9408300178
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Montague Gammon III
LENGTH: Long : 167 lines
The ``Year of the Playwright'' is upon us.
The works of local authors are uncommonly prominent in a season when the schedules of Norfolk's community and collegiate theaters fairly bristle with premieres.
Generic Theater and the University Players at Old Dominion University lead the pack of groups offering new works. Original scripts, new adaptations for the stage, and revisions of familiar works mark the playbills of almost every producing group in the city.
ODU kicks off its year with a piece by the nationally known Virginia Beach playwright Deborah Pryor, whose script ``Wetter Than Water'' was featured at the Virginia Stage Company in the mid 1980s. Pryor has seen her scripts done off-Broadway twice: at the Arena Stage in Washington, and at the Actors Theater in Louisville.
Either Pryor's first musical, ``Cock Lane,'' or her folk drama, ``The Love Talker,'' will be the first production of 1994-95 at the Stables Theatre. ``Cock Lane'' is a ghost story inspired by events that made sensational news in London in 1762.
``Cock Lane'' would be a world premiere and might be presented as a work in progress. ``The Love Talker'' has been staged at the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville. Set in the Clinch Mountains of Virginia, this piece displays what producing director Erlene Hendrix calls ``incredible storytelling.''
Edward Morgan, a Virginia Beach author with a reputation that stretches well beyond the area's boundaries, has been commissioned to write a piece for the Players' first show at the University Theatre. He has just finished ``Burning Azaleas'' about a political radical living with a Norfolk military family.
Determined to ``give everybody a fair voice,'' Morgan says he ``wanted to write a play that addresses some of the issues and realities of life in Tidewater.''
A Student Performance Festival, which could incorporate scripted works, performance art pieces, or both, finishes the fall series. The spring semester at ODU will feature the classic Russian satire ``Marriage,'' by Nikolai Gogol, and ``Romeo and Juliet,'' as staged by guest director Will Bond.
If this is the Year of the Playwright, Edward Morgan is certainly Playwright of the Year. The Generic Theater will be using the local premiere of his ``wild and wooly'' western musical, ``The Last Ride of the Bold Calhouns,'' as a special fund-raiser for their first year of financial independence. ``Calhouns'' earned rave reviews at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
Generic is known for doing shows never before seen in Hampton Roads, but a world premiere by a famous author is something new even for them. ``Amazons in August'' will be the first show of the regular season. It's by Ernest Thompson, best known as the author of ``On Golden Pond.''
In December, Generic will be the host to three plays performed by visiting artists.
Generic follows that Small Shows series with an 18th century classic comedy, ``The Liar'' by Carlo Goldoni, a show that promises ``lots of good bawdy fun.'' The troupe then switches to contemporary issues with ``Kelly and Du,'' Jane Martin's look at both sides of the abortion controversy. Martin is the author of the funny and topical ``Coup/Clucks,'' seen at Generic seven years ago, a few years after Goldoni's ``Servant of Two Masters'' played to packed houses there.
``The Faith Healer,'' by Brian Friel, will run at Generic in April, and the ``wickedly funny'' ``Pterodactyls'' closes out the season.
Across 21st Street from Generic, the Hurrah Players will be running their Little Plays for Little People series. In contrast to the large cast, grand productions for which Hurrah is best known, these shows are done in an intimate space and feature the direct involvement of the young audience members with the action.
The first big Hurrah Players show, the Rodgers and Hammerstein ``Cinderella,'' will be seen at the Virginia Beach Pavilion. Hurrah's Hugh Copeland promises splendid technical effects, and a ``fairy godmother with soul.''
Copeland will stage the perennial favorite ``The Best Christmas Pageant'' for the third year in a row at the Chrysler Museum, and, in March, present another familiar title, ``Starmites.'' The playwright will come to Norfolk to work directly with the local performers.
The season will close with ``Showstoppers,'' a musical revue at the Wells Theatre.
Most of the Hurrah Players are students, ranging from elementary to high school age. Norfolk is home to two other troupes of young performers who are very different from each other but worthy of the same attention given theaters that rely on adult talent alone.
The Norfolk Public Schools Repertory draws its talent from all of Norfolk's public schools. The troupe of 30, selected from 300 who auditioned, will open its season with ``The Jungle Book.'' Producer and director Connie Hindmarsh will pen the adaptation from Kipling's classic using ``familiar tunes'' and ``a live something.'' Hindmarsh put a camel on the stage last year.
The school systems of eight cities have sent 60 carefully selected students to the Theatre Program of the Governor's Magnet School this year, a record number for the program. The Magnet School will be yet another venue for a new American play. ``The Living,'' by San Franciscan Anthony Clarvoe, is a surreal sounding dramatization of the 1665 plague in London.
From pestilence-ridden 17th century London, as encapsulated in the school's small Black Box Theater, the tone and time shift for a newly revised version of Cole Porter's classic musical ``Anything Goes'' on the stage of the Wells Theatre. The final Magnet School show will be an American comedy, to be announced.
Virginia Wesleyan students will stage Brecht's ``Three Penny Opera'' early in the fall term, and a studio production to be announced of a script by an Hispanic playwright directed by Rebecca Williams. Williams is an actress, director and teacher who is usually associated with ODU.
``Selma'' will return to Norfolk State. After the NSU players finish their brief run of this civil rights musical with a ``gospel flare and a '60s feel,'' they will present ``Black Nativity,'' adapted by NSU's Dr. Clarence Murray from Langston Hughes' work of the same name.
An African-American version of ``Rapunzel,'' adapted by John Steptoe, is part of the NSU season, followed by the musical ``Blues in the Night,'' and the revue ``The All Night Strut.''
Sharing the Norfolk State's Brown Hall with the college players will be the time-honored Norfolk Players Guild, one of the oldest community theaters in America and almost certainly the oldest such African-American group. The Guild will produce for its second time ``Beyond the Darkness,'' Leonard Watkin's story of a blind black man's triumph over adversity in Alabama during the late '60s.
Like Watkins, Julia Beale Williams has been active with the Guild for years. Her script, ``The Upper Room,'' will be included in the season, which will end with Watkins' ``Rainbow.''
Neither the Little Theatre of Norfolk, ancestor of most community theater in Hampton Roads, nor the 3-year-old Virginia Repertory Theatre Company are spotlighting new scripts or authors this season, though the Little Theatre has appointed an artistic director for the first time in a quarter of a century.
David Burton, president of the Little Theatre, has taken on the new volunteer position. Burton and current president Jean Hillegass speak with pride of the new core of volunteer workers that came to LTN during Burton's tenure; audiences have noticed an influx of talented new performers and the company's willingness to do more scripts that are daring or serious.
``Prelude to a Kiss,'' a ``bewitching fantasy comedy'' that won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1990, is certainly a little out of the ordinary, with its plot about a new bride and a very old man who find their personalities switched into one another's bodies at the close of the wedding. ``Prelude'' is the Little Theatre's September show.
Neil Simon's ``Lost in Yonkers'' will be seen at LTN also.
The Pulitzer Prize winning, turgid classic ``Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,'' marking the midpoint of LTN's season, is typical of the challenging scripts that Burton has brought back to the Little Theatre. It will be followed by Horton Foote's sentimental, nostalgic comedy/drama ``The Trip to Bountiful.''
Burton and Leslie Draper are compiling ``The Songbook of Swing II'' as the season closing musical.
The Virginia Repertory is the area's only for-profit theatrical group. Their four-play season includes ``Light Sensitive,'' a piece about blindness by Jim Geoghan, the Southern family comedy ``Belles'' by Mark Dunn, ``On Golden Pond,'' and ``T Bone and Weasel,'' about the adventures of two young ex-cons on the road to freedom.
The Rep's formula of ``meaty comedies,'' supported by a talented pool of performers in their resident company, has been successful as commerce, and usually as art, since its foundation. MEMO: WHERE TO CALL FOR INFORMATION
Generic Theater 441-2160.
Governor's Magnet School Theater Department, 441-2905
Hurrah Players 627-5437 or 623-7418
Little Theatre of Norfolk 627-8551
Norfolk Players Guild 625-2401
Norfolk State Players 683-8341 or 683-9009
ODU Players 683-5305
Performing Arts Repertory 441-5656
Virginia Repertory Theater Co. 623-7529 ILLUSTRATION: Photo by AVERY PHOTOGRAPHY INC.
Edward Morgan performs in the ``wild and wooly'' western musical
``Bold Calhouns.''
by CNB