Two weeks ago, at a recent breakfast for several hundred Geffen
Playhouse subscribers and donors, Geffen Playhouse Producing
Director Gil Cates conducted a poll right there in front of
attendees while they had their coffee.
“How many of you hated a play here last year?” Cates
asked.
And to Cates’ relief, several hundred hands went up.
He then asked what plays they specifically hated. The plays that
some people hated were the favorites of others.
Cates proved his point.
“Everybody’s got their own taste,” Cates said.
“Sometimes folks ask me in terms of booking these plays, what
my hope or aspiration is. And frankly, it’s this: I hope that
if you subscribe to the Geffen, you will love two of the plays; you
will like two of the plays, and you’ll hate the
fifth.”
Even though Cates, former dean of the School of Theater, Film
and Television, spends endless hours each year reading more than
2,000 plays with the help of associates and traveling as far as
Europe scouting for plays, he recognizes the diversity of
theatergoers’ preferences and the diversity of Americans in
general. The plays that he may love may put off others.
The new season of the Geffen Playhouse, the first in a 10-year
series of American original plays, expresses just this ““ the
diversity of America. Perhaps the point of the Geffen’s
American Originals series is to show America’s diversity both
through the plays presented, and through audiences’
reactions.
With his poll, perhaps Cates, currently a directing professor in
the theater department, was also trying to forewarn theatergoers
about the highly controversial plays in the new season, which
includes “Take Me Out,” a play about a gay superstar
baseball player who comes out of the closet (the play also features
a lot of full-frontal male nudity), and the original Broadway
production of “I Am My Own Wife,” which is about an
East-German transvestite who survives the Nazi onslaught and
Communist regime that followed.
With plays involving homosexuality and nudity, there’s
potential for people taking offense.
“My intent is not to offend anybody,” Cates said.
“”˜Take Me Out’ is not about homosexuality.
It’s really about being honest, where honesty can take you
and how much it could cost you. I think theater at its best should
really make people think and entertain.”
“Take Me Out” isn’t the first time the Geffen
has presented a play with full-frontal nudity. Another play by
“Take Me Out” playwright Doug Wright,
“Quills” (1996), also included it.
Still, Edit Villarreal, professor of playwriting in the theater
department, said the new season of the Geffen on the whole seems to
have taken on riskier and bolder plays than previous seasons
have.
“A lot of their previous seasons have been pretty
conservative,” Villarreal said. “They always choose
plays that are family-oriented. I think it’s wonderful that
they are more risky this season with the plays that they
selected.”
Two of the new season’s plays, “I Am My Own
Wife” and “Golda’s Balcony,” also feature
solo actors, a financial risk on the part of the Geffen when more
commercial forms of plays usually have large casts and huge
spectacle.
“They’ve never been a mainstay in the
theater,” Cates said of solo-actor plays.
But as Villarreal pointed out, that recently has been
changing.
“(Solo-actor plays are) really popular right now,”
Villarreal said. “The actor has to transform right in front
of the audience, which audiences love, and which is a tremendous
challenge for actors.”
In “I Am My Own Wife,” actor Jefferson Mays portrays
more than 40 characters. And Cates swears you’ll soon forget
that there’s only one actor doing all the roles. Meanwhile,
“Golda’s Balcony,” is a one-woman play about
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
There are a multitude of reasons for producing riskier
plays.
According to Villarreal, the $17 million renovation and
expansion of the Geffen Playhouse, which is causing the playhouse
to hold its plays at the Brentwood and Wadsworth theatres until
September 2005, may allow the Geffen to take chances on riskier,
more controversial plays. At construction’s end, there will
be a second, smaller, 120-seat theater adjacent to the Geffen.
“With the remodeling, they will have a second stage where
they can do riskier work,” Villarreal said. “And the
first stage will hopefully be more utilitarian, so they can do a
wider variety of plays.”
Also, both “Take Me Out” and “I Am My Own
Wife” are critically acclaimed and amply awarded plays that
are not being presented for shock value. “Take Me Out,”
which is currently running until Oct. 24 at the Brentwood Theatre,
won the 2003 Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Director and Best
Featured Actor. “I Am My Own Wife” took a Pulitzer
Prize for Drama and the 2004 Tonys for Best Play and Best Actor. It
will run from June 14 until July 10 of next year at the Wadsworth
Theatre in Brentwood.
The riskier plays also represent contemporary issues of
tolerance in America toward homosexuality, which is becoming
increasingly written about in plays.
“I was thinking about what it means to be an American in
terms of who we are, where we are, how we got here, and where
we’re going,” Cates said.
And Villarreal feels that the presentation of riskier plays may
also have something to do with the presidential election this
year.
“They may want to do riskier, more liberal plays in an
election year with the Bush administration becoming so conservative
and so closed-minded and afraid of other cultures, other ways of
looking at things ““ afraid of sexuality, afraid of so many
things,” Villarreal said. “You hear so much rhetoric
just about shutting down and eating American apple pie and not
thinking about the rest of the world.”
But Cates swears there’s no agenda behind presenting more
liberal plays than in the past. There still is a strong balance in
the new season of the Geffen with two more conservative plays.
“Paint Your Wagon,” the 1951 classic Broadway
musical about the California Gold Rush by Alan Jay Lerner and
Frederick Loewe (“My Fair Lady,”
“Camelot”), will be directed by Cates and will run from
Nov. 23 until Jan. 9 at the Brentwood Theatre.
The second is the American classic comedic play, “You
Can’t Take It With You,” by George S. Kaufman and Moss
Hart. During April and May of 2005 at the Brentwood Theater,
Christopher Hart, son of Moss Hart, will direct the play in a
celebration of the centennial anniversary of Moss Hart’s
birth. About a dysfunctional family’s attempts to get along,
it won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937.
Both plays confront issues of diversity in America. “Paint
Your Wagon” involves an inter-cultural relationship, while
“You Can’t Take It With You” follows a group of
eccentric characters trying to survive, a concept that Villarreal
said all Americans can relate to.
“That’s the story of America,” Villarreal
said.