Swelling violins and overwrought, dramatic narration streaming through crackling radio speakers may seem out-of-date, but L.A. Theatre Works produces radio drama that is anything but old-fashioned.
Each week, classic and contemporary radio plays are broadcast on National Public Radio stations, but before they make it to air, the plays are recorded by Hollywood and Broadway actors in front of a live audience at the Audrey Skirball Cultural Center.
L.A. Theatre’s most recent development, “Speech and Debate” by Stephen Karam, will be performed and recorded this weekend. The play first showed Wednesday and will continue running until Sunday.
Though the actors are reciting their lines, their emphasis is not on the typical motions of stage actors. Their stationary, costume-less performances do not detract, however, from the effectiveness of the play; rather, the focus shifts more squarely to the words.
“This is a form that both the actors and the audiences respond to very quickly. It indicates to me that it’s related to a very ancient form of theater: storytelling and narrative,” said Michael Hackett, a UCLA theater professor and a director of past L.A. Theatre Works productions.
Founded in 1974 by Susan Loewenberg and a group of actors including Edward Asner, Richard Dreyfuss, Julie Harris and John Lithgow, L.A. Theatre Works began as a conventional theater company that strove to perform in small Los Angeles venues. However, during a 1985 rehearsal, Dreyfuss expressed his desire to record a novel.
“We decided to record a book and it was Sinclair Lewis’ “˜Babbitt,’ which turned into a 1 1/2-year project in studio and we’d go into studio and record it piecemeal. It was 14 1/2 hours long, and it was absolutely brilliant, even though we had no idea of what we were doing,” said Loewenberg, current artistic director for the company.
Loewenberg spoke with the local NPR representative, and the station picked up the project of recording “Babbitt.”
After that recording session, NPR decided to record weekly productions of different classic and contemporary productions to air live and to keep in archives. Loewenberg and the other members of the company found the process so rewarding that they never returned to conventional theater. Their relationship with NPR continues today.
“When you’re listening to a play, there is nothing between you and the experience of really inspired performance and an ability to really focus in on the essence of great dramatic literature, which is the words. Nothing distracts you from hearing the wonderful words that are characteristic of the best plays,” Loewenberg said.
Professor Hackett finds the actor and the audience must conspire to create the imaginative world of the play.
“A radio director has to think about what that world is and how you create that world, because you only have the actor’s voice to create a sense of location, atmosphere, geography and whether the person is speaking from a personal place psychologically, as though it’s internal monologue or an exterior place, such as where are actors entering or exiting the room,” Hackett said.
While history’s most popular radio plays include Orson Welles’ “The War of the Worlds” and other sensationalized productions, Loewenberg and her staff choose a diverse canon of plays.
Brendon Fox, the casting director for L.A. Theatre Works and a directing student in UCLA’s theater school, finds discovering new and old playwrights alike a challenge.
“We’re trying to find a balanced need, if you will, of classic plays that people may recognize and other plays that will be new and that we believe will be around for a while,” Fox said.
“Putting these plays together is always a gamble, but it’s an exciting gamble … because we’re not just looking for plays that are going up for this year, but we’re looking at recordings that will be archived for years and will be played on public radio for years.”
L.A. Theatre Works’ upcoming production of young playwright Karam’s “Speech and Debate,” about three high school students who form an unusual bond while forming a speech and debate team, is one of those gambles.
“When I read it, I was struck by what an original voice Stephen Karam had. It’s an unusual play,” Loewenberg said. “It’s funny and it’s touching, and it’s very, very edgy and I think those are all great elements.”
While “Speech and Debate” may specifically appeal to younger audiences, each play chosen by L.A. Theatre Works captures different voices. After years of performing mostly canonized plays by the likes of Arthur Miller, they are now integrating more modern fare.
“Every playwright has a different rhythm and a different series of vocabulary choices. A whole world is created,” Hackett said. “Part of my job with the actors is to make them understand the world that they’ve entered when we’re rehearsing, so that we can come to some common agreement about the world that we’re trying to create.”
“Speech and Debate” features the voices of “Desperate Housewives'” Andrea Bowen and Gideon Glick, of the Tony Award-winning “Spring Awakening.” Extensive theater training allows the actors to portray nuanced characters through their vocal expression.
“We want (the actors) to be able to have great voices because we treat every play like a piece of music, and every voice is an instrument in that piece, so we need them to all be a richness and a variety when we’re putting characters together,” Fox said.
During rehearsals for the productions he directs, Hackett emphasizes the importance of the actors’ voices in creating a dramatic vision.
“I always tell my actors not to misconstrue my reactions in the rehearsal room, because I generally don’t look at them after the first day. I’m looking at the text very carefully to see that everything is here,” Hackett said.
Whether watching the plays in a live recording or listening to them on a radio, the electricity of the actors’ voices comes through.
“When you’re listening to it, you feel like the actors are only playing to you and like you’re overhearing something you’re not supposed to be hearing or experiencing,” Loewenberg said. “You’re part of that excitement of being on the inside.”