Jill Renner walked hurriedly to a black storefront on Venice Boulevard and, pulling back a large, wooden, ramshackle door, stepped into a small theater space. Renner, a third-year theater student, called it intimate.
“Island of Brilliance,” which will have its West Coast premiere in this 34-seat space, features Renner in the lead role of Evie Brighton, alongside three UCLA alumni.
Renner began to run lines with Kevin Railsback, who graduated in 2009 from UCLA with a degree in theater. Both are journeyman actors, members-in-training, at Pacific Resident Theatre. They got involved with the 25-year-old theater company after taking classes with artistic director Marilyn Fox, who also teaches acting at UCLA.
“There’s a lot of crossover in terms of so many of the young people that were our students over the years (who) have become members of the theater,” Fox said. “It’s just an ideal place for them to come after they graduate.”
Since getting a part in last year’s production of “Our Town,” Railsback has been using his involvement at Pacific Resident Theatre to keep acting fresh in his mind while looking for his bread and butter in the world of film and television.
“PRT has been very good to me. This is the fourth show that I’ve done in the Co-op here,” Railsback said. “You get the chance to work with a lot of people like Orson Bean, who’s been doing stuff since the ’60s. It’s really cool to be around people like that because you hear stories they tell.”
Bean, who currently has a recurring role on “Desperate Housewives,” has been a longtime member of Pacific Resident Theatre. Wynn Marlow, the play’s director, approached Bean with the script, written by Dawn O’Leary. Marlow is not a member of the theater company; to book the Co-op, Bean had to step up as the producer of “Island of Brilliance.”
“She had somehow met the playwright and had this play and gave it to me, and I flipped over it. There was no part in it for me, but I said I really want to do something with this,” Bean said.
Marlow had rented “Admissions,” an independent film from 2004, and said that she felt it would make for a beautiful and devastating play. She wanted to adapt it for the stage, only to find out that the film was a screen adaptation of “Island of Brilliance.”
A chance relation between Marlow’s son and Bean’s son-in-law allowed the director to find Bean.
“He became the angel of the whole project. Without him, none of this would be happening. He knows all the actors in the company, and he would refer people to me,” Marlow said.
Bean said that 90 percent of directing is casting. Since Marlow wasn’t familiar with Pacific Resident Theatre, she relied on recommendations from Bean and Fox.
“Jill was suggested by Marilyn Fox, who taught Jill, and she’s the key that unlocks the door here,” Marlow said. “If Evie can’t fulfill the huge complexity of this character … you don’t have a play.”
In “Island of Brilliance,” Evie is a high-achieving high school senior, who struggles with a neglectful mother and a reclusive father but finds comfort in Emily, her savant older sister.
Ava Bogle, who graduated from UCLA the same year as Railsback, plays Emily and describes Evie as loving but not necessarily selfless.
“She’s hiding behind Emily to avoid leaving the nest,” Bogle said.
With respect to Marlow’s directorial style, Bogle noted that despite her obvious passion for the play, the director gave actors free reign to explore their characters.
“When you’re at UCLA, the director is also teaching you how to act. I’ve been in a couple hundred plays in my life, and to me the director is like the orchestra leader,” said Bill Lithgow, who studied theater and graduated from UCLA in 1966.
“He’s not teaching you how to play the flute, somebody else how to play the violin. He’s just making sure that all the pieces blend together in harmony. That’s what Wynn does,” Lithgow said.
Marlow, as the director, said that having a good cast makes her job much easier.
“Dawn is so happy, and I’m so happy, and Orson’s so happy, and Jill’s so perfect,” Marlow said. “All these people are so perfect in their roles.”