It’s hard to miss the big blue building that’s
somewhat reminiscent of a warehouse on the side of Sepulveda
Boulevard. What may not be so obvious is that the building is home
to one of the city’s oldest and most adventurous small
theaters.
Founder and director Ron Sossi’s mission for the
35-year-old Odyssey Theatre is to make it a place that not only
showcases international and avant-garde contemporary plays, but
that welcomes students by making theater an accessible and
interesting art.
“We do anything to encourage students and young people to
come,” Sossi said. “The nature of theater in this
country is that it’s not a popular art form, especially among
people who don’t already have gray hair.”
Sossi, a UCLA film school alumnus, does everything he can to
make sure that money is not the reason that students don’t
visit the Odyssey Theatre. Student rates begin at $10 ““ about
the same cost as seeing a movie in Westwood ““ and there are
other ways to score free tickets to a play, such as volunteering to
usher at two shows.
Eager to make plays affordable to young people who are not
necessarily in school, the theater also has a program in which
people under 25 can pay $12 for tickets.
Sossi says that he wants to break the stereotypes that people
have of theater being an intimidating or boring art form by making
it approachable and entertaining for students.
He attributes much of theater’s unpopularity among people
to their lack of exposure to it. He notes many of the people who
venture out to see a play for the first time often return to see
others in the future.
Ever eager to see theater become a more popular past time among
students, one of Sossi’s future plans is to have a panel of
students debate how they can make theater a populist art form.
“Conventional theater has the image of being dry,
“˜cultural’ and not exciting, so we try to do the
opposite,” Sossi said.
Indeed, one look at the unfinished exterior of the building, and
its low-tech, intimate theaters inside is enough to eradicate many
of the preconceived notions people may have of theater being too
high culture for them.
The theater hosts post-show discussions, typically on Thursday
nights, that are open for anyone to meet and talk with the director
and other people involved in the play.
Additionally, each of the three theaters within the Odyssey
boasts only 99 seats, so that even the furthest seat is relatively
close to the stage.
In the past, this has gone beyond just having the actors and
audience feed off of one another’s energy to include actual
dialogue between actors and audience. One past play had an ad-lib
portion in which an actor joked with individuals in the audience.
Another time, a woman in the audience was so worked up she started
shouting at a stubborn character.
The avant-garde nature of the works being presented at the
Odyssey make it a counter to mainstream theaters in Los Angeles.
Those theaters tend to show traditional plays which cater to
aspiring actors looking to show off their talents to agents in the
audience.
“When we pick plays we pick them based either on the
material itself ““ if it is dangerous, controversial, or
interesting or if the style is unordinary,” Sossi said.
One of the plays currently being performed at the Odyssey is
“Things We Do for Love.” The play takes place on a
three- level stage, where the actors on the top level are only
visible from the knees down, so they must act with their legs and
feet. The audience can only see above the shoulders of the actor
who is painting a pornographic piece on the ceiling of the bottom
level.
“The attraction of theater is that it’s an
event,” Sossi said, “There’s nothing dangerous
happening when you see a film ““ it’s all in a can. When
you see theater, there’s a sense that something unusual can
happen that isn’t predictable.”