The School of Theater, Film and Television will satiate the
appetites of theatergoers with its upcoming surfeit of three
performances, onstage in June.
Starting with the Coppola One-Act Marathon, film and theater
graduate students serve up a palatable course of four original
works, presented as staged readings in two double-bills.
This annual production series began in 1997 with Francis Ford
Coppola’s vision for a program integrating playwrights from
the theater department and directors from the Department of Film,
Television and Digital Media.
Coppola received his master’s in film from UCLA in
1967.
“He learned all the most important elements of film
directing by being a theater director (and) wanted a class for film
directing students,” said Edit Villarreal, associate dean of
the graduate playwrighting program.
The first program of the series was presented May 26-27 and
consisted of two works directed by film directing graduate student
Alex Rogals. Playwrighting graduate student Brian Shoaf’s
“Mr. Richards, Coat and Tie” tells the tale of marital
intrigue in a multinational corporation.
The second performance delivers a more comedic flavor, with
playwrighting graduate student Tiffany Antone’s “My Pet
George” ““ the story of a person in a hamster cage and
his feisty woman master.
The second bill will run June 9-10, with a one-person play
written and performed by Angela Berliner and directed by Hiu Cho
Wong, both graduate students in the theater department. Titled
“Blood Hungry,” the piece takes place in an insane
asylum and centers around the legendary 17th-century “vampire
countess” Elizabeth Bathory.
Next, the mood will again be lightened by a one-act comedy.
Directed by film directing graduate student Martin Kisselov,
playwrighting graduate student Erica Saenz’s
“Overheard” centers around a mismatched group of people
at a party who keep misunderstanding each other.
For those who crave the theater of the absurd, look out for
directing graduate student Jim Dennen’s rendition of
“Six Characters,” part of the 2005-2006 student theater
season. The original script, written by Luigi Pirandello, follows
the comedic journey of six archetypal characters from an unfinished
play in search of a chance to tell their story.
Dennen’s revised staging is the result of a joint effort
between him and Berliner, who rewrote the script together. The
script materialized over the course of a two-quarter-long process
in which actors read through the original script and performed
improvisations based on it.
“(The new script) takes themes from the original script
and explores them in a totally different way,” said
fourth-year theater student and cast member Dana Crossland.
Audiences attending “Six Characters” will enjoy an
experience far from a typical evening at the theater.
“(The play) utilizes different forms of acting and
deconstructs theater as an art form,” said fourth-year
theater student Hillary Enclade, also a cast member.
The extreme dynamics of the performance, integrating alternate
forms of acting and large movement in an outlandish presentation,
lend themselves to audience participation.
“The audience will experience everything the characters
are going through,” Crossland said.
The third theater department production is directed by 33-year
veteran theater Professor Gary Gardner, who will treat audiences to
a delectably irreverent political satire in his staging of
“Urinetown.”
However, Gardner tells people not to be intimidated by the lewd
title.
“(The play) is wholesome. It contains no sexuality and not
a dirty word,” he said.
Gardner’s production of “Urinetown” brings the
play back to its roots. It earned three Tony Awards in the 2002
season, including Best Director. Award-recipient John Rando
graduated from the UCLA graduate directing program in 1989 and has
worked in close conjunction with Gardner in the past.
The performers include undergraduate second-, third- and
fourth-years, most of whom are also members of the Ray Bolger
Musical Theater Program, which trains students in singing and
dancing, along with acting.
Written by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman, “Urinetown”
tells the story of a town recently recovered from its so-called
“stink years” and its inhabitants, who must pay
astronomical fees to use bathrooms.
Staged as a series of humorous spoofs on different theatrical
genres, ranging from Bob Fosse to “Les Miserables,”
“Urinetown” presents a masquerade of mirthful
color.
“(The performers) will do the script as written,
interpreted by a silly old man,” Gardner said jokingly.
“Expect to be a little shocked, and then realize, “˜Oh,
it’s more like Sesame Street ““ it’s all
fun.'”