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The Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble perfomed their second production “Wounded” – a

A Friday or Saturday evening in Los Angeles boasts an overwhelming array of entertainment options for college students. Rarely considered and often written off as boring or expensive is the choice to start the night off with a trip to the theater.

But the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble strives to change that. Comprised mostly of UCLA students and alumni, this newly founded ensemble, currently wrapping up their first season, has brought accessible, relevant and new theater to the L.A. stage. With two original shows and an L.A. premiere to its credit, the ensemble is currently staging the West Coast premiere of “Stone Cold Dead Serious,” by Adam Rapp, which will run through March 4.

“There is very little professional-quality theater in this town aimed at people our age,” said Brian Norris, a fourth-year theater student and a founding member of the ensemble. “Los Angeles isn’t considered a theater town; it’s considered a film town. But I want (our shows) to be as exciting, or more exciting than going to a movie, because it’s live.”

Tom Burmester, the ensemble’s artistic director and a UCLA alumnus, was able to begin the project by initially receiving a generous grant from Acme Theatre Company, a nonprofit organization based in Northern California, who then agreed to support the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble under their nonprofit structure.

In an effort to capture their unique position in the theater world onstage, the ensemble began its first season by exploring the theme of the overlooked. “Kindred,” by Daniel Keleher, was their first production, dealing with two prisoners on death row, one of whom was to be executed by the end of the play. First staged as Burmester’s graduate thesis project at UCLA, the ensemble revived it as its first piece.

“We picked up all kinds of rave reviews and generated substantial street credit off of that run,” Burmester said.

The incredible success of “Kindred” led Burmester and the rest of the ensemble members to attempt something even more daring and experimental for their second project.

“Wounded,” the ensemble’s sophomore production, dealt with injured soldiers coming home from war, and was collectively written by several ensemble members. After interviewing soldiers who had returned home wounded from Iraq or Afghanistan, the ensemble began to improvise scenes, videotape them, then explore those further and trim them down into what would become a script.

“As an ensemble, we decided that every year there is going to be one completely collaborative show,” said Meredith Hines, a fourth-year theater student and founding member of the ensemble. “This one was ‘Wounded.’ Tom (Burmester) sculpted the piece, but we all wrote it together.”

After refining the piece, the ensemble took it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland for its world premiere. Burmester had edited the script to 75 minutes, which was the amount of performance time allotted to them by the festival. There, cast members experienced how their show, which was essentially very American in its subject matter, would be received by an international audience.

“One of the biggest philosophical debates we had was how politically slanted this piece should be,” Hines said. “Taking this overseas, we didn’t necessarily want to create a leftist piece, though members of the ensemble are predominantly against the war.”

Surprisingly, many audience members in Edinburgh found that the show leaned more toward the political right than it was impartial.

While the show was well-received, some reviewers felt that the piece did not make a strong enough statement. “The sentiment was that because we were American we were for (the war), and people were always really surprised to see that we were against it,” Norris said. “But we really made a concerted effort, and we pretty much succeeded in making the show not about whether the war was right or wrong but about telling (the soldier’s) stories.”

Hines, however, truly felt that the audience detected the ensemble’s apprehension about revealing their attitudes toward the war, and that overall, people were sensitive to that.

“Our audiences were refreshed because we’re Americans who are self-aware,” she said.

The ensemble’s third production, “The Distance from Here,” by Neil LaBute, received critical acclaim for its realism and honesty, dealing with alienated teenagers forced to fend for themselves as their disinterested parents struggled to hold together their own lives.

“Distance” marked the ensemble’s first production by an already-established playwright. Though at first glance it would appear a less challenging project, the ensemble found LaBute’s hyperrealistic writing style incredibly difficult to bring to life in a theatrical environment. However, ensemble members believed that the subject was relevant enough to attract a college-aged audience.

Rapp’s “Stone Cold Dead Serious,” the ensemble’s current project, is the story of a boy’s struggle to save his family, which has almost completely fallen apart.

“It is a beautiful, funny, bizarre play, and it has the potential to really reach a wide audience, particularly our generation,” said Michael Lovan, a fourth-year theater student and founding member.

Lovan is also the assistant director for this piece, working alongside famed director Larry Arrick, who has directed over 100 plays on and off Broadway, and has taught at several of the nation’s most acclaimed theater programs, including UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

“We had so many good talks, conversations about directing. I was like a sponge around him,” Lovan said. “He always has so much to say. The experience has been very rewarding.”

Norris and Hines, both cast members of “Stone Cold Dead Serious,” feel fulfilled working with what they feel is an incredibly difficult, yet groundbreaking, piece.

“It’s a really unique and truly amazing play,” Norris said. “When I go to the theater there are very few characters that I haven’t seen before. But there’s no one in this play you’ve ever seen before. (Rapp) writes unique characters in the truest sense of the word ‘character.’”

Of the play in its entirety, Norris said, “The acting and writing is very realistic. But the play as a whole is just a little left of reality.”

Hines agrees.

“The play is very offbeat,” she said. “I’ve never read anything like it. It’s very difficult to characterize.”

She also speaks of some of the challenges she and the cast were faced with while producing this piece. “From a production point of view, it’s always a challenge to put on something visually exciting and innovative with limited resources. But that is also what I like about it. We don’t have a huge budget, but we are a really positive group of people, and it’s mostly about the story and the audience.”

Always looking forward, Burmester and the rest of the ensemble already have two upcoming projects in preproduction, as well as the U.S. premiere of “Wounded,” taking place in May. Norris, Hines and Lovan, who will all be completing their studies at UCLA this year, say that they plan to continue their involvement with the ensemble and its future projects.

The ensemble was also recently awarded an additional grant to create a new work of theater, using a similar creative process to that of “Wounded.”

With such a successful first season, the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble is Burmester’s dream come to life.

“I created the ensemble to reconnect with my love for theater,” he said. “More than anything, what draws me to theater, and specifically to directing, is building community. As a director, my strength has always been in building an ensemble. So when I decided to gather this group together to create the ensemble, I was simply following my bliss.”

With another busy and exciting year on the horizon, ensemble members await the opportunities that lie ahead.

“I was really excited to be a founding member of a company and have a voice that counted,” Hines said. “Now I will have a home base after I graduate, which, for an actor starting out, is a sacred thing.”