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.’”