Piecing together a company

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.”