Out of the box and onto the stage this season
By Justin Bilow
Sept. 23, 2006 9:00 p.m.
The UCLA Department of Theater is walking on the wild side this
coming season.
The theater department will be putting on performances that
cover topics from sexual escapades to alcohol that mainstream
theater often rejects. However, plays addressing subject matter
like this are the norm for the department.
“The (theater) department is actually
anti-mainstream,” said Mel Shapiro, a UCLA theater professor.
Last season, for example, Shapiro created “The Blogger
Project,” a multimedia performance piece culled from some of
the Internet’s most muckraking blogs.
Shapiro didn’t let the audience just sit there and watch,
however. Theatergoers could walk around from scene to scene,
staving off passivity. Among these scenes were filmed actors
playing out a D.C. intern sex blog; the mock decapitation of Marie
Antoinette; and a portrayal of Helen and Athena exchanging
“disinformation” about the Trojan War to parallel the
current Iraq war.
If last season’s “The Blogger Project” is any
indication of theater to come, then audiences can expect two things
from the theater department: the unexpected, of course, and more
experimentation than New York’s old dance-and-drug hovel
Studio 54.
The earlier events of the season include the Master of Fine Arts
Acting Program series, or New Play Festival, which runs from Nov. 9
to Nov. 18. It starts with “The Libertine,” a
16th-century dark comedy that’s a bit of a morality play
about John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester ““ an incredibly
self-destructive alcoholic and sex addict.
With that in mind, “The Libertine” is the kind of
play that invites its audience to take a breath and punch itself in
the face a bit.
“(Wilmot) challenges the audience, saying, “˜You will
not like me,'” said the play’s director, visiting
Professor Dan Bonnell.
Audiences may not like Wilmot’s character, but Bonnell
thinks they will like the play in general.
“It’s risky, adventurous material,” he said.
“We’re all fascinated by the dark side of
life.”
On the lighter side of the season is third-year graduate student
playwright Rachael Brogan’s original play “The Bottom
of Sterling Lake.”
Along with her two fellow graduate playwrights, Brogan’s
piece will also be performed during the New Play Festival.
One advantage that the theater department has over many
independent theaters is that admission to the shows is either
inexpensive or free. For standard off-campus theater productions,
an average ticket will cost about $40, whereas an MFA Acting
Program play costs $8 on average.
This benefits the department because a more diverse crowd can
afford to attend, allowing for a more diverse range of
performances.
“Theater has always been a great platform for being a
provocative medium,” Bonnell said.
Shapiro agrees.
“There’s more investigative journalism (in theater)
than in a lot of other media,” Shapiro said.
Although this may be, theater has also become much more
expensive and much less prevalent than it once was.
Because mainstream theater now caters largely to a specific,
older crowd who can pay more for tickets, far fewer opportunities
arise to perform highly experimental material.
“Most mainstream theater is very safe,” Brogan
said.
When those opportunities do arise, however, the risks involved
in performing potentially ill-understood pieces hardly outweigh the
rewards.
“(For the audience) it’s live, immediate and
involving,” Shapiro said. “It gives the students
involved the experience and chance to stretch themselves and their
craft.”
