HAPPI TROUPE HAS A DRAMA DATE IN HOLLYWOOD

A tall man in jeans raised his arms to quell the conversational din at the Jon Yarbrough production space near Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills.

“If you’re planning on supporting this damn thing at all, arrange to get to the Hollywood Roosevelt at 2:30 p.m.,” he said. “We’ll put your body to work.

“The doors open at 6:55, the show starts at 7:30. We don’t want it to stop because someone’s car broke down. If it goes well, it’ll be wonderful. If it goes badly, we’ll be the worst dummies in town.”

T.V. Hall is the man’s name. He was advising a group of 25 or so people about what to do Tuesday, when Handicapped Artists, Performers and Partners Inc. (HAPPI), founded and directed by Otto Felix, puts on a show at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

“Just say I’m a former member of the Air Force who served for 13 years and then became a standup comic and emcee,” Hall said. “What my official responsibility in this show is, I don’t know. Otto is very creative, but not very organized.

“I don’t think you’d call me a producer. More like production manager, hey, Otto?” Felix was passing by in the corridor en route back into the work space, where a group of 25 or so young people were working on scenes.

“More like production manager, right?” Hall said.

“Go for it,” Felix said.

The rehearsal room was outfitted as a combination classroom and videotape space, and except for several people in wheelchairs poised in waiting, you might have taken it for any one of hundreds of acting classes in Los Angeles.

The difference was that all the scenes featured one handicapped and one able-bodied person. The first scene consisted of Jim Troesh, a blond quadriplegic in an automated chair, playing opposite Janus Blythe, a young blond woman.

“Sit down,” he said to her.

“No,” she replied.

“You always do what I ask.”

“Things are different.”

“Different,” he said, in a puzzled monotone.

“It’s not going anywhere,” she said. “This isn’t right. I’m scared to quit, scared to go on. But I have to make a change.”

Felix sat in the middle of the front row, a young woman behind him with her face hovering near his shoulder. He directed his comments to both the players and the class.

“OK, let’s try it again as if it were a film take and we needed to set up the cameras for another angle,” he said. “Only let’s have more energy. Don’t be afraid to tell your conscious mind that you can move. Some things that terrified us 20 years ago aren’t terrifying now.”

The second scene, with Demot Davis and Dave Marciano, was set in a prison doctor’s office. Davis played a prisoner being accused of violence by the doctor. “I never laid a hand on him, I never even tried,” Davis said.

“I heard you ran a cigarette up a guy’s nose,” Davis said.

“I’m real sorry. I was aiming for his eyes,” Davis replied.

“Try both of you being crazy,” Felix suggested, whereupon Marciano sniggered in melodramatic crazy-guy fashion and squatted into a corner with the stool clutched at his chest--standard acting-class stuff.

During a break, Felix, who has the pale-eyed earnestness of a younger Mike Curb, said: “I’d been teaching with the Performing Arts Theatre for the Handicapped for seven years. HAPPI has been in existence since June, and the idea for this show is only about 6 weeks old. It was thought up between me and Dick Dorwart, who’s handicapped and a drummer--we’ve been friends since 1969.

“I was a deejay in Florida and I’ve acted here in soaps and night-time shows. I studied with Charles Conrad, who emphasizes feeling out a situation instead of thinking it out, and I thought that theory could apply to the handicapped.

“I was an orphan. I feel the need to pay my rent on Earth by donating my space in it. This program is not publicly funded--I only moved it here because my living room was getting too small for everyone to work in.”

In addition to the scenes, “sit-down comedian” Gene Mitchner will perform (he’s also wheelchair-bound), as well as a seven-piece band with blind pianist John Granett. An all-male and all-female wheelchair basketball team will be introduced, and Majestic the Magician will perform.

The direction Felix offered his actors was clearly not intended for a stage space, where the actors will find themselves Tuesday. He spoke of how “the camera can pick up your thoughts” as opposed to how they can find ways to deliver those thoughts to a live audience which isn’t afforded the luxury of close-ups.

Too, none of the conflicts in these scenes had anything to do with the reality of the players’ physical condition, which, even in the best of all possible worlds, has to have some bearing on how they are perceived by other people, even people who love them.

Asked if he weren’t subjecting his players to an inadvertent cruelty by not preparing them properly, Felix replied, “If a feeling comes across, the rest doesn’t matter.”

The show will be in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. A $10 donation will be asked. More information at (213) 470--1939.