‘AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE’ PICKING UP STEAM

The coming sixth season of public television’s “American Playhouse” series will reveal that the weekly drama anthology has matured into a stable “community of artists” rarely found in today’s fast-changing entertainment industry, its producer says.

“We have come to the point where we are a genuine community of artists who return season after season with new ideas, and who mutually support one another in their individual endeavors,” said Lindsay Law, executive producer of “American Playhouse” and its driving artistic force.

One example of the community is Howard Cummings, who, after serving as a production designer on five previous “American Playhouse” presentations, will mark his debut as a director this season with Horton Foote’s “Courtship.”

“This really is a community in that, as the relationship grows, you get to have more and more input in various areas, and eventually you are accepted in a new and different role,” Cummings says. “This is what separates ‘Playhouse’ from even the small, independent film companies, which hire you to do one thing only. Here, they are more willing to take chances, and for an artist it is encouraging when people are willing to take chances.”

The “American Playhouse” season is scheduled to open on KCET Channel 28 and other public television stations around the country Jan. 19 with the first television production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.”

Over the course of the 24-week season, a mix of veteran and upcoming actors are due to be seen in a range of original and adapted work by American authors, including Lanford Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates and Eudora Welty, whose short story “The Wide Net” marks the first of her works to be adapted for either television or film.