GUY GIARRIZZO WALKS ROMBERGER’S ‘FINE LINE’

“Headaches are par for the course,” noted director Guy Giarrizzo, whose staging of Judy Romberger’s “A Fine Line” premieres next Sunday at the Cast Theatre. “And this is an incredibly difficult play to stage. But really, the harder the better. What’s the point of doing art if it’s not going to stretch you?”

For Giarrizzo (who’d previously served as artistic director of the Magic Circle Theatre in Chicago), that stretch has included leaving a post at the Mark Taper press office a year and a half ago and devoting himself to directing full-time.

“I had to break free,” he said simply. “The stress and strain of directing (he staged ‘Fabiola’ at Ensemble Studio Theatre in 1985) and that job was just too much. Of course, it is hard to make a living as a director in this town--but I’m having a fabulous time. Last year, I did ‘The Great Wall’ with my wife, May Sun (as part of the Roadshows performance program which played LACE, the Powerhouse and the Cast). I had wondered about doing a piece with May, but she turned out to be the best wife . . . and the best performer.”

Giarrizzo is equally excited about “Line,” which he describes as “a naturalistic play, but with a heightened reality--and real, true characters, who talk like real people. The action takes place on a horse-breeding ranch in Riverside County, where a 17-year-old girl gives shelter to a Mexican alien who’s about to give birth. But really, it’s mostly about the girl’s step-mother, who starts out on shaky ground--unsure of herself and psychologically battered--and ends up discovering her own strength. On a universal level, it’s about birth, renewal, rites of passage. And at the risk of sounding corny, it’s about the power of love.”

In the cast: Christopher Callen, Les Hannom, Marco Hernandez, Rance Howard, Sharon Madden, Lucy Rodriguez and Roxana Zal.

On Thursday, “Emerging Voices: A Jewish Playwright’s Festival” bows at the Harman Ave. Theatre, a two-week program of one-acts sponsored by the Streisand Center for Jewish Cultural Arts at UCLA.

“The center has, for the past several years, been encouraging young Jewish artists to explore Jewish themes,” explained Avi Davis, center director and the producer of this event. “Every year, we have film and playwriting awards for artists under 30. This time we decided to take a little more action. So we’re showcasing some of that strong Jewish talent--and hopefully, giving Jewish theater a shot in the arm.

“The problem in the past was that the Jewish playwrights were writing great plays--but they got lost because they were too specific, too ethnic for the population. The idea for this festival, then, is to offer a broad cross-section: one play has to do with black/Jewish tensions, another with current-day Jewish neurosis. So the concern is with Jewish themes, but the attempt is to show their universality: things that Jews--and all of us--can relate to in our own lives.”

The program includes seven staged readings, all of them Los Angeles premieres: Ned Eisenberg’s “Soulful Scream of a Chosen Son” (Thursday), Lotus Weinstock’s “Desperately Seeking Sabbath” (Saturday), Leah K. Friedman’s “Before She Was Even Born” and “Pushing the D Train Back To Brooklyn” (next Sunday), Donald Margulies’ “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” (May 28), Susan Nanus’ “The Survivor” (May 30) and Lynn Roth’s “Freud” (May 31).

Those who remember Kedric Robin Wolfe’s “Ah, Kedric” (Factory Place Theatre, 1983) are in for a trip down memory lane--sort of. This weekend, the locally based performer, whose hit “Warren’s Story” toured the country last year, opens “Blind Stab” (featured in “Ah, Kedric”) at the Saxon-Lee Gallery. He describes the one-man show as “a journey through a collage landscape of beauty, humor and madness set in the past, present and possible future.”

As for coming back to old material, Wolfe noted, “The piece really deals more with the external world than my private world. And I do have a natural inclination to go on to new things, so I thought this might be cheating. But now I know it’s not so. How long has Hal Holbrook been doing Mark Twain? If you have a good thing, you stay with it. But yeah, I did have some resistance returning to the piece--till I realized we weren’t returning, but going forward to a new piece. I think of it as sort of a rebuilt automobile: old and new.”

The origins of the show lie in a favorite habit of Wolfe’s.

“I stand next to a dictionary, open it up, plunk down my finger and see what I come up with. More often than not, the word has to do with what’s going on in my life--some information, what I call clarity on the subject. When I was first creating the piece, I decided to expand on that ‘blind stab’ principle: I went to the Santa Monica Library, put on a blindfold, stuck my finger in the card catalogue, got four random pages from four random books and said, ‘OK, this is the script for what I’ll do.’ So from those seemingly unrelated pages, I’ve woven together this show.”

LATE CUES: Michael Wolk’s shoot-’em-up comedy, “Heartstopper” (which has been extended at the Eagle Theatre through May 24) is offering a special Mother’s Day treat: Every person arriving today with his/her own mommy will be admitted at half-price. Such a deal!

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: David Pownall’s “Master Class” (based on a fictional get-together between Joseph Stalin, Soviet Minister of Culture Andrei Zhdanov, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich) opened recently at the Odyssey to some rather classy reviews.

Said The Times’ Dan Sullivan: “ ‘Master Class’ does leave us with something to think about, but it is not a Shavian debate. Nor is it, at least under Ron Sossi’s direction, a grim study in totalitarian thought control. Don’t think of ‘Darkness at Noon.’ Think of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’ Stalin and Zhdanov play get-the-guests with their friends, and it gets a little crazy in there about 3 a.m., with the vodka and close harmony.”

In the Herald-Examiner, Richard Stayton warned that although “Pownall’s history and politics are suspect, his theatrical talents aren’t, especially when orchestrated by director Ron Sossi and performed by this gifted quartet (Gene Dynarski, Louis R. Plante, John Rose and Randy Dreyfuss). Sossi conducts ‘Master Class’ like a symphony of riotous mood swings, embracing wholeheartedly Pownall’s conception as if it were harmless science fiction.”

From L.A. Weekly’s Steven Mikulan: “This isn’t a great play, but it has all the necessary ingredients for a fascinating drama: people in danger, the absence of easy choices and the personification of history. Dynarski’s Stalin fittingly dominates the arena of debate, an exhausting performance acutely revealing the cruelty and cunning of a man who sees himself as much a victim of history as its shaper.”

From Larry Jonas in the Reader: “This is an engaging, rambunctious play with interludes of high anxiety balanced with high jinks.” In Drama-Logue, Polly Warfield wrote, “When it’s over, you’ve had an oddly exhilarating good time.”

Last, from Jacki Horowitz in the Outlook: “Much to its credit, it doesn’t offer answers; it simply, and quite effectively, presents the problems and leaves us to our own conclusions. But it does so without ever tripping on didactic feet or falling into a pool of agitprop.”