Theater

- Anyone just happen to have an extra copy of “The Odd Couple” or “The Iceman Cometh”? Actor and director Spike Sorrentino is trying to build a community theater “with a difference” for 20 inmates at the Richard Donovan Correctional Center at Otay Mesa--the first theater of its kind in San Diego. The first step, as he sees it, is to beef up the prison library with copies of plays that the prisoners might like to do.

Sorrentino, a veteran of “Hill Street Blues,” “Starman” and “The Young and the Restless,” can date his San Diego theatrical experience back to the days of “Spontaneous Combustion,” the comedy group that is now most famous for featuring Whoopi Goldberg.

Sorrentino was first approached in October about a theater program by Anne Mottola, the director of a newly funded state arts and correction program based in the Richard Donovan Correctional Center. In December, when Sorrentino was in town to direct a sparkling version of the latest San Diego Junior Theatre offering, “L’il Abner,” he decided to check the prison out. He was, he said, impressed by the possibilities for the program and by Mottola herself--”this is a woman doing incredible work.” “You see prison on television and read about it in books, but standing there in prison is a whole different experience. I thought, ‘Boy this is scary.’ But the feeling that it was great overpowered the scary.”

Recently the San Diego Junior Theater lost its artistic director, Robin Stevens, because of health reasons, and Sorrentino put a bid in to take that job, too.

“If I get it, then I will be going from prisoners to teen-agers, back and forth. There will be some differences, but I imagine there will be some similarities.” It might also mean a permanent move back to San Diego for Sorrentino, which he said would suit his wife and children just fine.

For those with plays to burn, send them to Sorrentino at 1411 Edgemont St., San Diego CA 92102.