Big Weekend Due at L.A. Theatre Center; ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Coming to La Jolla

Upon us today is the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s self-anointed Big Weekend, a four-day event that is fast becoming LATC’s annual way of celebrating theater by holding a kind of theatrical smorgasbord.

This year’s celebration, beginning at 10:30 this morning, includes a major symposium, staged readings of 10 new plays, regular performances in all three LATC theaters--and a Saturday night bash.

Admission to all this is the cost of a single ticket (subscribers exempted) to any regular performance of “The Promise,” “The House of Correction” or “Etta Jenks.” Events:

TODAY, 10:30 a.m.: Staged reading of “Kingfish,” a new play by “Etta Jenks” playwright Marlane Meyer (repeats Saturday at 2 p.m.), followed at 2 p.m. by a reading of Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s “Stone Wedding” and, at 5 p.m., Samm-Art Williams’ “Women of the Town.”

FRIDAY, 10:30 a.m.: Staged reading of Lynne Alvarez’s “Thin Air” (repeats Sunday at 2 p.m.), followed at 2 p.m. by Donald Margulies’ “The Model Apartment” (repeats Sunday, 10:30 a.m.) and, at 5 p.m., Han Ong’s “In a Lonely Country.”

SATURDAY, 10:30 a.m.: Staged reading of “Piano” by Anna Deavere-Smith, followed at 2 p.m. by Robert Harders’ “Crawlspace.” (Harders was the co-author with Donald Freed of “Secret Honor,” the award-winning fantasy about Richard Nixon.)

SATURDAY, 4:30 p.m.: “Developed to Death: Creative Alternatives for Developing New Playwrights.” Panelists will be Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum; LATC artistic producing director Bill Bushnell; John Glore, literary manager of South Coast Repertory, and playwrights Stephen Dietz, Marlane Meyer and Samm-Art Williams. Robert Freedman, a New York-based theater agent, moderates.

SATURDAY, 8 p.m.: Staged reading of Icelandic playwright Birgir Sigurdsson’s “Day of Hope,” followed at 10:30 p.m. by a party that invites you to eat, drink, be merry and “dance till you drop” in all 80,000 square feet of the center.

SUNDAY, 10:30 a.m.: Staged reading of Charles Marowitz’s “Wilde West,” or Oscar Wilde discovers America. Marowitz is LATC’s newly appointed associate director in charge of dramaturgy--a fancy title for dramaturge.

FINAL ENTRY: Kaufman and Hart’s “Once in a Lifetime,” directed by Stephen Zuckerman (who did the original stagings of Tom Topor’s “Nuts” and Shannon Keith Kelly’s “Big Apple Messenger” at New York’s WPA Theatre), will open the La Jolla Playhouse’s sixth summer season.

“Once” will run May 22 to June 26, joining the previously announced “A Quality of Tears” by Lee Blessing, Wedekind’s “Lulu,” Geoff Hoyle’s “The Fool Show” and the new Snoo Wilson-Ray Davies musical version of Jules Verne’s ( not Mike Todd’s) “Around the World in 80 Days,” which caps the season.

PIECES AND BITS: Roxie Roker, the best thing in “Legends” at the Ahmanson in 1986, has replaced Marla Gibbs in “Checkmates” running through Sunday at the Westwood Playhouse. . . .

“Nunsense,” which opens Wednesday at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, will give a special benefit preview Tuesday for the Serra Ancillary Care corporation, a project sponsored by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese. The proceeds will go to establish adult care residences for people suffering from AIDS. Information: (213) 462-2727. . . .

Access Theatre, which employs disabled and non-disabled performers, is presenting “Storm Reading” for three performances, Friday through Sunday, at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre, (805) 963-0761. “Reading” is a new play by disabled writer Neil Marcus. . . .

Roxanne Rogers has been set to direct John Ford Noonan’s 13-woman play, “Green Mountain Fever,” which kicks off a previously announced four-play Noonan festival. The location, however, has changed--from the Zephyr Theatre to the Callboard. . . .

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded more than $300,000 toward a Euro-American film production of “Beckett Directs Beckett,” a collection of three plays (“Waiting for Godot,” “Krapp’s Last Tape” and “Endgame”) written and directed by the playwright and performed by the San Quentin Drama Workshop and founder Rick Cluchey. Shooting is expected to begin in Paris this year. “Krapp’s Last Tape,” starring Cluchey, plays at the Ensemble Studio Theatre through March 27.

GRANTS BY THREE: Ted Schmitt’s Cast Theatre has received three significant grants in recent weeks. The first is a Rockefeller Foundation $5,000 grant to commission and develop work by a playwright of its choice. (The playwright chosen is Suzanne Lummis, author of last year’s “October 22, 4004, B.C., Saturday.”)

The second is a matching grant of $6,100 from the National/State/County Partnership to develop its CASTpass, a marketing strategy for subscriptions. And the third grant is the Dramatists Guild Fund of $1,500, up $500 from last year, which goes to support the Cast’s Foundry series. This, incidentally, was the Guild’s only Los Angeles award for the second consecutive year.