Theater and Film : Fledgling Repertory Company Gets to Go Right to the Source

Orange County’s Alternative Repertory Theatre was especially interested in Edward Albee’s visit Sunday to Anaheim. The next production by the fledgling company--which made its debut last fall with Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” and currently is staging Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”--is Albee’s “Seascape.” It opens April 8 at the ART, 1636 Grand Ave., Santa Ana.

The play, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, uses an encounter between two couples--one human, the other sea lizard--as the basis for all sorts of philosophical jabs on the state of coupling and other moralistic quagmires.

Albee’s visit gave the Alternative Repertory’s “Seascape” contingent--director Patricia Terry, producer Kathleen Bryson and actor Andy Pari--a chance to go straight to the source.

“He was very gracious and helpful,” Terry said of their chat with Albee after the program at Loara High School, which had included a scene from the play. “He reinforced what we felt were (‘Seascape’s’) basic threads.”

Albee said the land-bound lizards represent a “loss of innocence” (and, in terms of the evolutionary process, a “slight mistiming” on their part: “They emerged a few million years too early or too late.”)

Terry said she asked Albee, who lectures at Cal State Fullerton April 14-15, to “drop by and catch our ‘Seascape’ performance.”

Alternative Repertory players were not among the actors who performed the “Seascape” scene Sunday, but the director, Long Beach City College drama teacher Greg Atkins, was a member of Alternative Repertory’s “No Exit” cast last fall.

“It was a tremendous opportunity,” Atkins said after Albee had watched the scene intently from his seat in the first row. “It was exciting, yes, but also a little unnerving.”