Four New Plays in LATC’s ‘88-89 Lineup

Four new plays, a classic and a return engagement will compose the 1988-89 fall/winter lineup at Los Angeles Theatre Center, according to artistic producing director Bill Bushnell.

They are “Kingfish,” a new play by Marlane Meyer, author of this season’s “Etta Jenks” (Sept. 9-Oct. 23); a return of the Earth Players of South Africa’s anti-apartheid “Bopha!” (Sept. 16-Nov. 16); Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” directed by Charles Marowitz (Oct. 7-Nov. 13) and Donald Margulies’ “The Model Apartment” (Nov. 11-Jan. 1).

Two commissioned projects round out the schedule. The first is “Stone Wedding” (Dec. 2-Jan. 22), a project of LATC’s Latino Theatre Lab, partly funded by the Ford Foundation ($50,000), written by Milcha Sanchez-Scott (who wrote “Roosters,” opening at LATC June 17) and developed by lab director Jose Luis Valenzuela. From Feb. 10 to March 19, LATC will present “Project X,” based on Life magazine photographer Eugene Smith’s book, “Minematta,” written by Meyer and developed with director-writer Reza Abdoh.

“It’s based on the idea of corporate-vs.-personal responsibility,” Bushnell said. “The larger issue is about what happens when a chemical company poisons a bay that is the food supply for a small city and huge amounts of genetic mutations begin to appear. We’re working on marrying (the work of) Reza and Marlane and Diane (White, producer) and Timian (Alsaker, designer). The piece will use a lot of Far Eastern theater techniques--shadow puppets, Noh, Bunraku, as well as some native American chants and dances.

“Marlane has one of the most wonderfully twisted imaginations I’ve come across,” he said, getting back to Meyer’s “Kingfish.” “One of the central characters is a dog. The ‘dog’ is a barking black box on a leash. That’s what the script says. Otherwise, it’s a pure Hollywood story about an aging homosexual and a young hustler.

“Three of this fall’s pieces were developed in February and March in our new-works festival. ‘Stone Wedding’ we’ve been working on for almost a year. The words are Milcha’s. A lot of the ideas for characters were Jose’s. I don’t know how you explain the title in a family newspaper, but it’s about a small town in the Southwest during the Korean War in which all the men, except for the priest, have lost their manhood. It’s also about mothers and their desire to marry off their daughters. And about the rising again of ancient Aztec gods to lead the way to a new life.”

As for “The Model Apartment,” “It’s the first of what we sense may be several plays that will emerge over the next few years not directly about the Holocaust, not about hunting down its perpetuators, or the camps. It’s about what can happen to the children of survivors if they grow up with the central event in their life being the Holocaust--or children who died during the Holocaust and are therefore perfect children.”

A central character of this play is the 300-pound daughter (figuratively “stuffed full of dead Jews”) of two Holocaust survivors. “It’s important to realize this is a dark, dark comedy,” Bushnell said.

Roberta Levitow will direct.

A seventh play, to be announced, will fill out the December schedule.