More Plane Activity Stops the Show Time and Again

“Showboat,” the San Diego Civic Light Opera’s winning season opener, is operating with a 10% increase in plane activity over last year’s shows at the Starlight Bowl. The planes stop the show 40 to 45 times a night, according to Roxana Casillas, the 24-year-old San Diego State senior who signals the performers when to freeze for approaching planes. Part of the problem, said Casillas, is the earlier curtain time of 8 p.m., which begins an hour of prime flight time.

But the greater problem seems to be that San Diego is a growing city that can expect ever-increasing air traffic.

“I don’t see how it’s not going to increase,” said Don Ward, the co-artistic director of Starlight, adding that he expects an annual 10% increase in flights at Lindbergh Field.

It is with that expectation in mind that Ward and his co-director, wife Bonnie, are actively looking for indoor venues to supplement the Starlight’s regular season.

“I think we owe it to the audience to stay there,” Ward said of the bowl--”stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing. But I think that everyone started to take it as sort of a clue that we’re doing ‘42nd Street’ indoors (at the Civic Theatre). We will not abandon an outside setting because that’s what we are, but the city is growing and we are looking around.”

One of the places they are looking at is the Lyceum during the four months of the year when it is not being used by the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Another is the Balboa Theatre, which would not be available for three years, even if it is eventually converted to a theater, as the Wards hope.

One person who doesn’t mind the plane traffic too much is Casillas, who likes her unusual job as the staff airplane spotter. She sits every night in the middle of the house by the sound board, giving the performers an amber light to signal an approaching plane and a red light for the freezes that last about eight seconds each. On the green light, they resume.

The hardest part, said Casillas, is deciding at what point to freeze the number. The uncooperative planes don’t come in at the same intervals every night.

“It’s an unusual job,” said Casillas. “But it’s fun.”

It started out in January, 1985, in a little room at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre where Deborah Salzer labored to design a program for writers under the age of 19. Now Salzer’s baby, The California Young Playwrights Project, is coming of age.

KPBS-TV is planning to use winning scripts from her project for a television series featuring the work of writers 18 and younger. The first filming, scheduled for December, will be selected from one of last year’s winners at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre. The candidates include Pamela Mshana’s “Ebony” and Josefina Lopez’s “Simply Maria or The American Dream.” Mshana and Lopez are both from Los Angeles. The third script, “And One Bell Shattered,” was written by Karen Hartman of San Diego.

Also getting into the act of producing California Young Playwrights plays is Santa Monica’s award-winning Pacific Theatre Ensemble, which plans to produce selections from the 1987 winners this fall.

Next month, Lopez and Mshana--longtime friends--will be joining 80 writers in Sydney, Australia, for “Interplay ‘88,” the second International Festival of Young Playwrights.

Lopez also will be at the South Coast Repertory Theatre for two weeks, where “Simply Maria or The American Dream” marked Lopez’s leap from junior to adult playwright. The play will be developed along with works by five other Hispanic playwrights.

Would the young playwrights do it all again if they could? The answer lies in this year’s submissions. Among the about 100 scripts sent in for the 1988 contest are those of three playwrights produced in January: Kari Lydersen, Mshana and Hartman. Hartman put her script in a plastic bag and hung it on Salzer’s doorknob just before midnight on the deadline date. As for Lopez, now that she is an “old lady” of 19, she is no longer eligible to submit plays. Ah, youth. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Will Simpson, artistic director of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, had hoped to send a videotape and reviews of the Gaslamp’s newest show, “A Walk Out of Water,” to his Pomona College friend, playwright Donald Driver. Then he got the news that the 65-year-old Driver had died June 27 of AIDS.

It has made Driver’s show more important than ever to him.

“I hope to honor the man by giving him a good production,” Simpson said. “If they (audience and critics) don’t care for it, at least we can say we said it well. Then our end of the bargain will be fulfilled.” Driver had his share of Broadway credits years ago, including two musicals based on Shakespeare plays. “Your Own Thing” was a takeoff on “Twelfth Night,” and “Oh Brother,” a farce based on “The Comedy of Errors.” “Oh Brother” is now being developed for cable TV.

But Driver’s last few plays, “A Walk Out of Water” and “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” which drew upon his own rural Oregon upbringing, did not play Broadway. “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” had its San Diego premiere at the Gaslamp in 1986.

Simpson also has on hand Driver’s last play, “Ambushed,” about three revolutionary Latinos. Simpson is considering producing “Ambush,” which Driver finished shortly before his death, at the Gaslamp if Driver’s son, Dion, will consent to some changes.

“They’re really much stronger than his earlier stuff,” Simpson said, referring to Driver’s last three plays. “I think it will be a discovery and a shame that we didn’t recognize him at the time. He was a literate showman and his insight into people was pretty deep.”