Assembling Ensembles in Movie and TV Land

The actor sat back in his chair at a coffee shop booth.

“You know what an actor’s life in Hollywood is like?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s like getting out on a road, putting your thumb out and hoping you hitch a ride.

“Sure enough, you get picked up. Then they drop you off down the road. And you get back out there and thumb another ride. You just hope someone gets you to where you want to be.”

James Terry, the actor, knew that lonely road. But Terry is also a member of the Actors’ Gang, one of a number of vital, prolific theater ensembles based in Los Angeles. Life in “the Gang” (as Terry and other Gang members interviewed for this story fondly dub it) is anything but lonely.

“It’s like coming home,” Terry said, echoing a phrase that ran through conversations with the Actors’ Gang, the KitchenCollective (which recently completed a run at downtown’s Wallenboyd of Heiner Muller’s “The Mission: Memory of a Revolution”) and Friends and Artists Ensemble (about to open Nikolai Erdman’s Russian comedy, “The Suicide”).

Along with director Reza Abdoh’s company and the recent emergence of John Steppling’s and Bob Glaudini’s Heliogabalus group, these theater ensembles have become oases in an often-hostile landscape filled with the dreams offered by hustlers in television and film, the dog-eat-dog competition for a part-- any part--and the usual trail of crushed hopes.

With the cutthroat commercial world nipping at their heels, ensemble members describe their particular group as a “safety net,” “support system,” or “family.”

“You need that,” said Friends and Artists co-founder Michael Nehring, “especially in this town.”

Yet, another phrase you’ll hear in these groups is, “we’re not for every actor.” Lisa Moncure was speaking for the Actors’ Gang, but it applies to the other groups as well.

None of these ensembles is to be confused with the standard “actors’ workshop,” mostly concerned with film and television training for any actor who can pay the registration fees. By contrast, prospective Gang members have to meet the demands of rigorous workshop training (inspired by Georges Bigot of Theatre du Soleil) before they can get into a show. The KitchenCollective has studied plays for months before putting one on. Would-be Friends and Artists members go through a six-month “probation,” at which time, said co-founder Laurie Wendorf, “you either fit in or you don’t.”

Which means that they’re deadly serious about theater.

This spring, the Actors’ Gang pulled off the rare coup of a repertory evening of two full-length, utterly different plays--the broad political satire of “Carnage” and the poignant introspection of “Freaks.”

Tim Robbins is the Gang’s acknowledged leader. (He is also their chief source of funding.) Friends and Artists’ guiding light is Sal Romeo, commandeering the ensemble on a wild ride through world theater: from Max Frisch’s “The Firebugs,” through Peter Weiss’ “Marat/Sade” and Michael Weller’s ‘60s comedy “Moonchildren” to Erdman’s “Suicide.”

The KitchenCollective considers their leaderless non-hierarchy to be as important to them, politically and artistically, as the material they perform. “The Mission” and their earlier “A Vietnam Requiem” explored the political tensions when the First World encounters Third World revolution and placed textual ideas above plot lines.

All the groups have had ties to university theater. The Actors’ Gang was born in a UCLA theater directing class. KitchenCollective dramaturge Rick Berg, a film and theater professor, is moving from Scripps to Pitzer College this fall. Romeo, Nehring and Marc Handler helped build Friends and Artists on the strength of the students they taught at Fullerton, Orange Coast and Chapman colleges in Orange County.

Only one of the groups has a literal home: Friends and Artists just signed a two-year extension on its lease of a cozy space on Vermont Avenue. The Actors’ Gang, after a successful run at the Tiffany Theatre, recently lost the lease on its downtown workshop loft, “The Actory.” The KitchenCollective meets over kitchen tables, in living rooms or classrooms at Occidental College.

While “families” and “safety nets” abound, the existence of an L.A.-based ensemble can be almost as precarious as it is for the solo actor hitching a ride to fame. Despite a solid reputation the Gang has built up over seven years and nearly a dozen shows, James Terry said, “You don’t know if there’s going to be another show.

“Jeez, I hope so. But there’s no guarantee.”

The Gang’s Team Spirit

Yet, the striking aspect of these and other groups is that they do come back for another show. Indeed, at a Gang gathering in Tim Robbins’ mid-Wilshire apartment, a feistiness borne of survival marked the conversation.

“We’ll stay together, definitely,” said “Freaks” director Michael Schlitt.

Said Moncure, like a road-show vet: “I’m in it for the tooour !”

“But we need to get paid,” said Shannon Holt.

“We could play the L.A. Theatre Center right now!” said Lee Arenberg, an actor who exudes pit-bull determination.

“Look, the only reason we don’t have a comedy show on HBO, say, is that they haven’t found us yet. We’re so ready: We have a core of (14) people who can play a multitude of characters, plus we write our own material.

“We have,” Arenberg said, “what I think is going to be (typical) of the theater company of the future--a theater-production unit combining live performance and film work.”

Whether the group’s cohesiveness comes out of determination or vice versa, a palpable team spirit informs their work and identity.

Take their name. “Ron Campbell came up with ‘The Gang’ when we were at UCLA in 1981,” Arenberg said. (Terry said that it was Campbell, as well, who dreamed up the term, combacting, to describe the group’s early performance method.) In those days, the group included Arenberg, Campbell, Terry, Robbins, Benjamin Thompson.

“Were there any women, Lee?” teased Moncure (who came to the Gang in 1985). A few, Arenberg said, but he knew what she meant: The Gang, until recently, has been very male in numbers and attitude.

Everyone agreed that they were an aggressive bunch of people, “including the women,” Moncure and Holt said.

“We happen to be actors,” said Arenberg, “but we play sports. And we play hard.”

“One of the things that makes this a company,” Schlitt said, “is what we do off stage together is just as important as what we do on. ‘Theater of Sweat’--that’s what they used to call us.”

Holt, Moncure and Arenberg, referring to the bumps and bruises from all the extra-curricular activity, sounded like NBA veterans in a playoff situation as they talked about “going on in the role in pain.”

“A lot of actors, especially if they’re in film or TV,” Moncure said, “get very intimidated by what we do. I know I was when I first came into the group. I mean, there’s total commitment on stage.”

They roundly attributed this to what’s known in the Gang as “The Style”--a presentational method of acting, partly derived from commedia dell’arte and developed by France’s Theatre Du Soleil. After that company’s local appearance as part of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, Soleil star Georges Bigot taught workshops here. Gang members who attended took what they learned back to the ensemble.

“It’s not just a workshop technique,” Schlitt said, “it’s the key to how we do our shows and remain an ensemble.”

The group mentioned nine “rules” for “The Style,” including:

Be in one of four emotional states--happy, sad, angry or afraid.

Establish the status of the character, either “high” (i.e. Arenberg’s holy roller preacher in “Carnage”) or “low” (i.e. Arenberg’s hobo in “Freaks.”)

Don’t ask questions in an improv situation.

Don’t act in a vacuum, thus ignoring other actors.

Always deliver lines to the audience.

This is how the Gang operates under Robbins’ direction. But, Terry said, “The Gang is a group of actors featured in the work of various directors.”

One of them, Thompson--under the rubric “L.A.Test Stage”--has conceived of outdoor “Wild West Shows,” with Terry, Campbell, Cynthia Ettinger and others as cowpokes, outlaws and tough farm women. Arenberg cited Gang director Richard Olivier’s work on the play, “Battery,” as “the toughest theater work I’ve encountered. We did it with no blocking, but we prepared so completely as a group that it worked.”

“And it looked like a well-blocked play,” said Schlitt. “Man, that’s an ensemble.”

The KitchenCollective

The KitchenCollective would never dream of going on stage without blocking.

“We try to be very sure of what we’re doing,” Alex Wright, assistant director on “The Mission,” said in the Wallenboyd auditorium, “before we go out and do it.”

“This group puts the process ahead of the final product,” said dramaturge Rick Berg. It’s an ensemble that “resists labeling. We’re about what we do.”

For instance: Choosing Muller’s dense, provocative play based on the Haitian slave revolt at the time of the French Revolution, and the problematic relationship of the French and “Black” Jacobins. Collective member and “Mission” director Rolf Brauneis happened to be translating the text last year, and brought it to the group.

“First, we looked at Rolf’s translation,” said Berg, “then we talked about the play’s meaning. We probed questions the play raises, about memory--the play’s subtitle is ‘ Memory of a Revolution’--about history, and the validity of theater today.”

“And, during this process (last November),” Wright said, “we did ‘A Vietnam Requiem,’ ” a staged reading of poems ranging from the ancient Vietnamese verse to boot camp songs and to Ho Chi Minh’s verse.

Before putting “The Mission” on stage, the KitchenCollective read an impressive and daunting list of background texts, including John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” an analysis of how class and sexual politics inform the way visual art is viewed; Cyril James’ history of the Haitian revolution, “The Black Jacobins”; “Illuminations” by critic Walter Benjamin; and Franz Fanon’s work on the Third World, “The Wretched of the Earth.”

“We chose them for the various ways each book illuminated aspects of Muller’s text,” said Berg. But this wasn’t a passive classroom.

“People in the group without an academic background demanded to understand clearly what it was we were reading and talking about,” said Wright. After all, out of all of this was supposed to come a performance. Confused performers wouldn’t do.

Performer Eric Wise, for one, said that he was grateful for this kind of theater and ensemble preparation.

“Where else in town am I going to read about the Black Jacobins? Besides, the Collective never asked me to act. I’m not an actor. (Wise is a costume designer in television and film.) Somehow, within this group, I can perform on stage.”

Berg and Wright suggested this may be because of the ensemble’s unconventional approach to theater making.

“A guiding principle with us is skepticism,” Berg said. “We came together with a common disenchantment with L.A. theater: the lack of politics, the trend to naturalism. We said, ‘Let’s take a good, hard look at theater and see if we can push the edges of the medium.’ Break down old traditions with a purpose.”

How? Berg: “This interview, for example. We’re representatives chosen by the Collective to talk to the media. Because we’re about making theater political, we carry that into everything we do. We don’t have a hierarchy. And you’re not talking with the director or the professional actors in the group.”

Wright cited another example: “We talk about the actor’s job being personal, political and social. We believe: Bring those concerns into rehearsal and, rather than being fed things from the director, question them if you disagree. But think through your questions. The actor’s responsibility becomes greater.”

Far from creating a situation of thespian Jacobins in revolt, “we’ve found that actors, being so trained not to question, have to learn to,” Berg said.

“Underneath what we’re doing is tinkering--with a purpose. Tinkering . . . that’s one of my favorite words.”

Friends and Artists

Sal Romeo, sitting in the surprisingly elegant lobby of the intimate (read: small) Friends and Artists Theatre Ensemble space, got down to basics to describe his company.

“There are 40 members here, and over 30 of them have keys to this place. And the only reason why the eight or nine don’t have keys is that they probably lost them!

“This is their theater, from the cash box to the back door.” And not a theft yet, in the two years of the theater’s existence.

As incredible as that may seem, ensemble member Marc Handler suggested that a familial spirit guides the group’s affairs. “This place is a major part of the actors’ lives. It’s a home for us. It’s where we meet, where we party, where we work.”

Few ongoing, working ensembles anywhere can claim such blissful residency. Formerly a camera store, the space even fits the group’s requirements for a good neighborhood--the lively, ethnic stretch of Vermont Avenue north of Hollywood Boulevard.

Even though Handler and fellow “Friends” Michael Nehring and Laurie Wendorf (who lives with Romeo) immediately pointed to Romeo as “the boss,” the mustachioed director insisted that it was the students whom he, Handler and Nehring were teaching at various Orange County colleges that signaled the start of the group.

“We found that our students were frustrated with the lack of ensemble companies they could work in. The alternative was a hit-and-miss affair with Equity Waiver. We got frustrated with their frustration, and said to them, ‘If you guys want to have a place to work, then we’ll get together and we’ll build a place to work.’ ”

Many sleepless, work-filled nights and $10,000 later, they had a place. Now, what to put in it?

“The easiest thing for us,” said Romeo, “would have been to open up with a play done in contemporary realism--what they do in film and television. Instead, our commitment was to do as many styles as we can: Swiss-German absurdism in “The Firebugs,” “Marat/Sade’s” style of group acting, “Moonchildren’s” realism. Next, classical Russian farce (in Erdman’s “The Suicide”).”

An approach, in other words, utterly different from the Actors’ Gang’s team approach to a particular method. Nehring and Romeo both cited the tradition of Stanislavsky and the Actors’ Studio as the model for an embrace of eclectic styles.

“The actors here are just hungry for that,” Romeo said. And unlike the intellectualism of the KitchenCollective, these Friends try whatever seems to work best.

This will vary from Handler giving history lectures to the cast preparing “Marat/Sade” to taking the “Moonchildren” cast out to a demonstration protesting U.S. troop deployments to Honduras--just to give the actors, mostly in their 20s, a sense of what the play’s anti-war background was like.

“We’re all 30-ish,” Wendorf said, looking around the room at her colleagues, some veterans of Los Angeles’ experimental stages where ensemble work was something of a cause (Romeo helped found the Burbage Theatre, and Nehring went through the Company Theatre). “There’s a little bit of a generation gap (with younger actors).”

“Age isn’t really a factor here,” said Romeo. “This is a responsible group. I direct them with a light hand: an actor’s process should be what that individual actor needs.”

One way Romeo “stays out of their hair,” as he put it, is by working on the parking lot crew during a show’s run. “Everybody here has a job,” he said. Handler’s is as researcher and handyman. Wendorf’s is house manager and planning the always generous display of intermission desserts and beverages. Assistant director Nehring’s other job is maintaining the bathroom.

“Making sure that’s taken care of,” Nehring said humbly, “is as important as having a great set.”

With the uncertain future for smaller theater posed by the potential end of Equity Waiver, with rumblings that the only affordable shows will be of the one-person variety, where does that leave these large ensembles?

In a word, undaunted. The KitchenCollective is in the midst of searching for their next piece. Some candidates: John Webster’s rarely seen “The White Devil,” Walter Benjamin’s “Thesis on the Philosophy of History” (as a reading) and Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Play Without a Title.”

They’re also searching for funding. A $1,500 Goethe Institute grant, a $1,000 private donation plus a matching $2,500 MOCA grant funded “The Mission” during its MOCA engagement. Pipeline Inc. has been, monetarily, just that for the group. “But we don’t know where the money is going to come from in the future,” said Alex Wright.

Friends and Artists, in almost quixotic fashion, is searching for a 99-seat house, while maintaining its current base. Box-office take and fees taken in from their membership organization are among the various means helping them stay afloat.

And even with their workshop space gone, their philanthropist and artistic mentor--Tim Robbins--continually out of town on movie locations, and no HBO gig in sight, the Actors’ Gang is fighting back.

Gang members are teaching a group of Chicago actors “The Style” in preparation for the Chicago premiere of the Gang’s “Slick Slack Griff Graff.”

For some ensembles, it appears, Los Angeles isn’t big enough.