THEATER / NANCY CHURNIN : Residency Programs Put Grad Students on Stage

Dozens of professional actors in San Diego would surrender all their 8-by-10s and then some to get an inside track on a job at the Old Globe Theatre or La Jolla Playhouse. Deborah Pearl and Tom Nelis are graduate students who have such a track.

When the Playhouse season opens with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s adaptation of “The Grapes of Wrath,” Nelis, a second-year student at UC San Diego, will be one of 10 master of fine arts candidates guaranteed auditions for that production and five others in the Playhouse’s extended season.

Pearl, a second-year master of fine arts candidate at the University of San Diego, who last year appeared in the Old Globe’s “Coriolanus” and “Timon of Athens,” has been cast in “Up in Saratoga,” which opens in March.

Only about 10 universities across the country list graduate programs that offer residency programs through regional theaters. San Diego is the only city with two programs. Last year, each attracted 400 candidates from across the country.

According to one academic at San Diego State University, a third program may be in the offing. That one would involve San Diego State and the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

“I think this development is part of the growth of theater in San Diego,” said David Hay, associate director of the Young Globe Company, which serves as the liaison between the Old Globe and USD.

“We have two major regional theaters and we both realize the importance of developing young actors,” Hay said.

The Old Globe began looking for a university where it could train actors 10 years ago, Hay said. Eight years later, the Globe and USD, which had not previously offered a graduate theater program, signed a resident theater agreement.

When UCSD started its theater program in 1974, it was waiting for the long-dormant Playhouse to awaken from about 20 years of slumber. And waiting. And waiting.

When the Playhouse came back to life in 1983 under the artistic helm of Des McAnuff, the theater and university shared a “Goodbye Girl”-type relationship.

They knew they had to share theater facilities--the Playhouse during the summer, the school during the academic year--as a kind of test of whether they liked the arrangement.

The relationship began informally with Playhouse professionals such as McAnuff teaching at UCSD and academic professionals such as Richard Riddell, of UCSD, designing at the Playhouse.

In 1987, the Playhouse and UCSD moved from “living together” to a formal marriage contract. This year, UCSD gave the Playhouse the go-ahead to extend its summer season, for the first time, into the school year.

The key to that decision, according to Adele Shank, chair of the theater department, was the Playhouse commitment to audition and cast out of a master class for second-year students during the 1989 season. In addition, all 30 acting students from the three-year program can audition for the final Playhouse offering, “Macbeth,” which plays during the school year. Do the students feel their academic year has been encroached upon?

Hardly, says Nelis, who appeared in the San Diego Rep productions of “Red Noses” and “The Cradle Will Rock.” Like Pearl, who calls the Globe connection her reason for applying to USD, Nelis said the opportunity to work at the Playhouse was why he chose UCSD over all other university programs.

“I’m excited,” he said. “It can’t help but be a great boon for us. It’s in everybody’s best interest that the Playhouse is coming in.”

Some actresses take direction too literally.

Olive Blakistone, artistic director of the North Coast Repertory Theatre, was on a cruise with her husband, Tom, when Dori Salois opened at the North Coast in “Little Footsteps” last Friday. Blakistone sent Salois a telegram telling her to “break a leg,” only to learn later--”To my horror ,” Blakistone said--that Salois nearly did just that during a physical stunt in the second act.

The North Coast had no understudy for Salois, who dislocated a kneecap, so they called each of the patrons who had tickets for the full house on Saturday and nearly full house on Sunday and canceled the shows.

The show now has an understudy, the show’s director Ginny-Lynn Safford. Either Salois or Safford will continue the run, according to Blakistone, and two more performances have been scheduled: a Feb. 5 matinee at 2 p.m. and an 8 p.m. show Feb. 15.

Two world premiere productions are among eight new productions announced for the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s 1989 season. “Squire Haggard’s Journal,” by and starring Ron House and Alan Sherman, the team that wrote and produced “El Grande de Coca Cola,” is a world-premiere comedy about the Revolutionary War, as seen through the eyes of a down-and-out British nobleman. The moons of Saturn are the backdrop for the first post-workshop production of “The Albanian Soft Shoe,” by Mac Wilman, a story of a group of intrepid travelers searching for the great Fake Cheese that will save the universe.

The Rep will again collaborate with the Dell’Arte Players (they did “Red Noses” together last year) with an untitled play based on the writings of George Orwell, and has two bilingual productions on tap: “Thin Air,” a new play by Lyn Alvarez, is about an American traveler who becomes embroiled in political intrigue in Latin American government, and “Orinoco!” by Emilio Carballido is about two women examining themselves as they travel down Venezuela’s Orinoco River looking for a better life.

The life and songs of Elvis Presley will be featured in “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” a national premiere that debuted in London. Also on tap is the San Diego premiere of Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” a black comedy about a bad marriage, seen through the eyes of a child, and the San Diego Rep’s annual “A Christmas Carol.”

The Rep also announced plans to present a Soviet play in conjunction with San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s Soviet Arts Festival in October. The play, to be announced, will be presented in English, with a Soviet director and designer and an American cast. The Rep’s Underground at the Lyceum starts up again next Friday with a show by comedian Don Victor and is scheduled to run indefinitely Friday and Saturday nights, with new material and performers changing roughly every three weeks.