UCI Joins Bicoastal Showcase for Actors

In what UC Irvine officials have called “an unprecedented move,” the university’s graduate drama program will showcase students in Hollywood and New York in a bi-coastal partnership with the theater programs of Temple University and Southern Methodist University.

“We’ve done showcases by ourselves for the last 4 years in Hollywood, but to our knowledge no university acting programs have presented students to theater professionals on both coasts,” UCI spokesman Gerard Babb said Tuesday.

The three-way partnership, dubbed the Actor Training Alliance, comes 2 years after the dissolution of the League of Professional Theater Training Schools, which had presented students from about a dozen of the nation’s most prestigious university or conservatory programs in an annual showcase held at the Juilliard School in New York.

Officials at Temple and SMU, former members of the league, said they sought the union with UCI, which had not been a member, because of its growing reputation for turning out quality actors and for its proximity to Hollywood, where more jobs are available in movies and television than in New York.

“Basically, we are joining together to share resources and to improve our transcontinental communications,” Cecil O’Neal, chairman of SMU’s theater department, said Tuesday from his office in Dallas.

A contingent of 18 actors--four from UCI, six from Temple and eight from SMU--will present a series of dramatic scenes in the West Coast showcase at Stages in Hollywood on April 24. On May 8, the actors will present scenes and monologues in the East Coast showcase at the John Houseman Theatre in Manhattan.

“What the actors usually get out of these showcases is interest from agents and casting directors,” O’Neal said. “It’s not a fantasy land where somebody shows up with a contract for a show the next day. But very often they do get immediate offers (of representation) from important agencies.”

“The showcases that the league used to put on were a good bridge to the industry,” Dugald MacArthur, drama professor and head of Temple’s theater training program, said from his office in Philadelphia. “Otherwise, kids come to Los Angeles or New York and drive cabs and hope they’ll get in to see the right people.”

MacArthur said that eight of the 10 actors that Temple presented last year with SMU in a New York showcase landed work “as a direct result.” Another school, Florida State University, presented students in that showcase but was not asked to join the bi-coastal alliance, MacArthur said.

UCI, Temple and SMU are not the only schools with graduate drama programs to form showcase partnerships in the wake of the league’s dissolution. For instance, UC San Diego has joined the Denver Theatre Center and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, both of which have training programs, in presenting their third-year graduate actors to professionals in the industry.

But none is as ambitious as the Actor Training Alliance, MacArthur said. “We’re already thinking of adding Chicago next year,” he said, “and there will be a greater effort to get artistic directors of regional theaters” to come to the showcases.

For all that, the student actors chosen to attend the showcases in Hollywood and New York will have to pay their own way. Only SMU is providing a partial subsidy to its actors.

“Funding is always a problem,” said MacArthur. “It is one of the reasons that the league disbanded.”

Robert Cohen, who heads the drama department at UCI, and Dudley Knight, who heads the actors’ training program there, could not be reached for comment. Babb said the four graduate students chosen for the showcases from UCI are Rex Slate, Sarah Salisbury, Philip Thompson and James Donovan.

The West Coast showcase of the Actor Training Alliance will be at Stages, 1540 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood, on April 24. The first performance is at 1 p.m., preceded by a noon buffet at the adjacent Cafe des Artistes. The second performance is at 7 p.m., with a buffet at 6 p.m. Information: (213) 225-1486.

The East Coast showcase will be at the John Houseman Theatre, 450 W. 42nd St., New York City, on May 8 at 7 p.m. For New York reservations: (212) 439-4991.