Padua Playwrights Festival Finds New Home at CSUN

Cal State Northridge has a new house guest this summer: the 12-year-old Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, which has taken up residence at the university’s Art and Design Center (and outlying dormitories and gathering spaces). Twenty-five participants have gathered from all over the country for the six-week session of writing workshops--taught by 13 playwrights, including Tony winner David Henry Hwang, John Steppling, Jon Robin Baitz and Maria Irene Fornes--which will culminate July 20 with an outdoors presentation of new works.

“It’s the kind of event this university needs to be involved in,” said Jeff Levy, general manager of CSUN’s theater and also a workshop participant. “We’re interested in a collaboration between a professional company and the university--one that serves the education of our students and faculty--but also serves the theater by helping students move into the professional world. It can also be a resource for academia. If someone wants to do experimentation, the university can provide a place for it.”

The relationship began when Robert Caine of Sherman Oaks’ Actors Alley (with whom CSUN has had an ongoing artistic relationship) put Levy in touch with Padua Hills Executive Director Cheryl Bianchi, which led to a January meeting with Levy and CSUN theater chairman Richard Shank. Shank then went to School of Arts Dean Philip Handler, who went to Bob Suzuki, vice president of academic affairs, who took the proposal to college President James Cleary.

“We thought it’d be wonderful to bring their creativity onto the campus, and they seemed interested in establishing themselves” in the San Fernando Valley, Shank said. (Since losing its original site in the San Gabriel foothills a few years ago, Padua has been held in a variety of locations.) “The Art and Design Center is a large configuration of buildings used by sculptors and 3-D artists. It makes several performance spaces. And there’s a large courtyard that we’ve converted into an outdoor theater.”

CSUN is also providing room and board for the 13 playwrights and 25 students during their stay. “The value of those services is $5,000 to $6,000--so that’s a major contribution,” Levy said. “We’re also picking up all the facility costs.

“Two things need to happen for this relationship to be long-term. First, this summer has to go well. We’re dating, but not married yet. And the university can’t afford to provide complete support. So we’ll need to look for funding resources to cover a percentage of our costs.

“I’d love to announce we’re the home of Padua for the next five years,” he added quickly. “I think it would inject dynamite into the student body, who are theatrically complacent. Most students want to make it in the entertainment industry. They don’t really understand theater, what its value is. The other common misconception is that Arthur Miller or Sam Shepard sits down for awhile and comes up with a play. The students have no sense of workshop, the rehearsal period, the actor’s voice. . . .”

For Levy, the week-old workshop experience has already had a profound impact: “I can hardly sleep at night. To get real poetic, I feel this light coming into my body. It’s rare to be around people with the same interests, with passions not in making money but creating and speaking the word . You know, the world is not very supportive of playwrights. Everyone talks about actors’ theater or directors’ theater--but there’s very little support of playwrights. Padua addresses that need squarely.”

Shank, too, is hoping that Padua’s presence will stimulate an interest in new plays. With 300 majors in his department (divided between acting/directing, design and technical, theater history and dramatic literature), he’s counting on the many students who live in the Valley for support: “One of our majors is enrolled in the writing workshop; others are in technical areas. I hope that our majors here will be a big part of the audience and that it spreads through word of mouth.”

A benefit retrospective will be held Sunday, featuring works from past Padua festivals--some with their original casts. This year’s festival program, which runs through Aug. 6 and is open to the public, features Susan Mosakowski’s “Cities Out of Print,” Martin Epstein’s “The Ordeal of Nancy Fergusson,” John Pappas’ “Increments of Three,” Alan Bolt’s “Beloved Love,” a new work by Steppling, Fornes’ “Oscar and Martha,” Leon Martell’s “Kindling” and Julie Hebert’s “Almost Asleep.”