Drama From the Fringe : Arts Ensemble Brings Play From Festival in Edinburgh to San Diego

Ginny-Lynn Safford and Paul Bedington first went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as part of their honeymoon trip in 1985. Safford, a San Diego actress and director, turned to her husband and told him she would bring a group there to perform one day.

“That’s a goal,” he remembered saying.

R.J. Bonds, an actor then performing in the original London production of “Tracers,” went to that same festival. He didn’t meet the San Diego couple in the throngs attending the world’s largest international arts festival--in which more than 1,000 productions are presented in 400-plus venues around-the-clock during three weeks. But he had the same reaction to the energy and stimulation of the event.

He, too, vowed to someday return.

That someday came for all three last summer when Safford and Bedington took five actors (including Bonds), an understudy and the managing director of the newly formed Ensemble Arts Theatre to the 43rd annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival to present Sam Shepard’s “Angel City.”

They will be presenting the same show at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse Thursday through Oct. 29, and they hope San Diego will welcome the work as warmly as the Edinburgh audiences did.

The Fringe began alongside the Edinburgh National Festival in 1947 as a semiofficial way for aspiring artists to show their work alongside that of major theater, opera and dance companies.

The Fringe Festival became known as the place where audiences could catch rising stars and groups could find springboards to London productions. Fringe veterans include playwright Tom Stoppard and actors Derek Jacobi, Dudley Moore and Maggie Smith.

As more groups clamored to get involved, the system of sharing space developed, allowing performances to run from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. during the festival.

For Ensemble Arts Theatre, a new group legally founded by Safford in February, the Fringe offered a way of fulfilling one of her company’s primary charter goals: to make international connections with other theaters. The Fringe, which is open to any company that can pay its way, was a perfect opportunity for the local company.

“Angel City” is Ensemble Arts’ second production. The first show was “Tracers,”

a story written and originally performed by Vietnam veterans about their war experience. “Tracers” was Safford’s original choice for the Fringe, but she couldn’t get the rights from the Dramatists Guild to take the show to Edinburgh.

“Angel City” received positive reviews, which helped the company sell out three of its 18 performances in a 120-seat house. Many other performances averaged about 40% to 45% of capacity--not bad when a company is presenting just one of 1,053 productions in 422 venues, and is a new group to boot.

Being an American group presenting a play by an American playwright helped draw audiences, said Safford, Ensemble Art’s artistic director. The company was the only group performing work by Shepard, and that was a draw, as was the subject matter: a sendup of Hollywood movie makers based on Shepard’s own experiences as a Hollywood script doctor.

“People would ask me if I was from Hollywood,” said company member Paul Jennings. “And I’d say, ‘Well, nearly . . . ‘ “

But the real secret to their success was the review that came from the paper in town, “The Scotsman,” on the fourth day of performances.

“The play is, at first viewing, demanding to the point of incoherence, but the cast produce bravura performances which are all the more remarkable because the characters alter and deteriorate as the work progresses,” wrote critic Joseph Farrell. “Director Ginny-Lynn Safford forced the play to a crescendo of frenzy without ever losing control. This is an impressive Fringe debut for a new professional company.”

The success came despite a series of misadventures that tested the company’s mettle.

First there was the luggage that got lost--the two suitcases containing all the sound equipment and actor James Mooney’s costumes. The suitcases didn’t turn up until the day before the show opened. Then there was the trial of trying to rent the timpani needed for the show. They found one 10 minutes before opening.

They had to master the art of assembling a set in 15 minutes each day, from 1:30 to 1:45 p.m., performing so that they would finish precisely at 3:15, and striking their set to leave the space free for the next group at 3:30.

That often left no time for putting on or taking off makeup, so actor Tim West would leave the theater with the green face paint he wears for the show. Several Scottish children asked him if he was “the Incredible ‘ulk.” One street preacher, railing against the festival, stopped mid-sermon to point to West’s green face as he passed by and thundered, “It’s a sick world, brother!”

Then there were the everyday challenges, such as learning to eat--and like--the Scottish national dish of haggis (lung, heart and liver boiled in a sheep’s stomach); not getting run over by cars driving on the opposite side of the street, and hoping for the best when holding out handfuls of change, lost as to how to figure the rate of exchange.

“Saying it was not stressful would be a lie,” said Safford, shaking her head and laughing.

The group echoed her sentiments.

“You’re in a strange city, the traffic is different, the food is different, the toilets don’t work and you’re trying to put on a show. I’d say it was stressful,” said Bonds. “Then one day a magical thing happened.”

Part of the magic, as he and the others in the group describe it, came from a feeling of bonding between the company members, all of whom did double duty behind the scenes.

Linda Libby, who took her role fresh from 503 performances of “Six Women With Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want to Know,” also did all the costumes. Mooney, a “Brain Death” orchestra veteran, wrote all the music. Actor Tim West was the dramaturge. Bonds handled the props. Jennings doubled as development director. Bedington, the general manager, was also the tour manager. Ron Lang, the understudy, ran the lights and the sound. Maria Mangiavellano, the managing producer, found herself with the job of finding the infamous timpani drums.

Now, as the group readies for its San Diego opening, they hope their esprit de corps will help achieve a couple of goals: develop a core group of ensemble actors to perform regularly in San Diego, and operate an acting academy, which the group has started in a shared-space arrangement with the Winston School in Del Mar. The company will use the space for its next play, Peter Parnell’s “The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket,” the story about a boy who can fly, scheduled for a four-week run in November.

And they are already thinking about the plays they want to take to the Fringe Festival next year.

“Even though we are a small theater, we want to take advantage of the world connection,” Safford said. “Our intention is to go back there many times.”