S.D. Rep Season Marks Change, ‘Not Retreat,’ From Last Year’s Fare

The world premiere of “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson”--an Amiri Baraka script about the Harlem Renaissance and featuring an original score by Max Roach--is one of the highlights of the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s 15th season.

The shows for the new season, announced Thursday, reflect a balance between the work of familiar classical, contemporary and comic artists: Joe Orton’s “Loot,” Tennessee Williams’ “A Lovely Sunday at Creve Coeur,” Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This,” Ariel Dorfman’s “Widows,” Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” and “Latins Anonymous,” a four-person sendup of Latino stereotypes presented here by the Old Globe’s Teatro Meta last year that went on to become the longest-running show at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where it continues to play.

No specific dates--only months--have been set for any of the eight shows, including the Rep’s annual “A Christmas Carol,” tickets for which are sold separately from the regular season.

The season marks a distinct difference from last year’s controversial premiere-laden offerings, which caused many Rep subscribers to write letters in complaint of works such as “Animal Nation” and “Albanian Softshoe”--shows that seemed unfinished or unclear. Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the Rep, said the theater is as committed as ever to producing new works but that the development of those works may take a different form.

“Our 1989 was not as effective or successful as we had wished it had been,” Woodhouse said. Subscription renewal is only 35% to date, he said. That may indicate that subscribers may be waiting for the season to be announced before they make their decisions.

“I would say we’re proud of the risks that we took,” Woodhouse said. “We think it’s essential that San Diego as a mature theater town provide significant opportunities for the development of new work.

“The 1990 season doesn’t reflect a retreat from an ongoing commitment, which has always been the presentation of seldom-seen classics, new American plays and new work and the Teatro Sin Fronteras program,” he said, referring to a program designed to promote the work of Latino artists and subjects.

“What we’re going to do in 1990 is continue the commitment to new work through not only the plays that we’re doing on the main-stage season, but with an expanded and intensified play development program which will involve the development of musical work, Latino work and other new American plays, with an eye toward producing this work in the 1991-92 subscription seasons,” Woodhouse said.

One of the ways the Rep will develop new work is through greater use of Wordworks, a weekly series of staged readings, which can serve the same function of testing new scripts as the Play Discovery Series does at the Old Globe. The Sixth Avenue Playhouse may also have an increased role in trying out new scripts and new artists, according to Woodhouse.

The season kicks off in June with “Latins Anonymous,” directed by Miguel Delgado and Jose Cruz Gonzalez at the Lyceum Space as one of the annual Teatro Sin Fronteras offerings. The show marks the return of San Diego-born actor Rick Najera, last seen on the San Diego Rep stage 10 years ago in “Working.” Najera’s family still lives in La Mesa, and he recently bought a cabin in Julian.

The San Diego premiere of “Widows,” which will be produced in a new Spanish translation as well as in English, will also be a Teatro Sin Fronteras play. Woodhouse, who will co-direct “Widows” with Jorge Huerta at the Lyceum Space in January, described Dorfman’s story of widows in a Latin American dictatorship who demand that the bodies of their wrongfully slain men be returned for burial is a thematic continuation of “Burning Patience,” which the Rep presented in 1988.

The schedule continues with the San Diego premiere of “Burn This,” a reluctant romance between a dancer and the brother of her dead roommate, directed by Woodhouse on the Lyceum Stage in June; “Loot,” a farce about money hidden in a corpse, directed by associate artistic director Walter Schoen on the Lyceum Stage in July-August; “A Lovely Sunday in Creve Coeur,” the story of a Southern woman waiting for a call from a gentleman who she hopes will change her life, directed by Douglas Jacobs on the Lyceum Stage in September; “Cymbeline,” a romance about thwarted love set right, directed by Douglas Jacobs in the Lyceum Space in September, and “A Christmas Carol,” adapted by Doug Jacobs and directed by Schoen in December.

“A Christmas Carol,” which was updated to a story about the modern homeless in San Diego last season, will further develop that concept, Woodhouse said. The season will be capped with “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” directed by George Ferencz. It tells the story of a real black gangster who used his money to help fund the Harlem Renaissance and was friendly with writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. It will play at the Lyceum Stage in late January.