UCSD Writer 1st From U.S. to Direct at Soviet Festival

Director-writer Walton Jones, a professor at UC San Diego, will become the first American director to participate in an annual Soviet festival of new plays in Schelykova, 500 miles outside Moscow.

Jones, 41, learned last Friday that a new play he had directed at the Yale Repertory Theatre in January, William Snowden’s “Rust and Ruin,” was selected by ASTI, the American Soviet Theatre Initiative, as the one U.S play to be shown with four new Soviet plays.

Jones, speaking on the phone from his office, said he was “surprised” and “excited” and was worrying about what to pack.

He leaves June 1 for a 2 1/2-week stay. But it’s not clothes he’s worried about packing, it’s scenery. He hasn’t yet figured out how to best suggest Macon, Ga., to an audience that is going to be far more familiar with Soviet Georgia.

“Rust and Ruin,” a first play for Snowden who works as a journalist in Tallahassee, Fla., tells the story of a rural family trying to escape their lives as poor white trash.

It’s a busy time for Jones, who chairs the theater department’s directing program at UCSD. Jones, who is also a playwright and script writing veteran of “St. Elsewhere,” is now writing the third draft of a new musical, set in the Depression.

He also just found out that of his early plays, “The 1940s Radio Hour” was just picked to be produced by the North Coast Repertory Theatre on Nov. 10-Dec.31.

Jones first wrote “The 1940s Radio Hour” when he was an actor at the Yale Drama School in 1978; he and Meryl Streep were in the first cast. The show, which played Broadway in 1980, goes behind the scenes of a radio broadcast.

(San Diego theater critic Welton Jones reviewed that play, and Walton Jones said their names have been mixed up by writers ever since.)

The inspiration for “The 1940s Radio Hour” came when Walton Jones was a child with mumps, being cared for by his grandmother in her house. His grandmother had a radio and he spent hours listening to shows like “Dragnet” and “The Lone Ranger.”

“I remember how much better it was than TV. A radio was a member of the family, and not in such a passive way as television,” said Jones. “It was part of a time when people believed everything could change.”

Jones’ new play, which is as yet untitled, may be headed for a workshop production in Los Angeles in the fall.

PROGRAM NOTES: The Bowery Theatre has canceled recent performances of “Jesse and the Bandit Queen” because lead actor Patrick Egan has an acute hernia requiring surgery and an extensive recuperative period. Replacing Egan, beginning next Thursday and continuing throughout the rest of the run (scheduled to end June 9) is local actor Tim Reilly. He was last seen in the Bowery’s “Teibele and Her Demon.” . . .

Playwright Craig Lucas, who just picked up a Tony nomination for “Prelude to a Kiss,” will have his play “Reckless” presented by UC San Diego drama department in November. Lucas, whose “Marry Me a Little” played at the Old Globe and “Blue Window” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, also has a new movie out called “Longtime Companion,” which looks like old-home week for actors who have appeared on San Diego stages. Bruce Davison, who starred in “The Cocktail Hour” at the Old Globe and is still appearing in the show at the Doolittle Theatre in Los Angeles through July 1, stars as the companion of an AIDS victim, played by Mark Lamos, a veteran of both the Old Globe (where he played “Hamlet”) and the La Jolla Playhouse (where he directed “School for Wives”). Mary-Louise Parker, who appeared in the Old Globe’s “Up in Saratoga” and just picked up a Tony nomination for “Prelude to a Kiss,” is also part of the cast. . . .

Except for one date, the North Coast Repertory Theatre season has been nailed down, including: the San Diego premiere of “The Couch,” by Lynne Kaufman, which deals with a day in the life of Freud and Jung from a feminist perspective, June 16-July 21; Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues,” featuring North Coast favorite Paul Epstein as Simon’s alter-ego Eugene, Aug. 4-Sept. 8; Michael Frayn’s “Donkey’s Ears,” a farce set in a prep school in England, Sept. 22-Oct. 27; “The Flight of the Earls,” a play by Christopher Humble about the troubles in Northern Ireland, Jan. 12-Feb. 16; Alan Ayckbourn’s “Intimate Exchanges,” starring Brian Salmon, March 2-April 6, and a selection to be announced for April 20-May 25. . . .

Old Globe managing director Thomas Hall is still in Leningrad negotiating with the Maly Theatre to bring the third installment of “Brothers and Sisters,” called “The House,” to the Old Globe in 1991. . . .

More news on the Eastern European front: Des McAnuff, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, just received a letter from Lithuanian actor Regimantes Adomaitis whom McAnuff directed in “A Walk in the Woods” in Lithuania:

“The performance lives. I have tried hard not to forget your direction and now we are taking a special delight in performing in the repertory at the Russian Drama Theater.”

Part of the delight may come from the subtext of the play, which is ostensibly about conflicts between an American and Soviet arms negotiator. But in Lithuania, a country now striving for its independence from the Soviet Union, it has been played like the conflicts between a Lithuanian and a Soviet. . . .

The San Diego Repertory Theatre’s WordWorks at the Lyceum continues Monday at 8 p.m. with a staged reading of “Benefits,” a corporate comedy by Los Angeles playwright Kathryn Michon, directed by Binnur Karaevli. Admission is free. . . .

Ensemble Arts Theatre will hold auditions Monday for its 1990 Edinburgh Festival Fringe tour. The company, which toured “Angel City” in Edinburgh last year, plans to present three original works in Edinburgh this August. . . .

Next stop for “The Trials of Don Edwardo,” which runs through Sunday at UCSD’s Warren Theatre, will be Spain, France and West Germany. Professor and director Jorge Huerta is raising money to take the show to seven different cities, June 18-July 11. . . .

Playwrights/actresses/sisters Vira and Hortencia Colorado will perform “Coyolxuahqui,” a work about the everyday experiences of Native American women in modern society, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at El Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park.