Young Playwrights Project Severs Tie That Bound It

The California Young Playwrights Project is growing up.

The highly acclaimed organization, which officially announced its separation from the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company this week, is now an independent organization called the Playwrights Project that includes playwrighting projects for adults and seniors besides its 5-year-old program for writers under 19.

Although the announcement is new, the company actually left the Gaslamp months before money problems canceled the rest of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre season, said Deborah Salzer, CYPP’s founder and program director. The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre will shut down after the Sunday performance of “Blithe Spirit,” and has said that it intends to resume performances in September with “Oil City Symphony” at the Hahn Cosmopolitan.

“I was not comfortable with the pattern of artistic and fiscal decisions that I felt were guiding the company, and I realized the time had come for us to move out on our own,” Salzer said.

The move also gave Salzer’s organization the impetus to expand its focus and range. The program, which is now no longer limited to California playwrights, will continue to produce scripts from writers 19 and younger in January at a location to be announced. Salzer is now negotiating with the Bowery Theatre, which has set aside dates in anticipation of producing the Playwrights Project at the Bowery’s Kingston Playhouse, said Salzer and Mickey Mullany, managing director of the Bowery Theatre.

The company has already received 170 scripts, almost more than three times what it received last year, Salzer said.

The Playwrights Project, which has expanded its budget from $75,000 last year to $153,000, has also added an adult playwrighting course, co-sponsored with San Diego State University, and two programs designed for seniors. The programs for senior writers include an eight-session playwright course and what is called “a partnering program,” in which senior storytellers will be paired with young dramatists, who will help the seniors develop their stories. The partnering program is still in the developmental stage.

Salzer said she hopes that the new projects will result in workshop productions similar to the annual ones she has mounted of young playwrights’ scripts since her program’s inception in 1985.

One of those workshop productions, by teen-age writer Josefina Lopez, now a student at UC San Diego, was broadcast by KPBS-TV last year and has recently been made available to other stations across the country.

Salzer expressed particular pride in her partnering program for seniors. She credits her mother with the inspiration.

“She came out here from New York to live in a nursing home in December of 1988,” Salzer said. “She has a neurological condition which makes it hard for her to have fine motor control, but she’s very alert and has wonderful stories to tell. I thought how wonderful it would be if some of these stories could be the basis for very short dramatic pieces. Not only would the storyteller have the joy of creating, but young people will have the opportunity to use writing skills that they are developing in exchange with a writing partner who also has something to give to the partnership.”

Bowery Gets Rights to Broadway Hit

The Bowery Theatre landed the rights to David Mamet’s hit Broadway play “Speed-The-Plow” just before the rights were frozen in anticipation of a national tour, said Mickey Mullany, managing director of the Bowery.

The show, which became known informally as “the Madonna show” when the pop singer starred in it on Broadway--drawing respectful notices--is scheduled to run at the Bowery, San Diego’s smallest Equity house, in October. The Bowery’s season also includes a co-production with the new Latino theater troupe, Mascara Magica, called “I Am Celso,” June 21-July 15 and “The Glass Menagerie,” opening Aug. 9.

Getting “Speed-the-Plow” is definitely the good news for Mullany, who has had her share of grief at the theater since artistic director Ralph Elias left on a vacation to Europe with his wife, the Bowery’s development director Allison Brennan.

In his absence, Mullany, who became the whole artistic staff in addition to her regular duties as managing director of the theater and the star of the Bowery’s current show, “Jesse and the Bandit Queen,” had to cancel nearly two weeks of performances when her co-star, Patrick Egan, required a sudden hernia operation.

“We said to ourselves, ‘What is the worst thing that could go wrong when Ralph goes on vacation? We could shut down the theater,’ and, by God, that’s just what we did,” Mullany said with a tired laugh.

“Jesse and the Bandit Queen” is scheduled to run this weekend with understudy Tim Reilly replacing Egan, and continue Thursdays-Sundays, through June 9.

Other Troupes to Use the Gaslamp Theatre

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company theater plans to keep its spaces open to other theater troupes while it shuts down for a few monts. Already on schedule are Nehemiah Persoff, who will star in Eric Bogosian’s “Drinking in America” July 17-29, and the San Diego Actors Theatre, which is planning a production from August to mid-September, both at the Elizabeth North Theatre.

Tickets will be available through Ticketron. The box office for the Gaslamp will be closing down with the theater company.

Also coming up at the Hahn Cosmopolitan on Monday is a reading of Reid D. Baer’s new play, “I Am a Lion,” a story about a dysfunctional family directed by James R. Thayne and produced by Scripteasers, San Diego’s 42-year-old play-reading organization. The reading is free to the public. A $3 donation is suggested.

PROGRAM NOTES: The Old Globe Theatre now has a Hamlet for its “Hamlet,” opening Aug. 30-Oct. 7. The sweet prince, Campbell Scott, has quite a lineage. He’s the son of Colleen Dewhurst and George C. Scott. Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the theater, is directing. . . .

Old Globe favorites Richard Easton, Richard Kneeland, Ed Hall, Pippa Pearthree and Jonathan McMurtry are cast with Michael Gill and Jayne Atkinson (as the young lovers, Orlando and Rosalind) in “As You Like It,” opening at the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre June 22-July 29. Julianne Boyd directs. . . .

The national tour of Jerry Sterner’s Wall Street comedy, “Other People’s Money,” has postponed its San Diego stop from its previously released July dates until sometime in the fall, reports Times critic Don Shirley from L.A. No new dates have been announced. . . .

The Plus Fire Performance Group, headed by the husband and wife team of Bartlett Sher and Carla Kirkwood will present David Rabe’s “Sticks and Bones” in collaboration with the San Diego City College Drama Department. The show runs May 24-June 2 and will have a special benefit performance for homeless Vietnam veterans May 26. . . .

The Ensemble Arts Theatre will continue its staged play reading series with “The Dark Confessions Her Veins Spell,” an adaptation of the work “Voyages” by poet Hart Crane. The reading on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Words & Music book gallery in Hillcrest, is free. . . .

The Old Globe’s Play Discovery program concludes Monday at 7:30 p.m. with Lee Dunne’s “Goodbye to the Hill,” a story about an Irish youth, struggling in his relationships with his mother and brother. . . .

Patti Goodwin, who was featured in the Starlight Musical Theatre’s “La Cage Aux Folles” and “The Sound of Music” last season, will star in “42nd Street,” the opening show of Moonlight Amphitheatre, July 3-15. Nearly 400 actors vied for roles in the upcoming production, which is almost as many as attended the entire first season of the 10-year-old Moonlight organization. . . .

Josefina Lopez, the UC San Diego undergraduate whose play, “Simply Maria or the American Dream,” a CYPP winner, was broadcast by KPBS-TV last year, will present her latest, “Real Women Have Curves” as part of the annual Undergraduate Theatre Festival in UCSD’s Warren Theatre May 23 and 25-27. . . .

Leon Singer, restaurateur (El Tecolote) and a San Diego Critics Circle best actor nominee for “Burning Patience” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre plays Don Julio in the movie “A Show of Force,” starring Amy Irving, Robert Duvall, Lou Diamond Phillips and Andy Garcia. . .