Theater Troupe Turns Tide on Pier-Top Entertainment

There are a lot of things you can do on the Santa Monica Pier. Ride the carousel. Play ringtoss, Skee-ball and video games. Ride bumper cars. Eat. Fish. Look at the view. Lately, you can also see some good theater. Fourteen months ago, the Aresis Ensemble at the Waterfront Stage established itself on the pier. The 30-member theater collective is dedicated to the fostering of contemporary writers--and production of new works.

Their newest offering, Kathy Acker’s “Lulu” (based on Wedekind’s work of the same name), had its world premiere Sept. 15.

“It’s an avant-garde treatment of the classic archetype,” said Aresis co-artistic director Charles Duncombe Jr., “a street creature plucked from that environment and turned into this glittering sexual object for the delight and pleasure of men. In her version, Kathy’s got pieces of ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Pygmalion,’ ‘Joan of Arc’--she goes through a range of female icons. It ends up with Lulu rejecting all those identities and disappearing on a voyage to discover herself, seize her own freedom.”

Duncombe and co-artistic director Frederique Michel discovered Acker’s text (an extraction from her novel “Don Quixote”) in a theater magazine; their transposition to the stage is accompanied by an original score and a black-and-white film.

“We spent a full day filming in the middle of the desert with a goose and a bathtub,” recalled Michel, who’s directing the play. “I wanted to have a goat and a llama, but it was kind of difficult.” The animals, noted Pennsylvania native Duncombe, are representative of wild things--like Lulu--imprisoned by male society. “Sometimes the film will bridge one scene to another,” he said, “sometimes it runs behind the scene as a silent film.”

The Paris-born Michel, who also adapted and directed Aresis’ recent staging of Harry Kondoleon’s “The Brides,” enjoys adding her personal vision to the artist’s text.

“When I read something, I get excited about it,” she said in her lush French accent. “Right away, I see pictures. Like when I read ‘Brides’--it is just monologues. Just monologues. There’s nothing happening. It can be done by one woman, two women.” (Her treatment included six actresses, two birds and a snake.) “That’s what I like: finding something you can do whatever you want with; you can work with your imagination.”

“That’s what’s great about Frederique,” said Duncombe, who also partners with Michel in private life. “She’s very ballsy that way; she has great confidence in her own vision. Of course, sometimes the choices don’t work out; sometimes they’re bad, wrong. Those are the chances you take. You take a text you’re inspired by, and you work with it, bring the best you’ve got to it. Naturally, you hope that people like it. But your first priority is that the work itself makes sense to you, that you care about it.”

And yet, it’s hard not to care about reviews. Duncombe is still smarting over the company’s recent production of Charles Mee’s “The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador,” which sank in a pool of negative critical response.

“I killed myself on ‘El Salvador,’ ” he said earnestly.

“You put so much of yourself into a piece of work, and then it just disappears, like over the edge of a cliff. And unlike film, when it’s gone--it’s gone. No one will ever see it.”

He doesn’t completely fault the reviewers for their harshness. “All that matters is what you put on stage; that’s as it should be. But on the other hand, when you give your heart and soul, every dime you have, every dime you can borrow to make something good, you think, ‘At least, could we get a pat on the head?’ ”

In fact, the track record of the 3-year-old company has been a healthy one. From their beginnings at the nearby Off-Main Street Theatre, Aresis’ stay at the Waterfront (where Michel also teaches acting and directing) has produced a flurry of works, including Mamet’s “The Shawl,” Pinter’s “Landscape” and “Silence,” Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s “Female Parts,” Duane Whitaker’s “Eddie Presley” and Michael Vinaver’s “Portrait of a Woman.”

Part of the momentum may have had to do with the psychological rush of being on borrowed time.

The city of Santa Monica and Pier Restoration Corp. have allowed Aresis to inhabit the formerly empty building while they decide what to do with the space in the long term. A six-month external renovation will start on the building as early as November, and Duncombe is hoping during that transitional time to lay plans for a new season--plus do sufficient fund raising to convince the city of the company’s economic viability.

“I think they’ve been impressed with how thoroughly we’ve dug in here, the level of work and commitment we’re putting in,” he said. “Of course, they’re under a lot of pressure to generate as much commerce as they can. So we’ve got to demonstrate to them the cultural value of having a theater here, convince the board that it’s a good thing to have a live theater on the pier--that it adds to the diversity, and balances the other things out.”

“Lulu” plays at 8 p.m. Fridays through Sundays at the Waterfront Stage, 250 Santa Monica Pier. General admission is $12.50, students and seniors, $6.25. (213) 393-6672.