STAGE : ‘1,001 Night Stands’ Brings New Dawn to the Marquis

After more than a year of darkness at the Marquis Public Theatre on India Street, the lights will be back on this weekend.

Christopher R, a 42-year-old San Diego native, United States International University graduate and longtime figure in the San Diego theater scene, has signed an eight-month lease at the 112-seat theater. This weekend, Christopher R and partners Manuel Mancillas, Al Charlens and Miff Mole plan to move in a showcase workshop called “1,001 Night Stands” that will run every other weekend through the end of the year.

Under the terms of the lease, Minerva Marquis, who runs the theater, can take an extended holiday and return when she wishes to do her next show, which she said will be a Kabuki-style “Macbeth.”

Marquis’ deceased ex-husband, Raoul Marquis, left his son Tor the India Street block that includes the theater when he died last year. He left the stewardship of the theater to Minerva.

Christopher R’s company, which operates under the name Bear State Theatre/Ruse, plans to mount Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” in January and “Ghost Dance,” an original piece by Christopher R about the coming of an American Indian messiah, in early April. To finance the lease and the productions, the partners all have day jobs which may supplement box office receipts, donations and grants as needed. The company will also set aside some time for subleasing the space to other companies. Nothing else is on the schedule yet for the Marquis. Next summer, however, the company will present “The Tempest,” its second annual free Shakespeare production, in Zorro Gardens in Balboa Park.

Last summer’s free Shakespeare-in-the-park distinguished the company from the many other theater groups that have approached Minerva Marquis.

“I like free Shakespeare in the park. I like that sort of thing,” Marquis said this week.

Still another factor, according to Marquis, was that she has known and liked Christopher R since she moved here to run the theater in 1979. Christopher R had worked with Raoul Marquis at the Marquis Theatre as early as 1977 and was one of the co-founders of Indian Magique, which later evolved into the San Diego Repertory Theatre. He also directed shows at the Marquis and other theaters, including the San Diego Rep, the La Jolla Stage Company and the Coronado Playhouse.

“Every group in town approached me,” Marquis said. “But I trust him totally. He’s a family man (a father of four) and a dedicated theater person and he does the kind of theater we do.”

Even so, Christopher R reports, it wasn’t easy getting the lease. First, he gave up trying to reach her through the mail. He camped out on her doorstep.

“I just kept dropping notes and I didn’t hear from her so I had to go visit her six weeks ago. I told her we needed a home. She’s been approached on the space almost daily. But everyone seemed to want to rent it for a certain amount of time, for one show or for three months. What we offered is that we would take it for all of the time we would have it. And if she wants to do a show we’ll accommodate that. It’s her space ultimately.”

Ever since she plunged into “Heartbeats” at the Old Globe Theatre, Amanda McBroom has found that her own heart has been beating a little faster.

Part of it is that she has not stopped working on the show about love in the fortysomething set, which she created, co-wrote, composed songs for and stars in. It has been extended through Nov. 11 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. She’s also simultaneously writing songs for “Cop Rock.”

Since opening night, she has added dialogue and a new opening number, “It’s Gonna Be One of Those Days,” and changed some of her monologues on an almost nightly basis. And since her director left the show soon after opening night, as directors do, Jack O’Brien, the artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre, has been helping to stage the changes.

McBroom added that if the show moves on to another regional theater or perhaps to Off-Broadway, there will be still more changes after “Heartbeats” closes here--mostly at the beginning of Act Two.

If the Globe helps to negotiate a new venue for “Heartbeats,” the theater may participate in the future life of the play, she said. “I find myself listening to a scene and thinking I can change this and then, before I know it my scene is coming up,” McBroom said. “Then I wonder, ‘Who am I, the actress or the playwright?’ It’s been insane.”

Also adding to the insanity is the fact that rather than resting on Mondays--which is the theater’s dark night-- McBroom travels up to Los Angeles to do what for another person would also be a full-time job. She is expected to compose at least one song a week for the television show “Cop Rock.”

Last week, she reports, she had three. Of the 13 scheduled episodes, she’s up to number 11 now and she speculates that “by Thanksgiving, they may have to send me to a funny farm or wrap me in cold sheets.

“All I can say is God bless the fax machine,” she said from Los Angeles. “The fax machine and the phone have been on fire.”

McBroom did get a little rest this week--the show temporarily closed so that one of the ensemble, Hilary James, could get married.

“Heartbeats” performances resume Tuesday and the pressure will be back again with a number of producers scheduled to come and check out the show. One thing McBroom is looking forward to is the return of her husband, George Ball, who opened the show as her co-star but had to leave Sept. 28 for a concert tour.

Ball, who was replaced by Richard Hilton, will return for the final week of the run. But will he recognize the script he left behind?

McBroom laughed as she noted that that old script might not do him any good anymore.

“I’ve left him a new script on the coffee table.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Starlight Musical Theatre has a title for the world premiere musical it is presenting in 1991. It will be called “For My Country--the USO Musical”. . . .

The La Jolla Playhouse will give half-price tickets for “Twelfth Night” to patrons who donate five pounds or more of non-perishable food to the San Diego Food Bank. The half-price offer, which ends Nov. 4, excludes Friday and Saturday evening performances and is subject to ticket availability. . . .

The San Diego Repertory Theatre is hosting a Halloween fund-raiser, with a costume contest and haunted house, Oct. 29 at the Island Rehearsal Hall and Scene Shop. With a cover charge of $5, the company is not likely to make much of a dent in its goal of raising $350,000 by Dec. 31, but it’s a start. Still “Cymbeline,” which was said to need $100,000 to get under way, is a go at the San Diego Rep for Nov. 7. It’s been two weeks since the company announced it needed $100,000 to get the show under way and about $50,000 has been raised, insiders say. . . .

“Sh’bop! The Fab Fifties,” a revue of more than 20 fifties songs, sails into the Price Center Theatre at UC San Diego Saturday for one night only. . . .

“Las Comadres,” a women’s art collective, will perform “Border Boda,” a story about life on the border at the Centro Cultural de la Raza at 8 p.m. tonight.