South Africa Shows Head Downtown : LATC will present ‘Absalom’s Song’ and ‘My Africa!’ and the long-dormant Orhpeum Theatre may reopen with ‘Sarafina!’

Downtown Los Angeles will offer an unofficial South African theater festival in the next few months.

Two South African shows are scheduled for the Los Angeles Theatre Center: a new play called “Absalom’s Song” and the return of Athol Fugard’s “My Children! My Africa!” in virtually the same production that was seen at the La Jolla Playhouse and Hollywood’s Henry Fonda Theatre.

Furthermore, discussions are under way for the South African musical “Sarafina!” to reopen the long-dormant Orpheum Theatre for the first extended theatrical run there since the early ‘60s.

If plans are firmed up, “Sarafina!” will arrive first. Tentative dates are Feb. 5-24. Set in 1976, “Sarafina!” follows a group of South African high school students who join the Soweto uprisings and also stage a play about then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela.

First produced at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in June, 1987, “Sarafina!” was brought to Lincoln Center in New York later that year and transferred to Broadway in January, 1988.

The touring company is largely the same as the one that played Broadway. Mbongeni Ngema, whose “Asinamali!” played the Mark Taper Forum in 1986, directed “Sarafina!” and wrote the music with Hugh Masekela.

The Orpheum, potential home of “Sarafina!” in Los Angeles, is a 65-year-old, 2,084-seat vaudeville and movie palace at Broadway and 9th Street. It has been used recently for sporadic single-night or weekend stage events, but not for a run as long as three weeks.

“My Children! My Africa!” will replace Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” in the Feb. 21-March 24 slot at LATC. Except for the casting of Melora Hardin as the play’s teen-age girl and a different lighting design for the Tom Bradley Theatre, the production will remain the same as in La Jolla and Hollywood.

Nancy Travis, who played the girl in the other Southland venues, has gone on to movie assignments, but replacement Hardin got five performances under her belt before the show left the Fonda. Brock Peters and Sterling Macer Jr. remain in the other roles.

“My Children!” didn’t fare well at the Fonda box office, suffering from an unusually brief period for advance publicity and marketing. But a subscription audience is built-in at LATC, and theater officials are also trying to add the production to the list of shows that students get to see as part of LATC’s “Theatre as a Learning Tool” program.

The production’s general manager, Ken Myers, said that its commercial producers, Vidal Sassoon and Richard F. Pardy, are forgoing any financial participation in the LATC run: “We’ve cut it to the bone to get it to where LATC can afford it.” However, the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse retains its financial cut in the show.

“Anna Christie” was canceled because director David Thacker had to tend to financial problems at his own theater, the Young Vic in England--and because no other directors were available with whom star Natasha Richardson wanted to work, said LATC producing director Diane White.

“Absalom’s Song,” a new play by a San Francisco-based South African, Selaelo Maredi, will fill the March 7-April 21 slot that was vacated several weeks ago when “Day of Hope” was postponed until later in the season. A two-character drama with eight songs, “Song” examines the relationship between a white woman and her black servant. It will be staged by Ann Bowen, who directed some of Fugard’s plays at LATC’s precursor, Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre.

Playwrights Lab: The Mark Taper Forum is launching a playwrights lab next month. Fifteen writers will receive $1,000 stipends and meet weekly, directed by playwrights Maria Irene Fornes and Mac Wellman and Taper dramaturge Leon Katz. Applicants should submit a full-length or one-act play and a resume to the Mark Taper Forum Mentor Playwrights’ Project, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, 90012, by Tuesday.

‘Twelfth Night’ on 12th Night: On the 12th night of Christmas (Jan. 6), Shakespeare Festival/L.A. will bring an all-star reading of “Twelfth Night” to the Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre as a benefit for the summer theater company. Expected to join in are Ed Asner, Dana Delany, Harry Groener, Val Kilmer, Rue McClanahan, Roger Rees and David Ogden Stiers, with music by Peter Melnick. Tickets cost $100 (including reception) to $175 (including reception and a limited-edition autographed poster).

Information: (213) 489-1121.

Pay What You Can: You may choose your own ticket price for Friday’s matinee of “The Heidi Chronicles.” Tickets are available at the Doolittle box office--cash only, with a two-ticket-per-person maximum, subject to availability.

Hot Scripts: If you sent a script to the Colony recently, it may have been among the 25 that were in the trunk of literary manager Jerry Fey’s car--along with the list of playwrights’ names and addresses--when the car was stolen. Contact Fey at (213) 665-3011.

King in as Esther: Yolanda King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., will play Esther in “Willie and Esther” at Theatre of Arts, Friday-Sunday, while the original Esther, Edwina Moore, is on vacation. Moore returns Jan. 4.