Kingsley to Sub for Keating at Benefit for the S.D. Rep

It helps to have friends.

Charles Keating, originally scheduled to perform as part of a benefit for the San Diego Repertory Theatre with Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart March 30 at the Lyceum Stage, had to drop out. So Stewart prevailed upon Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, a fellow veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, to take Keating’s place.

The show, “So Many People Have Heads,” an evening of song, verse and prose compiled by Cicely Berry, vocal coach for the Royal Shakespeare Company, includes a variety of readings of works by such authors as James Joyce, Jules Feiffer, Bertolt Brecht and Sylvia Plath.

Theaters, like prophets, are often more appreciated outside their home communities.

The Performing Arts Theatre for the Handicapped, or PATH, a homeless, 11-year-old Carlsbad-based group largely dependent on the work of a small staff of volunteers, has come to attention of the National Council on Communicative Disorders.

PATH board president and founder Robert H. Cole will fly to the Kennedy Center in Washington May 9 to accept a 1991 Distinguished Service Award from the Council, which is composed of 28 national organizations that help people cope with blindness, deafness, speech and learning disabilities.

But has this acclaim translated into what PATH really needs--a permanent space to stage plays and showcase talent with the handicapped performers the organization trains?

“Unfortunately, not yet,” Cole said from his home in La Costa. The search for permanent space has been a problem ever since Cole moved the organization from Los Angeles to San Diego seven years ago.

For more than a year, from January, 1989, to April, 1990, Wells Fargo Bank allowed PATH to use a building it leases in Carlsbad that had been unoccupied for the last 10 years. PATH used it to stage “The Curious Savage,” “Stagecoach Saloon” and several variety-type showcases.

The 4,700-square-foot space was ideal in part because of its bathrooms, which were accessible for handicapped performers with wheelchairs, Cole said. PATH also invested time and money in building a stage that was accessible to the handicapped.

Then, according to Cole, Brooke Wolford, assistant vice president and senior asset manager of corporate real estate, called Cole on Feb. 27, 1990, and asked him to vacate the premises by April 1 in anticipation of bringing in some paying tenants.

A year later, those tenants have yet to materialize. The space remains vacant and PATH still has no space. Cole said he has had no luck with his requests to return to the space, even temporarily.

Meanwhile, recognition for PATH’s achievements continues to pour in. Carlsbad Mayor Claude A. (Bud) Lewis and the Carlsbad City Council will make an official proclamation Tuesday honoring Cole for “giving generously of his time and effort in establishing PATH and assisting talented handicapped individuals seeking careers in the theatre, motion pictures, TV, radio and other media.” But PATH needs more than a proclamation, Cole said. It needs a space.

Cole can be reached at (619) 753-3386.

Two former United States International University instructors, Kerry Duse and Elliot Palay, are banking that there is still an audience out there for the type of musical fare USIU used to offer in the Theatre of Old Town, before the school’s bankruptcy cut the school’s season short.

The two have started Music Arts Productions, which is showing “Ain’t Misbehavin”’ at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts through March 17.

Palay, who serves as associate director to Duse’s artistic director, stresses that there is no connection between USIU and his new organization. But don’t be surprised to see similar fare and faces from the USIU program.

Starring in “Ain’t Misbehavin”’ at Poway are three cast members who also starred in the same USIU show at The Theatre in Old Town a few years ago: Glenn Carson, Tracy Hughes and Leatrice Andry. Palay said he is hoping for the proceeds from “Ain’t Misbehavin”’ to finance the next show, “Tintypes,” May 31-June 15 at Poway. “Tintypes” had also been produced with some success at USIU.

“What we would like to do is produce nice, entertaining musicals,” Palay said. “We know what kind of talent pool is available. We know what kind of shows will appeal to audiences. We know that these kind of shows can sell and we would like to present them. It seems like a logical way to run a theater.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Some of Don McLean’s songs, among them “American Pie” and “Vincent,” are part of a musical written by Allan Havis, professor of playwrighting at UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre. The show will have its premiere at the Chichester Festival Theatre, outside of London, May 21-July 27. The musical moves through the 1960s to the 1990s and tells the story of a groupie who has a child by a rock star in the 1960s and reunites with him 20 years later. The San Diego-based Havis, whose work has been produced at the Long Wharf Theatre, the Hartford Stage, the American Repertory Theatre and the South Coast Repertory, has yet to have a play mounted here. . . .

New York producers are already expressing interest in A.R. Gurney’s “The Snow Ball,” the Old Globe/Hartford Stage Company show that recently opened in Hartford, according to Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe. Interest also continues to heat up for “The White Rose,” Lillian Garrett’s new play that closed at the Old Globe Feb. 24. “Tentatively, it looks as if there is going to be a New York production next fall,” said Thomas Hall, managing director of the theater. Bruce Kerner, who owns the film rights, said he is currently in negotiations with a director for a movie version. . . .

Ticket sales for most plays are down from 5%-15% at theaters citywide, but they’re up about 15% at the San Diego Theatre League’s Times Arts Tix booth where tickets cost half price on the day of performance. San Diego Theatre League executive director Alan Ziter speculates that that’s because “people are looking to Arts Tix as a source of entertainment in hard economic times.” Also on the subject of bargains, Times Arts Tix will offer $5 tickets for the final dress rehearsal of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s upcoming production of “A Shayna Maidel” Sunday, March 31.