STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : Life Parallels Stage Role for ‘2 Trains Running’ Actor

Ed Hall identifies with Holloway, the part he plays in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” now at the Old Globe Theatre.

Hall describes Holloway, one of a group of blacks frequenting a Pittsburgh diner in the show, as “one of the most stable persons in the play--a man who has lived his life, worked hard all his life, been through all the experiences that the others are living through and tries to give advice to the younger people.”

At 60, Hall describes himself in much the same way.

As a boy of 7 and 8, Hall, who grew up in Roxbury, Mass., used to take a bus with his mother and two brothers to South Carolina to pick cotton. As a young man, a graduate of Howard University and a U.S. Army veteran who decided to become an actor, he ignored the unwritten rule that there was no place for a black actor on Broadway in the 1950s.

“I went up for everything. They had a call for ‘Mister Roberts.’ We all stood in a line,” he said, recalling that he was the only black actor in that line. “Jimmy Hammerstein, Oscar Hammerstein’s son, was directing it. He came down and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said I’m here to read for the show.’ He said, ‘Thank you.’ ”

That was the end of Hall’s audition. And yet, there was something in him that would not be discouraged.

“When I started, there were not that many roles for black actors,” he said. “But I always felt I was as good as any actor on the Broadway stage.”

So he kept pursuing parts. He landed the role of one of the moving men in the original 1959 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” directed by Lloyd Richards, now directing “Two Trains Running.” Hall ultimately took on the larger role of Asagai, the young African student in the play, and played it for 1 1/2 years.

But his dream was to be in a repertory company, and in 1965, when he was offered a spot at the Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, R.I., he took it. He remains a member.

For 24 years, he played everything from a rock singer to Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He will be in the ABC television movie “Separate But Equal” (airing in two parts April 7 and 8) with Burt Lancaster and Sidney Poitier. And at the Old Globe, he won raves for his portrayal of Hoke, the chauffeur, in “Driving Miss Daisy.” He has also played Corin in the Globe’s “As You Like It” and is considering a part in the upcoming “The Merchant of Venice”--that is if he decides to defy his doctor’s advice and put off having his second hip replaced.

“Two Trains Running” marks Hall’s third August Wilson play. In “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” he played Bynum for three years, moving from the Yale Repertory Theatre to Broadway. In “The Piano Lesson,” he performed in the staged reading of that play at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference.

For Hall, acting in a Wilson play feels like something he’s prepared for just by living his life.

“My father was one of the greatest persons I’ve ever known. And it’s like August had just sat down and talked to my father and listened to him. I just love saying the lines. I don’t want to get gushy about it, but each night there’s a point in this play where it picks up with something I’m doing in my life.”

The part that moves him the most is where the characters discuss Hambone, a half-crazed man who will not stop asking for the ham he was promised 9 1/2 years before, even though it seems clear that it will never be forthcoming. Hambone’s refusal to give up, even to the point of absurdity, seems at once heroic and natural to Holloway--and to Hall.

“When August goes into one of those long speeches which he loves to write about believing in yourself, it comes out of experiences in my life,” Hall said. “I have a great belief in myself. I knew that I could do anything, any of those parts. That’s why it’s so poignant. It’s so natural to say sit there and say those words.”

The health of a theater town can, in part, be measured by the small companies springing up. And now, with more small spaces available for rental in San Diego, things are looking up for new, homeless companies testing their wings.

One of the most actively booked local spaces is the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s small theater, where Sammy Shore’s play, “Beyond the Laughter, Beneath the Smile” plays through April 7. The bookings at the 90-seat house, which only became available after the Gaslamp decided to limit its productions to its larger Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, now extend through the end of the summer. The Ensemble Arts Theatre will bring “Lady Macbeth,” its co-production with the Gaslamp from April 26-May 19, followed by a production by the San Diego Actors Theatre May 31-June 30.

“A Lyon’s Tale,” an original play about a dysfunctional family written by local playwright Reid Baer and produced by a new company, Pacific Coast Productions, moves in from July 26 through late August.

Close behind in booking popularity for small groups is the 103-seat Marquis Public Theatre, now managed by the Ruse Theatre. For nearly a year before Ruse took over the space in November, 1990, the Marquis lay vacant. Now, “Amidst the Alien Corn,” an evening of two one-act plays by the newly founded Outcry/Studio 4 company, plays through March 31. Next up will be the Star & Tortoise Theatre production of “Everywoman,” an original play by the Star & Tortoise Theatre founder and director Jana Gardner April 18-May 5. Then Ruse, which is a rather small company itself, returns with a jazz festival to be followed by “Ghost Dance,” an original play about an American Indian messiah in June and “The Lady Cries Murder” in August.

At the San Diego Repertory Theatre-managed 250-seat Lyceum Space, the Southeast Community Theatre brings in “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” April 11-May 5. The San Diego Chinese Center, in association with the San Diego Rep, will present “The Monkey King,” an adaptation of a Chinese folk tale, on the 550-seat Lyceum Stage, April 15-21. Then the San Diego Rep begins its season with “The Rocky Horror Show” May 15 on the Lyceum Stage, and with “Still Life,” June 5 on the Lyceum Space.

The 204-seat Sixth Avenue Playhouse, also managed by the San Diego Repertory Theatre, is more sparsely booked at this point, with Sledgehammer Theatre presenting Bertolt Brecht’s “Drums in the Night” June 16 for a four-week run.

PROGRAM NOTES: The Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Tony-winning production of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” which was presented at the La Jolla Playhouse before its New York run, will air on “American Playhouse” Friday from 9-11:30 p.m. on KPBS-TV. . . .

At the Spreckels Theatre, the Famous People Players, a troupe of talented disabled performers who work with puppets, will present shows April 1 and 2 at 9:45 a.m. and 11: 45 a.m. . . .

“I Love You, I Love You Not,” Wendy Kesselman’s story about a teen-age girl who learns about her grandmother’s experience as an adolescent at Auschwitz, will be presented by San Diego State University’s Theatre for Young Audiences April 26-28 at the Experimental Theatre at SDSU. . . .

Half-price tickets for seniors are available for the March 30 matinee of the Old Globe’s “Sun Bearing Down’ at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. The tickets, at $8.50 each, are on sale only at the Senior Center, City Administration Building, 202 C St.