Drama Students’ Crucible : Theater: UCSD Cabaret stage gives young actors and playwrights an opportunity to spread their creative wings.

Aside from being some of the biggest stars in American film and theater, Sigourney Weaver, David Mamet, Christopher Durang, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Wendy Wasserstein have something else in common: They all once tested their theatrical talents at the Yale University Cabaret.

In the early 1970s, then-Yale School of Drama Dean Robert Brustein decided that the Ivy League campus needed a dose of alternative, late-night theater. Brustein converted a basement room in an old fraternity house into a theatrical space. He gave students carte blanche to create as they saw fit: Durang, Wasserstein and Mamet wrote. Weaver, Kline and Streep performed. Yale Cabaret was born.

Four years ago, Yale graduate Walt Jones, who is now a UC San Diego theater professor, brought the Cabaret format to UCSD. He converted a tiny university rehearsal studio--known as 409 Small, off Russel Drive on the Warren College campus--into a viable theatrical venue. He told students to let loose. Now, UCSD Cabaret has built a reputation of its own. Students, faculty and sporadic off-campus observers routinely fill up the 40-plus-seat venue.

Students, both graduate and undergraduate, perform, design, direct and sometimes write the UCSD Cabaret productions. The after-hours shows, presented at 9 and 11 on Friday and Saturday evenings during the academic year, have been providing UCSD students with an important creative outlet.

The first Cabaret of the spring quarter, Albert Innaurato’s “The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie,” opens tonight at 9 p.m. and will be followed by seven different productions on subsequent weekends, a new one each week. The performances, which are open to the public, are providing San Diego audiences opportunities to see some original and provocative theater.

“I think it’s really important to have Cabaret,” said Jones. “I think it’s just as important as anything else we offer in the program. We give the students the space to do the work they want to do. It was a student thing at Yale, and it is here, too.

UCSD Cabaret productions are completely extracurricular. Students receive no class credit for working on Cabarets, and many students spend their own money to pay for productions. The department essentially gives the students the keys to the space, a pat on the back and the freedom to push the limits of their craft.

“It’s really important that there be a free outlet outside of faculty or departmental jurisdiction,” Jones said.

“We don’t say: ‘No, you can’t do this play because it’s not right for your training at this time.’ In a university situation where assignments are made, it’s important for creative people to do work that is not assigned.

“Oftentimes, students don’t know what they really want to do, what kind of theater they want to create,” Jones said. “The existence of (Cabaret) helps them focus on taking chances. Cabaret is a way for the students to show the people around them, the faculty and peers: ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”

Jones cited acclaimed playwright Christopher Durang as an example of someone at Yale who spent much of his student time workshopping plays at the Cabaret.

“Most of the plays Chris has written since Yale started in the Cabaret,” Jones said. ‘The Marriage of Bette and Boo’ started in the Cabaret, ‘Dentity Crisis’ started in the Cabaret, ‘Idiots Karamazov’ (a musical comedy about the Brothers Karamazov written with Albert Innaurato) started in the Cabaret.” Since leaving Yale, Durang’s work has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theaters nationwide.

Although Durang’s successes are one side of the picture, the Cabaret experience also can involve a certain degree of failure. Some experimental comedies just aren’t funny; some improvisations prove stale and repetitive; some performances appear under-rehearsed and not ready for the stage. This element of risk is expected by both students and audiences. UCSD Cabaret, like Yale Cabaret, has become a testing ground for new material and new ideas.

Jones does not see this situation as problematic. For one, Cabaret doesn’t have to sell tickets to survive: productions are free. Also, Cabaret productions are relatively low-cost: The university owns the space as well as all of the necessary materials--lights, costumes, props, sound boards, etc.

“A small amount of failure is good. (Bertolt) Brecht’s early work was free and free-form and up to nobody but him. He had a huge number of failures that didn’t mitigate his successes. Not that any of us are Brechts, but we might be,” Jones said.

“There was a play done at Cabaret four weeks ago called ‘Motel Chronicles’ that I think has a huge commercial life. First-year graduate student Stuart Osfelt wrote it, and he has since submitted the script to various theaters,” Jones said.

“He can look back to the Cabaret and say, ‘It started there.’ ”

According to current Cabaret artistic director Christi Sibul, an undergraduate student, “Cabaret is for the exploration of ideas.” She believes Cabaret exists “to see if things work out, to see if these bizarre concepts you’re writing about have any theatrical value.

“The idea is that we’re playing. We’re playing with different ideas, and, if it doesn’t work out, everybody says, ‘Oh well.’ ”

“Bennie Blimpo,” the first Cabaret production this quarter, should further Cabaret’s experimental tradition. Rather than stage the play in a straightforward, typical fashion, undergraduate director Mary Hafner has taken a few directorial liberties.

Hafner “is exploring the play as a multimedia piece,” Sibul said.

Actors on stage physically interact with characters in the film.

This sort of creative deviation from the norms of theater is what Cabaret is all about.

Upcoming Cabarets this spring include performances of Tennessee Williams’ “This Property’s Condemned” on May 10-11; an “Interdepartmental Arts Cabaret” coordinated by Stuart Osfelt on May 24-25; and Walt Jones’ staging of Bertolt Brecht’s “In the Jungle of Cities,” scheduled to run June 5-9.

For further scheduling information regarding UCSD Cabaret, contact the UCSD Theatre Department at 534-3791.