Chicago-Born Theater Company Likes to Live Life a Little Dangerously : IgLoo Presents a Play With a Chilling Message About Love and AIDS

Some people are born for danger. Others have danger thrust upon them and meet the challenge head-on.

A young company from Chicago, igLoo, was born for danger, or was at least created that way five years ago.

Those who have danger thrust upon them are the two protagonists of igLoo’s production of the late Alan Bowne’s “Beirut,” opening Friday at the company’s space on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

“Beirut” is a stark futuristic drama about enduring love in a society torn apart by an AIDS-like disease. It’s the story of a woman named Blue who crosses strictly maintained quarantine lines--surrounding a Manhattan neighborhood renamed Beirut--to find the love of her life, Torch, who has tested positive and has been separated from the non-infected society.

It’s a hard-hitting play about a hard-edged subject, directed by igLoo co-founder Dan Piburn and featuring co-founder and artistic director Chris Peditto as Torch, and Kristina Loggia as Blue. Rick Isaacs appears as the “Lesion Patrol Guard” who stalks the ghetto’s squalid living units to separate the finally hopeless from the initially hopeless.

When igLoo began, it shook up Chicago critics and audiences alike. The group moved--literally--into a burned-out candy factory. It was about to become its theater and, as Piburn says: “It was also our residence. I lived in the ladies room; Chris and Maria lived in the lobby.” (Chris Peditto’s wife, Maria Tirabassi, was also a co-founder, along with Greg Nagan and Peditto’s brother Paul.) “At one point we had about eight people living in the theater somewhere.”

It was a communal life, and igLoo was a communal theater. The production that put them on the map was “A Fire Was Burning Over the Dumpling House One Chinese New Year,” by Paul Peditto. An autobiographical drama, it concerned his girlfriend’s emotional toboggan slide to death, and garnered rave reviews.

“A Fire Was Burning” was also igLoo’s first production at its current space in Hollywood.

“What we wanted to do with our acting and productions was, in our own way, to present a very immediate kind of theater experience that was not complacent and institutionalized and frozen,” Chris Peditto said.

Peditto’s philosophy of theater is drawn from Gertrude Stein, who said, “Don’t draw the tree, draw the idea of a tree.”

“So much theater is stillborn,” he said, “because it’s trying to draw the tree. If you want to stretch the boundaries of theater, the first thing you’ve got to do is test yourself; you’ve got to fail.”

Peditto is not alone in his view of what igLoo is all about. “IgLoo is an igloo with a lot of heat,” Piburn said. Like the Eskimo shelter, “it keeps everybody warm.” He explains that an igloo is where a family lives. Family members leave, go on journeys, then return to sit in the warmth, and tell stories of their travels to raise their consciousness. “That’s igLoo’s mission,” Piburn said.

“Beirut” is one of those plays. It forces anyone involved in the production to make decisions.

The big question in Bowne’s drama is how many people would follow Blue’s example and give up their lives for someone they love. Company members see the question in different lights.

Piburn said it’s more than a timely play. “It directly addresses a situation we all have to face one way or another. ‘Beirut’ is an emotional, psychological and academic journey because everybody is either directly or indirectly affected by what’s going on.” Although the playwright was gay and died of AIDS, his use of a heterosexual couple makes his statement accessible to a wide audience, Piburn said.

Would actress Kristina Loggia, who plays Blue, take the risk her character takes?

“When Bowne wrote the play,” she said, “he wasn’t saying, ‘Don’t be careful.’ He’s definitely saying, ‘Be careful.’ He’s saying, ‘If we don’t wake up to what’s going on, on a political level, this is what’s going to happen.’ Would I do what Blue does? At that point, if this is what it comes to, there’s no doubt in my mind. It’s a lot like Nazi Germany. They said, ‘It’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen.’ And it happened.”

Rick Isaacs, who plays the Lesion Guard, also connects the play’s message with larger themes. “The American Dream is history,” he said, “so we’re afraid of everything. Even though Bowne uses the shell of a disease, he says so much about society--that you’ve got to risk. The play’s about risking, and taking the mask off and going for what you really want.”

T. Baker Howell, who is designing the production and writing original music, feels as strongly about the play’s message. “That’s why I got involved,” he said. “The message is: Do you want to live if you can’t love somebody, regardless of whatever the sex is? Is living without loving someone life? The choice becomes very clear. It’s going to be to love and live, or not to love and die.”

It’s a question that audiences are going to have to answer for themselves. As Peditto believes, theater is there to make audiences think. He said it’s only “when you’re throwing yourself into dangerous waters that good stuff is going to happen, that you’re going to grow. You’ve got to make people think dangerously.”

Peditto and igLoo keep looking for dangerous waters, and keep on growing.

“Beirut” begins performances Friday at igLoo, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, playing at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Indefinitely. Tickets: $17.50. Information: (213) 466-1767.