Pair’s Career of ‘Working Well Together’ Continues at Theatre 40

When Theatre 40 went looking for a new artistic director last spring, its board of directors expected to hire one person for the job.

It ended up with two.

As of July 1, Robert Cohen and Keith Fowler are the co-artistic directors of the company, which produces out of the theater on the Beverly Hills High School campus.

For this season, Theatre 40’s 25th anniversary, they have chosen a lineup of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” Howard Brenton’s “Bloody Poetry,” Fowler’s “New Year’s 1944,” the third annual One-Act Festival, Thomas Bernhard’s “Eve of Retirement” and Moliere’s “The Misanthrope.”

“It happened flukishly,” Fowler said of the pair’s appointment. “Bob had seen an ad for the position in Art Search,” a theater employment directory, “and called me about it. He thought it might catch their attention if we applied together.”

In fact, the collaboration of Fowler, 52, and Cohen, 53, is nothing new--it dates all the way back to Yale Drama School, where the two were classmates. Since then, Fowler spent eight years as the artistic director of the Virginia Music Theatre (where Cohen directed one of the shows), two years running the American Revels Company in Richmond and 11 years on the drama faculty at UC Irvine, where Cohen has chaired the department since its inception in 1969.

“We work well together,” said Cohen, a native of Washington, D.C., who gave up law studies at Dartmouth to pursue theater. “In many ways, I’ve had a secure and easy career. So I was looking for a challenge, something new.

“For example, today we’re washing walls at the theater. Now there are people who do that at UCI, but the chairman of the department is not one of them. So it’s like a year of volunteerism for me, going back to my roots. This is exactly the kind of arena we both started in.”

Both will continue working at UCI, divvying up Theatre 40 duties as needed. “We share some of the same interests and skills--but not exactly,” Fowler noted. “I have more experience in production; he has more experience in actor-coaching.” Given that, and that he lives in Los Angeles (commuting to Irvine on motorcycle), Fowler will take on more of the company’s day-to-day chores. But, he stressed: “We’re working jointly on the play choices and casting.”

Cohen will stage the first offering, “Much Ado,” opening Thursday.

“It’s a good summer play--a funny, warm play,” said the author-director, whose books include “Acting Power,” “Acting One” and “Acting in Shakespeare.” Cohen regards it as “a play of couples and couplings--and very much of the ‘90s: dealing with single people, commitments, betrayals, insecurity in the single life. Beatrice and Benedick are jaded; this is their second time around, and they’re wary of each other. Working through that wariness is very pertinent to our time, our culture.”

He’s pleased with the stylistic mix that he and Fowler have assembled for the season: classical with Moliere and Shakespeare, modern with Brenton and Bernhard.

“We wanted to pick plays that would have some wit, something to say--besides entertainment value,” Fowler said. “They’re also international, not all American or all European.”

Written by an Austrian-German, “Eve of Retirement,” which has been produced only once before in the United States, “is about Nazism,” Cohen noted. “There are lots of ramifications with Eastern Europe, the anti-ethnic campaigns.” Written in 1981, it predates--and perhaps foreshadows--Kurt Waldheim’s accession to Austrian chancellor in 1986.

In October, Fowler will direct “Bloody Poetry” (on the amorous escapades of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley); December marks the premiere of his “New Year’s 1944,” written in the style of a ‘40s radio show.

In between now and then is major gear-up time: “Once school starts, it’ll get hairier.”

Those demands aside, the San Francisco native is convinced that this new co-artistic directorship is the right job at the right time. “Ten years ago, when I was finishing with the Revels Company, I was putting in more than I got out,” Fowler said. “But being an artistic director is really what I wanted to do. After 10 years as a guest director, I miss that. It was important to me not to just do single shows but pick shows that bounce off each other, really develop a sense of community.”