Sledgehammer Production Takes Swing at Censorship

As the title of his latest play, “7 Blowjobs” indicates, Mac Wellman does not shy away from controversy.

The fictional play is about the issues of censorship that have plagued artists since the controversy over an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe erupted two summers ago. It premiers Sunday in a production by the Sledgehammer Theatre.

To reinforce his point, Wellman has dedicated the work to the men he calls “the Four Harebrained Horseman of a Contemporary Cornball Apocalypse”: Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the Rev. Donald Wildmon (head of the American Family Assn.), Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) and the Rev. Pat Robertson.

The dedication is in retaliation for the role he believes these four played last year in blocking the National Endowment for the Arts from giving grants to performance artists Holly Hughes, Karen Finley, Tim Miller and John Fleck, all of whom had been recommended for the awards by panels of their peers. Wellman counts Hughes and Finley as personal friends.

“I know they must feel very lonely and isolated,” Wellman said of the four who lost their grants. “I view it as part of my public duty as a citizen to do whatever I can to take the pressure off them.”

As for Helms, Wildmon, Rohrabacher and Robertson, “They make me angry,” Wellman said on the phone from his office at the University of New Mexico, where he is teaching this year.

“It’s a year later, and a lot of the superficial hoopla has passed away, but there has been enormous damage done to the arts. There are huge budget cuts all over the board. We were portrayed as a bunch of lunatics and crazies in a time of economic hardship when any excuse could be used to slash funds for the arts. Very few people are attacking Helms and the right-wing religious fanatics associated with him. I think they need to be attacked, and that’s why I wrote this play.”

“7 Blowjobs” tells the story of a fictitious U.S. senator, called Senator Bob, who receives seven mysterious photos in his office on Capitol Hill. He and his staff spend much of the play trying to figure out what the photos are of, and then what to do about them.

Wellman applauds Sledgehammer for presenting this controversial show. The company, which is known for building theatrical spaces at unusual sites, will present the show in a former parking garage at 843 10th Ave.

Scott Feldsher, Sledgehammer artistic director and director of the play, said he jumped at the opportunity to stage the work.

“We’re here to explore the boundaries that a lot of other theaters put around themselves,” Feldsher said during a rehearsal break. “Some theaters won’t touch certain work if it’s politically controversial or theatrically controversial, and that’s always been the kind of work we’re attracted to.”

Although Sledgehammer has been primarily known for its innovative productions of classical works by the likes of Brecht, Beckett and Shepard (the company has done some wild stuff with Shakespeare as well), Feldsher said that working on “7 Blowjobs” has inspired him to develop more original scripts and do more previously unproduced work by American playwrights.

“This is the first step along this track,” Feldsher said.

Tickets can be ordered by calling 544-1484.

To paraphrase a line from “Moby Dick,” the Old Globe Theatre was Don Sparks’ Harvard and Yale.

Sparks, who stars as Aubrey Piper, the showoff in the Globe’s production of “The Show-Off,” grew up in La Mesa. After being what he describes as “a terrible student who barely got out of high school” he served an apprenticeship at the Old Globe.

That was when the Old Globe was an Equity theater only during the summer. During the winter months it was a community theater. Sparks worked without pay all winter, and during the summer he earned $45 a week.

For the last dozen years, he has lived in Los Angeles. He has had roles in a lot of television and plays a recurring character in “L.A. Law” (Russell Spitzer who generally defends sleazebags, he says). But every three or four years, he comes back to the Old Globe, which, he said, “feels like coming home.”

Besides the lure of coming home and working opposite Sada Thompson, he was attracted by Piper’s point of view.

Piper infuriates his mother-in-law (Thompson) who cannot understand why her daughter is in love with such a braggart and a liar. But he is a triumph of personality over circumstance. “Here’s a guy who works in a cubicle and eats in a cafeteria with hundreds of people. Even though everybody makes fun of him and kid the life out of him, even though to the rest of the world he looks like a crank and a blowhard, he has personality. Rather than showing up and hating his job, he’s created a world that he lives in--a world of his own creation. I think he’s a tribute to the human personality.”

Though columnist Liz Smith has called for this production of “The Show-Off” to go to Broadway, there is no news as to whether there will be further life for this production after it closes Oct. 20. But Sparks is hoping.

“I want to do a Broadway play someday. I would like to do this show in Los Angeles. But, as far as I know, this show closes in two weeks.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Robert Alexander, playwright of “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’,” will be the guest speaker at the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s free Preview Dialogue discussion Monday at 7 p.m. in the Lyceum Theatre. The show, commissioned and performed by the Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, will kick off its national tour at the San Diego Rep on Wednesday. It runs through Nov. 2 on the Lyceum Stage. . . .

Garry Shandling, star of “The Garry Shandling Show,” will give a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Camp of San Diego on Sunday at Mandeville Center at UC San Diego. . . .

Labrys Production Theatre Company, a lesbian theater troupe, will present “8 x 10 Glossy,” a play by Sarah Dreher at the Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza Friday through Oct. 20. . . . The Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center will celebrate National Coming Out Day with an evening of performances by San Diego lesbian and gay writers and actors at SOHO Tea and Coffee in Hillcrest on Friday from 8-10 p.m.