‘Beehive’ Success May Unite Theatre in Old Town, SDSU

“Beehive,” the bright and sassy musical revue that has just been extended at the Theatre in Old Town through March 15, may signal a new direction for the theater and San Diego State University’s drama department.

For the Theatre in Old Town, now managed as a wing of the Francis W. Parker School, this musical look at 1960s female singers is the company’s first success in its inaugural season. And a hit like this is something the cash-strapped administration (which just canceled “Sweeney Todd”) doubtlessly would like to duplicate.

For SDSU’s drama department, which supplied most of the talent, including the director, the design team and most of the five-women cast, this association with a professional venue just might extend itself into a long-term relationship.

Other graduate drama schools in town have ongoing relationships with professional theaters. UC San Diego has a student residency program with the La Jolla Playhouse; the University of San Diego has one with the Old Globe Theatre.

But while venerable SDSU, founded in 1897 as a teaching school, has been sending theater talent into the San Diego community since the 1920s, it has never been associated with any one professional space.

Paula Kalustian, the head of SDSU’s musical theater department and director of “Beehive,” thinks this show could change all that.

“Since I run the musical theater department, I’m interested in a theater that does musicals,” Kalustian said. “I think the Theatre in Old Town is a great theater, and ‘Beehive’ was an experiment to see how it would work.

“ ‘Beehive’ became a little dream come true for me because it has allowed me to work with some of my closest collaborators. I’m very interested in finding a place to do the kind of work that I want to do: a small intimate place with an orchestra pit and sound potential. This could be a gem. I’ve already made a proposal for the summer that would include some children’s theater.”

Kalustian would like to continue doing intimate musicals--with some world premieres and some West Coast premieres, such as the ones she has been including in the SDSU season in her 2 1/2 years on staff. As an academic, she said she would like to be involved in the teaching aspects expected at a school-supported company such as Theatre in Old Town.

Ocie Robinson, managing director of the Theatre in Old Town, said that “things are in the discussion stage,” and nothing has been decided.

“Paula and I have talked about the possibility of working together so that their MFA students could work here in part for their degree,” Robinson said.

“We both agreed from the very beginning that before we made any commitments we should see how this show works. But we very much like working with each other. It’s definitely something we’re interested in developing.”

In the meantime, SDSU continues to pour talent on the local scene.

Alumna Marion Ross of “Happy Days” and “Brooklyn Bridge” fame will come home May 10 to star as Amanda Wingfield in the La Jolla Playhouse season opener, “The Glass Menagerie.” Alumnus Craig Noel continues as executive producer of the Old Globe. Graduate students Michael Roth, Patrick Nollet and Rick Meads also maintain an ongoing presence locally. Roth is a frequent composer for the La Jolla Playhouse, Nollet is a principal dancer with California Ballet, and Meads is an associate artist with Lamb’s Players Theatre.

In upcoming shows, SDSU Professor Beeb Salzer will be at Blackfriars Theatre (formerly the Bowery) to design sets and costumes for “The Puppetmaster of Lodz,” opening Sunday. SDSU alum Jim Roth will do the lighting. Faculty member Nick Reid, who did the set design for “Beehive,” will design sets for “Shirley Valentine” at the Old Globe, opening March 14, and faculty member Ralph Funicello will design sets for the Old Globe’s “Bargains” (March 19). Undergraduate Shana Wride is currently featured in “The Heidi Chronicles” at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company.

The fourth annual Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays, a series of staged readings of plays on Jewish subjects, will be held at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre at 7 p.m. Mondays, March 16-April 6.

James Sherman’s “The God of Isaac” opens the series March 16 with its story about a young Jewish reporter assigned to cover the neo-Nazi march on Skokie, Ill. Alan Havis, a professor at UC San Diego, weighs in March 23 with “Heaven and Earth,” a comedy about a televangelist who tries to convert his Jewish son-in-law, while the son-in-law’s father tries to convert his Christian daughter-in-law.

“Rescuers Speaking,” a docu-play by Wilfred Harrison, to be presented March 30, weaves together interviews with people who rescued Jews during the Nazi era. Ron Elisha’s “Two,” is set in 1948 Germany and will feature Nehemiah Persoff and Gaslamp trustee Kit Goldman on April 6 as a rabbi and a young woman struggling to come to terms with God in a post-Holocaust world. Tickets are $8 apiece, $26 for the series. Call 234-9583.

PROGRAM NOTES: Working overtime: Two stars from the Gaslamp’s “The Heidi Chronicles,” Steve Gunderson and Mary Yarborough, will team up with Melinda Gilb and Lillian Palmer for a staged reading of a new musical revue, “Back to Bacharach” at 8 p.m. Feb. 24 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre. The show, directed by “Heidi” director Will Roberson, with musical arrangements by Gunderson, is a book-less score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Tickets are $5. Call 234-9583. . . .

The Gaslamp has extended “The Heidi Chronicles” through March 8, which will postpone “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” which was scheduled to open March 10. An additional performance of “Heidi” is planned for Sunday at 7 p.m. Call 234-9583. . . .

The San Diego Actors Theatre’s play-reading series continues Feb. 24 with Jules Feiffer’s “Elliott Loves,” a satire about the impossibility of love. Next up is a play by David Williamson, author of the screenplay “The Year of Living Dangerously.” Williamson’s play “Emerald City” explores ambition, money, power and deception and will be presented March 23. Both shows are at 8 p.m. at the Athens Market restaurant, 109 W. F St. Call 268-4494.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

ACTORS FESTIVAL PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON PERFORMERS

It’s a nightly grab bag of different performances by different performers, but Actors Festival ‘92, which opens Friday, is also an opportunity to catch some good local talent in some promising new work.

This is the second annual festival sponsored by the 5-year-old actors collective now called the Actors Alliance. Actors, rather than directors or producers, select--and, in some cases, write--the three to five plays or scenes they perform in each night. Each work runs 45 minutes or less. Of the 22 works on tap, more than half are new.

Performances are at 7 p.m. Friday-Sunday through Feb. 23, with about half a dozen “best of show” to be repeated March 5-8. Tickets are $6 for an individual work, $12 for an evening’s worth of work and $40 for the entire series. At 852 8th Ave. Call 238-5582.