A Novel Idea Puts a New Theater Group on Stage

Producing nonprofit theater usually involves complicated, time-consuming rituals: assembling a board of directors, raising money, building, buying or leasing a theater, negotiating nonprofit status.

Now a new company, composed of young San Diego talent, plans to cut through all that and go back to basics. B-Attitudes, described as a “producing collective,” will present the American premiere of Odon von Horvath’s “Faith, Hope and Charity: A Little Dance of Death in Five Acts,” translated by Christopher Hampton (the translator of “Dangerous Liaisons”) April 2-26 at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse.

Holly Becker, 27, who is producing the show which will cost approximately $10,000 to $12,000, stressed that B-Attitudes is not a nonprofit theater but a group of artists pooling their time and resources on a show-to-show basis.

“This is getting a group of people together who are interested in this particular project and in working together to make it happen. The name B-Attitudes comes from the word ‘beatitude’ (perfect blessedness or happiness) and also from the idea of bad attitude or new attitude.

“We feel like we’re a whole new way of operating,” she said.

It helps when the interested people on the design team sound like a Who’s Who of San Diego theater:

Neil Patel, who designed three plays for the La Jolla Playhouse and one for the San Diego Repertory Theatre, will design the sets, Brenda Berry, who has designed lighting for the Playhouse, the San Diego Rep and the South Coast Repertory Theatre, will do the lighting. And Mary Larson, who designed for the San Diego Rep’s currently running “Ruby’s Bucket of Blood,” will handle the costumes. Nine local actors will play a total of 14 parts.

Becker is special events coordinator and publications producer at the La Jolla Playhouse. She said she has met all of the people who will be involved in the show through her work at the Playhouse, including director Maria Milleaf, a graduate of the MFA program at UC San Diego.

Milleaf found the play at a bookstore last year when she was looking for work by Horvath, a dramatist popular in the Weimar era before his work was banned by the Nazis. Horvath was exiled in 1933, just before “Faith, Hope and Charity” was to open.

Milleaf and Becker were surprised to learn that this translation had only been done once before, in the West End of London in 1989.

Becker said they saw a connection between today and this work about an impoverished lingerie salesclerk struggling to survive in the midst of a depressed economy and repressed, bureaucratic society. Becker said she also found parallels with the show’s depiction of a young, struggling woman and the struggle they expect in launching “B-Attitudes.”

“It’s a very personal project,” Becker acknowledged with a laugh.

Tickets will be $10 and can be purchased through the San Diego Rep box office at 235-8025.

Blackfriars Theatre also has a new show on the boards, based on the work of a writer whose work spurred anti-Semitic riots in Austria at the turn of the century.

The company has dropped Simon Gray’s “Stage Struck,” which was to have been the troupe’s next show, in favor of a new translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1902 Viennese satire, “Der Reigen,” better known as “La Ronde.”

The show, which will open in early May, will be retitled “Getting Around” and will be reset in the current turn of the century, with contemporary American characters.

Blackfriars’ artistic director Ralph Elias is co-adapting the work with United States International University student Christine Vogele. Blackfriars will co-produce the work with USIU.

The play consists of a series of affairs in which each character has two lovers, and ultimately all the love affairs are linked. Although Elias said much of the dialogue will be retained, some of the roles will change. Instead of Schnitzler’s class system, which included soldiers and prostitutes and noblemen, there will be executive secretaries, rock and rollers, doctors and lawyers--with gender switching from the original version.

“It’s a very nineties play,” said Elias. “Not only are we in our own fin de siecle , but it’s interestingly relevant especially in the age of AIDS.”

Tickets are $12-18 with selected discounts. Call Blackfriars (formerly the Bowery) at 232-4088.

PROGRAM NOTES: Diversionary Theatre has a new artistic director, Bill Peterson, and two new additions to the season. Following the gay and lesbian theater company’s production of “Dolores Street,” opening Friday, the company will present Tom Wilson Weinberg’s Off Broadway musical, “The Ten Percent Revue,” under the musical direction of Gary Holt (Director of the San Diego Men’s Chorus), April 23 and “Healin’ Dirt Diner,” by Mary F. Casey and Pamela Gray beginning in mid-June. All shows are at the company’s theater at 2222 Broadway in Golden Hill. Call 574-1060. . . .

Actor Tom Bosley will do the ribbon-cutting honors on a new workshop-showcase for 12-year-old Performing Arts Theatre for the Handicapped (PATH) Saturday at 3 p.m. The workshop, made available to PATH by Sports Shinko, owners of the La Costa Resort & Spa, is at 7634D El Camino Real in Carlsbad. It has been remodeled by PATH volunteers into a 50-seat performance area. . . .

“Ruby’s Bucket of Blood” has been extended at the San Diego Repertory Theatre through March 21. Call 235-8025 . . . .

Got an English sheep dog or a shi tzu trying to break into show business? Starlight is auditioning dogs for “Camelot” and “Gypsy” Wednesday for the 1992 season. There are also parts for humans. Dancers can audition Sunday, vocalists Sunday-Wednesday and children Monday. Call 544-7800 for information.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

ENCORE PERFORMANCES BY ACTORS

The Actors Alliance Festival Encore, which runs tonight through Sunday, features nine short one-act pieces repeated from last month’s Actors Alliance Festival of 23 works.

Local actors have chosen, performed, presented and in some cases written the shows, all of which will be presented at the Sushi Performance Gallery at 852 8th Ave, starting at 7 p.m. It’s a chance to see what roles actors would pick for themselves if they were given the choice.

Two programs will be shown twice. Featured tonight and Saturday are pieces by Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and Katherine Snodgrass, along with two new works: “Salvation, or Die When You Can,” adapted and performed by Tracy Bryce from Marguerite Yourcenar’s book, “Fires” about Mary Magdalene, and a piece by Luther Hanson called “Waiting for Gounod, A Fugue for Two Clowns in D Pression.” On Friday and Sunday, the program includes two more new works: “Sweet Dreams for A.J.” by Annie Hinton and “Working Title” by Peter J. Smith. Tickets are $12 for an evening pass and $6 for an individual show. Call the Times Arts TIX booth, 238-5582.