Woodruff Updates a Greek Tragedy

The sign above the Mandell Weiss Theatre stage where “Orestes” is about to open says, “WE ARE NOT IN DECLINE.”

It is weathered, beaten and--in places--broken. Stage lights peer through its cracks.

“It’s a phrase that has been haunting me for a while,” said Robert Woodruff, looking rather weathered himself in the Mandell Weiss’ upstairs VIP lounge. The director, 44, wore dark sunglasses, and his long, kinky gray hair was in a ponytail under an Iowa Hawkeyes cap. He sipped a diet Coke.

As a guest artist of the UC San Diego Department of Theatre, Woodruff is directing the West Coast premiere of Charles Mee’s new translation of this Euripides drama tonight through Sunday.

He is well-known locally for three productions he has directed at the La Jolla Playhouse, and even better known nationally for his direction of Sam Shepard premieres, most notably the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Buried Child” in New York and San Francisco. In a lighter vein, he has a reputation for his work with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, whom he will direct in a world premiere, “Le Petomane,” at the Playhouse June 14-July 10.

The Greek tragedy he is directing now, however, is both age-old and contemporary. It is the story of Orestes, who killed his mother, Clytemnestra because she had killed his father, Agamemnon, who had just returned from the Trojan War.

Mee’s translation resets the story first in a hospital ward and then in a modern political arena, where Orestes is tried for his crime. In this version Helen (the woman whose beauty caused the Trojan war) walks onstage wearing a canary-yellow Chanel suit and talks about her elaborate facial-care system. Others talk about pubic hair on Coke bottles (shades of Anita Hill testimony), politically correct language and the ravages of war. Near the end, a gray-suited Apollo with “a Reagan-like voice” (as it is described in the script) tells everyone that there’s nothing to worry about, even as fires rage all around.

Woodruff worked closely with the translator on “Orestes” and is frank about the connections it has for him.

“This play is about a victorious army coming home from a war to a society that is in shambles. I wanted to do a piece that was a response to the Persian Gulf War.”

“I always look for political parallels. When you translate a period, you look for the political context of the Greeks and the political context we live in. “

Woodruff’s own politicization dates back to the Vietnam War, which he evaded first by teaching sixth grade in Harlem and later by drawing a high number in the draft lottery.

The threat of the war hanging over his head made him reject his initial plans for himself--law school--and led him to theater, he said.

“I think it was something about that moment in history. I wanted to make something, and I wanted to do it instantly. The idea of taking a text and making it alive was exciting.”

The dream began to come true when the New York native got the high draft lottery number, his ticket to freedom. He quit teaching and took off for San Francisco, where he studied theater arts at San Francisco State University, co-founded the Eureka Theatre in 1972 and later created the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a forum for new play development.

In San Francisco he developed the charged, confrontational style for which he is now known.

“I like theater that’s in the world, that doesn’t ignore the world, that relates to what’s going on outside the doors of the theater, that doesn’t ignore the universe that we’re living in,” he said.

It is a quality he looks for in other directors he admires, he said, reeling off the names of Peter Sellars, JoAnne Akalaitis, Reza Abdoh and Anne Bogart.

Woodruff left San Francisco in 1988 and is now based in New York, but “Orestes” was developed in a workshop at the Mark Taper Forum while he was in residence last year as an associate artist. At first, Woodruff wrote a first page that set “Orestes” in a contemporary war-ravaged but wealthy setting, and asked Mee to insert some contemporary moments into a faithful translation of the Greek text.

Woodruff requested an autopsy report on Clytemnestra, then he wanted a trial scene. Mee, who lives in New York, kept faxing him material in bits and pieces.

“Originally, I wanted a car crash between the original Greek and Chuck’s (Mee’s) writing,” Woodruff explained. “Then he took over all the other material almost totally.”

Some of the text is hard to follow--that’s not by accident.

“It’s all reflective of the society, which is dysfunctional,” Woodruff said. “It’s less a show about Orestes than it is a meditation. There’s a bombardment of ideas in the air. There’s a lot of violence and division in the play, but I think there’s a real deep sorrow for something that could be greater than it is.”

Woodruff’s determination to make art reflect contemporary life sometimes leads him to excess, as with his critically panned direction of “The Tempest” for the Playhouse in 1987, which, because of his struggle with the material, had to have its opening night delayed.

Woodruff agreed with the critics: “That piece was so hard. I didn’t get it in the end. I think the play will eat you alive.” His two other productions at the Playhouse--”A Man’s a Man” and “Figaro Gets a Divorce”--were acclaimed here, however.

And Woodruff says he is very proud of this production.

“I feel a real sense of authorship about it. There’s a lot of ‘50s references because I grew up in the ‘50s. It was a nice quiet time when we were all stupid.”

“Orestes” was well received in its world premiere in January at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard, a program under the auspices of the American Repertory Theatre.

Under the direction of Tina Landau, the production sold out for each of its five performances in the small, 52-seat house. But Woodruff isn’t sure he sees a future for the show in non-university affiliated American theaters. At this point, the director talks about taking the work to Europe--particularly Germany.

“I think it’s the best work I’ve ever done,” Woodruff said, and the world of theater remains vital for him.

“Just being in a room with people eight hours a day working on an idea is the healthiest thing one could be doing with one’s time.”

* Performances of “Orestes” are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, at the Mandell Weiss Theatre on UC San Diego campus in La Jolla. Tickets are $6-$12, parking passes are $2. Call 534-4574.