‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ and a Lot of Dedication

Maria Mileaf’s car wreck gave her the impetus to direct “Faith, Hope and Charity.”

No one was hurt, but she took the $2,000 her insurance company paid her for the car and poured it into the budget of roughly $12,000 needed to finance the B-Attitudes production of “Faith, Hope and Charity: A Little Dance of Death in Five Acts.” Mileaf is directing the play at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse starting Sunday.

Everyone in B-Attitudes has an unusual story or brings a different kind of dedication to the project.

Holly Becker, special-events coordinator at the La Jolla Playhouse, was drawn to it out of a need to change the direction of her life. Producing something fit in with a New Year’s resolution she’d made to herself to get back to the “artistic side” of theater, she said. She got B-Attitudes going by asking Mileaf what she would most like to direct.

For Mileaf, a 1990 graduate of the UC San Diego master of fine arts directing program, it was one of those questions she thought she would never get to hear.

“It was the most shocking moment of my life when Holly said in the beginning of January, ‘What do you want to do?’ Never in my experience did anyone ever ask me that,” Mileaf said, sitting in the Sixth Avenue Playhouse.

Mileaf had come across Odon von Horvath’s “Faith, Hope and Charity” last year in a bookstore. The translation from the German by Christopher Hampton, who also adapted “Dangerous Liaisons,” had never been done in the United States before. (Now, it is being produced almost simultaneously at the University of San Diego campus, as a school production). The play tells the story of a young lingerie salesclerk struggling to survive in a depressed and bureaucratic society.

Together, Becker and Mileaf have put together an impressive ensemble of talent, most of it culled from recent UCSD graduates. The stars of the design team, set designer Neil Patel, costume designer Mary Larson, lighting designer Brenda Berry and composer Michael Roth, have worked at many of San Diego’s leading theaters, including the La Jolla Playhouse, the San Diego Repertory Theatre and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company.

The facilities at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse may be far less “user-friendly” than those at the other theaters these designers have worked at, but the designers don’t seem to mind.

Berry, for instance, has to make do with 20 lights for this show, while she has become accustomed to as many as 400 at the Playhouse.

“Here you have 10 choices, but you can still make the 10 best choices. Your limits become your tools. They can become your assets,” Berry said.

“Not that you’d want to do it that way the rest of your life,” she added with a laugh.

What they all seem to enjoy is working with people they like, whom they’ve worked with before, on a project they like.

Mileaf responds to that feeling.

“The support comes from the people,” she said. “You can have 3,000 lighting instruments, but if you can’t communicate or collaborate with your lighting designer, what good is it?”

Even the lead actress, Kate Malin, who dropped out of the UCSD drama program in 1990, has made an extraordinary commitment to the show. When Mileaf sent her the script, she’d been offered a role in “Macbeth” in Washington, where she was living.

“I sold everything I owned and moved out here,” Malin said. When the show is over, she says, she may move to Los Angeles.

Funny Guy: Steve Allen, who sold out the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas in a production of “Love Letters” last year, will return to host an evening of comedy at the same venue at 8 p.m. April 25. Allen will introduce four young comedians: Steve Mittleman, John McDonnell, Brian McKim and T.C. Tahoe. Call 278-TIXS or 436-2171.

Give John Fleck credit for being a versatile performer. In the same year in which he gave a deftly comic performance in the Old Globe Theatre’s “The Granny” (January, 1990), John E. Frohnmayer, then chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, revoked his NEA grant because of the controversial nature of his performance art.

Now Sushi Performance Gallery, which has the distinction of being the only San Diego venue to present all four of the artists whose grants were revoked that year (commonly referred to as the “NEA Four”), will bring Fleck back with his newest one-man show, “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell” in May.

His performance will be part of Sushi’s 10th annual Neofest celebration of new work. Neofest opens April 9 with the San Diego premiere of “Black Choreographers Moving” at the Lyceum Stage in Horton Plaza and continues at Sushi, 852 8th Ave., with San Francisco artist Anne Galjour in “The Krewe of Neptune,” a Cajun tale of love and revenge, April 30-May 2; “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell,” Fleck’s takeoff on media stereotypes, May 7-16, and New York artist Reno in “Reno Once Removed,” an interweaving of comic anecdotes about personal life with political broadsides against such figures as Jesse Helms and Donald Trump, May 21-23. Call 235-8466 for tickets.

PROGRAM NOTES: The play is called “The Women” and, appropriately, with the exception of composer Michael Roth, it’s an all-woman cast behind and in front of the scenes in the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s upcoming production of the Clare Boothe Luce play, opening May 20 on the Lyceum Stage. Anne Bogart directs, with set design by Victoria Petrovich, lighting by Brenda Berry, costumes by Cathy Meacham-Hunt, dramaturgy by Wendy Arons, with Susan Virgilio as stage manager. The 16-actress (!) cast includes Darla Cash, Roxane Carrasco, Linda Castro, Barbara Chisholm, Sandie Church, Susan Gelman, Eleni Kelakos, Dochia Knox, Linda Libby, Sandra L’Italien, Suzy McWilliams, Amber Rae, Lorna Raver, Karenjune Sanchez, Joan Schirle and Regina Byrd Smith.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

‘PUPPETMASTER’ PERFORMANCE FOR HEARING-IMPAIRED

A performance of Blackfriars Theatre’s “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” interpreted for the hearing-impaired will be performed at 8 p.m. today. Two people will sign as actor Robert Zukerman gives his eloquent performance as a Holocaust survivor who has retreated into a world of puppets. Tickets are $10 for the hearing-impaired, $16 otherwise. Regular performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through April 12. 232-4088.