Q & A : Playhouse Directors Have a Different Kind of Theater

Evelyn Rudie, 43, and Chris DeCarlo, 44, co-directors of the Santa Monica Playhouse, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next month.

Claim to fame: Eschewing careers on Broadway and in Hollywood, this husband-wife team--who write, compose, direct and act together, and even finish each other’s sentences--have built an internationally known nonprofit theater company and children’s workshop program.

Background: Both native Angelenos, both child actors, Rudie and DeCarlo stumbled on the infant playhouse and each other in the mid-’60s, and in the course of their long partnership have played each other’s lover, spouse, parent, grandparent and murderer. They live in Hollywood, naturally.

Interviewer: Times staff writer Lois Timnick.

Q: How was the playhouse founded, and how did you two get hooked up with it, instead of winding up on Broadway, television or the movies?

R (Rudie): It was started as a workshop in 1960 by a Belgian actor/director named Ted Roter and officially founded two years later. It was a place for actors to work out--to get together, to do a play if they wanted to. Chris and I joined as workshop actors and slowly began to assume more authority and responsibilities. We started the children’s program, and when Roter got tired, we bought him out.

Very early on we realized that what happens to most theaters in America, here especially because of the film industry, is that actors join to be in one play, to be discovered. What used to happen all the time here was the day the reviews came out, half the cast would be gone because they’d gotten what they wanted out of it. We felt that there had to be a better way.

Having been brought up with a background in European theater and Hollywood show business, I knew of actors who stayed with the same company for 30 years, but saw how friendships here usually ended with the wrap. That combination made me want to develop a different kind of theater.

D (DeCarlo): I acted all the way through school and was a national oratory champion for several years. Then when I decided to study acting, I couldn’t find an environment I could get behind--the workshops seemed either elitist and too esoteric or just a lot of bs. I discovered this place by accident--I’d gone to high school with the daughter of the founding director--and found that it offered European theater, an acting coach who could actually do what he taught and an opportunity to participate actively from the start. And when all those actors left after opening night, I always got their parts.

There was also a sense of wanting a family. I really felt that going out and trying to get jobs, dealing with the casting process and the auditioning process, is very intimidating and in some ways degrading and diminishing for an artist. Getting the job and actually acting are wholly different skills. It was very painful for me.

Then I was drafted and ended up in Vietnam, an experience that gave me a tremendous appreciation for life and humanity. As a survivor, I vowed to celebrate that life and make a difference. Theater became a perfect opportunity to do that. It’s more than entertainment; it explores the extremes of the human condition and connects us.

Q: There are a lot of repertory companies in this country, but are any like you?

D: I don’t know of any that are doing the kind of broad range of programs that we do. There are larger organizations that do it but I don’t think they do it in the same way. Having the artistic directors working directly with the beginning students. Having the scripts written for them. Developing material through their work and giving it international form. To do what we’re doing and to connect it with a professional repertory company is unusual.

Q: How did these diverse programs evolve?

R: At the beginning it was just the showcase--workshops and a bunch of actors coming in to do one play. Then I began teaching a children’s class, which evolved into children’s workshops, improvisation workshops, and summer and winter stock for young people, and a young professionals company. Then we started doing family theater matinees (fairy-tale musicals popular with Westside parents looking for unusual birthday parties). Our mobile touring program, which is 15 years old, started locally and now performs as far away as New York, England and Japan.

We’ve also added a retreat program for adults in Big Bear and an exchange program in which young people’s groups from other countries perform here and stay with our families and participate in joint workshops, and we go there.

Q: It sounds as though the playhouse never closes.

R: We go seven days and seven nights. The adult workshops are Monday night. Regular performances are usually Tuesdays through Sundays. Saturday and Sunday afternoon are kid shows. Mobile touring--two to four places--is during the week. And the workshops for young people are now five afternoons a week.

Q: How did your own experience as a child actress influence the way you work with kids?

R: From the beginning, I was always given a tremendous amount of responsibility as a professional actress--there were cameras rolling and thousands of dollars at stake--and I loved it. That feeling of being valuable and validated and accomplishing something real, that counted, was something that I thought every kid should have. It would be a crying shame not to use their energy and input. So that was one of the very first things we both had in mind, that the kids who worked here would have real responsibility, whether it be in helping to run a class or the theater itself, that they would really be counted on.

Q: Did you have a stage mother?

R: No, I had very rooted, grounded parents who never pushed. In fact, they tried everything to keep me out of show business because my father (who wrote cabaret shows in Amsterdam after fleeing Hitler) and my grandfather (a Berlin producer) were in it.

Q: What is the goal of the children’s program? To turn out little commercial-makers or the next Macaulay Culkin?

R: No! We’re definitely not trying to turn out professional actors, although if somebody really wants to we are extremely supportive, just as my parents were with me. Every once in a while somebody comes who really wants to act and does go on. I can count maybe five in the whole time that we’ve been here.

Mostly what we are trying to give the young people is a sense of self-worth, a love of theater, an opportunity to explore their own personalities and the different possibilities that are open to them and to learn in a nurturing environment how to communicate.

Q: How do you handle stage mothers, when you encounter one?

D: We try to be very frank with them as far as what we’re about and what the program is about. But some stage mothers are encouraged to bring their children here through agents or producers or people that have heard about our reputation, some of the results that we do get with the kids. And the first thing we try to do is let them know that this program is not to get a job, not to showcase the kids, but to help them explore and get a foundation in the craft of acting and an appreciation for it. Talent scouts and agents are not invited--we try to keep a low profile in terms of The Industry.

Q: How are you financed?

D: Our annual budget was a little over $500,000 last year. It varies, depending on the attendance, which is a big part of our income. Only about 20% comes from contributions. The rest we earn through ticket sales and workshop fees.

Q: With a theater that seats only 88 and low-priced tickets for all children’s performances, can an actor actually make a living here?

D: You can make an existence. I mean, compared to the regular job market we can’t compete--I could go to work at a restaurant and make more money in two days than I make here in a week. A member of the ensemble in our current “A Love Affair” makes $28 a performance (plus pension and other union requirements). We just can’t generate that kind of money (from ticket sales) to pay that, so what we do here is hire our resident company as members of our permanent staff, so that they are wearing three and four hats and under those conditions are able to make a basic living.

Q: Where do the plays come from?

R: Our stated mission is to present “unique and unusual classic and contemporary plays not usually seen on Southern California stages.” So we have always done a lot of European playwrights--Moliere and Ben Johnson, Strindberg, Sholom Aleichem, Sartre, Ionesco and also original plays, such as the three recent Jerry Mayer plays, and the American premieres of an Australian play--David Williamson’s “The Coming of Stork,” and a Quebec play, Michel Garneua’s “Quatre a Quatre.” So from different countries, originals and European classics. Theater of the Absurd. That kind of thing.

D: We get submissions of new works--about 50 to 100 a month that I have to read. Unfortunately, we can’t produce most of them because either the physical requirements of the piece and the size of the cast, the type of material is not appropriate for what we want to do or what we feel we can produce effectively. We try to keep an open mind, we don’t really have a specific genre. We try to make it both challenging and accessible to our audiences. Sometimes it may be a little too conservative for some people, sometimes it’s a little too far-out. It’s a balance. We try to walk that line.

R: We also do at least one of our own original pieces every year. It’s “Mezzanine” this year.

Q: The play you wrote about teen-age Angst, “Dear Gabby,” has been very successful worldwide, both with audiences and the youngsters who play in it. How did you capture what they are going through?

R: I think I am a child. I honestly think some part of me has never grown up. I can be responsible and balance a checkbook and do all of those things that grown-ups do. But I still don’t feel like a grown-up. Chris and I’ve talked about this before and to a certain extent I don’t think he does either. A parent will want to talk to us. They’ll be in the patio and they’ll be saying hello and even though they’re maybe 13 years younger than me, I’m uncomfortable about using their first name because I’m thinking “This is somebody’s mother !” And when we go to schools we talk to teachers !” Somehow part of me is still a child. Totally and completely. When I sat down to write “Gabby” I did not have to stop and think how did I feel when I was a teen-ager. I just sat down and said how do I feel now and started writing and . . . it came out. And I still feel all of those things, right on the surface. Not back as a memory.

D: A lot of it has to do with the environment here: We do exercises in which we explore drama and we start with our own drama. The barrier between adult and child is very vague. We try to maintain a certain amount of focus and guidance in the classroom. We really encourage the young people to communicate, to make a difference in their world. If you have something to say then you have an opportunity to say it and we try to help them empower themselves to do that. And through that we’re constantly being challenged. We can’t hide behind the fact that we’re the teachers.

Q: What was your most memorable role or moment onstage?

D: Playing Sam Lawson in “Career” (20 years ago)--he’s a guy who has dreams of being an actor and the play follows him through 25 years. It is a typical actor’s story and an actor’s part because you get to do everything.

My memorable moment would have to be from “Anatole, Anatole” where I played a old transient and we started the play out on the street, in the ticket line. There is a snafu, and my character starts complaining about the holdup. One night, a real audience member threatened, “Shut up, old man, before I punch your lights out!” Then I went onstage, saying “When I had my theater, it was not like that,” as I removed my old-man makeup. It was a very funny moment.

R: For me, a family melodrama with booing and hissing called “Charlie’s Place.” It was based on a treatment my father wrote for me when I was a little girl but was never used. I came across it several years ago in my file and rewrote it as a play. On opening weekend he was in the audience and during the first scene, in a real touching scene between the mother and her daughter, I just happened to catch his eye right when we were getting to that moment, and it was like, I really felt like I’d given something back for all the stuff that he gave to me when I was growing up.

Q: Where is the playhouse headed?

R: More international exchange programs.

Hopefully, a new permanent location that is ours (the 4th Street theater is leased). The Cadillac version that we’re dreaming about has three intimate theaters, because there is so much material that wants to be done. Our kids who did winter stock this year want to continue the play they did, “Adults Keep Out.” But we looked at our entire calendar from now until June and found only one afternoon that was available where they could perform.

D: We want to stay small and intimate, but we have reached the limit in terms of time and space with the existing staff. We’re conducting a teachers training program to be able to administer a couple more programs. We’re trying to involve people in starting programs in their own communities, using our resources and experience. We are doing a drama program at Paul Revere Middle School with more than 50 young people, many of whom have never been exposed to drama, unless you count TV sitcoms.

R: And we are going to be opening two satellite workshop programs next year, one in the Valley and one in the Inland Empire too.

Q: How can you stand being around all these noisy kids every day?

D: Well, there was a period after we’d been doing this for about 10 years when I felt a little burned out, like it was the same old thing, all this noise and these kids. But one day I stopped myself and realized: “Wait a minute. Look at all this energy!” Instead of trying to put a lid on it, instead of saying it’s bad and I don’t want to hear it anymore, just let it in and see what happens. It’s made an incredible difference in my whole outlook about myself and life.

Q: What is the state of the theater today, particularly here? We still seem to look to New York for commercial theater and to places like Louisville for experimental or community theater.

D: I think Los Angeles seems to have an inferiority complex about its cultural programs. But the reality is that we have one of the most active theater communities in the world right now. We have over 400 small theaters producing mainly new works, not hackneyed old things, not lots of revivals. Some of it is not accessible--some of it is very esoteric and weird and crazy and just way out of the limits, but a lot of it is very valid. It’s addressing real issues in a very meaningful way. And compared to theater in London, New York, Hong Kong or Tokyo, where we’ve been a lot, it’s really happening. All that needs to happen is that the community be made aware of that. Actors are migrating to Los Angeles, not just because of the film industry but because theater is accessible here, alive, vibrant. A lot of people disagree with me because they say that the money’s not there, but the artists are there and working. They’re alive and they’re healthy and I love it.