Ready to Put Up His Duke in ‘Tempest’ : Stage: Distinguished actor Alan Mandell, who plays the arrogant Prospero in the Grove production, considers the role a royal opportunity.

When Alan Mandell speaks of his “enormous line load” for the “The Tempest,” which opens today at the Festival Amphitheatre in Garden Grove, he naturally means the amount of dialogue he’s had to master.

But the distinguished actor, who is starring as Prospero in the Grove Shakespeare Festival production, might just as well be referring to his research. It involved, among other things, poring over “two packages of material, each weighing six pounds,” he says.

“I read huge amounts. But ultimately what you have to do is act the character. All the philosophical writing about the play is wonderful to understand. But actors act actions , and I’ve had to find a way to make a real person of Prospero.”

Sitting on a sofa in the living room of the spacious home he shares in Los Angeles with his wife, Elizabeth, a computer consultant, Mandell looked almost scholarly as he unfolded a piece of paper and read from his notes:

“He’s a traditional ruler who brings about a counterrevolution against the tyranny that overthrew his government. . . . The play also portrays an artist, that is, he speaks of the power of his art, the power of knowledge he has acquired through 12 years (in exile) on his island. . .”

Mandell refolded the paper and placed it neatly on the coffee table in front of him.

“Prospero,” he continued, “is a man of power. He was born to power, and he uses power. He simply exudes power. It is his natural birthright.”

At 65, the white-haired Toronto native sounds somewhat regal himself--as though to the theater born. Quite the contrary. “I was certainly the first actor in my immediate family,” he said, recalling that his father disapproved of his theatrical ambitions, as did the authorities at his high school.

“I was a dropout or ‘throw-out.’ It was one of those things. My father wanted to know what was going to happen to me. I was 17 or 18. I told him I was going to go into the theater. He looked at me and said: ‘A nice Jewish boy goes to the theater.’ It was a great remark. I didn’t know what to say.”

But Mandell did know what to do. Besides taking acting lessons, he painted scenery, swept floors, made costumes, did anything that needed doing around a theater. By his early 20s, he was running a small company called Theater 49, so named because it was formed in 1949 as an offshoot of the Toronto Civic Theatre.

In the early 1950s, Mandell took what he thought would be a short trip to San Francisco and discovered a hole-in-the-wall company called the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop. Headed by Jules Irving and Herbert Blau, it would become one of the launching pads for the American regional theater movement.

“My one-week vacation turned into a 12-year stay,” Mandell said. “Like Prospero, the fates brought me to a place at a particular time, and I knew I had to grasp it.”

In 1965, when Irving and Blau were hired to establish the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York, Mandell went with them as general manager. Nearly a decade later, that highly visible not-for-profit project came to an end, and Mandell decided to focus on acting. He worked for a couple of years Off Broadway until 1976, when Irving lured him back to Los Angeles, where he has remained.

Although Mandell has toiled in Hollywood, playing roles in television and movies as well as writing screenplays, the theater has been his life. He is not only an actor distinguished by his expertise in the plays of Samuel Beckett; he’s also a playwright and a stage director eager to develop new plays by others.

Through the ‘80s, Mandell was a consulting director at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (it closed last October), where he encouraged such talents as Jon Robin Baitz, Reza Abdoh, Marlane Meyer and John Steppling. In addition, he helped organize LATC’s Classical Theatre Lab and headed a highly regarded LATC poetry-reading program that drew writers from around the country.

“I feel whatever art you’re in, you must strive for the very best,” Mandell declared. “For me to be just an actor is not enough. I also don’t want to do just any old role. And at my age I feel there are maybe three (Shakespearean) roles to play.

“One is Shylock, which I did last year at the Grove. So what is left? There’s Prospero and Lear. Though I’ve never played Lear, I have worked on many productions (of it) and I think Prospero is more difficult, in some ways, because of the language. If Lear is Everest, Prospero is certainly Kilimanjaro.”

Mandell paused, then added:

“Prospero is arrogant. But it’s an arrogance born of stature. He is the duke of Milan--as he says, ‘the prime duke.’ He believes he was well-loved. He talks of the love his people bore him. It’s supreme arrogance. Of course his people loved him. But then he thought his brother loved him . . . and look what happened.”

Mandell savors the irony of Prospero’s claims as measured against the fact that he’s been deposed by his brother--the love of the people notwithstanding--and exiled from his dukedom. Not that Prospero’s reduced circumstances have reduced his innate sense of authority. Indeed, he manages in his exile to acquire a magical power over nature itself.

For all his arrogance, though, even Prospero recognizes there is some greater power. Quoting from the play, as if to prove the point, Mandell intoned: “My zenith doth depend on the most auspicious star, which now, if I omit, my fortunes will ever after droop.”

Mandell appears to be operating under an auspicious star of his own. Later this summer, following his Shakespearean mountaineering, he expects to climb several Beckett peaks at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. He and actor-writer Rick Cluchey, the former convict who launched the San Quentin Drama Workshop during the 1950s under Mandell’s tutelage, have been invited to stage several of the late Nobel laureate’s works.

“I’ll do ‘Stirring Still,’ ” Mandell said. “Rick will do ‘Krapp’s Last Tape.’ And together we’ll do ‘Ohio Impromptu.’ ” Additionally, they’ll show the 1991 film of “Endgame” that Mandell directed. In it, he reprises the role of Nag, which he originally played more than a decade ago in an “Endgame” revival at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre under Beckett’s direction.

Then, in November, he plans to go to Europe again--this time for theater festivals in Bordeaux and Barcelona to reprise a role in Abdoh’s “The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice,” which premiered 18 months ago at LATC.

As for the Grove Shakespeare Festival, Mandell thinks of it as a nice piece of luck.

“I’m thrilled that they invited me,” he said. “Last summer was a wonderful experience for me. I thought we did a first-rate ‘Merchant,’ and I think ‘The Tempest’ will be first-rate as well.”

“The Tempest” opens today at 8:30 p.m. and continues Wednesdays through Sundays at 8:30 p.m. through July 25 at the Festival Amphitheatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. $18 to $25. (714) 636-7213.