The Lighter Side of Tennessee Williams : Actors Conservatory Ensemble is offering five one-acts by the master writer but plans to turn to experimental works in the future

The very mention of Tennessee Williams tends to conjure up images of dark, overheated dramas: “The Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” One-acts and comedies don’t automatically spring to mind.

“Most people are stunned that he did comedy,” said Catherine Blore of Actors Conservatory Ensemble, whose quintet of Williams one-acts, “5 x Tenn,” is playing at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood. “We have a lot of wonderful women actresses in the group who weren’t getting used,” she said. “And Williams writes some great women characters--imperfect though these pieces may be. He really did them as exercises for himself.”

The collection of one-acts consists of “27 Wagonloads of Cotton,” “Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen,” “The Lady of Larkspur Lotion,” “Hello From Bertha” and “The Unsatisfactory Supper.” Ensemble founding member Burr DeBenning, who is directing “27 Wagonloads” and “Supper”--the two are vaguely linked through an overlapping character, Aunt Rose Comfort--describes the lot as “often hilarious, grotesque folk comedies.”

Officially formed in January, 1990, ACE’s 20 original members were part of a master class taught by the late husband-and-wife team of William Traylor and Peggy Feury (formerly a master teacher at the local Strasberg Institute), whose Loft Studio on La Brea Avenue was one of the city’s most respected and popular acting classrooms in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“We would work on a single playwright for two months--all different scenes and plays, but the same playwright. So it was very intense work,” said Blore, who hooked up with Feury and Traylor in 1975 and became ACE’s founding artistic director.

Feury was killed in a car accident in 1985; Traylor died in 1989. During Traylor’s illness before his death, Loft alumni Blore, her husband, Mark Haining, DeBenning and Allen Williams took over Traylor’s teaching. After his death, they moved to a rental space at the Fountain Theatre.

Most members of the group were actors. Some were directors, but with little experience in mounting full-scale professional work. A program of four one acts was their debut production at the Lex in 1990.

“It’s often been hard, because you’re learning as you’re doing,” Blore said. The actress, who had a role in the group’s recent, well-received production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” has now shed her artistic director’s title--and with it, ACE’s class- and business-management duties--to concentrate on the creative end.

“Everybody here has two jobs,” she said. “For this production, I ended up doing the sound. You just throw yourself in and start swimming.”

In spite of their affiliations with Williams and Chekhov, Blore said experimental work will be a big part of the company’s future repertoire. Their recent late-night entry, “shelf life,” was one such effort--albeit critically skewered. And come this fall, ACE has plans for Edward Bond’s “Bingo” and a play by Gardner McKay, which, she said, “is being written as we speak.”

Now 35 dues-paying members strong, ACE has expanded to include actors from the late Company Theatre and American Conservatory Theatre. “We’re like the old Group Theatre,” Blore said. “No stars, no star personalities. We require actors to get dirty--build sets, paint.” Although “Uncle Vanya” featured a beautiful forest of real-life trees, she cannot condone expensive sets.

Blore admitted that critical scrutiny mounts with growing visibility. “We’re a new group but not new actors,” she said. “We’ve all been punched in the nose by critics. Sometimes you expect it. But I think we’re really improving; ‘Uncle Vanya’ was our best yet. Still, we want to take some chances, so we’re going to fall on our face sometimes. It doesn’t feel like failure to me. Just lessons.”