Actress Kelly Back at Scene of Triumphs

For three years, from 1988 to 1990, to talk about the Bowery Theatre’s greatest successes was to talk about actress Erin Kelly.

Kelly steamed up the stage in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” the John Patrick Shanley romance that resurrected the theater after the official departure of its founder and artistic director, Kim McCallum, in 1988. Kelly exuded mystery as the ex-wife in Shanley’s “Italian-American Reconciliation,” the 1989 show that inaugurated the Bowery’s move to its new home--now known as the Bristol Court Playhouse. Like a magnet, Kelly pulled audiences into the extravagant imagination of Teibele in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Teibele and Her Demon” in 1990.

But, after her success in the wildly popular “Teibele,” which netted Kelly a Best Actress Award from the San Diego Critics Circle in competition with the biggest theaters in town, she left for New York.

Now she’s back, starring as Gwendolyn in the company’s season opener, “The Importance of Being Earnest”--and she’s thinking about staying a while.

New York wasn’t everything she hoped it would be, and the Bowery, which renamed itself Blackfriars Theatre in 1991, is in trouble again, so it opened the season as an ensemble company. The plan is that most of the actors in this show--Kelly, Allison Brennan, Philip Charles Sneed and others--are also going to be in the subsequent shows of the season.

Kelly, 29, looks forward to continuous work after New York, where she did a few showcase shows and play readings, but nothing as meaty as she had in San Diego. And she hopes she can play a role in helping to return Blackfriars to financial stability.

“I feel like there’s a need for theaters like Blackfriars to thrive,” she said early this week. “The Blackfriars people have given me the roles that I received any sort of notoriety for. They’ve helped me, and, if I can help them survive the next series of crises, I’m willing to do that.”

The ingenue Gwendolyn, which she plays with fire under ice, did not come easily to her.

“The tendency for me was to make her too strong, too old and too knowing.”

Indeed, a Kelly part--judging from her early successes--would more likely be a world-worn woman older than Kelly herself. She had a flair for such roles even as a San Diego State undergraduate, when she played Blanche du Bois in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Hers was a remarkably mature depiction of a faded belle, for a girl who was just 24 at the time.

She attributes her affinity for such roles to her upbringing.

“I was the youngest of three girls, and my mother was very ill from the time I was 6,” she said, explaining that her mother had and still has multiple sclerosis. “We grew up having to be older than we were. When my older sisters left for school, it was me and my Mom, and I was caretaker.

“It was very important to be appropriate, to make everyone happy. I’m glad I have those skills, but there was a lot of resentment in having to be that too early. There’s a balance and imbalance between the side of me that knows how to be strong and get things done and the little girl in me that never got to be a little girl. And that’s why playing the ingenue is the more difficult thing for me to play--or to expose.”

It is the pain of those early years that propelled her to the stage, she believes.

“Part of my growing process as an actress was to acknowledge that there is that pain. That’s why I was drawn to acting, because I was able to express that pain on stage when I wasn’t able to in life.”

Kelly said she has not completely given up on New York, and is subletting her apartment there to a friend.

But New York has also made her look again with fondness on the life she left here.

“One thing I’ve learned from New York is to appreciate any chance that you have to do some work. It’s really wonderful to work with people who care about the quality of a production, who care about the validity of the casting and who are nurturing. I’m trying to take advantage of that.

“I loved living in New York. But I’m here to see what we can get going.”

San Diego writer Annie Weisman, 18, is one of the four teen-age playwrights whose work will be produced at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage Dec. 9-20 as part of Plays by Young Writers ’92.

The presentation by the San Diego-based Playwrights Project is the company’s eighth annual festival of winning scripts from California. Weisman’s script, “We’re Talking Today Here” was chosen from 130 contest submissions along with “Free For All” by Jim Knable, 16, of Sacramento, “The Dreamwalkers,” by Risa Yanagisawa, 17, of Santa Monica and “The Unwall” by Rian Johnson, 18, of San Clemente.

The numbers are in for KidzArtz, and some of them are pretty and some of them aren’t. The good news is that the sixth annual free festival of the arts in Balboa Park attracted 50,000 to 55,000 kids Oct. 10 and 11. The bad news is that the program came $6,000 short of meeting its $100,000 budget. Last year, it came $10,000 short. Founder and coordinator Elaine Krieger said she is “desperately” seeking donations to ensure that there will be a seventh annual free festival next year. To send contributions, write KidzArtz, 3831 Eagle St., San Diego92103, or call 685-3400 until Oct. 31.

PROGRAM NOTES: Stacy Keach’s showpiece, “Solitary Confinement,” which had its San Diego premiere at the Spreckels Theatre last January, will open Nov. 8 on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre. . . .

Busy Graciela Daniele, who has directed for the Old Globe Theatre and the La Jolla Playhouse, has done the musical staging for the musical version of Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl,” opening on Broadway March 4. . . .

Kirby Ward, son of San Diego Civic Light Opera co-artistic directors Don and Bonnie Ward, will play the lead in the London version of “Crazy for You” opening next year. He is the only American to land a part in an otherwise all-British cast. . . .

The San Diego Theatre League’s Sneak Preview series continues with $5 tickets for a Nov. 2 dress rehearsal performance of the San Diego premiere of “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” the Terrence McNally play opening at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre Nov. 5. Tickets are available at the Times Arts Tix booth in Horton Plaza. Call 238-0700. . . .

A reading of Cathryn Pisarski’s “Something Is Burning,” a tale of witches and ghosts in contemporary life, will be presented Tuesday at the Fritz Theatre at 8 p.m. featuring Brian Salmon, Linda Libby, Philip Charles Sneed and Melissa Harte. Admission is what you can afford. Call 523-1549. . . .

The University of San Diego’s Theatre Arts Program, the Old Globe Theatre and Sweetooth Comedy Theatre will co-produce the San Diego premiere of Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock,” the story of a family’s struggle through the Great Depression Tuesday through Nov. 7 in Shiley Theatre at USD. The Globe will provide costumes and props, Sweetooth the technical support and publicity and the 27-person cast will be drawn from USD and the community. In addition to the ticket price ($7 general admission, $5 for students), patrons are urged to bring a can of food to be distributed to the hungry. For information call 260-4600, Ext. 4901.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

CHICANO SATIRE

Culture Clash’s “A Bowl of Beings” is “exuberant art, unshackled, traditionless, inspired, self-affirming--and ready,” Sylvie Drake wrote when the show appeared in Los Angeles last year. The company, made up of Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza, uses satire and skits to redefine the experience of being Latino in America, or as they prefer to call themselves: “Chicanos . . . reared on tortillas, frijoles and Pop-Tarts.” Culture Clash will perform “A Bowl of Beings” Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Mandeville Auditorium on the UC San Diego campus. Tickets are $13-$15 general admission and $9-$11 for students, 534-6467 or 278-TIXS.