Performing on the Edge

Los Angeles actor Arthur Hanket bases his current solo play on the life and work of Frenchman Jean Genet, a homosexual playwright and criminal who was sentenced to a life term in prison. The play is set in Genet’s 1948 prison cell where the playwright, after receiving word of a pardon from the president of France, is facing the prospects of a foreboding outside world.

It ain’t Kansas.

And it isn’t “Oklahoma.” Or “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” or any of the more typical, universally popular fare that crowd the lineups of many theater houses in Ventura County.

But it is the third show in the solo series at Ojai’s Theater 150. The four-play series marks the opening of the 45-seat, storefront theater designed to provide a forum for daring and intimate work.

Hanket’s “Genet: Language of the Wall” opens Friday and runs through Sunday. It follows Doug Motel’s “Shiva Arms,” about a menagerie of characters that include a self-mutilating punk rocker and a B-movie actress; and Ellen Hulkower’s comedy, “Jumping Off the Fridge,” about the struggles of single life.

“Skinny White Boy (In the Heart of Darkness),” Rick Cleveland’s autobiographical tragic comedy about researching and writing a play on elephant poaching in Africa, will run April 11-12.

Coming up, there will be a dramatization of two short stories by James M. Cain, improvisation, play readings, an Ojai Playwrights Conference and the continued presentation of original, cutting-edge works.

In a town that boasts a Shakespeare Festival, a civic light opera, a children’s theater company and an art center-based community theater program, Theater 150 manages to fill a niche.

“This is not your typical fare, especially what you would find in a small town. It’s really, really edgy material,” said Kim Maxwell-Brown, who operates the theater with husband Dwier Brown. “We’re dealing with social issues, emotional issues, uncomfortable issues. I don’t like comfortable and safe.”

Maxwell-Brown, 34, and Brown, 38, are themselves veterans of stage, film and television. The former can claim among her credits a solo show, “The Invisible Girl,” and a recurring role on TV’s “Knot’s Landing.” The latter, a former member of the Second City improvisational troupe, has had numerous film roles including that of Kevin Costner’s father in “Field of Dreams.”

Since the couple’s move from Los Angeles to Ojai in 1992, Maxwell-Brown has taught acting classes for adults and teens, and the couple has established itself in Ojai Valley’s theatrical community.

It was that involvement that ultimately led to Theater 150.

“We increasingly met more and more wonderful professional, gifted actors who were living here, but working in Los Angeles,” Maxwell-Brown said.

“A large group of us started getting together every week or two, going to people’s homes to have readings,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘I wish there was someplace we could do this.’ My classes started to take off and I needed a full-time space of my own.”

That full-time space turned out to be the former game room of Giorgio’s Italian Food & Pizza restaurant, now Theater 150, located on the Highway 150 portion of Ojai Avenue.

The theater is dimly lit by a combination of track lighting and an antique sconce that belonged to Maxwell-Brown’s Auntie Gwen. It was Auntie Gwen’s estate that largely paid for the theater, so the sconce serves as a tribute to the benefactor.

The seats at Theater 150 are an intriguing example of artistic creativity in their own right--a mix of thrift store finds and donations from Maxwell-Brown’s students. Each distinctive chair has been painted black and will eventually be given a black velvet cushion.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of the 800-square-foot theater, which took about five months to redesign, is the proximity of the actors to the audience: There is just enough room between the front row and the handmade stage for a wheelchair to pass by.

“There is a level of intimacy in this theater you are not going to get in a larger theater. The performer is right there,” Maxwell-Brown said. “It is so much more intense. The actor can see your face, and get feedback from the audience. It bumps the whole level of work up another notch.”

Motel, who christened the theater with his show about the 11 eccentric tenants of the Shiva Arms apartment building, called the small theater experience “raw performance.”

“When the audience is right there around you, they help you form the performance. It becomes an exchange of energy,” Motel said. “Each audience adopts their favorite character, and I can feel what they are responding to.”

Hanket, who will be in town Friday, is looking forward to the opportunity provided by the living room-style setting.

“It is very, very intimate and my play is a very intimate sort of play,” Hanket said. “The piece I do is about a prisoner and prison and the metaphor of prison. What is attractive to me about a small stage is I am able to share intimacy without having to shout.”

Like Motel, Hanket’s work also is audience-driven in a close setting.

“The play has its own steam. It’s funny, it’s charming, but it’s very intense material. The audience totally turns the way the play goes. They drive it as much as I do.”

The quaintness of Theater 150 may be an illustration of a particular theatrical style. But for Maxwell-Brown and Brown, it’s as much an illustration of their desire to maintain creative integrity.

By keeping the seating capacity low, they said, even the most off-the-wall production has an opportunity to sell out and not cause a financial hardship.

“Excellence is really what I believe in. Integrity. Physically we’re really tiny and we designed it that way specially--it’s the only way we knew we could maintain artistic creativity,” Maxwell-Brown said.

“If we had more seats to fill, we would have to do better-known plays, or musicals, or plays with lots of children in them or large casts,” she said. “I enjoy going to see those shows and may decide to do one, but I don’t want to make that as a financial decision.”

Besides, Ojai has plenty of other presenters of more standard theatrical work. That group includes Wayne Pickerell, a former student of Maxwell-Brown’s who is now director of the Ojai Civic Light Opera.

Pickerell said the addition of Theater 150 to the Ojai stage community will benefit theater-goers and actors alike.

“Kim’s vision is very much focused on what I would call the avant-garde. She is involved in bringing artists and creative work to Ojai that may not have a large audience now, but that in years to come will develop that audience,” Pickerell said.

“She’s really giving an opportunity not only for Ojai, but mostly for the artists themselves to have a place to try out their work and become known,” he said. “I think that probably a lot of stuff that David Mamet was involved in early on had to be done off-off-off-Broadway in small theaters where people would accept experimentation.”

Pickerell said he expects Theater 150 to be accepted by the generally arts-educated Ojai community and thinks there are plenty of theater-goers to support the cluster of theater groups. Rather than grab audience away from other venues, he said, Theater 150 should help build the Ojai reputation.

“I don’t think you can do too much theater in an area like this,” he said. “More people are coming here because they see a theater center.”

Theater 150: Arthur Hanket’s “Genet: Language of the Wall” will be performed Fri.-Sun., 8 p.m. (Sat. performance is sold out, but seats may become available if there are no-shows.) 918 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. Tickets are $15. Call 525-1212.