One More for the Road

When the words “White People” were posted on signs in front of the elegant Lankershim Arts Center last year, some of the North Hollywood neighbors wondered what was going on.

One teenage girl was so concerned that she approached a member of the center’s resident theater company to ask whether only white people could enter the building.

Instead of keeping people out, though, the signs were meant to invite them in. They advertised the play then on stage: J.T. Rogers’ “White People.” The Road Theatre Company was presenting it as a way to get people thinking and talking about racism.

The 8-year-old company’s commitment to new, socially relevant plays has made it one of the region’s most watchable troupes--an achievement borne out by the recent announcement that the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle has bestowed the Road with one of its highest annual honors: the Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in small theater.

The presentation takes place Monday at the circle’s annual award ceremony. The Road is also in the running for production awards to be announced that evening; “White People” is nominated for Rogers’ writing and for David Gianopoulos’ lead performance.

The award show will follow a busy weekend, as the Road is in the midst of opening yet another play with a chilling title: John Rafter Lee’s “Hitler’s Head,” about artistic expression and social responsibility in Hitler-era Germany.

The crush of events is enough to make artistic director Taylor Gilbert sigh wearily but happily as she says, “We just love it. I think we’re all just theater rats here.”

The Harford Award follows an exceptional year and a half in which the Road achieved back-to-back successes with “An American Romance,” about love, religion and politics in an 1860s utopian community; “New York Mets,” about sexuality in a not-so-utopian present; “White People”; and “Tainted Blood,” a comic vampire tale involving Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Hitler’s Head” playwright Lee, who lives in Hollywood, believes his play and the Road are a good fit. He was a guest performer in the 1997 production of “An American Romance,” and he knows from experience that the company is committed to “plays that dig a little deeper.”

“The plays they do here tend to be ones that, a week later, you’re still thinking about--which I hope is true of this.”

Lee’s new play is a fictional account of a German artist who finds himself drawn, unwittingly yet inexorably, into the Nazi world. It all begins when he accepts a commission to create a bust of Hitler.

Ken Sawyer, the play’s co-director (with Gilbert) and an eight-year member of the company, says the story is about “the responsibility an artist has for what he’s creating.”

Hitler is very much a character in the play, and not just a cardboard villain. The devil doesn’t always come in horns and a tail, Sawyer observes. Sometimes he comes in a nice suit and a mustache.

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The Road is made up of about 90 actors, directors, designers and technicians. Actors are admitted through auditions, other artists and technicians through a review of resumes. Shows are then cast, and jobs assigned, primarily from within the company. Everyone shares the workload, from running lights to manning the box office.

Most company members do this in addition to holding outside jobs. “It’s like working a full-time job on top of your full-time job,” says Marci Hill, a member for four years and a producer of several shows, including “White People.”

Though members are paid a small amount for acting or directing, they volunteer most of their time. Unlike members of many such companies, however, they are not required to pay dues. The group derives much of its money, instead, from grants through the city of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department, the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from other foundations and, of course, box-office proceeds.

As a nonprofit group, the Road is incorporated as the Other Side of the Hill Productions. Its revenues were about $114,000 in 1997. “We operate on a shoestring here, like every other theater does,” says Gilbert, 46.

Still, the company tries to give back to its community, whether by sharing a portion of box-office proceeds with local charities, inviting youths and seniors to see shows for free, or offering acting, writing and other workshops.

The Road was born in March 1991, due largely to the efforts of Gino Cabanas. He and Gilbert were fellow actors in a Valley production that didn’t turn out as they’d hoped and, longing to choose their own material and maintain creative control over it, they began seeking like-minded people.

Their fledgling group--about a dozen and a half members at the time--opened its first production, an ambitious mounting of Lanford Wilson’s large-cast “Balm in Gilead,” later that year.

Over the next several years, the Road went through a shake-down process. This is typical for any young company, of course, but the Road seemed to have an especially challenging time of it. The company’s artistic leadership is now in its fifth configuration, with various falling-outs and movings-on resulting in the departures of such key players as Cabanas and onetime associate artistic director Brad Hills. (Dan Butler, another company leader, left to focus on the role that would make him famous: radio shock-jock Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe on NBC’s “Frasier.”)

Gilbert, who has always served on the board and been part of the producing and artistic leadership, took over as sole artistic director in October 1996. (She is not paid for her work; Suzanne Tara, the new administrator of programming and community outreach, holds the first-ever paid position.)

Through the years, the company has found itself wandering from home to home, trying to carve out affordable yet comfortable spaces for itself in industrial parks in Sun Valley and Van Nuys before landing a berth in the city-owned Lankershim Arts Center in 1995. (“It’s a good thing we chose the Road as our name,” Gilbert cracks, “because we were always going to be moving around.”)

The Lankershim facility is one of six community arts centers owned and maintained by the city, and overseen by the Cultural Affairs Department.

Initially, the Road and three other arts organizations were chosen to occupy the 1930s Art Deco building. The city later jettisoned the consortium tenancy as unwieldy, however, and chose the Road as the sole resident company. Under the terms of a new agreement, which became effective last month, the Road’s Other Side of the Hill Productions is responsible for ensuring that the center provides at least 40 hours of programming a week, in performances or classes. In addition to its own programs, Other Side of the Hill will contract with other groups to present a wide range of arts activities, many of them free to youths and seniors in the surrounding community.

In addition to free rent and utilities (except telephone), Other Side of the Hill receives $15,000 a year from the city to help pay the administrator’s salary. Other Side of the Hill must match that amount, as well as raising the underwriting for programs.

The Road presents its shows upstairs, in a room that accommodates just a 25-square-foot playing area and seating for 43.

Viewers sit so close that, on a few occasions during “Tainted Blood,” some got hit with squirting stage blood when a vampire took a stake to the heart. “It’s interactive theater,” Tara quips.

It’s part of life in a small theater.

“If we had had any idea that it took the type of funding that it takes and the begging that it takes and the man-hours that it takes, I don’t know that we would have sought it,” Gilbert says with a smile. “I think we were very lucky that we were that ignorant.” *

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“HITLER’S HEAD,” Road Theatre Company, Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Dates: Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. No performances next Sunday or April 2-4. Ends May 9. Price: $15. Phone: (818) 761-8838.