The Siren’s Song Still Beckons

“Running a theater is crazy: constant, constant, constant stress,” said Ron Sossi.

He had just been asked whether his two mild heart attacks, 15 and 20 years ago, were related to his job running the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in West L.A. The second attack took place on the premises of the Odyssey’s previous home. Doctors recommended bypass surgery at the time, but Sossi declined. He believes in his own ways of fending off cardiac trouble.

He recently went through an annual 30-day “juice-fest,” during which he ate no solid food and lost a half-pound every day. He has learned how to sense rapidly building tension within his chest and take steps “to pull down,” he said.

“You can die or you can live. I try to run the theater in a way that opts for the latter.”

No kidding. Both Sossi, 59, and the Odyssey, 30, are alive and kicking. Although there are older theater companies in L.A., the only other one that has been led by one individual through as many decades of productions is the bigger and wealthier Mark Taper Forum, run by Gordon Davidson.

Sossi’s celebrating his nonprofit theater’s 30 years by directing the Odyssey’s most expensive ($80,000) and ambitious production ever: “The Greeks,” Kenneth Cavander’s two-part epic that condenses and combines 10 ancient plays. Money for the show came from a $39,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, plus other donations and ticket revenues.

The production has severely tested Sossi’s stress-fighting techniques. Of the original cast of 28 who began rehearsing more than three months ago, a dozen had been replaced by the time Sossi talked to a reporter recently, mostly because the departing actors got jobs that paid them more than the paltry fees offered by the Odyssey under Actors’ Equity’s 99-seat theater plan.

“It became a joke: ‘Get cast in “The Greeks” and you get a role in a movie,’ ” Sossi said. “Conflicts come up that wouldn’t be there in a real paying situation. This play is hell in that regard.” Characteristic for the Odyssey, the show’s opening was postponed by a week--but as of press time the opening was definitely on for consecutive nights this weekend.

Rehearsing “The Greeks” is also grueling because of its “high-pitched” nature, Sossi said. With so many intense plays combined into fewer than seven hours, climaxes are frequent. “You can’t look forward to any five minutes of just a nice conversation.”

So why bother? Sossi cited his interest in the late, legendary theatrical guru Jerzy Grotowski, with whom he studied for three months in 1976. “The Greeks” “goes into the most emotional places where human beings can go--nether reaches” where most actors have seldom ventured. “For me, theater is about trying to have new experiences,” Sossi said. “I get a little impatient with the Method--it’s valid, but it’s about re-creating experience. It’s not about exploring new states, which is what Grotowski did.” Sossi likes theater that discusses “subjects we’d prefer not to think about.”

During the Odyssey’s first decade, this penchant for new and sometimes uncomfortable experiences translated into plenty of experimentation with theatrical technique. “I still love all that stuff, but as the years pass, I’m more interested in the content,” Sossi said. “I see young companies and think: Been there, done that. I’m more interested now in the microscopic view, in digging deeper holes.”

Especially identified with Brecht’s work in the theater’s early years, Sossi generally stopped doing it (except for a brief return last year) because “I try not to let myself get old in terms of regurgitating past things. We all try to be as daring as we can in the choice of material and in experimenting with the rehearsal process. Sometimes, I don’t even block the play until two weeks before opening. With this one, I wanted the chorus members to learn all of the choral lines, to the point where they began asking me to please assign them individual lines. But I didn’t want them to be interested only in their own lines.” Now, with individual lines finally assigned, Sossi believes that chorus members could easily fill in for one another, if necessary.

Despite the fluidity of the rehearsal process, however, Sossi no longer believes the form of the production itself has to be unconventional. “Find a form that serves the play,” he said. “If it’s conventional, fine. When we did Brecht, one of the first things I asked was, ‘How can we do this differently?’ Now my question is, ‘What is the provocative thought process that’s going on in this play?’ ”

That the young Sossi wanted to experiment as much as possible was understandable, considering what he was doing when he launched the Odyssey. After becoming excited by theater at the University of Michigan and while doing graduate work in film at UCLA, he had become a TV executive. Working for ABC, he supervised the network’s concerns in such fare as “Bewitched,” “The Flying Nun” and “Here Come the Brides,” later moving on to similar jobs at Paramount and Metromedia.

But he really wanted to direct. His wife at the time, future TV star Bonnie Franklin, introduced him to an acting and dance teacher, Mascha Beyo, with whom he rented a small North Hollywood space. After a few months, Beyo left, but Sossi kept going, pouring his TV salary into an 81-seat theater at Hollywood Boulevard and Harvard, named the Odyssey.

The Hollywood space was next to an X-rated movie theater, where the on-screen climaxes were so loud, Sossi said, that the Odyssey sound cues had to be timed to cover the noise. But the location had the advantage of attracting another porn exhibitor who was willing to pay the Odyssey a lot of money to sublease the space, enabling Sossi in 1973 to move his own company to the Westside, which he thought would be more hospitable to the intellectual and European fare he favored.

After 16 years at the intersection of Bundy Drive, Ohio Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, the Odyssey lost its lease. Now committed to the Westside, Sossi found a “temporary” home on the west side of Sepulveda Boulevard, between Santa Monica and Olympic boulevards, in a city-owned building. He’s still there 10 years later, with a great rental deal from the city: $1 a year.

Sossi wanted to expand beyond the 99-seat format, building a mid-size theater at the site, but that plan was foiled when the adjacent carwash leased part of the property from the city for a lot more money than the Odyssey pays. Sossi’s campaign to prevent the carwash lease deal, involving letters and petitions, failed in its ostensible goal, but the city offered to extend the Odyssey lease; the company now has another eight years there.

“If the circumstances are right to do it well, I’d still like to move up” to a larger facility and an Equity contract, Sossi said. “But it’s no longer ‘move up or bust.’ ” Most of the companies that have made such a move, such as A Noise Within and East West Players, had an easier challenge, Sossi said, because they are in neighborhoods where real estate isn’t as expensive as it is on the Westside.

For the Odyssey’s future, Sossi is more interested in people than in buildings. He wants to find the money to create a more genuine ensemble within the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble. Over the years, the behind-the-scenes staff has been a kind of ensemble, and a number of actors have been associated with the Odyssey, more or less informally. Individual units arose under the Odyssey umbrella, just as Circus Theatricals--formerly the Hudson Theatre Guild of Hollywood--did this year (its current show is “The Cheats of Scapin”). But few of these smaller groups had any extra money attached to them, which led to their eventual demise. “I’m ready to do an ensemble at a higher level, before I get too old,” Sossi said.

A number of other directors have worked at the Odyssey. “As an artistic director, I’m pretty liberal. If you have confidence in a director, you go with it,” Sossi said. Yet he also acknowledged that he’s “really involved with casting, because I’m really good at it.” Shortly before technical rehearsals, he’ll give the directors notes, but “it’s nothing I impose--unless the show is really rotten.” He canceled two such productions before they opened, and “maybe half a dozen other times I’ve taken over, as a life preserver.” Mounted on his office wall is a life preserver a cast member gave him after one of his takeovers.

Signs of a control freak? “In the theater I am, and I have to be,” he replied. “In my life, I’ve tried to be, but I’m not.” Control on that level is illusory, he believes--a lesson some of “The Greeks” learned the hard way. “My personal interest is in plays that really shake the foundation of eternal verities, that shake our smugness about what life is. I don’t think we have the foggiest notion what life is about.”

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“The Greeks (Part I, the Cursed and Part II, the Blessed),” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Part I, “The Cursed”: today, 2 p.m. Part II, “The Blessed”: today, 7 p.m. See listings for future schedule. Ends Dec. 5. Prices: Parts I or II: $20.50-$24.50. Parts I and II: $38-46. (310) 477-2055.