FUTURE PRESENCE

Kathleen Chalfant

Actress, 54

What she’s done: An admired regional and New York actress, Chalfant made her Broadway debut in 1975 with a flop musical (“Dance With Me”). If life affords a performer at least two major breakthroughs, Chalfant got her first in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” in which she played a cranky rabbi and a Mormon undergoing a late-spring’s awakening, both in L.A. (1992) and on Broadway (1993). Breakthrough No. 2: The role of John Donne scholar Dr. Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. As an unnervingly smart literary professor hit by ovarian cancer, Chalfant helped make “Wit” one of the decade’s most touted new plays, second only, perhaps, to “Angels in America.”

Outlook for 2000: Chalfant reprises her performance in “Wit” for the Geffen Playhouse’s production, Jan. 18-Feb. 20. After that she’ll headline the London West End production. She has a recurring supporting role on the upcoming UPN TV series “The Beat,” from the “Homicide” and “Oz” team of Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson.

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Robert Glaudini

Playwright, actor, director, 53

What he’s done: He murdered Sharon Lawrence on last season’s finale of “NYPD Blue,” a series for which he has been a writer. Glaudini got his start as a key figure in 1960s and ‘70s San Diego theater; in New York he directed Sam Shepard and Patti Smith in “Cowboy Mouth,” and he directed Shepard’s “Mad Dog Blues.” Glaudini’s own plays include “Against the Sun” and “Borrowed Time.” In the 1998 Mark Taper Forum New Work Festival, Glaudini’s play “The Poison Tree”--about a La Jolla woman, her guru and her compromised husband, a judge--received a workshop production. Director Robert Egan supported it and, says Glaudini, after some “hard but inspiring” feedback from Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson, “The Poison Tree” was optioned by the Taper.

Outlook for 2000: “The Poison Tree” has won a prestigious Taper main-stage slot, premiering May 28-July 16. Glaudini has a newer work, “Swing, or the Identical Same Temptation,” now making the rounds in New York. Meantime he returns to the stage to act in the East West Players production of David Henry Hwang’s “Golden Child,” Jan. 26-Feb. 20.

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Rachel Hauck

Scenic designer, 31

What she’s done: Since 1993, Hauck has been an Actors’ Gang resident designer and company member. More recently she has branched out geographically, designing “Tongue of a Bird” for its incarnations in Seattle, L.A. and New York. She works often with her partner, director Lisa Peterson; their collaborations include “Tongue of a Bird,” the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “Anthony and Cleopatra,” and the recent La Jolla Playhouse premiere of Chay Yew’s “Wonderland,” for which Hauck created one of the most gorgeous abstract conceptions of Southern California--a sliver of ocean, an expanse of sky, an intimation of loneliness.

Outlook for 2000: Hauck’s designs for a pair of “short musicals about stinky food,” “Green Eggs and Ham” and “The Old Man Who Loved Cheese,” grace a world premiere double bill this month in Minneapolis at the Children’s Theatre Company, after which her design for another world premiere, “Wild Nights With Emily,” opens at the Perseverance Theatre Company in Juneau, Alaska. Next, she’ll return to the Gang, for writer-director Tracy Young’s “Dreamplay,” to be followed by a workshop Hauck is co-creating with Chris Wells. Called “Sprawl,” it’ll involve L.A., urban spread and lots and lots of packing tape.

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Suzan-Lori Parks

Playwright, screenwriter, 36

What she’s done: Since the 1980s, Parks’ explosively playful stage explorations have challenged audiences. Her historical fantasia “Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom” made its West Coast premiere at Odyssey Theatre in 1993, directed by Peter Brosius (the former Mark Taper Forum staffer who runs the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre Company). Parks’ resume also includes “The America Play,” in which a black man in post-Civil War America makes his living reenacting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. More recently, at the New York Public Theater, Parks has been represented by “Venus” and the recently closed “Scarlet Letter” riff, “In the Blood.” She wrote the screenplay “Girl 6” for Spike Lee, and she has various other scripts for film and TV in the offing.

Outlook for 2000: George C. Wolfe, head of the Public and the New York Shakespeare Festival, has optioned Parks’ newest play, “Topdog/Underdog,” a two-man show about a complex relationship between brothers. One’s trying to hone his skills at three-card monte. The other, a retired monte veteran, makes his living impersonating Lincoln (in an extension of Parks’ “America Play” gambit). Early reports liken “Topdog/Underdog” to Athol Fugard’s “Blood Knot,” but even if this work turns out to be more accessible than earlier Parks poetic riffs such as “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,” you can bet it’ll still be full of inventive, bebop-soaked language. The play could arrive on- or off-Broadway before the end of the year.

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David Yazbek

Composer, lyricist, 36

What he’s done: Commercial jingles. A year spent writing for NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman.” Producing various albums, with artists ranging from XTC to Tito Puente. Yazbek’s debut album, “The Laughing Man,” was followed by “Tock.” And, according to the Yazbek Web site (https://www.war.com/yazbek), he “accidentally” composed the theme to “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

Outlook for 2000: Backed by 20th Century Fox, the musical version of “The Full Monty” opens at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, May 23-July 2. Yazbek is writing the music and lyrics, in cahoots with librettist Terrence McNally and director Jack O’Brien.