Keeping it Together at the Edge of the World

Where there’s a will, there’s an Edge.

As the Edge of the World Theater Festival enters its second year, event organizers are working to address issues that came up last year--among them the absence of a central staging area, a lack of ethnic diversity in shows and some confusion over what constitutes “edgy.”

The inaugural festival ran eight days, and featured 50 shows at 20 venues. With more than 60 shows offered at about 30 venues, this year’s EdgeFest--as it is more commonly known--continues its ambitious agenda beginning Thursday and running through Nov. 19. A number of artistic round table discussions are planned, as well as the L.A. History Project, a special two-day program of original commissioned pieces highlighting different personages and events from L.A.’s past.

With participating theaters located from the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood to the Westside, cohesiveness is an issue. “Because of L.A.’s expansiveness, we can’t have that Edinburgh feeling,” says one of the EdgeFest organizers, Tamar Fortgang, referring to the venerable festival of the arts held annually in Scotland. “We were missing that neighborhood feeling, where you go to one place and see shows throughout the day.”

To address the geographical challenges, organizers have established four festival “hubs”: the Village at the Gay & Lesbian Center in Hollywood, the Eclectic Theatre in North Hollywood, downtown’s Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

“These hubs not only house many of the shows that are attached to the festival, they will also be the sites for various special events,” says Fortgang, who is also a founding member of the Zoo District and communications coordinator for Cornerstone Theatre Company. “And they will be information centers, where you can purchase passports and also get an overview of what’s going on in the festival citywide.”

EdgeFest passports, which cost $15, allow purchasers to attend any festival show for $5. (Because many of the productions take place in small venues, calling the specific theater for advance reservations is recommended.)

Last year, EdgeFest organizers sold about 200 passports. “We are having quite a few advance sales, which in L.A. theater is miracle enough,” Fortgang says. “You have to realize, and I say this with a huge smile on my face, that the notion of a successful theater festival in L.A. is already a huge contradiction to what people thought was possible. The fact that it’s happening a second year is extraordinary.”

It’s fitting that such a far-flung enterprise as EdgeFest had its origins in cyberspace--namely Big Cheap Theatre, a small-theater e-mail network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and resources.

“A bunch of small theater representatives got together and asked how we could stay in touch,” says Christopher DeWan, another festival organizer and a member of Theatre of NOTE’s artistic board. “That’s how Big Cheap Theatre evolved.”

DeWan considers the Internet vital to the continuing development of the festival. “We conducted online surveys last year to pinpoint public reactions to the festival--one directed at festival participants, one solely for audience members,” DeWan says. “From those surveys, we learned that people questioned how attending the EdgeFest differed from somebody just going out and seeing a lot of theater. But now, with our new hub system, we hope to make the festival more festive. We want to make people aware not only of the great theater in their own neighborhoods, but of the great stuff being done in areas farther away.”

But what exactly makes the EdgeFest so edgy? Last year’s festival took some heat not only because of the decentralized nature of its activities, but also because of its apparent homogeneity. (A Times story noted that “very few ethnic-specific groups are in it; the festival is somewhat whiter than one might expect at the ‘edge of the world.’ ”)

“I definitely agree that we need more African American and Asian companies, and we do have more this year,” Fortgang says. “This year, companies like Lodestone, an Asian American company, have become aware of us and are diving into the mix. But there just aren’t that many racially diverse theater companies that we know of in this city. If you look at the festival’s percentage of ethnically diverse theater companies to so-called white companies, then I think we’re doing just fine.”

Some Questions About Qualifying for the Festival

The 1999 festival also engendered some confusion about what specific criteria, if any, EdgeFest participants were required to meet. The EdgeFest is a non-juried festival--unlike the Edinburgh Festival--in that there is no panel of judges giving thumbs up or down on festival applicants. However, though the EdgeFest is a purposely ecumenical affair, including such disparate shows as Zoo District’s gritty “Nosferatu” and Actors’ Co-op’s sunny “The Fantasticks” under the same creative umbrella seemed a stretch.

“Some people think that we should have a more juried festival, with people saying, ‘We’ll take you and you but not you,’ ” Fortgang says. “Others feel that we are grass-roots and inclusive. This year, we rejected a specific show, because they couldn’t answer our question as to how that show fit into the festival.”

But the festival is growing, and organizers are already looking ahead as to how to manage that growth. “Maybe we’re talking about different tiers, a more selective juried festival and then a fringe, which would include everyone and his mother,” Fortgang says. “But no matter which way we go, we will always have that inclusiveness, because that’s where we came from and to abandon that would be to destroy the festival. And after all, who are we to define what ‘edgy’ is?”

Whatever their countercultural qualifications, theaters share a common goal: building audiences. By opening their doors to festival crowds, theaters hope to strut their creative stuff and, hopefully, expand their patron bases.

“I really wanted to put our facility on the creative map,” says Sue Hamilton, a festival director and the producing artistic director for the cultural arts program at the Gay & Lesbian Center’s Village. “I wanted to bring people to the Village who have never been there before, people who normally wouldn’t come.”

Hamilton says the festival serves an essential role in the development of new works. “I think the festival is catering to new works, especially this year, with our L.A. History Project,” Hamilton says. “Also, artists are motivated to get their new stuff out there, to get their shows on in time for the festival. The festival staff as a whole has encouraged people to submit new work. Plus I really do feel that this festival will continue to grow each year. We’ve witnessed it with the number of applicants this year, which have greatly increased.”

By at least two. The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and the Evidence Room, cutting-edge producing organizations conspicuous by their absence in the 1999 EdgeFest, will be on board this year, with the Odyssey serving as a festival hub. Ron Sossi, artistic director for the Odyssey, says his theater’s omission from last year’s festival was due more to organizational difficulties than philosophical differences.

“I think that last year the festival was really a last-minute thing,” Sossi says. “We didn’t really find out about it until it was a fait accompli, and everything had been set, really.”

Bart DeLorenzo, artistic director of the Evidence Room, simply had other fish to fry.

“Last year’s festival came at a tricky time for us,” he says. “Not only were we mounting an ambitious production, ‘No Orchids for Miss Blandish,’ but we were negotiating the terms for our new theater space, which was a pretty massive exercise. So we decided we just couldn’t throw ourselves into the festival at that time.”

Both Sossi and DeLorenzo are enthusiastic about coming on board for EdgeFest 2000. “What I like about the festival is that it is, to a large extent, younger groups with a younger audience that are trying to come up with things that are a little more edgy, more off the wall,” Sossi says. “There’s a kind of renegade, guerrilla quality that I like, out of which comes some interesting, gutsy work. Often that work is done on a shoestring budget, and it may even be a little slipshod, depending on who’s doing it and how it’s put together. But there’s a kind of vitality and energy that I find appealing.”

DeLorenzo agrees. “It’s exciting, this kind of crazy energy of all different groups putting on different shows. My guess is that there are going to be a lot of surprises this year.”

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* Edge of the World Theater Festival opens Thursday, continuing through Nov. 19. For information and specific dates and locations, go to https://www.edgeoftheworld.org, or call the Village at the Gay & Lesbian Center, (323) 860-7336; the Eclectic Theatre, (818) 508-3003; Los Angeles Theatre Center, (213) 627-6500; or the Odyssey Theatre, (310) 477-2055.