New Improv at South Coast Repertory: The Marriage of Festival, Construction

Actors tend not to improvise at South Coast Repertory, where the guiding ethic is a faithful adherence to the words and meanings that playwrights put on the page. But a whole lot of improvising--logistical, not dramatic--is going on in connection with this year’s fifth annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Hardhats, not actors, will inhabit the theater in June, when the festival devoted to showcasing and developing works in progress customarily takes place. When the current season closes May 5, construction crews will move in to remodel and refurbish the two stages. The $19-million expansion and renovation project also includes building a third stage for the Costa Mesa theater. Oct. 5 is the scheduled reopening date.

For the Pacific Playwrights Festival, that means improvising. Instead of two consecutive weekends in June, the public readings of plays will take place during the last weekend in April and the first weekend in August. Jerry Patch, the festival’s director, says everything should be back to normal next year.

Typically, scripts being developed through the theater’s Hispanic Playwrights Project are highlighted on the first weekend of the Pacific Playwrights Festival, followed by an assortment of works by emerging and established playwrights on the second weekend. This year, April 25-28 will be designated the Pacific Playwrights Festival. The Hispanic Playwrights Project, in its 17th year, will take place Aug. 2-3. Because of the construction at South Coast, the Hispanic play fest will move across the street to Founders Hall, an intimate theater at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

In conjunction with the Hispanic weekend, South Coast will remount “California Scenarios,” an evening of one-act plays about the Latino experience in California that premiered at last year’s festival. It will again be staged in the Noguchi sculpture garden two blocks from the theater. The show, a quick sellout last year because only 99 seats were sold for each performance, will run for eight performances, July 25-Aug. 4.

The April festival will feature readings of five plays, including “Exposed,” a new script South Coast commissioned from Beth Henley, best known for her 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, “Crimes of the Heart.” Also to be read are “Intimate Apparel” by Lynn Nottage, whose “Crumbs From the Table of Joy” was seen at South Coast in 1996, “99 Histories” by Julia Cho, “Truth and Beauty” by Steven Drukman and “Our Boy” by Julia Jordan.

Patch said he is scouting locations for weekend matinee readings because both theaters at South Coast will be occupied: Horton Foote’s “Getting Frankie Married ... and Afterwards” will be on the Mainstage, and Richard Greenberg’s “The Dazzle” will be on the Second Stage.

In the past, two plays in the festival have been given full workshop productions, with costumes, scenery and actors who have their parts memorized and move about the stage. With no place to put a full production, all festival performances this year will be staged readings, in which actors typically sit or stand still while reading their lines.

Play selections for the Hispanic Playwrights Project will be announced later.