Who’ll Pitch Radio Drama at UCI?

Baseball fans may remember Johnny Callison, the Philadelphia Phillies outfielder who won the 1964 All-Star game with a dramatic, three-run homer.

His phonetic namesake, Glenn Kalison, will be swinging for the fences March 3 on “Theatre on the Air,” the weekly radio drama program he founded about 18 months ago on UC Irvine’s radio station, KUCI (88.9FM).

Kalison started the Sunday night show as a performing outlet and learning tool for himself and his fellow student actors in UCI’s graduate school of drama. Now, in his last public performance before graduating with a master’s degree, Kalison will play the hero of “Man on Spikes.” He adapted the radio play from a 1955 baseball novel by Eliot Asinof about a centerfielder’s 16-year struggle to make it to the big leagues.

While honing the 11th original live show in the series, Kalison wonders whether other student actors will step up to the plate and keep “Theater on the Air” alive after he leaves in May to pursue an acting career. He hopes that rookie talent--current first-year acting students in the three-year graduate program--will fill his spikes and continue producing the show on the nonprofit, student-run KUCI.

One of his projects between now and graduation is to get newcomers involved in the remaining broadcasts. “Theatre on the Air” produces about one live drama each month; vintage recordings of old-time classics such as “The Shadow” fill the rest of the slots each Sunday at 10 p.m. Audiences who can’t pull in KUCI’s signal can hear the show live over the Internet at www.kuci.org

Julie Espy, the station’s general manager, helped Kalison launch the show in October 2000, and hopes it will continue. “It fulfills our mission to play things you don’t hear elsewhere,” she said. “Certainly no one else in Orange County is doing live radio theater.”

Kalison, from New York City, was not a radio drama buff when he arrived on campus. His studies under Dudley Knight, UCI drama professor and radio theater veteran who specializes in voice and dialect training, gave him the idea of starting the show. For the actors, Kalison said, it has been an outlet for experimenting with accents, playing offbeat characters and learning microphone techniques. That practice could come in handy for the voiceover work that sustains many a professional actor waiting for a stage or screen role.

Professional outlets for radio drama are few, Kalison acknowledges. But with the advent of satellite radio, which would expand listeners’ choices, he thinks a channel for drama could emerge.

The 10 live shows that “Theatre on the Air” has produced have tested the staff’s ingenuity. One program, “Three Skeleton Key,” required a sound effect that would resemble an army of rats attacking a lighthouse. A brush scratching on a piece of glass did the trick.

“Theatre on the Air” has done fresh re-creations of existing radio scripts, including an episode of “The Shadow” and an adaptation of Ray Bradbury short stores. “Man on Spikes,” two hours instead of the usual one-hour show, reflects Kalison’s love of baseball literature.

As an undergraduate he caught for Lehigh University--an experience that made him realize he was better suited for the stage than the diamond.

After “Man on Spikes,” Kalison plans to produce fresh adaptations of a couple of classics. Then the future of “Theatre on the Air” will be in the hands of the school’s returning acting students and the radio station’s incoming programming directors.

“It’s an underused opportunity for storytelling,” says Kalison. “Your imagination’s got to do the work, and there’s not a lot of that any more.”

Check This ‘Tommy’ to See What’s Changed

“Oh, look out you rock ‘n’ rollers, pretty soon now you’re gonna get a little older,” David Bowie sang 31 years ago in his song, “Changes.” Baby Boomers who want to know just how much has changed might look to the upcoming Fullerton College stage production of “The Who’s Tommy.”

This version, which plays March 7-14 in the campus theater, comes with a 15-page study guide designed to bring Pete Townshend’s landmark rock opera into high school classrooms. One generation’s soundtrack for rebellion has turned into another’s homework.

The study guide was written by Gary Krinke, the veteran Fullerton College theater professor who directs the show. Krinke, 53, saw the Who perform the 1969-vintage “Tommy” in Los Angeles. He chuckled when asked whether he could have imagined then that high school kids would get class credit for, watching the rocking saga of a deaf, dumb and blind boy who parlays his genius for pinball into leadership of a religious cult. “No,” he said. “And I never thought I would get paid to direct it.”

Krinke says his student cast of 53 actors knew next to nothing about the Who when they got involved in the production. But he says that appreciate the score, which includes “Pinball Wizard.” As an added attraction, ticket holders--among them high school English and drama classes attending for course credit--will be able to play pinball for free in the lobby during intermission. We don’t know whether Krinke never tilts at all, but the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s Western region honored his teaching achievements recently by giving him its annual Excellence in Theatre Education Award.

Rude Guerrilla Company Opens Actors Workshop

The newest player in Orange County theater education is the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company in Santa Ana. Its Actors Workshop, a weekly Saturday morning and afternoon soiree for thespians, was launched Feb. 9 at the Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway.

Dave Barton, the storefront theater’s artistic director, taught the first course, a two-part discussion and hands-on workshop based on his personal acting bible, David Mamet’s “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor.” The series continues today with the first of two voice workshops led by company member Susan E. Taylor. The classes cost $10 per session. Information: (714) 447-4414.

Last-Minute Switch Lands Rat Pack in Santa Ana

Gilbert & Sullivan are out and the Rat Pack is in at the Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center. “The Pirates of Penzance” had been scheduled this month in the Celebrity Dinner Theater, one of three performance spaces in the lavishly restored former Masonic Temple. But differences between the building’s managers and the production company that staged the room’s inaugural musical, “A Big Band Christmas,” led to a change.

Limon/Carr Productions of Tustin, which stages full-scale musicals around Southern California, was unhappy with the marketing and advertising support for “A Big Band Christmas.” It offered the center a chance to opt out of the contracted “Pirates of Penzance.” Now Tibbie’s All American Cabaret, which has produced dinner theater since 1982 in Orange County and Long Beach, has moved in. The first show, running through April 28, is “Blue Eyes and His Buddies,” a revue celebrating Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack pals. Three more revues, “Those Fabulous Forties II,” “Viva Las Vegas” and “Holiday Follies” are scheduled through the end of the year.

Jason Kordas, general manager of the Event Center, praised the quality of “A Big Band Christmas” but says the deal with Tibbie’s is a better business marriage. The center’s focus is not promoting shows, but hosting and catering business meetings, civic functions and private parties. Kordas said Tibbie’s is renting the theater and paying the center to provide food and beverage service while it handles marketing, advertising and ticket sales. The productions are revue-style shows rather than book musicals, with actors doubling as waiters and interacting with the audience. Kordas said Tibbie’s, with its established clientele, has drawn 120 to 140 people per performance during the first two weeks of “Blue Eyes,” about double the average draw for “A Big Band Christmas.”