They’re Believers First, Then Artists

Actors Co-op is the L.A. theater that prays before it plays. Literally. To join, an actor must be a committed Christian. That, and a pretty fair thespian.

In 10 seasons, the company--based at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood--has been nominated 13 times for Ovation Awards. It has won six Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, including a 1996 citation for sustained achievement by a small theater.

Ensemble members say that a special cohesiveness born of intimately shared faith is crucial to what happens on stage. But the co-op learned early on that preachiness doesn’t pay.

Company leaders do have spiritual and moral issues in mind when they choose plays: “Man at a Crossroads” is this season’s theme--a look at moral choices and their consequences. But the religious touch is light and decidedly non-dogmatic. This season’s shows, all frequently seen on secular stages, include Alan Menken-Howard Ashman’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” George Bernard Shaw’s “The Devil’s Disciple” and Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” “Fools,” the co-op’s latest show, opened this weekend. “I’m not a Christian, but their work speaks to the soul of everyone,” said Julie Briggs, an Actors Co-op fan who is co-founder and artistic director of Moving Arts, a small theater in downtown Los Angeles. “You don’t get the sense of an agenda.”

Behind the scenes, though, the agenda is avowedly Christian. Every Monday evening, the members meet to discuss business and bond. Each is pledged to a Statement of Faith that says, “All of our members must be born again through Jesus Christ.... We will seek first God’s kingdom and look to Him to reveal our place as actors in it.”

On a recent Monday, about half of the 60 actors in the company were scattered about the Crossley Theatre, one of two 99-seat spaces at the church that Actors Co-op uses rent-free for shows and rehearsals. First came a charitable ritual--the passing of a velvet purse to collect money to help needy company members through emergencies. Then, separating into groups of three, the players began to talk quietly and pray.

Greg Baldwin, a husky man with small eyeglasses and a Vandyke beard, invoked God, “the author of all comedy,” on behalf of the cast of “Fools,” a play about a village of idiots that Neil Simon adapted from Russian Jewish folklore. “Let them get the rhythm right,” he prayed.

Not every member believes in the same way. “Some people are really fundamentalist Christian, and then there are people who are black sheep,” said Tim Woodward. He considers himself the company troublemaker, the one who argues for more daring approaches when it comes to strong language and sexuality. Last year, company leaders had to ask Woodward to tone down his bawdy gesticulating when he played Touchstone, the randy jester in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” Given his druthers, Woodward said, the company would be freed of such strictures, and artistic adventurousness would overcome religious caveats. “But,” he added, “part of the success is that everything is prayed about, and prayer works.”

Joel Swetow, who considers himself an atheistic Jew, went in with his radar on for signs of censorship or interference when Actors Co-op hired him last year to direct “As You Like It” on the strength of his past Shakespearean work with the Glendale classical stage company A Noise Within. He came out delighted. He felt no pressure to take part in the prayer sessions before each rehearsal and performance, but sometimes joined in.

“I never felt like there was any judgment against me when I didn’t participate,” Swetow said. “The tenor of it was, ‘We thank you, Lord, for allowing us to be here, we thank you for Joel, we pray that you give him inspiration.’ We used to joke about that: ‘If you’re asking God to inspire me, I must be doing a terrible job.’ I enjoyed the people and the process so much that I would go back there in a flash.”

Actors Co-op began meeting in 1987, led by David Schall, a transplanted Pennsylvanian who was passionate about acting and the ministry. The company’s first two productions were overtly Christian--much too overt for the critics. “We woke up and realized we were alienating the very people we wanted to embrace and draw in,” Schall said. “We took stock and reconsidered what our contract with our audience was.”

Producing director Nan McNamara and artistic director Gary Lee Reed say there are certain unbreakable constraints for a theater that has a Christian charter and operates on church grounds. Profanity can be heard only sparingly, when the context justifies its use. The company expurgated some epithets from its season-opening “Little Shop of Horrors,” for instance. Sexuality always will be treated gingerly. Nudity is out.

Schall, producing director for Actors Co-op’s first six seasons, says that until a few years ago, play selections were vetted by a drama committee designated by the church.

In 1993, the committee vetoed “The Boys Next Door,” about a group home for mentally disabled men, because a crucial scene was laced with profanity. “That was a little painful,” said Schall. The play’s impact and the context of the harsh language justified stretching the boundaries, he said. In 1996, “The Runner Stumbles,” about a priest accused of murdering a nun, was dropped as potentially offensive to Catholics.

Church-theater relations have grown more relaxed with time, Schall said, and so have the reins. Play selection is now strictly in the hands of the theater company.

Reed and McNamara see opportunities for more adventurousness--within limits. When Reed directed “Godspell” in 2000, one scene depicted a man stoned and tied to a fence. It was a deliberate evocation of the torment inflicted on Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was gruesomely beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo. Reed said he didn’t trumpet the parallel, but it was there to lend current meaning to the story for anyone who wanted to make the connection.

Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” also staged in 2000, bothered some conservative playgoers because its cast of flawed characters offered no examples of alternative behavior, Reed said. With the upcoming “All My Sons,” co-op audiences again will be left contemplating a tragic play with a shattering ending.

“The last three years we have tried to do more of showing people going down those darker paths,” McNamara said. “We always want to balance a season with [lighter] shows, but we think it is important to do those kinds of plays.”

The theater’s vital signs seem strong. McNamara said Actors Co-op will spend about $360,000 this season, most of it to stage productions and pay its five employees. The theater earns 60% to 65% of its budget at the box office and raises the rest from donors. With the church forgiving the rent, providing free office space and paying utility bills, Actors Co-op can funnel more money into the strong production values that are one of its trademarks.

The co-op has no trouble finding talent, despite the rule that only believers can belong. Last year, McNamara said, 200 actors applied and 100 auditioned for 14 openings in the annual spring tryouts. McNamara estimates that about a third of the 60 current members make their livings in show business--but they don’t do it at Actors Co-op. Players earn $7 to $15 for each performance. Co-op leaders dream of changing that. They envision an Actors Co-op housed in a 400-seat theater away from church grounds. There, some strictures concerning language and sexuality might be loosened somewhat. But not wanting to sever ties with the church, they would keep running the 99-seat Crossley Theatre and Crossley Terrace Theatre as well.

Their model for expansion is the 350-seat Lamb’s Players Theatre in San Diego. That company came into being in 1971, when a group of Christian hippies began doing street theater. Now Lamb’s boasts a budget of almost $4 million and nearly 8,000 subscribers, compared with 1,200 at Actors Co-op.

Reed belonged to a secular theater company in Los Angeles before joining Actors Co-op. “When you’d get in serious conversations, it was about work and business, the superficial day-to-day dealing with our careers,” he said. For him, Actors Co-op makes possible a closer, more fundamental human connection that begets onstage cohesiveness. But show business remains a business, even when conducted in Jesus’ name.

“It would be nice,” Reed said, “if our company was able to make a living doing this.”

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“FOOLS,” Crossley Terrace Theatre, First Presbyterian Church, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood. Dates: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends April 21. Prices: $14-$18. Phone: (323) 462-8460.

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Mike Boehm is a Times staff writer.