A Pair of Downtown Experiments

Two decrepit buildings in the vicinity of downtown L.A. that aren’t normally used for theater will play host to the most adventurous theatrical events of the summer: a radical vision of “King Lear” opening June 14, and Cornerstone Theater’s “Crossings, journeys of Catholic immigrants,” opening June 22.

For “King Lear,” director Travis Preston and the CalArts Center for New Theater will use six sites in a 30,000-square-foot former power plant at the Brewery Complex, a few blocks northeast of downtown. Audiences will move from space to space, past a 40-foot video installation, a field of oil derricks, a suspended car wreck and other scenic highlights.

The cast is all-female, led by Fran Bennett, who has already tackled men’s roles in the smaller-scale productions of Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company. Three distinguished East Coast actresses--Joan MacIntosh, Mary Lou Rosato and Marissa Chibas--are also featured in a company of 50 that’s filled out with CalArts students. Advance word from Preston is that this Lear is, more or less, the play’s bad guy.

With only two weeks of performances and only 140 spectators per night, tickets may be scarce. But “King Lear” also will be a harbinger of similar events. The Center for New Theater will soon inhabit REDCAT, CalArts’ new theater that’s scheduled to open at the Walt Disney Hall complex in 2003.

Cornerstone Theater is an old hand at site-specific projects, and this year’s “Crossings” will use the partially demolished St. Vibiana’s Cathedral to explore biblical stories from the perspective of L.A. Catholic immigrants from five ethnicities. An audience of 200 will make the rounds of the old church, watching a nucleus of professional actors supplemented by people from the five communities. The director is Steven Kent, whose Company and ProVisional theaters in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were the grooviest, most experimental troupes in town.