Low pay, huge rewards

TAMARA Zook is writhing on the floor, hands over her ears, desperately trying to block out the sound as a voice in the room says the number “43.” “La la la la la,” she chants in a sort of hysterical mantra. Again, louder: “La la la la la,” finally hyperventilating into unconsciousness. * A pensive Deborah LaVine is pacing in the background, her eyes on Zook and Taylor Gilbert as Gilbert rushes to Zook’s aid, kneeling while Zook’s body shakes as if possessed. Then, when the spasms cease, Gilbert lifts one of Zook’s limp arms and sees something she never wanted to see. “Oh, please, no -- not again,” she murmurs. * The three women are holed up on a small North Hollywood stage on a hot day in May, preparing for the world premiere of Jim Henry’s “The Seventh Monarch.” It’s about three weeks until opening night, and LaVine, who is directing the production for the Road Theatre Company, paces the unfinished set as she choreographs the dance of Zook’s collapse and Gilbert’s horrified reaction, appearing as calm as the two characters are distraught. “Try playing it as though you can’t catch your breath,” LaVine suggests to Zook. * For reasons that will become alarmingly clear later, Zook’s character, Miriam Hemmerick -- genius, victim and, in her youth, an aspiring astronaut -- cannot handle any mention of the number 43. Her desperation remains a mystery to Social Security agent Raina Briar, portrayed by Gilbert, the Road’s artistic director and supervising producer of “Seventh Monarch.” * This day’s rehearsal brings the Road one small step closer to the end of the road as it prepares to present this new work by Chicago playwright Henry, whose “The Angels of Lemnos” was a hit for the company in 1999.

“In theater time, three weeks is an enormous amount of time,” LaVine says in a pre-rehearsal conversation, seemingly as much to reassure herself as anyone.

During those weeks, the theater will become a hive of activity as the production moves from the sensitive character work of this day’s rehearsal to the nuts and bolts of staging the story, while the light, sound and scenic designers join the five actors in the cast to set the stage and orchestrate cues in seven nights of technical rehearsals before opening. The smell of new paint, glue and freshly cut lumber hangs in the air.

But although there’s still a long way to go, the rehearsal marks the final stretch of a process that began late last year, when the company held readings of Henry’s script.

Although the scene, setting and actors may be different, the same drama is being played out all over town on rehearsal stages for any of Los Angeles County’s sub-100-seat theaters -- that is, trying to put on a high-quality production at a small theater on a shoestring budget in the long shadow of the entertainment industry.

RIDING HIGH

“A lot of the way I make my money is to direct showcase theater. I’m very clear on the difference when I’m working for the project, and when I’m working for the paycheck,” says LaVine, who directed “Napoli Milionaria” for the Road in 2002. “But I really like the work they do here; the company and I speak the same language.”

Indeed, the Road Theatre Company has been riding high recently, with critical acclaim and a flurry of local theater awards, including four Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards in 2002 (three for “The Woman in Black” and one for “Napoli Milionaria”) and six 2002 Ovation Awards.

The 12-year-old company makes its home upstairs in North Hollywood’s Lankershim Arts Center, a city-owned facility with an art gallery downstairs. The space is one of 125 to 140 small theaters in L.A. ranging from 25 to 99 seats, according to Michael Van Duzer, 99-seat administrator for Actors’ Equity. (Above 99 seats, theaters have to pay Equity actors higher wages.) Not all small theaters have a resident acting company, and many small acting companies have no regular performance space, using the area’s sub-100-seat houses on a rental basis. Van Duzer says the financial arrangements vary: A one-night rental for a 60-plus-seat house might be $300; a week at such a theater, if it includes box office services, could go as high as $3,000.

The number of theater spaces fluctuates because such venues open often but don’t always last long. Quality fluctuates too, because many of these small theaters are home to “vanity” or “showcase” productions that serve as little more than a glorified audition for more lucrative, high-profile film and TV roles.

Even that line is blurry, because a good show often can serve as an industry showcase too. Actors say the difference is in the motivation -- putting the goal of a quality production ahead of potential career exposure. As Van Duzer wryly points out: Should one decide to rent a small theater and star as Hamlet, the difference between the performance being called a “vanity production” or “art” for posterity will be decided by the reviews.

But when the production is good, the actors, designers, directors, technicians and donors -- who often outnumber the audience -- say the close-knit and supportive community of Los Angeles-area companies who do their work in sub-100-seat houses provides opportunities to realize big dreams, and a creative control that is virtually impossible in either the larger theaters or the entertainment industry.

Zook sees her role in “Seventh Monarch” as the chance of a lifetime: “I am a character actress, and I am a character actress ‘of a certain age.’ This kind of role doesn’t come along every day.” But she’s praying that another chance of a lifetime doesn’t come along before opening night -- that is, a major television or film role. Still, that’s an issue that looms large in this theater world. Like the rest of the Road Theatre Company, Zook is a working actress, with TV, film and some 100 commercials under her belt. She also supports her small-theater habit by doing outside work as a professional organizer. But small theater companies like the Road must accept the fact that their casts have no contractual obligation to stay with a show if a better-paying job comes along. Because salaries are so low -- often $5 to $15 per performance, just enough to cover transportation -- there’s an unspoken understanding that the rehearsal schedule will be juggled around other auditions, kids and day jobs.

“That’s the nature of the 99-seat world,” LaVine says. “You have to give special attention to the understudies; they can’t just be people that you plug in for a day or two. In essence, you are casting twice, with the same amount of care and specificity.”

Just such a careful casting session for the men’s roles in the drama took place in early April, in the living room of the Culver City home of Heather Moses, one of the show’s producers. Like many company members, Moses also does double -- even triple -- duty, occasionally acting in shows and also handling much of the company’s accounting. Today, as host, she is also providing candy and Girl Scout cookies.

The Road casts its shows, and draws its designers, exclusively from its membership pool. All members pay $20-a-month dues; the rest of the $250,000 operating budget comes from fund-raising and in-kind donations. Such donations often come from other small theater companies, which lend or give each other props and set pieces. Cooperation, they say, is much less expensive than competition. “We’re always calling each other up and saying, ‘Hey, do you have a wing chair?’ ” Road set designer Desma Murphy says.

With many industry auditions, no call means you didn’t get the part. But most Road directors will give an actor a courtesy call regardless of whether the actor has been cast rather than let the actor sit by the phone, descending into a cesspool of self-doubt. After all, these actors are members of the family.

Two or three men at a time come to the house to audition for the show’s three male roles and are banished to the porch. They pace in the chill night air clutching scripts as Zook, Moses, Gilbert and LaVine hold low-voiced discussions of their performances, almost apologetically ranking the auditioners, most of them longtime colleagues and friends, on such qualities as seriousness, the shape of their profile and “kissability.”

At one point, actor Curt Bonnem provides a head shot and performs an impressive monologue. He’s cute, talented and ... too young? LaVine reassures Bonnem that she’ll keep him in mind for other roles in future productions, but the actor is clearly underage for any of the men’s parts, all middle-aged and older. In fact, all the roles in the show are over 40. “This is a whole town in which shows are built around youth, and to have a play that ain’t is an incredible gift,” Zook says. “For younger members of the company, well, I could almost have empathy for ya -- almost.”

The men are reading a restaurant scene opposite Gilbert. After Zook, Gilbert was the next to be cast, based on her performance at the initial readings. As artistic director of the company (her husband, film producer Ian Bryce, is president of the company’s corporate board), Gilbert agonizes about appearing on stage, even when she is, as in this case, the director’s choice.

“It weighs heavy on me a lot of the time,” she says. “There were women in the company whom I feel certainly would do the job equally well. But at the same time, I am primarily an actor, and I want to be able to work here in this space because I’m very proud of it.”

According to the creative team behind “Seventh Monarch,” the rewards of being part of such a production far outweigh the difficulties as well as the risks. Not just in terms of money -- for many small, little-known theaters, the success or failure of each production represents a step toward establishing an artistic reputation.

And for any theater, big or small, the risk of failure is higher for a untried play. Premiering new work is part of the Road’s mission statement, along with reinterpreting classics for today’s society. “Woman in Black,” Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel, was London’s longest-running hit since “Mousetrap”; for the Road, “Seventh Monarch” represents a trip into outer space.

“One thing I will say about a company like this, in their efforts to do extraordinary work, they will fail sometimes,” says LaVine, who has directed scores of theater productions in L.A. “If you don’t risk, you may always do things that are successful to a degree, but you can’t do the extraordinary.”

The stakes are higher than usual for the Road Theatre Company, even for a new show, because the 100-member troupe, founded in 1991, stands at a crossroads in its growth.

For the company, as well as the central character in their latest play, the number 43 holds a major significance. That’s also the number of seats in the Road Theatre’s modest upstairs performance space with a 25-square-foot stage. Luckily for Miriam, the latest Road Theatre production won’t play to a traumatizing 43 seats. Instead, it will be presented at Deaf West Theatre’s 75-seat performance space, in a renovated Art Deco storefront right door to the Road on Lankershim Boulevard, main street of the burgeoning NoHo arts district.

“Seventh Monarch” is playing there because of the surprise success of another Road show in the old space -- “The Woman in Black.” The mystery-thriller, which opened in October, was scheduled to close in December. Instead, it marked its 100th performance on June 14, sharing festivities with “Seventh Monarch.” “We couldn’t afford to close it,” artistic director Gilbert says with a laugh.

Deaf West was able to offer its space temporarily because of another recent coup for L.A.’s small theaters: Deaf West’s production of “Big River” is scheduled to open July 17 on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre, co-produced by New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company in association with L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum. The musical, based on “Huckleberry Finn,” played at the Taper in 2002 -- the first time in its 35-year history that the Taper had imported a play or musical from a smaller Los Angeles theater.

A BEGINNING

One Monday night in early December, members of the Road gathered at their NoHo space for a reading of “Seventh Monarch.” Friends and board members were in the audience. Also present was playwright Henry, on one of his occasional trips to Los Angeles to monitor the progress of the play. The writer takes advantage of the trips to take meetings on his Hollywood screen projects.

At this point, only one part in “Monarch” had been cast: Zook would portray Miriam.

Not everyone at the Road immediately warmed to Henry’s story of the exquisitely disturbed Miriam Hemmerick -- born Oct. 4, 1957, the day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, her life intimately tied to the milestones of the NASA space program -- as the company’s next production. It took Zook’s determination to portray Miriam to get the story produced. In fact, Zook had to become a producer. The Road comes by its scripts in various ways, including cold solicitations and submissions. But Gilbert says company members often advocate for a play -- as was the case with Zook and “Seventh Monarch.”

Life at a small theater company allows for the opportunity to change hats -- or, more likely, to wear several at a time. On Broadway, the producer, or producers, are the ones who put up the money. At the Road, as well as at other sub-100-seat houses, the definition of the term is much looser. For Zook, it meant taking the initiative to assemble a creative team skilled enough to get the blessing of the theater’s artistic board to take on the production.

“I feel like I’ve worked all my life for this play,” Zook says.

Zook fell in love with the play back in November 2001, when the theater asked her to participate in a reading of “Monarch” in order to decide whether to produce it. “There wasn’t a whole lot of interest on the part of the artistic board, so it was really going to come down to whether I was going to be able to put the pieces together myself,” Zook says. “I went to Taylor Gilbert as a representative of the artistic board and I said, ‘What do I have to do to make this happen?’ I’m from Kansas, and I felt like Dorothy asking: ‘What do I have to do to get back to Kansas?’ ‘Go get the witch’s broom, Dorothy ....’ ”

The witch’s broom Zook brought back to the board was a fully assembled creative team willing to do the project, including LaVine, who had directed Zook in 1996 in “The Rose Tattoo” at Hollywood’s Hudson Theatre; company members Jobe Lawson and Heather Moses as co-producers; Murphy as set designer; Robert L. Smith as lighting designer; and David Marling, the man responsible for the jump-out-of-your seat sound effects in “Woman in Black,” signed on for sound design.

“I walk around with such a full heart of gratitude to all of these people who have been willing to say, ‘Yes, Tamara, I will come along with you on this vision,’ ” she says fervently. “May every actor, even the ones I don’t like, someday have this experience.”

A SPACE OUTGROWN

Gilbert seems at home in an upstairs office adjacent to the theater at Lankershim Arts Center, where the company has operated rent-free since 1995 through an arrangement with the city. “We want to be here forever, we love this space and the community that is around us here, but we have outgrown this space,” she says. “We need additional venues.”

The success of “The Woman in Black” has allowed the company, which operates on an annual budget of about $250,000 (a veritable bargain compared with the Taper’s $38 million), enough to provide a $25,000 budget for “Monarch.” Usually Road production budgets are closer to $15,000 (all figures include in-kind donations). Still, although its friends at Deaf West are offering a good deal, the Road is paying rent for the first time in eight years.

Although there’s been no hint that “Woman in Black” or “Seventh Monarch” will ever make it over the hill to downtown’s Taper as “Big River” did, Los Angeles attorney Steven L. Boortz, a member of the corporate board of Other Side of the Hill Productions -- the nonprofit umbrella organization under which the Road Theatre operates -- chuckles at the suggestion. “Oh, God, we’d have to change our name to the Other Other Side of the Hill Productions,” he says.

But Boortz, who provides pro bono legal services, adds that this is a historic moment on any side of the hill.

“It’s a tremendous struggle, really, to get one good show going, and getting another one going at the same time just shows the immense talent and drive -- and that the other 70 plays, or however many we’ve done, weren’t flukes,” he says. “Our doing the play next door is not going to be a fluke either. I think it’ll be the start of a new chapter in the life of this theater.”