All the world's (or at least SoCal's) a stage

All the world’s (or at least SoCal’s) a stage

By Mindy Farabee

Feb. 14, 2008 12 AM PT

NOBODY really knew if it was going to work, says Long Beach Opera artistic director Andreas Mitisek, until they actually got their Orpheus into the boat.

Only a couple of hours before, the Belmont Plaza municipal pool was clogged with frolicking swimmers, their cacophony ricocheting around its ample Greek Modern-style hall. But evenings here have recently been put to an unexpectedly sonorous use -- an unorthodox staging of the new opera “Orpheus & Euridice.” And while Mitisek had been diligently envisioning it for some time, fingers remained tightly crossed until the night they first set Todd Palmer, LBO’s titular Greek, adrift.

“The first image Andreas created was of a [divine emissary] pushing Orpheus’ boat out into the water,” says composer Ricky Ian Gordon, who wrote the opera’s music and text. “Within moments, it became a hallowed space. It wasn’t a piece of music beginning or a piece of theater opening, it was a reflection of the role of mythology in our lives.”

“Orpheus” is actually just one of a handful of site-specific productions on tap in the L.A. area. In North Hollywood, the Crown City Theatre Company is making modest use of St. Matthew’s, a Lutheran church in which they’re reviving a Broadway-style musical adaptation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

In Beverly Hills, Theatre 40 continues to prowl the Greystone Mansion, the scene of a 1929 murder they’ve dramatized in “The Manor” (see Jan. 3 issue of The Guide). The appeal? Site-specific works lend a uniquely transformative element.

For a story requiring a healthy dose of the River Styx, Belmont Plaza layers not only the visual but also the audio (a steady, hypnotic trickling of water), Mitisek says. But the man who also staged “Anne Frank” in a parking garage (to better conjure displacement) and put Mozart up in a nightclub (because he felt the notoriously impish composer would have approved) believes events like these have the power to reflect back on the arts themselves.

“I think it’ll help to erase some cliches about opera,” he says. “Like the idea that you have to go to some temple of art to experience it. I want to connect it to daily life.”

Like, say, doing the laundry? Next month, Collage Dance Theater keeps the site-specific ball rolling by taking over Le SuperWash Coin Laundry to reprise one of their most popular works, “Laudromatinee.” A 20-minute, imagistic piece in which emotions run from light to dark, “Laudromatinee” is typical of artistic director Heidi Duckler’s witty and innovative efforts to awaken audiences to unexpected uses and meanings. “Site-specific could become a very L.A. thing,” Duckler says. “We’ve got the perfect breeding ground. The weather’s always great, and we’re a very mobile, young city, thinking about” what our changing development patterns mean.

It’s as if the whole city is already a site of dramatic tension, specifically waiting for a boldly imaginative re-envisioning. As if.

-- Mindy.Farabee@latimes.com

‘ORPHEUS & EURIDICE’

WHERE: Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool, 4000 Olympic Plaza, Long Beach.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Sun.-Tue.

PRICE: $45 to $95

INFO: (562) 439-2580; www.longbeachopera.org

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME’

WHERE: St. Matthew’s Lutheran GLBT Church, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 7 p.m. Sun.; closes Sun.

PRICE: Pay what you can. ($20 suggestion)

INFO: (818) 942-6684; www.crowncitytheatre.com