Painter takes to ‘Six Degrees’ stage

Arts Commissioner and local painter Mike Tauber will make his acting debut next weekend — and will also contribute two paintings to a production of “Six Degrees of Separation,” which will run from April 27 to 29 at the Forum Theatre.

The show is being produced by Gallimaufry Performing Arts and will be on stage the same weekend as the group’s Dance Day events.

The show calls for a double-sided Wassily Kandinsky painting to be a main stage piece, which Tauber provided. The paintings will be auctioned off after the show is finished.

“We were going to use theatrical reproductions as set pieces when Mike came forward,” show director and Gallimaufry founder Steve Josephson said.

“Mike came to me and asked if we might want him to paint actual works of art for us to use and then we could auction them off after the production.”

The two paintings will be mounted back-to-back for the show, but are actually two four-foot-square canvases. They are based on Kandinsky’s “Moscow #1” and “Circles.”

The pieces will be valued at approximately $3,000 each, and are going to be made available through an auction on eBay. The paintings will be on display at John Barber’s Studio Arts Gallery in The Old Pottery Place, 1200 S. Coast Highway, from May 1 through May 10.

The show is presented by Gallimaufry’s “Promiscuous Assemblage” Repertory Company, featuring Laguna residents Julie Gibson Josephson and David Stoneman, who play Ouisa and Flan Kittredge along with Damien Xavier Johnson as Paul.

The play was inspired by a true story, and follows a young con man, Paul, who insinuates himself into the lives of a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, by claiming he knows their son at college.

Paul tells them he is the son of actor Sidney Poitier, and that he has just been mugged and all his money is gone. Captivated by Paul’s intelligence and his fascinating conversation, as well as the possibility of appearing in a new Poitier movie, the Kittredges invite him to stay overnight.

But in the morning they discover him in bed with a young hustler from the streets, and the picture begins to change. After kicking him out, Ouisa and Flan discover that friends of theirs have had a similar run-in with the brash con artist. Intrigued, they turn detective and piece together the connections that gave Paul access to their lives.

Meanwhile, Paul’s cons unexpectedly lead him into darker territory and his lies begin to catch up with him.

As the final events of the play unfold, Ouisa suddenly finds herself caring for Paul, feeling that he gave them far more than he took and that her once-idyllic life was not what it seemed.