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Article on small Bay Area theaters

by Pat Craig in Contra Costa Times

July 13, 2003

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Posted on Sun, Jul. 13, 2003 story:PUB_DESC
PAT CRAIG: THEATER
Up close and personal
By Pat Craig
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

 

The velvet darkness is tattered and threadbare, and disquieting -- mainly because of the footsteps behind you and the drunken voices staggering out of dark doorways. With a little imagination, you begin to feel more like the prey in a Dashiell Hammett mystery than a theatergoer.

Nice suburbanites don't go easily down the mean streets south of Market, universes away from the glittering theaters, bright bistros and festive restaurants that draw us across the Bay like a bug zapper draws guests on an August night. Mostly, though, the mean streets are in our imaginations, and the demons in the doorways are too preoccupied with their own devils to become yours. So you tentatively trip on, checking the address a fourth or fifth time to assure yourself that the flat-black door that leads to a dim flight of stairs is, indeed, the location you were looking for.

 

You climb the stairs, part the curtain at the top and are quickly shown from the hallway "lobby" into the auditorium -- most often a black room with mismatched folding chairs at one end and a makeshift stage at the other. It ain't the Palace, or even the Curran, but once the lights go down, you may find yourself stunned by just how exciting the world of intimate, black-box theater can be.

 

You may also be surprised that much of the tiny theater community isn't in the scary neighborhoods of your mind. Or even on the other side of the Bay Bridge. People are creating intimate theater on Locust Street in Walnut Creek; next to Berkeley Rep; in the basement of a pizza parlor just a block or so away from UC Berkeley; or in a '50s-style office complex on the outer edge of Walnut Creek. This isn't community theater here, but a hybrid sort of stage work with its roots in both the little theater movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the growth of off- and off-off-Broadway during the postwar years.

 

Opening new doors

 

It is designed to be an outlet for new and experimental works, for productions of rarely seen playwrights, and sometimes just a location for actors and audiences who like, literally, to hear each other breathing. At Lois Grandi's original 47-seat Playhouse West in Walnut Creek, there are some seats no more than 18 inches from the tiny stage, and all the seats are no more than 12 or 15 feet from the action. The place feels more like a living room than a playhouse.

 

"There's a real sense of participation, of living within the play for the audience," Grandi said shortly after opening the theater. "It's a really different experience because you find yourself getting caught up more with the action. Most people who have been here have seemed to enjoy it." This seems to be the real difference for small-theater actors who have performed at the former Aurora Theatre's location at the Berkeley Women's Club, and who can share stories of tripping over patrons' feet and listening to snoring just inches from their backs as they performed in the small space. Success has forced both companies to move: Aurora into its new digs on Berkeley's Addison Avenue and Playhouse West to the Knight Stage 3 at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. Those who operate the theaters, however, insist that the moves will not change the commitment to intimate theater. And indeed, you can still brush elbows with actors as they make entrances through the audience, and you will still have to move your feet from time to time if you sit in the front row.

 

Getting a start

 

For most small theaters, life is a feast-or-famine situation. Great word-of-mouth on a show will pay the rent for several months; a dog will prompt garage sales and fund-raising dinners. The goal, however, is not to grow rich on avant-garde theater.

Small theaters exist to give light to works that could probably never jump right into a mainstream house. Shows such as "Rent," "Urinetown," "Man of La Mancha," "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde," "The Laramie Project," "How I Learned to Drive" and a host of other plays got their start in storefront-style theaters long before reaching commercial and Broadway success.

Other shows were never intended to get out of the black box. They are either too raw, too limited in appeal or too much out of their time to become part of the mainstream theater world. There are any number of theaters in the Bay Area where these works are available almost year-round.

 

The best variety is probably offered by the Exit Theatre, a three-stage complex in the middle of San Francisco's somewhat dicey Tenderloin District. But inside, you will be able to see what is tickling the fancy of an enormous variety of playwrights. Throughout the year, the theater presents classic to highly contemporary works, and also sponsors several festivals, including the S.F. Fringe Festival and the Divafest, both of which serve up a theatrical potpourri that ranges from deranged to genius.

This is particularly true with the Fringe Festival, normally held in September, when acts from throughout the world vie for space in the two-week theatrical extravaganza. The plays are scheduled by drawing, so what you get runs from stupid to sublime. With luck, though, one evening at the festival will net at least one memorable piece of theater ("Urinetown," fringers are eager to point out, got its start at the New York Fringe Festival).

 

In the East Bay, Shotgun Players' unofficial headquarters over the years has been the basement of La Val's Pizza, near the UC Berkeley campus. La Val's Subterranean Theater is a converted storage area with view-blocking pillars, a top row of seats that has patrons brushing their heads against the ceiling, and a lighting system that can be charitably described as adequate.

A bit of magic

Bare bones, however, isn't a measure of creativity. Walnut Creek's Clean Comedy Co., which serves as a traffic school part of the time, operates out of a single room, with folding chairs facing a stage. Lighting is minimal in what is essentially an office, yet the creativity of staging a play, and the theatrical sparks that fly, bring a certain magic to the mundane setting.

In fact, when it comes to small venues, memories of productions from Shakespeare to Edward Albee's "The Play About the Baby," along with dozens of new works, are vivid and lifelong.

Magician and new vaudeville performer Paul Nathan opened the new Climate Theater on San Francisco's Ninth Street. He occasionally performs there himself, but also produces shows you would probably not see anywhere else except in a converted flat above a store. Currently, it's "Let's Pretend I'm Not Your Mother," a sexually themed (sometimes quite graphically) sketch comedy show.

Around the corner on Folsom Street is the New Langton Arts, where "The Love Missile," an anti-war play with an Arab-American point of view, just closed.

There have been memorable plays about a plot to kill former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, wild fantasies involving "secret agent girls," innovative Shakespeare interpretations (including "Romeo and Juliet" performed by four men), a bizarre version of "The Magnificent Seven" involving a battle between Quakers and hippies, a one-woman tale of being the last smoker in Berkeley, and many others.

And the best part of all is they will continue, on an almost nightly basis. You just have to look around to find them.

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