The Wasatch Front isn't exactly Broadway, but three "made-in-Utah" productions have been singled out for prestigious Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival honors - accolades that are tantamount to a trio of Tony Awards.
Although California has received multiple awards in previous years (not surprising, considering the number of college campuses spread across that highly populated state), having three ACTF prize-winners from a state the size of Utah is unprecedented.The recent announcement of the 26th annual KC/ACTF awards inspired one East Coast drama critic to label Utah as "the Great White Way Out West." The comment by Joseph C. Koenenn of Newsday may have been tongue-in-cheek or maybe even a tad sarcastic, but the ACTF awards - which went to seven university and college-level stage productions among more than 800 plays competing nationwide - did cast an unusually bright spotlight on three of Utah's best collegiate theater programs: the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and Weber State University.
The grand prize for this competition is not merely a plaque or another polished trophy for a campus display case. All three Utah productions - including their casts, crews and scenery - will be transported to Washington, D.C., for showcase performances in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In addition, the plays from BYU and WSU, both locally crafted original works, have been drawing the kind of national attention that should assure them of being seen and enjoyed by an even wider audience as they're mounted by other theater companies across the country.
The seven productions that will be presented in Washington, D.C., April 18-26, are:
- "Prisoner," Brigham Young University.
- "The Pirated Penzance," Weber State University.
- "Kiss of the Spider Woman," University of Utah.
- "Dancing at Lughnasa," Penn State University.
- "Breaking the Code," Amarillo College.
- "Harriett," a one-act play from Boston University.
- "Acetylene," also a one-act production, University of Wyoming.
Two of the Utah productions - James A. Bell's "Prisoner" and Manuel Puig's "Kiss of the Spider Woman" - have similar settings. The first, based on a navy captain's true experiences, takes place in a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam, and the other is set in a cramped, dirty jail cell in Argentina.
The third Utah winner is WSU theater faculty member James Christian's "The Pirated Penzance," a mirthful reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, "The Pirates of Penzance."
One of the happiest guys in Utah these days must be James A. Bell, a student playwright at BYU, who was selected as the National Student Playwriting Award winner for "Prisoner."
This award includes $2,500 from the William Morris Agency, an offer for agency representation, publication of the play by Samuel French Inc. (which will lease it for production and send royalty monies to Bell), and the opportunity to participate in a three-week fellowship to the eighth annual Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat in the Ozark Mountains.
Bell also received the Dramatists Guild Award, which includes membership in the guild and a reception in New York City.
In addition, the BYU Drama and Film Department will receive the Association for Theatre in Higher Education award for producing the national winning script.
Among others, Bell credits his playwright class teacher Tim Slover and director Ivan Crosland for his success.
"Dr. Slover is really good at helping you understand a play's strengths and where it needs work," Bell says. "Dr. Crosland had enough faith in the play to stage it and work with the script."
"It was a pleasure working with Jim on his play," Slover says. "He had an open mind and did not consider his words sacred. He was open to learning but had a strong sense of what he wanted his play to be."
"I got the play after it had gone through a playwriting class and the department's PDA (Playwright, Director, Actor) Workshop," Crosland says. "This one had some really strong characterizations, and the characters change and grow. Structurally this was as tightly written as I have seen a student production. It held well together dramatically. I think many groups will want to produce this work."
"Prisoner" will be performed April 25-26 in the Kennedy Center's 275-seat Theater Lab, an intimate "black box" space in the performing arts complex.
Kevin Rahm, who plays Capt. (now Navy Lt.) Gerald Coffee in the play, is also an ACTF finalist for the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship Award and will compete against the male winners in the festival's seven other regions. Rahm, whose father died while serving in Vietnam, is a student actor at BYU.
Additionally, Rebecca Bills received the Kate Draine Lawson for Excellence in Costume Production Award, also a national honor.
The play is based on Coffee's book, "Beyond Survival," and emphasizes the survival of the human spirit in the setting of the Vietnam War. With less than a year of duty served in Vietnam, Coffee was flying over the Gulf of Tonkin on his way to the USS Kittyhawk and 10 days of rest and relaxation when he was shot down and forced to eject from his plane. Twelve days later, he found himself in a 2-by-6-foot cell at the Hoa Lo Prison, where he spent the next seven years with hundreds of other prisoners.
"The physical torture Coffee endured was not as demoralizing as the propaganda used to attack his faith," Bell said. "His mental and spiritual progression is a story about faith in one's God, country, freedom and fellow man."
"Obviously we are thrilled to receive these honors," says Eric Fielding, chair of BYU's theatre and film department. "As somebody who enjoys both the performing arts and finds great relaxation in being an avid sports fan, I see Kevin Rahm's selection as one of best male acting students in the country as being selected for the All-American team and Jim Bell's honor for his first play reminiscent of the most valuable player award."
Except for Ivan Crosland, faculty director, students assembled the entire production.
"This speaks well of the depth of our program," Fielding adds. "The success of Utah is also incredible. The odds of three of the winners coming from here are unprecedented."
- THE PIRATED PENZANCE was adapted by director/choreographer James C. Christian from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 hit, "The Pirates of Penzance, or the Slave of Duty."
He first began working on it seven years ago when he was on the faculty at San Diego State University.
"I was scheduled to direct a show the next year and I was talking to the musical director and we were kicking around casting possibilities - `An ideal Frederic would be such-and-such's voice and such-and-such's body' . . . `and the best Mabel would be this voice and this body' - and then this little light went on in my mind and I thought, `Hmmm . . . I wonder if it would work?'
"Every director in the world wishes he could paste and cut actors to get all the best qualities," Christian said recently.
"Three other factors were also coming together: the `Slave of Duty' subtitle and how that would parallel the plot; a line from the script when the Pirate King says, `Always act in accordance with the dictates of your conscience, my boy, and chance the consequences' - because that was the key in inspiring Frederic/Daniel to do what he does; and discovering the information about what happened in Hollywood on June 30, 1933."
This last bit of Tinseltown trivia was one of the most important pieces in putting the musical puzzle together.
But Christian then had a change in course. He left San Diego State for a job at Weber State University in Ogden.
"Then, last year, we decided to go for it and I wrote it during one month last September," he said.
The gist of Christian's adaptation is this: The setting is the Hollywood soundstage in June 1933 at a studio lorded over by a tyrannical mogul. "Talkies" are still in their infancy and, in order to produce a film version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the studio chief (who also plays the role of the Major General in the film-within-a-play) places a chorus of talented singers to perform the music inside a sound booth off to one side of the stage, while non-singing actors lip-sync the words on the adjacent studio set.
But one of the singers - Daniel Brown (played by Sam Payne) - is weary of simply being a "slave to duty." He decides to take things into his own hands and break his contract with the studio. What ensues is an evening of wildly hilarious chaos as the singers run amok. Soon the studio is awash in Keystone Kops (all hoping to break into pictures themselves, of course). The story is told with the familiar Gilbert and Sullivan music, including Christian's own newly adapted lyrics for some of the tunes.
When "The Pirated Penzance" was presented last month as part of WSU's regional "Festivention '94" activities, Christian received feelers from directors throughout the area interested in doing their own productions of the piece.
Christian and his company - a total of 53 people, including the cast and technicians - left Thursday for Washington. Most of them flew, but there are also two truckloads of scenery and equipment. (The Ryder rental company is providing transportation for all of the scenery in the seven winning productions.)
"The Kennedy Center is providing the space and we take everything back ourselves and plug into it," Christian said earlier this week.
The 425-seat Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center has a slightly smaller stage than WSU's Allred Auditorium "so we had to do some redesigning of the set," Christian said.
"Penzance" will get three performances in Washington - on Friday evening, April 22, and both a matinee and evening performance on Saturday, April 23.
"We'll have an on-stage reception following the Friday evening performance, when the entire company will gather back on stage and a Kennedy Center spokesperson will present all of the cast and crew with individual tokens," said Christian. "We will also receive either a plaque or medallion, which I will bring back to Utah to be presented to WSU President Paul Thompson during the school's annual Crystal Crest Awards banquet this spring."
- KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN is completely the opposite of the frothy, big-scale "Penzance."
It's an intense, two-person drama, first presented in October in the Lab Theatre of the University of Utah's Performing Arts Building.
This "Spider Woman" is not the same as the big-budget, award-winning musical currently running at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway - but it is a not-so-distant relative.
The Lab Theatre's production, directed by Leo Geter, uses a script that was the first of three theater/film adaptations of Puig's book. This nonmusical version was followed by the highly acclaimed 1985 film starring William Hurt (in an Oscar-winning performance), Raul Julia and Sonia Braga.
While the Hollywood and Broadway versions had budgets in the millions of dollars, Geter said recently that his Lab Theatre budget was closer to $100.
A second-year MFA student at the U., with an emphasis on film, Geter said he was initially drawn to the "Spider Woman" project for a lot of different reasons, "one of them being that it had already been realized as a film. There was a lot of opportunity for a cinematic approach. That was what I tried to do at the outset and it works pretty well."
"Kiss of the Spider Woman" focuses on the relationship that forms between a gay window dresser and a political activist who are forced to share a cramped, dirty jail cell in Argentina, where one has been arrested for terrorist activities and the other for corrupting the morals of a minor.
One character's method of coping with the horrors of prison life is to recount his favorite childhood Hollywood films, including the classic 1940s movie, "Cat People" (1942), which parallels the developing relationship between the two cellmates.
Jason Bowcutt and Mark Anthony Taylor are featured as window-dresser Molina and revolutionary Valentin.
Geter was working in Los Angeles when the ACTF selections were first announced on March 1.
He had worked as an actor in California for eight years before coming to the University of Utah, where his flexible curriculum schedule allows him to teach film and television acting in the Actor Training Program, and produce and direct short films and videos, as well as direct productions for the stage.
At the time the ACTF winners were announced, Geter had been taking a quarter off from the U. to pursue other projects in Southern California.
He has since returned to Utah and, this week, was focused on re-rehearsing "Kiss of the Spider Woman" before it goes on the road to Washington.
Geter's first theatrical inspiration was the example set by his eldest brother, John, who appeared in the Hanover College premiere production of "The Diviners" at the Kennedy Center ACTF presentations in 1980.
Fourteen years later, John Geter is a United Church of Christ minister and a doctoral student at Yale . . . and Leo is D.C.-bound for his own ACTF honors.
"This has really been a tremendous experience all the way around," said Geter. "For me, it will always be something I can hold up against other experiences. It will be a benchmark in trust and confidence for the people I work with."
Geter noted that the two-character dramatization of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" is much closer to the original novel than the film and musical versions. The script used for the Lab Theatre production was adapted by author Tony Puig himself, whereas the film and musical were adapted by others.
"The movie is rather fragmented and cautious, but the play itself is more straightforward," said Geter.
"These two students (Jason Bowcutt and Mark Anthony Taylor) are well-suited to their tasks. Both of them are seniors and they're on the edge of moving into the professional arena and this will give them tremendous opportunity and exposure on the East Coast, where so much theater happens. I hope this is a real boost for them.
"Where acting is sort of a `you're only as good as your last job' situation, this is a great stepping stone for them," Geter said.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
`Spider Woman' Saturday
A special "dress rehearsal" performance of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" will be presented on Saturday at 8 p.m. in a rehearsdal hall in the Performing Arts Building, west of the campus book store at the University Utah.
Seating is extremely limited and patrons are urged to come early. The performance will be free of charge.