Two weeks ago, at a recent breakfast for several hundred Geffen Playhouse subscribers and donors, Geffen Playhouse Producing Director Gil Cates conducted a poll right there in front of attendees while they had their coffee.
“How many of you hated a play here last year?” Cates asked.
And to Cates’ relief, several hundred hands went up.
He then asked what plays they specifically hated. The plays that some people hated were the favorites of others.
Cates proved his point.
“Everybody’s got their own taste,” Cates said. “Sometimes folks ask me in terms of booking these plays, what my hope or aspiration is. And frankly, it’s this: I hope that if you subscribe to the Geffen, you will love two of the plays; you will like two of the plays, and you’ll hate the fifth.”
Even though Cates, former dean of the School of Theater, Film and Television, spends endless hours each year reading more than 2,000 plays with the help of associates and traveling as far as Europe scouting for plays, he recognizes the diversity of theatergoers’ preferences and the diversity of Americans in general. The plays that he may love may put off others.
The new season of the Geffen Playhouse, the first in a 10-year series of American original plays, expresses just this – the diversity of America. Perhaps the point of the Geffen’s American Originals series is to show America’s diversity both through the plays presented, and through audiences’ reactions.
With his poll, perhaps Cates, currently a directing professor in the theater department, was also trying to forewarn theatergoers about the highly controversial plays in the new season, which includes “Take Me Out,” a play about a gay superstar baseball player who comes out of the closet (the play also features a lot of full-frontal male nudity), and the original Broadway production of “I Am My Own Wife,” which is about an East-German transvestite who survives the Nazi onslaught and Communist regime that followed.
With plays involving homosexuality and nudity, there’s potential for people taking offense.
“My intent is not to offend anybody,” Cates said. “‘Take Me Out’ is not about homosexuality. It’s really about being honest, where honesty can take you and how much it could cost you. I think theater at its best should really make people think and entertain.”
“Take Me Out” isn’t the first time the Geffen has presented a play with full-frontal nudity. Another play by “Take Me Out” playwright Doug Wright, “Quills” (1996), also included it.
Still, Edit Villarreal, professor of playwriting in the theater department, said the new season of the Geffen on the whole seems to have taken on riskier and bolder plays than previous seasons have.
“A lot of their previous seasons have been pretty conservative,” Villarreal said. “They always choose plays that are family-oriented. I think it’s wonderful that they are more risky this season with the plays that they selected.”
Two of the new season’s plays, “I Am My Own Wife” and “Golda’s Balcony,” also feature solo actors, a financial risk on the part of the Geffen when more commercial forms of plays usually have large casts and huge spectacle.
“They’ve never been a mainstay in the theater,” Cates said of solo-actor plays.
But as Villarreal pointed out, that recently has been changing.
“(Solo-actor plays are) really popular right now,” Villarreal said. “The actor has to transform right in front of the audience, which audiences love, and which is a tremendous challenge for actors.”
In “I Am My Own Wife,” actor Jefferson Mays portrays more than 40 characters. And Cates swears you’ll soon forget that there’s only one actor doing all the roles. Meanwhile, “Golda’s Balcony,” is a one-woman play about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
There are a multitude of reasons for producing riskier plays.
According to Villarreal, the $17 million renovation and expansion of the Geffen Playhouse, which is causing the playhouse to hold its plays at the Brentwood and Wadsworth theatres until September 2005, may allow the Geffen to take chances on riskier, more controversial plays. At construction’s end, there will be a second, smaller, 120-seat theater adjacent to the Geffen.
“With the remodeling, they will have a second stage where they can do riskier work,” Villarreal said. “And the first stage will hopefully be more utilitarian, so they can do a wider variety of plays.”
Also, both “Take Me Out” and “I Am My Own Wife” are critically acclaimed and amply awarded plays that are not being presented for shock value. “Take Me Out,” which is currently running until Oct. 24 at the Brentwood Theatre, won the 2003 Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Director and Best Featured Actor. “I Am My Own Wife” took a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2004 Tonys for Best Play and Best Actor. It will run from June 14 until July 10 of next year at the Wadsworth Theatre in Brentwood.
The riskier plays also represent contemporary issues of tolerance in America toward homosexuality, which is becoming increasingly written about in plays.
“I was thinking about what it means to be an American in terms of who we are, where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going,” Cates said.
And Villarreal feels that the presentation of riskier plays may also have something to do with the presidential election this year.
“They may want to do riskier, more liberal plays in an election year with the Bush administration becoming so conservative and so closed-minded and afraid of other cultures, other ways of looking at things – afraid of sexuality, afraid of so many things,” Villarreal said. “You hear so much rhetoric just about shutting down and eating American apple pie and not thinking about the rest of the world.”
But Cates swears there’s no agenda behind presenting more liberal plays than in the past. There still is a strong balance in the new season of the Geffen with two more conservative plays.
“Paint Your Wagon,” the 1951 classic Broadway musical about the California Gold Rush by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (“My Fair Lady,” “Camelot”), will be directed by Cates and will run from Nov. 23 until Jan. 9 at the Brentwood Theatre.
The second is the American classic comedic play, “You Can’t Take It With You,” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. During April and May of 2005 at the Brentwood Theater, Christopher Hart, son of Moss Hart, will direct the play in a celebration of the centennial anniversary of Moss Hart’s birth. About a dysfunctional family’s attempts to get along, it won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937.
Both plays confront issues of diversity in America. “Paint Your Wagon” involves an inter-cultural relationship, while “You Can’t Take It With You” follows a group of eccentric characters trying to survive, a concept that Villarreal said all Americans can relate to.
“That’s the story of America,” Villarreal said.