Out of the box and onto the stage this season

UCLA theater avoids the mainstream through experimentation and unconventional topics

Justin Bilow
Published: Sunday, September 24, 2006

The UCLA Department of Theater is walking on the wild side this coming season.

The theater department will be putting on performances that cover topics from sexual escapades to alcohol that mainstream theater often rejects. However, plays addressing subject matter like this are the norm for the department.

“The (theater) department is actually anti-mainstream,” said Mel Shapiro, a UCLA theater professor. Last season, for example, Shapiro created “The Blogger Project,” a multimedia performance piece culled from some of the Internet’s most muckraking blogs.

Shapiro didn’t let the audience just sit there and watch, however. Theatergoers could walk around from scene to scene, staving off passivity. Among these scenes were filmed actors playing out a D.C. intern sex blog; the mock decapitation of Marie Antoinette; and a portrayal of Helen and Athena exchanging “disinformation” about the Trojan War to parallel the current Iraq war.

If last season’s “The Blogger Project” is any indication of theater to come, then audiences can expect two things from the theater department: the unexpected, of course, and more experimentation than New York’s old dance-and-drug hovel Studio 54.

The earlier events of the season include the Master of Fine Arts Acting Program series, or New Play Festival, which runs from Nov. 9 to Nov. 18. It starts with “The Libertine,” a 16th-century dark comedy that’s a bit of a morality play about John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester – an incredibly self-destructive alcoholic and sex addict.

With that in mind, “The Libertine” is the kind of play that invites its audience to take a breath and punch itself in the face a bit.

“(Wilmot) challenges the audience, saying, ‘You will not like me,’” said the play’s director, visiting Professor Dan Bonnell.

Audiences may not like Wilmot’s character, but Bonnell thinks they will like the play in general.

“It’s risky, adventurous material,” he said. “We’re all fascinated by the dark side of life.”

On the lighter side of the season is third-year graduate student playwright Rachael Brogan’s original play “The Bottom of Sterling Lake.”

Along with her two fellow graduate playwrights, Brogan’s piece will also be performed during the New Play Festival.

One advantage that the theater department has over many independent theaters is that admission to the shows is either inexpensive or free. For standard off-campus theater productions, an average ticket will cost about $40, whereas an MFA Acting Program play costs $8 on average.

This benefits the department because a more diverse crowd can afford to attend, allowing for a more diverse range of performances.

“Theater has always been a great platform for being a provocative medium,” Bonnell said.

Shapiro agrees.

“There’s more investigative journalism (in theater) than in a lot of other media,” Shapiro said.

Although this may be, theater has also become much more expensive and much less prevalent than it once was.

Because mainstream theater now caters largely to a specific, older crowd who can pay more for tickets, far fewer opportunities arise to perform highly experimental material.

“Most mainstream theater is very safe,” Brogan said.

When those opportunities do arise, however, the risks involved in performing potentially ill-understood pieces hardly outweigh the rewards.

“(For the audience) it’s live, immediate and involving,” Shapiro said. “It gives the students involved the experience and chance to stretch themselves and their craft.”