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NORTHERN LIGHTS
What can you say about a year in local theater that offered: A bevy of benevolent beauties, dancing in their underwear to defeat the evil Nazis; A verbatim reenactment of actual airplane disasters; And, Elvis coming back from the dead? How about WOW!
"A History of the American Film (The Chance Theater)," "Charlie Victor Romeo" (The Curtis Theater) and "The King" (STAGES & The Maverick Theater) were just three of the many bright spots reviewed in the 2002 "Northern Lights" season of offbeat entertainment. Here is a collection of "award winning" memories, from our favorites.
..."Best Actress" honors go to Jill Cary Martin for her work in Checkov’s "Three Sisters" (Vanguard) and "Molly Sweeney" (The Chance). Martin is subtle, sophisticated and sublime. She touches places in the heart that cause you to ache for her, on stage. Off stage she is confident, secure and a role model for actresses of all ages.
..."The Strongest Season" title is claimed, with good grace, by The Chance Theater (Anaheim Hills). "Beethoven: Heaven’s [Voice]," "Molly Sweeney," "Bash" and "Trail of Tears" were uniquely dramatic and well received. This solid foundation was topped by entertaining musicals — "Nine" and "A History of the American Film — a joyful experience. The Chance also claims the "Voices of Angels" award. Erika Ceporius, Tamara Davis, SuzAnne Joy Braderick and Kristel Koehler can break your heart, while knocking off your socks. "Utility Infielder" awards are also garnered by Chance actors Casey Long, Alex Bueno, Joseph Horn and Richard Comeau for being willing and supremely able to do it all.
...Finally, the "I’m Ready For My Close Up" award is shared by a cross section of appealing, quirky and talented actresses. Kimberly Fisher, Kristel Koehler, Hilary Pingle, Erika Ceporius, Susan Carrillo Hall, Cristin Wendt, Sherry Gregger, Melissa McHenry and Andrea Paquin add cover girl looks to the list of their other talents. Paquin — a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Don Knotts — typifies the 2002 season: Odd but intriguing. Building on that, 2003 should be as tasty as hot Krispy Kremes and just as sweet!
--Chris Creson, Northern Lights, January 2, 2003 [top]
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OC WEEKLY
The 7th annual Orange County Weekly Theater Awards—or the OCIE’s, as we’ve grown so fond of calling them, because it mimics the OBIEs and because it pays obeisance to Orange County’s Midwestern roots—will be announced Feb. 24 in South Coast Repertory’s jewel of a jewel-box theater, the Julianna Argyros Stage. And if there’s a theme to this year’s nominations, it’s egalitarianism. There are more categories than ever, and more shows, performers and directors nominated than ever. And the distribution of nominees among theaters has never been greater, with 17 Orange County and Long Beach theaters on the list.
As always, the only distinction we’ve made in terms of theater size is to separate out college productions. That means the big kids on the theatrical block—like South Coast Repertory (SCR) and the Laguna Playhouse—are considered alongside the smallest storefront or community theater. We are pleased to note that the nonprofessional theaters more than held their own this year, with Stages and the Chance Theater equaling SCR’s six nominations.
One award has been changed. In memory of Addison Glines, the remarkably talented and courageous Fullerton College student who passed away in 2000, we’re officially changing the name of the best college performance to the Addison Glines Award for Best College Performance. A small scholarship will be awarded to the winner.
The winners of the 2003 OC Weekly Theater Awards, along with a handful of special awards, including our Lifetime Achievement Award winner, will be announced at the Feb. 24 awards ceremony. It’ll be a great party in a great space. –Joel Beers
...Best Performance in a Musical
•Erika Amato, "Nine", The Chance Theater
•Misty Cotton, "The Spitfire Grill", Laguna Playhouse
•Frank Tryon, "The King", The Maverick Theater
•Frederica Von Stade, "Dead Man Walking", Opera Pacific
...Best Supporting Performance
•Hilary Calvert, "Parallel Lives", Loud•R•mouth Theatre Company
•JD Cullen, "Major Barbara", SCR
•Eric Eisenbrey, "David’s Mother", Rude Guerrilla
•Shawn Michael Brewer, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile", Stages
•Eddie Nickerson, "Dealer’s Choice", Stages
•Ken Rugg, "That Which Remains", Chance Theater
•Ellen Williams, "Parallel Lives", Loud•R•mouth Theatre Company
...Best Ensemble
•"Bash", Hunger Artists
•"Goose and Tom Tom", Garage Theater Company
•"A History of the American Film", Chance Theater
•"Jake’s Women", Stages
•"Sleeping Around", Rude Guerrilla
...Best Direction
•Martin Benson, "Major Barbara", SCR
•Sheryl Donchey, "Marat/Sade", Santa Ana College
•Erik Hamme, "Goose and Tom Tom", Garage Theater Company
•Todd Kulcyzk, "A Bright Room Called Day"/"Rosmersholm", Cal State Fullerton
•Robert G. Leigh, "That Which Remains", Chance Theater
•Russell St. Clair, "Smash", Long Beach Playhouse
•Collette Searls, "Promenade", UCI
...Best Musical Production
•"A History of the American Film", Chance Theater
•"The King", Maverick Theater
•"Nine", Chance Theater
•"The Spitfire Grill", Laguna Playhouse
--OC Weekly, February 20, 2003 [top]
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OC WEEKLY
If you’re one of the 140,000 or so people who read this paper every week, chances are good you’re among the 139,700 who missed this week’s seventh annual OC Weekly Theater Awards. Hosted by South Coast Repertory on the company’s Julianne Argyros Stage, it was the biggest OC Weekly Theater Awards event ever. More people attended, more OCIEs were handed out, and more complimentary shots of (gratuitous sponsor plug here) Vox Vodka were hoisted than ever before. Here’s a lowdown on what you missed.
...BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ken Rugg, That Which Remains, The Chance Theater
Eric Eisenbrey, David’s Mother, Rude Guerrilla Theater Co.
Rugg’s spot-on performance as Krapp in "Krapp’s Last Tape", one of the four Samuel Beckett playlets that comprise "That Which Remains", wasn’t a supporting role in the technical sense, since he was the only performer onstage. His towering performance as the lonely, angry, funny, confused, tired and questioning Krapp helped amplify the overall effect of this piece of theater.
...BEST DIRECTION
Robert G. Leigh, "That Which Remains", The Chance Theater
Resisting the temptation to conceptualize this paragon of conceptual theater, Leigh’s production of four short Samuel Beckett pieces was a great illustration of trusting the playwright. He performed Beckett to the letter, paying homage to that visionary, but also imbuing the show with a life all its own. He showed that there are worlds of possibility in Beckett if the director follows the playwright’s demanding technical stage directions, pauses, repetitions and wholly unique vision.
--Joel Beers, OC Weekly, February 27, 2003
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RIVIERA
The tiny theater with moxie
When 13 actresses danced and sang their hearts out on a napkin-sized stage in "Nine", the musical based on the Fellini film "8 1/2", the result was boffo reviews. The Chance Theater, which previewed the show before its revival on Broadway, had done it again.
Based in an industrial park in Anaheim Hills, the 54-seat Chance has gained a following by doing classics and musical theater with only some new work - the exact opposite formula from which it was founded.
"We've found that people may come for a classic, or a well-known name -- and then come back for the new plays, once they realize the quality of what they're seeing," says Jocelyn Brown, literary manager at the Chance.
Doing shows like Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" on a pocket-sized stage is part of the fun, points out Casey Long, production manager. "The audience experience Gilbert and Sullivan in a completely different way than seeing it in a big house," he says.
Walking into the space on East La Palma, you sense the energy and passion that fueled its inception. The teensy lobby's walls are adorned with art from local artists, the photos or paintings change with new productions.
Five young theater types, most graduates of Anaheim High School, started the theater. Oanh Nguyen, the artistic director, had gotten his chops working as a drama instructor at his old high school, and had been doing theater with his own troupe, Spare Change. But one thing was missing: their own space. So, with the support of legendary Fullerton College set-and-lighting sage Jim Book, Spare Change moved to Anaheim Hills. The theater opened in 1999 and has produced year-round since then. The OC Weekly gave the Chance's "Unrelenting Relaxation" its award last year for "Best Ensemble Acting".
Of course, all theater is risky, as the Chance discovered when its first season, devoted totally to new work, failed to generate hoped-for audiences. "In the beginning, the focus was completely original work," says Long. "But we've now grown." The company is also dedicated to developing the theater community in Orange County. Brown works with Orange County playwrights, particularly in co-productions with the New Voices Playwrights Theatre, a Southern California-based playwrights' group that fosters and develops new plays.
The Chance's schedule always includes two shows in repertory with the sole exception this year. The "First Chance Fest", slated for September and October, includes three new full-length plays and six new one-acts.
The rest of this years' season reflects the mix of old and new. The season began with stagings of Samuel Beckett's "That Which Remains" and a new play by Jason Burkett, "Saving the World". Beginning in March, the Chance mounts a commedia dell'arte-inspired version of "The Mikado", alongside a world-premiere play from the New Voices Playwrights Theatre. Other offerings will include "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Fantasticks", "Summer BBQ" and "Holiday Tree" from New Voices.
One new project the entire company is extremely excited about is "The Angel and the Fiend", opening April 13 for Sunday performances. This piece, based on the story of war photographer and surrealist muse Lee Miller, was written by Miller's son Antony Penrose and stars her great-niece, Chance ensemble member Erika Ceporius. Directed by Nguyen, it will premiere at the Getty Museum April 4-6 before moving to the Chance, and is expected to increase the theater's profile both in and outside Orange County.
Asked about the future, Long and Brown are optimistic, pointing to growing cross-pollination between O.C. theaters, including the Vanguard, Stages, Rude Guerilla and Hunger Artists. "We've found that audience members are coming from all over Orange County to see our shows," Long says. The grande dame, South Coast Repertory, continues to seed the movement, providing training for many of the young theatre artists.
Let us not forget that South Coast Rep started out in a Costa Mesa storefront. The people at the Chance sure don't.
--Janis Hashe, Riviera, March 1, 2003
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ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Anaheim theater troupe finds larger quarters and receives nonprofit status. Its first festival of new plays opens tonight.
Over the past few weeks, the Chance Theater has struck gold in Anaheim Hills, landing a new space in the same industrial park that's 50 percent larger than the one it has occupied since early 1999 and, within two days of signing the lease, gaining approval for federal nonprofit status.
"The timing of it all is amazing," Oanh Nguyen, the troupe's executive director, said in a phone interview this week. Amazing, he said, is the way the Chance's search for larger digs, which the troupe had been planning since late last year, coincided with the company's receipt of 501(c)(3) status - and with the donation to the theater of a badly needed air-conditioning unit that would cost $2,000 to install after Chance staff members had initially braced themselves to spend at least $5,000 and had gotten estimates ranging from $15,000 to $19,000 for equipment purchase and installation.
Nonprofit approval was received Aug. 25. Two days later, the lease for a 3,000-square- foot venue, a stone's throw from the Chance's current location, was in the hands of theater staff. They signed the lease and returned it Sept. 1.
Something else blows the minds of Nguyen and fellow Chance Theater staffers Jocelyn Brown, Jeff Hellebrand, Joseph Horn, Casey Long, Erika Ceporius Miller and Lisa Zaradich - the fact that the move will come on the heels of First Chance Fest 2003, the theater's first festival of original plays.
When the Chance was founded in 1998, its mission was to stage nothing but originals, year in and year out. Once that programming strategy quickly proved unprofitable, the troupe switched to fielding a more balanced lineup each year, with a handful of known theatrical commodities raising revenues to offset those lost by the staging of lesser-known original or new works. Nguyen said that to have a larger space become available a few hundred yards away just as the Chance was about to launch a festival of new works was akin to an embarrassment of riches.
First Chance Fest opens tonight in the current, 2,000- square-foot Chance Theater. It took the theater's staff months, with the help of the New Voices Playwrights Workshop, to read and select from the more than 550 scripts submitted. Finally, eight plays were selected to run in repertory over the next five weekends: Full-length plays Bridge and Tunnel and Love's Hollow and the one-acts Echo's Longing, Ripe Peach, Shadows and Light, Sharks!, Unemployment and Zazzle.
Over the course of the next month, the theater's staff and master theater designer and engineer Jim Book will analyze the new space; the group already has begun making sketches of the space, calculating what kind of flooring to use and how the lights should be hung, and many other similar details. Once the festival's run concludes Oct. 12, the move of furnishings and equipment will start in earnest, with Nov. 14 - the opening of the troupe's next scheduled show - as the target date.
The new space, at 5552 E. La Palma, is an end unit at the front of the industrial park the Chance has called home for nearly five years. Book said that having more space provides the Chance staff "many more theater options." Nguyen said the larger space - some 3,000 square feet - will make for "a much bigger lobby" (unlike its current, postage stamp-size lobby area) and a larger house - just over 1,500 square feet - he described as "a true black box with a thrust stage." Seating will be flexible, meaning that the initial configuration will be 50 seats - same as the current space - but with a full capacity of 100 seats.
The building's higher visibility, Nguyen noted, should translate into better box office: "We'll be able to have permanent street signage - a lit sign visible even when we're not running a show." As an added bonus, the building is already equipped with heating and air conditioning - welcome news for loyal Chance fans who've had to swelter in summer and shiver on chilly winter nights in the troupe's little warehouse venue.
Nguyen said that to make the new space work properly as a theater will require, among other things, "a spring-loaded floor with steel risers, all-new curtains and a whole new lighting grid." To raise the estimated $20,000 needed to make the move and complete the build-out, the Chance will hold a benefit fund-raiser at the new space Oct. 18.
--Eric Marchese, Orange County Register, September 12, 2003
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ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Safe season for (most) non-Equity venues.
Whether it's the tight economy or the inability to secure rights to desired theatrical properties, most of the storefront and community theaters in and around Orange County are playing it safe in the coming year. Only a small handful of the county's brave independent theater troupes are taking risks with material that's edgy, new or off the beaten track.
The principals: Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, now in its sixth year at the Empire Theater in Santa Ana's Artists Village; Stages Theater in Fullerton, now in its tenth year; Fullerton's Hunger Artists Theatre Company, in its fifth season; the Chance Theater, soon to be ensconced in a larger, better-equipped theater in Anaheim Hills; and the Maverick Theater, in a state of flux since its 4,000-square-foot space at The Block at Orange has been chopped roughly in half. ...
The Chance Theater's first festival of new works presents two original full-length plays and six one-acts in repertory over the next four weeks. The four-year-old troupe's "First Chance Fest 2003" contains numerous world premieres by playwrights from New York, New England, North Carolina, Seattle and California: "Love's Hollow" follows the romantic trials of a female shrink; "Echo's Longing," "Unemployment" and "Zazzle" explore various facets of how people spend their time, on and off the clock; "Bridge and Tunnel" and three more one-acts delve deeply into characters under intense situations.
--Eric Marchese, Orange County Register, September 19, 2003
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ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The productions will be staged in the theater's new, larger venue in Anaheim Hills.
In line with its relocation to a larger space in the same Anaheim Hills industrial complex - a venue it christened last month - the Chance Theater has announced its 2004 season.
Mainstage productions are Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" (Jan. 9-Feb. 14); Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeoman of the Guard" (March 5-April 17); Richard Nelson's "Goodnight Children Everywhere" (May 7-June 12); the Sondheim and Furth musical "Company" (Sept. 3-Oct. 16); and the stage version of the Frank Capra holiday classic "It's a Wonderful Life" (Nov. 12-Dec. 18).
Evolving Stage productions: Tony Kushner's "The Illusion" (Jan. 16-Feb. 21); a troupe-penned original called "Episode III"[now called "The Lord of the Screen: The Fellowship of the Pen"] (March 12-April 17); the classical Sophocles tragedy "Oedipus at Colonus" (May 14-June 19); Stephen Belber's "Tape" (Sept. 10-Oct. 16); and Jeff Goode's "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues" (Nov. 19-Dec. 24).
From July 2 to Aug. 7, both slots will be occupied by the company's second annual "First Chance Fest," a collection of original short plays penned by a variety of playwrights whose submissions will be selected by the theater's founding members in the opening months of 2004.
A deluxe pass of $135 provides admission to the entire season. At $75, the "As You Like It" pass allows one to create a customized season by selecting any six shows.
The theater's new location is 5552 La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills. The company's box-office phone number is (714) 777-3033.
--Eric Marchese, Orange County Register, December 4, 2003
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