THE great-great-grandparents of drama the ancient Greek and Roman playwrights have a permanent new home at the Getty
Villa museum near Malibu, where they will live off the largesse of the
multibillion-dollar J. Paul Getty Trust and see how much noise, figuratively
speaking, they can still make after two millennia or more.
The villa, which reopened in January as the repository for the Getty Museum's collections of Greek, Etruscan and Roman art,
aims now to foster fresh takes on the texts, tales and themes of Sophocles,
Aristophanes, Plautus and the rest of their decisively influential clan. Like a
newborn Athena popping full-grown and fully armed from the cranium of daddy
Zeus, the program debuts as the only amply funded (a first-year production
budget of more than $350,000), professionally acted initiative in the
English-speaking world dedicated to the annual staging of the ancients.
It was launched this ! year with three experimental workshop presentations in
the villa's 250-seat indoor
auditorium, each a radical reworking or futuristic updating of a Greek comedy
or myth created by L.A.
theater artists at the Getty's
invitation. Now comes Euripides'
"Hippolytos," the first full production in the 450-seat outdoor
theater.
The aim in this outdoor space inspired by ancient theaters including much larger ones in the Greek
cities of Epidaurus and Delphi
that continue to host festivals of classical Greek drama is to stick closely to the original
plays. Unlike the anything-goes indoor workshops, the productions will aim for
an ancient or timeless feel. The seldom-seen "Hippolytos," in a new
translation by Anne Carson, a Canadian poet, scholar and MacArthur Foundation
"genius grant" winner, concerns an austere, fanatically celibate
young hunter whose spurning of his own sexuality and his stepmother Phaidra's illicit advances ends badly for both.
In ancient lore, the p! ower of the Olympian gods to do as they pleased bumped
up against limits imposed by a higher order of things called moira, or
fate. It's the villa's fate to be surrounded by wealthy, well-organized
neighbors who sued to have the outdoor theater... governed by strict conditions
set by the city.
Only 45 performances a year can be staged in the theater, ... with an 11 p.m.
curfew. Luckily, ancient plays are epic in subject but not length, typically
lasting no more than 90 to 120 minutes....
Sachs, co-founder and artistic director of the Fountain Theatre, an 80-seat
house in Hollywood,
says necessity has bred invention for this, his first go at directing outdoors.
For the sound design, created by local theater composer David O, he'll rely on what the original Athenian players used singing and chanting by a 16-actor cast
that includes a 10-member chorus. With help from choreographer Tamika
Washington, Sachs is injecting dance and synchronized choral movement,! a
defining element of ancient Greek drama. Key roles are being played by some of
his favorite L.A.
stage actors, including Linda Purl as Phaidra and Fran Bennett, head of Cal
Arts' performance program, as her
servant. Morlan Higgins, acclaimed for Sachs-directed roles at the Fountain in
Arthur Miller's "After the
Fall" and Athol Fugard's
"Exits and Entrances," plays Theseus, the absentee father and
husband, respectively, to Hippolytos and Phaidra.
The Getty chose not to open with the hoopla that a star director and famous
cast might have generated. Karol Wight, the acting chief curator of antiquities
who oversees the villa, says it simply makes sense to give such an unusual and
restriction-encumbered venue an ample breaking-in period. Then, after it's more of a known quantity, the villa could invite
such eminences as Peter Sellars and Peter Hall to take a crack at the space,
officially known as the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater.
Drawing on local the! ater scene
PUTTING off star turns gives the Getty a chance to do something it's eager to do anyway, Wight says: declare its
allegiance to L.A.'s fecund theater scene, while tapping its talent.
"We wanted to inform the local community that we're
not just looking for the superstars of the theater world. We're looking to bring in a broad spectrum of
people."
The Getty is sometimes criticized for thinking globally and failing to act
locally. So far, the villa's
theatrical localism has been complete: The three workshops to date have been a
musical version of Aristophanes'
"The Wasps" by director-adaptor Meryl Friedman; "Liz Estrada in the City of
Angels," a new take on Aristophanes'
"Lysistrata" from the Latino Theatre Company, in which adaptor Evelina
Fernandez comments on violence between Latinos and blacks; and "Cafi
Oublii," from the local company Theatre Movement Bazaar. The latter was a
dance-oriented, multimedia take on the myth of Apollo a! nd Daphne, reconceived
as a backstage showbiz tale set in a post-apocalyptic future depicted with the
help of computer-generated images.
The Getty began planning long ago for an ancient theater program centered on an
outdoor venue. "The Wanderings of Odysseus," adapted from Homer and
co-produced in 1992 with the Mark Taper Forum, and a 1994 double bill of
comedies by Menander and Plautus were staged in outdoor gardens at the villa,
and showed that there was a substantial audience willing to hear the ancients
in a spectacular setting.
When art historian Mary Louise Hart, an expert
on ancient vase-painting, was hired in 1997, shortly before the
villa closed for renovations, she was assigned as the Getty's ambassador to the classical theater world,
scouting the creative landscape, making contacts, bringing back ideas.
Lacking a professional theater background, Hart began an odyssey of
self-education that has taken her to scores of productions! , from L.A. to Greece.
She has had breathtaking experiences seeing "Oedipus Rex" staged by
Japanese directors in Delphi and Epidaurus, and has tried to make the most of
"private tutoring from the best people in the world" such as hearing Sellars remark that the
way to bring the violent works of the Roman tragedian Seneca alive today is to "make them like acid rock."
"He was making a point, that you need to rock people, give them a
jolt," Hart says. It won't do,
she came to realize, for the museum to offer theatrical museum pieces marked by
extreme fealty to antiquity. For the Getty to fulfill its mission, today's audiences don't
necessarily have to see the plays as they might have been staged in ancient Greece and Rome,
but they must experience them with the same passion as the ancients.
"You're supposed to be in an
alternate state of consciousness," Hart says. "It's supposed to be emotional and transporting, and
that's what we hope to accompli!
sh."
Marion True, the embattled former chief curator of antiquities, currently on
trial in Rome for allegedly acquiring looted relics for the Getty's collection, played a key role in the planning
until her resignation in October 2005. A committee of seven curators, educators
and performing arts producers on the Getty staff sets theater policy; it stuck
with True's decision to hire Sachs
as the debut outdoor-stage director.
Rush Rehm, the Stanford drama and classics professor who directed "The
Wanderings of Odysseus" at the Getty, says the villa "will probably
fall" before it runs short on relevant ancient plays and modern variants
to stage. "I know of nothing comparable" to the Getty's planned menu of at least one full outdoor
production a year, along with five free indoor workshops and a sixth special
presentation, Rehm says. "That speaks to the good part of the Getty, an
ability to take on things that are culturally significant that nobody else is
doing."
"It's
extraordinary," says Brian Kulick, who has picked ancient Greek plays for
three of his four seasons as artistic director of New York's
Classic Stage Company. "There is not a theater in the United States
that is dedicating itself singly to that repertory. If they can identify and
nurture artists who are passionate about that repertory, and give them the
time, space and resources to really investigate it and present it to an
audience, they can grow into a theater that discovers performative language for
these plays in the 21st century. That would be an amazing success."
The chief artistic pitfall facing the Getty is a common impulse toward forced
gravitas and epic-scale gestures, says Peter Meineck, leader of Aquila Theatre
Company, another New York City
troupe devoted to classics. "Really great actors can forget everything
they learn when they do Greek drama and start declaiming it as if they're Charlton Heston." Consequently, audiences
"have these ideas that it'! s
good for you, it's boring, and you're not going to fully understand it preconceived ideas that are really hard
to break down. My hope with the Getty program is that they can help to break
down some of the barriers."
Sachs said he chose "Hippolytos" because of its immediacy: "It
doesn't take an understanding of
politics and warfare. It's a human
drama with four central characters who are immensely rich and psychologically
complex."
The Villa Theater Lab program aims both to generate new productions for export,
while importing worthwhile touring shows. Wight says budgets are $250,000 for
outdoor productions, a sum that Aquila's Meineck considers sufficient to do "a No. 1
professional production," and $20,000 each for workshop productions that
run for three performances, following a generous three-week rehearsal period.
Workshops are free, although tickets must be reserved in advance by phone or
the Internet. The three so far have been quick sellouts, Getty offi! cials say.
Playgoers will have to ante up $38 or $32 for the outdoor shows, $15 for
previews.
Planning ahead, a Roman comedy by Plautus, probably "The Rope," has
been slotted as next year's outdoor
show, because Wight wanted to demonstrate quickly that the series isn't solely Greek nor tragic.
The Getty's unique advantage,
curator Wight says, is that its ancient theater program is paired with a
leading collection of Greek and Roman art. The hope is that the art can inform
and deepen not only playgoers'
experience of the shows, but the shows themselves. Actors, writers, directors
and designers will be invited to seek inspiration in the galleries, or avail
themselves of the Getty's scholarly
expertise for background information and historical interpretations. A special
exhibition, "Enduring Myth: the Tragedy of Hippolytos & Phaidra,"
runs Aug. 24-Dec. 4, offering about 30 works, from ancient through modern
times, inspired by the myth that gave rise to the play.! ..