‘White Rose’ Being Touted for Hollywood, Broadway

The world premiere of “The White Rose” just opened last Thursday at the Old Globe Theatre, but a film or Broadway production is already being discussed.

That might seem unusual for a play that wasn’t written by a well-known playwright and didn’t get rave reviews, but Lillian Garrett seems to have captured the imagination of film and theater producers as well as audiences.

The play is based on a true story about the arrest and execution of a small group of German students who publicly protested Nazi oppression in 1942.

“I think it’s a play that has really struck a chord,” said Thomas Hall, the Old Globe’s managing director. “There is the moral question that it asks of all of us, and people cannot stop talking about it. We’re by all indications ending a decade where we haven’t taken on our moral responsibility as a society in a serious way. It has piqued a great deal of soul-searching.”

The film version of Garrett’s play was already contracted by Los Angeles producer and attorney Bruce Kerner, whose interest was piqued by the White Rose story before Garrett’s first draft was completed in October, 1989. Any Broadway arrangements would be at the discretion of the Old Globe Theatre, at least through an option period that runs two months after the play closes. That option can be renewed for two six-month extensions, Hall said.

If the Old Globe doesn’t exercise its option, Kerner said, he might try to produce the play in New York himself.

If Kerner produces the film, it will be his first feature film. He previously produced the television series “Down Home,” which will enter its second season in March; the pilot for “The Robert Guillaume Show,” and a CBS documentary on Martin Luther King.

Kerner, who spoke on the phone from his Los Angeles home, said he first came across the White Rose story in 1989 while vacationing in Europe. He contacted the surviving sister of two of those students, and asked for her cooperation in a possible film project.

Inge Scholl, sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, had never cooperated with any other productions concerning the White Rose, but she agreed to discuss her family and the movement in exchange for a contribution Kerner is to make to Greenpeace in her name, he said.

After he began looking for a screenwriter for his project, he was introduced to Garrett, who was already working on her play. He read the beginning of her first draft and was impressed enough to begin negotiations immediately.

“She addresses the issues that intrigue me--the question as to why these kids affected the Third Reich so much,” Kerner explained, adding that he wants to get the film in development by late this year “at the earliest” or, more likely, 1992.

Even before “The White Rose” opened at the Old Globe, the show excited AT&T;, which supported it with a grant as a part of its “The AT&T; New Plays for the ‘90s Project.”

Now, the question is whether the show will excite some of the directors (Oliver Stone and Arthur Hiller) Kerner has approached or the actors (including George C. Scott).

Young talent is getting its shot in the limelight thanks to the San Diego Junior Theatre’s popular and pleasing production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first musical was a lucky play for two San Diego companies last year: Lamb’s Players Theatre and Moonlight Amphitheatre. Now, the whimsical look at the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, which plays through Sunday at the Casa del Prado Theatre in Balboa Park, is proving lucky for the Junior Theatre’s young cast as well. Not only are they playing to full houses and standing ovations, but their singing and dancing have drawn the attention of two local talent agents.

Tom Touw, the 17-year-old Poway High School student who stars as Joseph, still remembers the panic he felt when the program’s artistic director, Spike Sorrentino, told him there was someone who wanted to see him after the show.

“I immediately said, ‘What did I do? What did I do?’ I immediately thought I had done something wrong,” Touw said.

To his surprise, the person waiting for him was Nanci Washburn, the owner of Artist Management, who wanted to compliment him. Touw is in the process of signing with Washburn, which is a thrill for the teen-ager, who said he had thought about approaching agents, but didn’t think he was good enough.

Actually, he was so good that Amber Rae, the talent coordinator for Lois Saliterman’s Agency II, also tried to get him--but too late. But both agencies are interviewing several other young actors from the show, including Jessica Parris, who plays the narrator; Jason Kent, who plays Pharoah with a touch of Elvis; Obaloc Phillips, who sings a calypso song as Levi, and Emily Regas, who plays Judah.

PROGRAM NOTES: Two Shakespeare plays have been scheduled for the Old Globe Theatre’s upcoming summer season, and the company plans to do them in repertory at the Lowell Davies Festival Stage: “The Merchant of Venice,” directed by the Globe’s artistic director Jack O’Brien, and “The Tempest,” directed by Adrian Hall. The last time the Old Globe did repertory was in 1987. . . .

The San Diego Repertory Theatre’s WordWorks program will present a staged reading of a work-in-progress, “The Mirror and the Lamp,” at 8 p.m. today at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse. Directed and written by Leona Heimfeld, “The Mirror and the Lamp” uses Sophocles’ “Antigone” as a springboard to explore the women in the life of Navy sailor Clayton M. Hartwig. Hartwig was accused of blowing up a 16-inch gun turret the battleship Iowa in 1989 in what the Navy initially believed was a murder-suicide. . . .

Kandis Chappell, Tom Lacy, Katherine McGrath, Robert Phalen, Deborah Taylor and James R. Winker will star in the world premiere of A.R. Gurney’s “The Snow Ball,” which is set to come to the Old Globe on May 9. The play will open Feb. 9 at the Hartford (Conn.) Stage Company, which is co-producing with the Old Globe. Based on Gurney’s 1987 novel of the same name, “The Snow Ball” received a $40,000 grant from the NBC “New Voices” program, which is designed to commission and produce new works for the American stage. . . .

Amiri Baraka and Max Roach, playwright and composer of the San Diego Rep’s upcoming world premiere, “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson” will participate in a dialogue with members of the African American Museum of Fine Art at 7 p.m. Monday at the Lyceum. . . .

The Bowery Theatre, which canceled its next scheduled show, “Stories About the Old Days,” because of a shortfall in income and attendance, has come up with a low-cost substitute. “Laughing Buddha Wholistik Radio Theatre,” which will open Feb. 28 at the Kingston Playhouse, will introduce three serialized comedies by Burnham Joiner and Bowery Managing Director Todd Blakesley in a live radio format. The show will include musical interludes, surprise guests, spontaneous audience prize contests and teasers for subsequent episodes.

FO Lillian Garrett