Way Off-Broadway : ‘Specific Hospital’ Has No Script, No Stars--and Sellout Audiences

“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway;

They say there’s always magic in the air. . .”

--The Drifters

Three thousand miles from Broadway, the neon lights were blazing in full glory on Melrose Avenue. It was a Saturday night. The usual crowd of playhouse enthusiasts was gathering outside the tiny Zephyr Theatre.

First in line, as always, were Richard and Susan Johnson, who became engaged last year right in the middle of an act. Cari Tucker was lugging a wood basket, a jug of laundry soap and a fake leopard-skin towel--items she hoped the cast would use as props. Melissa Rose was attending for at least the 30th time.

“It’s like L.A.’s little treasure,” she gushed.

Tonight’s performance of the soap opera spoof, “Specific Hospital,” was yet another sellout, just as it is week in, week out on the trendy Hollywood street. Never mind that the Zephyr Theatre contains but 99 seats, or that tickets for the light-years-off-Broadway production are still a bargain basement $4.99, or that the show has yet to turn one dime of profit.

For nearly two years--a veritable eternity in the world of small Los Angeles theaters--”Specific Hospital” has been packing them in. The plot line twists and turns like a snake on a hot griddle. Torrid affairs, back-stabbing, death rays, space aliens--the show has it all.

The script? There is none. The action is played out improvisational style--on the spur of the moment--by 11 fast-thinking actors, three crew members, a musician and a director, all working without pay.

Designed as “cheap, late-night fun” for actors and audiences alike, the show accomplishes other purposes as well. Like many such low-budget productions, it is a chance for performers to sharpen and showcase their talents as they struggle to climb the treacherous ladder to stardom.

Competition is fierce: Today, Los Angeles is home to about 34,000 television and motion picture actors and 8,000 dues-paying members of the Actors’ Equity Assn., which represents stage performers. For many, the only alternative to unemployment--and the only chance to catch the eye of that all-important agent or producer--is to perform at a 99-seat theater.

By offering fewer than 100 seats, theater companies are able to avoid paying union scale, which amounts to $900 a week at large playhouses such as the Ahmanson and Pantages.

Since the “equity waiver” arrangement began in the 1970s, more than 100 of the tiny theaters have sprung up in Los Angeles, many of them scattered in Hollywood, West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Actors clamor for the opportunity to perform, even at typical rates of $5 a night.

“The 99-seat theater is really the training ground for the industry,” said Alisa Fishbach, associate director of Theatre LA, a marketing and training organization. “They’re vital to theater as a whole.”

On any given night, dozens of obscure productions are staged in converted storefronts and dank brick rooms on side streets and back alleys. There is a seemingly endless abundance of comedies, satires, melodramas, musical revues, two-man skits and hard-edged political allegories. There are original stage plays and scaled-down versions of classics.

Titles come and go--”Desperately Seeking Elvis,” “The Peggy Judy Comeback Tour,” “A Last Belch for the Great Auk”--as do the actors, who always are on the move to new auditions, new roles, anything to bring a semblance of progress toward the dream of theatrical stardom.

On more ignominious nights, performers can outnumber the spectators--but always, the show goes on. Auditions for new productions typically draw well. When “Specific Hospital” put out a call for talent, well over 100 hopefuls showed up to try out.

Cast members of the spoof are mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, graduates of drama schools and workshops from New York to San Francisco. A few, such as Eric Kramer, who stars as conniving hospital administrator Dirk Stern, are successful; Kramer enjoys a full-time living as an actor, having appeared on such TV serials as “Cheers,” “Empty Nest” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

Others see themselves as young climbers. Julie Uribe, a one-time Lincoln, Neb., drama student, has parlayed her role as red-haired temptress Amanda Clay Mulholland into guest spots on “General Hospital” and “Family Matters.” Michael Stuno, the nefarious hospital board member Gerard DeVaine, found a measure of success in a long-running beer commercial.

Christopher Best works days as a part-time private investigator while starring as the hospital’s top surgeon. On the side, he is writing a two-man show designed to put him on stage in another small theater.

“And I caulk,” he joked--or may have joked. “I can do windows, tubs and showers.”

On show nights, perhaps 20 of the 99 spectators are agents and producers giving a look to the young talent, said director Fred Vicarel, who co-founded the show with three other troupe members who chipped in $500 apiece.

Vicarel takes the stage first, summarizing past episodes--a litany of bedroom trysts, broken relationships, power struggles and sex-change operations that make Peyton Place seem like the “Ozzie and Harriet Show.” On this night, it was announced that proctologist Carlos Fabricci, who had cruelly dumped Penelope Periwinkle, was out of town, thinking out his decision to become a woman.

After the house lights dim the action commences, with Vicarel keeping a rough notion of the story line in his head and making split-second decisions on where to cut off scenes, when to bring new characters on stage. To add to the challenge, Vicarel often asks a spectator to decide which two characters will open a scene, or to provide the scene’s opening line of dialogue.

The actors must go forward, unrehearsed, playing off one another until the scene ends naturally--or Vicarel blacks out the stage.

“It’s incredible mental exercise,” said cast member Robert Morgan Fisher, a former “Music Television” host who moved here from Houston six years ago. “You have to remember stuff scene to scene, night to night, month to month. There are things that were said a year ago that you’ve got to remember.”

On this evening, Vicarel introduced a new challenge--a rule, during certain scenes, requiring each character to begin his lines with the same letter of the alphabet that ended the last character’s lines. Thus, the opening sequence began: Penelope Periwinkle (played by Anna Miller) and Rowena Williams (Sheila Traviss) in a bar, commiserating about their rotten lives over a morning drink.

“Fill her up,” Penelope ordered.

“Please! You’re putting me in a bad position by forcing me to serve liquor this early in the morning.”

“Geez, Rowena.”

And so on. There were occasional intense pauses and loud audience laughter--sometimes hysterical laughter. It was more than just wild entertainment; it was cast members learning to think on their feet, preparing for those ever-stressful auditions.

Miller, who has devoted years to acting, including stints at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the National Theatre Conservatory in Denver, is pleased that “Specific Hospital” has attracted a following--that crowds line up to see it, that the waiting list for tickets is six weeks long. She did not expect the show to last beyond a month.

But at 30, Miller is still working days as a secretary at a film production company. And she is still dreaming of a break.

“My long-range goal is to act and get paid for it,” she said. “That would make me happy.”