Growing up with SCR -- an indelible experience

Tom Titus

* EDITOR’S NOTE: South Coast Repertory will unveil its

$19-million expansion at a gala ball tonight. The new Folino Theatre

Center will feature the new Julianne Argyros Stage, a renovated

Segerstrom Stage (the former Mainstage), the Nicholas Studio (the

former Second Stage), expanded classroom space and more. Daily Pilot

theater reviewer Tom Titus has been covering the playhouse since its

earliest days.

In the 37 1/2 years that South Coast Repertory has been an

ever-evolving component in Orange County’s cultural landscape, there

are just three people who have witnessed every one of the 375 plays

the company has produced.

Two of them are David Emmes and Martin Benson, the creative

visionaries who founded the company and continue to direct its

artistic fortunes. The third is -- to borrow a line from Miss Piggy

-- moi.

It was a fortunate happenstance that I started covering local

theater for the Daily Pilot the exact month that SCR began

experiencing its birth pangs in our backyard. Well, actually, the

birthing occurred a bit south of us, at the old Laguna Playhouse,

where SCR introduced its first three shows while awaiting completion

of its first theater in Newport Beach.

I’d only reviewed a couple of shows when Emmes dropped in at the

Pilot office to spread the word about the new theater company he and

his fellow 20-somethings were putting together on our shores.

The ensuing story, published Feb. 11, 1965, began: “A new

dimension in theater is taking root on the Orange Coast. Small but

dedicated, South Coast Repertory is opening its first regular season

this month with a spring series of five plays at its first permanent

home in Newport Beach.”

The story quoted Emmes as declaring, “We want to produce a theater

of substance. We feel we have something that will aid immeasurably to

the whole cultural environment of this area.”

Did they ever.

When I journeyed to Laguna to catch the first SCR show, a farcical

commedia dell ‘arte rendition of Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” I didn’t know

any of the actors, nor did they know meImagine my surprise then, when

Don Took, playing the nearly-cuckolded husband, reacted to David

Clements’ line, “I caught this man trying to seduce your wife,” by

storming off the stage and up to my seat. He pointed his finger at me

and demanded, “How dare you try to seduce my wife.”

“No, no,” Clements protested. “That’s Tom Titus.”

“Oh,” Took muttered and resumed his place on stage.

That’s what Emmes (who had obviously set me up) meant when he

vowed that “the fourth wall will be behind the audience.” SCR’s

performers might not involve the playgoers quite that

confrontationally, but you definitely would leave a performance moved

to some degree or other.

As for the review of “Tartuffe,” it began, “Orange County theater

took on a fourth dimension last weekend with the birth of an

unbelievably talented group soon to move permanently into Newport

Beach. Wild, raucous and overflowing with talent, the South Coast

Repertory version of ‘Tartuffe’ burst with incandescent brilliance

onto the Laguna Playhouse stage, leaving its audiences literally

gasping with laughter and clamoring for more at the final curtain

call.”

It would be too much to say that the next 374 SCR productions stir

the emotions so brilliantly, but many of them did. Of course, there

were a few turkeys along the way -- “Big Soft Nellie,” “Saved,”

“Subject to Fits” and “La Turista” come to mind -- but the company’s

track record overall has remained exemplary.

For every misstep noted above, there were a dozen plays like

“Othello,” “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “Macbeth,” “A

Streetcar Named Desire,” “That Championship Season,” “One Flew Over

the Cuckoo’s Nest,” etc., that elevated South Coast Rep another notch

in the playgoers’ estimation. And all of these were produced before

SCR ever took up residence on Town Center Drive in 1978.

SCR rarely tried to mount a musical, but two shows in that genre

were highly instrumental in establishing the momentum for the move

from the Third Step Theater in downtown Costa Mesa (where the company

had relocated in 1967) to its present complex.

In the late 1960s, SCR had absorbed an acting company in Long

Beach known as the Actors’ Circle Theater. One of the members of that

troupe, Ron Thronson, teamed up with a local actress with a musical

theater background named Toni Shearer to create a rock musical with

an ecological theme.

“Mother Earth” burst upon the scene in early 1971, creating the

same brand of excitement as “Tartuffe” had six years earlier. Public

response was so fervent that the show was brought back for the

1971-72 season. It even spawned a brief production on Broadway. Then

its creators set out on different paths, Thronson to a teaching

position at Chapman University and Shearer to a professional singing

career under her maiden name -- Tennille.

If ecology can succeed as a musical theme, why not the Bible? Sure

enough, “Godspell” arrived at the end of the 1973-74 season and was

also encored the next year. That show marked the SCR debut of

director John-David Keller, who’s been an actor and director with the

company ever since. He is now best known for helming the annual

holiday classic “A Christmas Carol,” which began in 1980 and is still

going strong.Propelled by the success of these shows, and other

sterling nonmusical productions (“The Hot L Baltimore,” “Equus,” “A

Doll’s House,” “Private Lives,” etc.), SCR gathered the financial

ammunition for its biggest transition -- moving to its present

location near South Coast Plaza in 1978. The Second Stage -- now a

rehearsal hall with the upcoming opening of the Julianne Argyros

Stage -- began operations in 1979.

With the opening of the Fourth Step Theater, SCR had more elbow

room artistically and technically. Bigger, splashier productions

followed, while works of questionable merit such as “Aunt Dan and

Lemon” and “The Gigli Concert” became fewer and further between.

Actors who would go on to movie and TV glory performed at SCR. The

Second Stage was home to Ed Harris in “True West” and Dennis Franz in

“Brothers.” Franz’s old precinct-mate Joe Spano dropped by for a few

shows. Jean Stapleton played Madame Arcati in “Blithe Spirit” and

Tony Roberts, Woody Allen’s sidekick in so many movies, starred in

“Sidney Bechet Killed a Man.” Andrew Robinson, who made Clint

Eastwood’s day in “Dirty Harry,” directed “The Beauty Queen of

Lenanne.”

But SCR’s most significant contribution to the art of theater has

been behind the scenes. Its Collaboration Laboratory, established in

1990, has supported scores of playwrights such as Richard Greenberg,

who has seen several of his scripts born at SCR and will offer his

latest, “The Violet Hour,” as the leadoff production on the new

Julianne Argyros Stage in November.

Thanks to the laboratory, SCR’s audiences have had the first look

at superb dramas such as Donald Marguilies’ “Collected Stories” and

Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” which earned the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for

drama. Other notable firsts at SCR have been Greenberg’s “Three Days

of Rain,” David Henry Hwang’s “The Golden Child” and Beth Henley’s

“The Debutante Ball.”

It’s been an incredible journey, these last 37 1/2 years, and

being able to chronicle it every step of the way has been the

journalistic experience of a lifetime. Hopefully, David, Martin and I

are up for another 37 years.

* TOM TITUS writes about and reviews local theater for the Daily

Pilot.