SEPTEMBER 3, 1993 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 19

ENTERTAINMENT

A look at the upcoming theater season in Cleveland

Continued from page 17

also promises a world premiere production as well as the 16th Annual Marilyn Bianchi Kids' Playwriting Festival.

The Ensemble Theatre (321-2930). Artistic Director, Lucia Colombi. In the Spirit of the American Woman is the overall title for this theater's fifteenth season, and it is a distinct improvement of the too often lackluster selections of the past few years. The season will open with a production of Frank D. Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses featuring Dorothy and Reuben Silver. (It is a telling contrast that from the same year, 1965, the Ensemble Theatre has chosen this well-written, slightly sentimental realistic drama, while Dobama has chosen the more daring America Hurrah.)

Associate Artistic Director Licia Colombi will direct her musical adaptation of Susan Glaspell's 1918 play, Tickless Time. Glaspell was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and is an important figure in the history of women's literature. David Feldshuh's Miss Ever's Boys tells the true story of the Tuskeegee Institute Study, a U.S. Public Health Service experiment which involved observing but not treating—a group of syphilitic black men. It is a highly acclaimed drama about social injustice. Vanishing Points by Martin Jones is the true story of a visual artist, Elizabeth Peck, and how she copes with life after the mass murder of her immediate family. The final play of the season is Abundance by Beth Henley. It is a comic tale of the lives of two mail-order brides set in the historic Gold Rush period.

Great Lakes Theatre Festival (7713999). Artistic Director, Gerald Freedman. GLTF produces four plays at the Ohio Theatre plus its annual holiday production, A Christmas Carol. Generally the season is composed of two classics of world theater and two more modern plays. When it is good, as it was with three of its four productions in the 1990-1991 season, the GLTF ranks with the best of our regional professional theaters.

This year's season classic plays are Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The former, featuring Piper Laurie, will be directed by Freedman and designed by John Ezell. Their 1990 production of the same playwright's Uncle Vanya was memorable. Sheridan Morely's Noel and Gertie is a biographical drama about British playwright, songwriter and composer Noel Coward and his favorite leading lady Gertrude Lawrence. We are promised a sampling of scenes and songs from Coward's sophisticated and witty plays. The second modern drama is Arthur Miller's American classic, Death of a Salesman, with Hal Holbrook in the leading role. GLTF schedules a variety of events in conjunction with its production that are often both informative and entertaining.

Karamu Performing Arts Theatre (795-7070). Artistic Director, Margaret FordTaylor. Under Ford-Taylor's leadership, the oldest African-American theater in the country has become one of Cleveland's finest theaters. Working with limited budgets and a mix of volunteers and professionals, this company has been producing classic and contemporary work that is often thoughtprovoking, dynamic and entertaining.

The Main Stage will open with a production of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. This Pulitzer Prize winning drama about a family caught in the depression is part of Wilson's series of plays that chronicle the history of African-Americans in this century. The holiday production is Langston Hughes' gospel song play, Black Nativity. For Black History Month Ford-Taylor is writing a dramatic tribute to the American Negro baseball leagues, For Love of the Game. This will be followed on the Main Stage by a revival of Orson Welles' famous Federal Theatre Project production, Voodoo Macbeth, a reworking of Shakespeare's play set in the Caribbean. The Main Stage Season closes with an award-winning new play by Shay Youngblood, Shakin the Mess Outta Misery, based on her book, Big Mama Stories. It tells the story of the relationship between an adolescent woman and her grandmother.

The smaller Arena Stage opens with Distant Fires, a co-production with Dobama Theatre. For Black History Month is Kathleen McGhee-Anderson's Oak and Ivy, which tells the romantic story of the poets Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar, who pioneered the path for African-American literature in the 20th century. The final play is Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign. Fuller's play, about the senseless shooting of a little girl in a black neighborhood, is as timely now as when it was originally written.

The Working Theatre (696-9600). Artistic Director, Walter Grodzick. This company, going into its third season, has a unique repertory that tends to focus on the best of contemporary European drama as well as on important work by contemporary American gay playwrights.

The season opens with Redevelopment: or Slum Clearance, the North American premiere of Czech playwright Vaclav Havel's latest work (see review in this issue). Charles Ludlam's Love's Tangled Web will be the second production. Ludlam, who died of AIDS, created the Theatre of the Ridiculous in New York and was instrumental in developing the camp style that is an important aspect of the gay sensibility in the arts. Ludlam was one of the true comic geniuses of the American theater. For Easter, the Working Theatre will offer The Mysteries, Part 2: The Passion. A live polka band will be part of this production of Tony Harrison's modern adaptation of the medi-

eval mystery plays which was commissioned by England's National Theatre in 1985. The closing play of the season is Harry Kondoleon's latest work, The Houseguests, which won this year's Obie award. Kondoleon's brilliant, brittle comedy will be staged at Spaces in conjunction with an Art and AIDS exhibition.

I'd like to conclude with a comment on the relationship of our theaters to the gay community. In this year in which the most prestigious national awards in drama have gone to gay plays, it is discouraging to see so few plays in the Cleveland season that represent our community.

Yes, the Kondoleon and Ludlam plays at the Working Theatre are important manifestations of a gay sensibility. Yes, Cabaret, at the Beck Center, features a gay character. Yes, the Great Lakes Theatre Festival is honoring Noel Coward. Yes, important works of gay playwrights such as Langston Hughes, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and Craig Lucas are being staged. But only the Cleveland Public Theatre's production of Keith

Curran's Walking the Dead deals directly with issues in the gay community. This is especially surprising given the success last season of such work as The Lisbon Traviata (Dobama Theatre), Once in a While the Odd Thing Happens (the Working Theatre), and the gay and lesbian performers in the Performance Art Festival.

Certainly the Beck Center, Cleveland Public Theatre, Dobama Theatre, and the Working Theatre have been gay friendly and will continue to be so. The Cleveland Play House's discreet homophobia and the Great Lakes Theatre Festival's more benign neglect are disturbing. We can be proud of the high artistic standards and thought-provoking and diverse repertoire of our best theaters. I encourage you to support their efforts to enrich our community, but, at the same time, I hope you'll let them know that we are a community that wants to be more frequently represented. ✓

Barry Daniels is an associate professor of theater at Kent State University.

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