LEEWARD COMMUNITY COLLEGE Drama Professor Paul Cravath, left, stars with Reb Beau Allen in "Escurial," to be performed this weekend.

2 for 1

Leeward students double up
their performances

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By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

You get two one-act plays at one low price. Why? To help purchase lighting equipment for one of the least-known theatrical venues on the island, the Leeward Community College Lab Theatre.

"My students are always doing little projects in there, but we don't always publicize them," LCC drama Professor Paul Cravath said. "Our students (also) do one main stage production a year ... and we try to make it as big as we can, but then when we do it in the Lab Theatre, it's so intimate; the audience is on three sides and you're right on the same level as the actors, like six feet away. It's a totally different psychological experience.

"We have done a number of shows in the lab theater that were really wonderful and intimate and then expanded them to the main stage, and they're completely different shows, because of the barrier of that proscenium."

The LCC main stage is also a popular venue for other theater groups, such as Honolulu Theatre for Youth and Lisa Matsumoto's 'Ohi'a Productions, as well as other promoters around the island. And for good reason: The stage is large and the facilities are excellent. The lab theater is a hole in the wall by comparison, so Cravath and several of his students are getting the LCC theater season off to an unusually early start this weekend with a three-night fund-raiser, with the proceeds to benefit the smaller facility.

Cravath is lending his acting expertise to the project and will appear as the mad king in Michel de Chelderode's "Escurial." LCC student Shawn Anthony Thomsen will serve as director, while fellow student Reb Beau Allen will direct the lighter "Boise, Idaho" by Sean Michael Welch (Allen will also portray the jester in "Escurial"). Cravath, his two student directors and the cast have been working all month on the project.

"They had asked me last year if I would act," Cravath said. "Students never get a chance to see me act because I'm always teaching and directing, and so we pulled these two very wonderful scripts together. One is very funny, one is very dark.

"Both of these shows have been tested before and they're both really audience-worthy."

From time to time, the lab theater has been used by outside groups for unusual or experimental productions, such as Troy Apostol's HAPA Theatre production of "The Love Talker" starring Eric Dixon Burns and Helen Lee.

"That show had no Leeward students in it, but it was directed by one of my best alumnae, Troy Apostol, and (the lab theater) was a perfect setting for that play," Cravath said.

Looking beyond the fund-raiser this weekend, the LCC Drama Department will be presenting its main stage production of "The Three Musketeers" in November, a festival of 10-minute plays in February 2003 and a spring drama production in the lab theater in April.

Cravath says the April show hasn't been finalized yet.

"I'm working on two possibilities right now ... but that spring production is a class, so you have to pray that the script you've chosen and publicized is gonna match who registers for the class," he said.

That's right: Cravath picks the play and then hopes the students who enroll in the class fit the cast requirements. He said he had "a wonderful cast" last year when he presented Tammy Baker's "Manoa," a story about the rainbow goddess of Manoa with hula choreography by Vicky Holt Takamine.

"That show will be expanded next fall -- a year from now -- on the main stage, and that's really an intense and violent play, but that's an example of something going from the lab theater to the main stage," he said. "We'll double the cast."

'Escurial' and 'Boise, Idaho' On stage: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 4 p.m. Sunday Place: Leeward Community College Lab Theatre Tickets: $10 Call: 455-0629

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