ACT Readers from left are Jo Pruden, Shari Lynn, director Vanita Rae Smith, Russell Motter and Richard Pellett
No fear of
drama hereReaders Theatre attracts loyal
patrons who like something edgier
than musicals
What do you do when opportunities are lacking? Vanita Rae Smith believes you create them.
Smith (who wears two hats as chief of Army Entertainment U.S. Army Hawaii and producer-director of Army Community Theatre) noticed back in 1998 that local theater groups weren't doing many dramas and that few shows had meaningful roles for older actors. So the Readers Theatre came into being as a Sunday afternoon extra in the ACT schedule.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Presented by the Army Community Theatre Readers TheatreWhere: Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter
When: 2 p.m. Sundays through March 14
Tickets: $6
Information: 438-4480
And readers theater is all about the spoken word.
"One of the main objectives in doing (this) is to make music of the words. ... All of us (major theater groups) are forced to do musicals to stay alive. I don't know what's happened to society these days, but so few plays are making it ... and we can't lose the spoken word."
Smith started Readers Theatre with a core of veterans that included Jo Pruden, Cecilia Fordham, Linda Ryan, Martha Walstrum and Shari Lynn, with Richard Pellett as the alpha male and narrator of the early shows. She opened the series with "Having Our Say," a 1995 Broadway show based on the lives of two centenarian African-American sisters.
Smith's subsequent choices of challenging dramas included some that were perhaps too edgy or offbeat for community theater audiences but earned the series a small but loyal -- and growing -- following.
The series continues this Sunday when Smith presents "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" It's the play Smith first presented in the readers theater format back in 1971, although she doesn't expect Edward Albee's searing dissection of two troubled marriages to seem as shocking now as it was when it debuted in 1962.
Pellett and Pruden star as George and Martha, a university professor and his wife. George secured his future by marrying Martha, the daughter of the university's president. But at the age of 46, his career is stagnating and Martha holds it against him. The estranged couple arrives home from a late-night cocktail party just in time to welcome a younger professor, Nick (Motter), and his wife, Honey (Lynn).
George and Martha use the younger couple as pawns in their private contest of humiliation and get the outsiders' moral support for their side of the "he said/she said" battle. The "games" they play get nastier as the night goes on, and Nick and Honey gradually get sucked in as active participants, albeit with problems of their own to confront. (Most people these days probably know the play in its famous 1965 film adaptation that starred the then-couple of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.)
"WHO'S AFRAID of Virginia Woolf?" is a play that Smith says probably won't ever be done here again as conventional theater because of its length and because playwright Albee specifies that there be a lot of cigarette smoking. She adds that the play represents a departure for her as readers theater as well.
"I have staged every possible readers theater style (since 1998) -- using a narrator as God to explain everything, having a Greek chorus repeat important phrases several times -- but this time, I'm going to let the actors interact, and they're going to be seated at a table instead of in a row of chairs."
And, unlike some of her previous productions, each actor will be playing a single character, rather than several.
Smith has been hoping that the series would attract young actors interested in observing how veterans can create distinct characters without relying on costumes, movement or music. (She casts the shows based on the work of people she's familiar with, rather than holding conventional auditions.) Younger actors who make the cut have the opportunity to learn what it takes to make readers theater work.
"I dwell on working with the actors to find the big word in every sentence. I do this when I do a stage production, too, but it's more important with readers theater because with each sentence you have to choose which word is the most important, plus you also have to work each sentence, so there are different levels (in it)."
With six seasons of scripts already collected, Smith would like to bring her productions to Hawaii Public Radio. Problems with copyrights and royalties have kept it from happening thus far. The bottom line with that is that someone has to come up with the money to pay the royalties that are owed the playwrights when their work is broadcast.
"It's not the Army's responsibility to buy royalties for public radio, but we'd love to come (to HPR) if they can get the rights. That has been one of my dreams, but I don't see how it come true without some angel out there who would get the rights and support public radio. I've got the talent and the scripts adapted and ready to go."
In the meantime, however, Smith's Readers Theatre program is alive and well at ACT.
"I love Readers Theatre," she says. "I'd do 15 shows a year if I could."
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