Baring It All

Stage

STARTING A NEW THEATER COMPANY is devilishly difficult, perhaps one reason why donors for stage productions are called angels. Local entrepreneurs Gary and Erin Lewis hope they’re on the side of the angels with their new San Diego Musical Theatre, which bows with a proven favorite, The Full Monty (May 4-13).

The Lewises plan to harvest locally from what they term “ a hotbed of theatrical talent, new authors and audiences” with a season of professional productions in the Stephen & Mary Birch North Park Theatre, also the home of Lyric Opera San Diego. If all goes well, SDMT will follow Monty with stagings next year of Guys and Dolls, Cinderella and Dreamgirls. For now, they’re busily raising funds.

Monty had its genesis in 2000, a few miles over from North Park, at the Old Globe. From there, the David Yazbek–Terrence McNally tuner went to Broadway and got 10 Tony nominations in 2001. The Lewises cited its gentle and comedic message, about six guys overcoming their fears and drawbacks by doing a Chippendale’s- type show, as the kind of uplifting productions they plan to offer.

The Lewises aim to have their own venue, which they envision as a performing arts center in the burgeoning coastal North County, between Carmel Valley and Encinitas. In addition to SDMT productions, the hoped-for center would be available to other arts organizations and offer an after-school youth theater program. That, no doubt, means they’ll need a large band of angels.

THROUGH THE CENTURIES, many artists and writers have left their native countries and gained luster and lucre as expatriates, but few faced the contrasts in attitudes that marked the life of Josephine Baker. An African-American born dirt-poor in St. Louis in 1906, she emigrated to France, where she became wealthy as one of that nation’s top celebrities, and was a major influence on dance in the Jazz Age. Yet, even when she returned to the United States in 1936 to star in the Ziegfeld Follies, Baker was scorned by audiences and critics. Only in the last couple of decades before her 1975 death did she become revered in this country, partly because of the 12 multi-ethnic children she adopted and called her Rainbow Tribe. In honor of her struggles against racism, the NAACP named May 20 Josephine Baker Day.

Baker’s early life is showcased in Josephine Tonight!, offered by Common Ground Theatre May 3-20, with Floyd Gaffney directing. The musical drama——with book and lyrics by Sherman (The Rothschilds) Yellen and music by late composer Wally Harper——follows Baker’s rise from poverty to Paris. Karole Foreman plays Baker.

RAPHAEL LEMKIN was a Polish lawyer who fled Nazism in 1939 and died in the U.S. in 1959. He’s remembered because, in the 1940s, he coined the word “genocide,” then campaigned to make it an international crime. In Lemkin’s House by Catherine Filloux, he’s in his afterlife, forced to reexamine his efforts as he’s visited by victims and perpetrators of modern genocides, Rwanda in particular. The play is offered May 27–June 13 by Dale Morris at Sixth@Penn as part of the theater’s 2007 Resilience of the Spirit Human Rights Festival.

SEEING NEW WORKS by award-winning playwrights Richard Greenberg, Donald Margulies, José Rivera and John Strand would normally require subscribing to a full season at a top-tier theater. Well, how about doing it in a weekend? South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is marking its 10th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival (May 4-6) with one of its strongest lineups ever. The seven plays——a workshop production, four staged readings and two fully staged world premieres——comprise six commissioned by SCR, from the writers mentioned plus newcomers David Wiener and Kenneth Lin, along with a script by Los Angeles playwright Julie Marie Myatt.

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