The announcement last week that Stages Theatre, Orange County’s longest running storefront theater,is closing its Fullerton space is terrible news on several fronts.
First, it’s the latest reminder that the storefront theater scene, the best thing to happen in the history of performing arts in this county (although South Coast Repertory and the Segerstrom Center would no doubt disagree) has long peaked.
Beginning in the late 1980s to around 2002, some 13 storefront theaters, or company-based producing entities not affiliated with a university, municipality or other government institution, all of which tended to produce less mainstream, blue-hair fare, launched. Today, that number is four.
Read the first part of the two–part series on Stages Theatre–past, present and uncertain future– at Voiceofoc.org.
Full productions of original plays also take a major hit, as no theater produced as many new works in this county over the past 30 years as Stages. That number had waned compared to the blistering pace its first few years in Anaheim. Of its approximately 100 productions in its first four seasons, at least 90 percent were original.
But you could usually count on at least one new play every season. In fact, its canceled 2020 season included three works that were part of the inaugural Page to Stage festival that focused on women playwrights.
And then there’s the perennial warhorses wheeled out year after year which won’t be seen, at least not for a while, including its summer production of “Twilight Zone” episodes re-enacted on stage, and its annual holiday play, a radio play of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was usually followed by the excrement of the Reverend Slappy White and his Calcavacade of Comic All-Stars and their A Dolt’s Only Xma$ Pageant, which somehow had a longer run (1994 to 2019, with a few years here and there lost in an alcoholic-haze) than just about any other “holiday” production in this county next to SCR’s “A Christmas Carol.”
And not to make it about me, but this is my blog, so deal with it; and I’ve got one burning question I need answered right now.
What’s going to happen to all my photos in the lobby?
But what about the photos?
Well, the photos aren’t of me, and it’s not like I own them but a handful of the approximately 50 photos of past Stages productions on those walls were pictures of some of the 14 plays that I either wrote or adapted (and one I directed) at Stages from 1996 to 2006.
And I actually do know what will happen to them, the same thing that will happen to me. Once they come down from those walls, are stuffed into whatever box gets crammed into whatever storage unit that, once locked, may conceivably never be opened again, they will join me on my slow and steady trek toward complete obliteration.
So , while you can read the first part of my two-part series on Stages that was published today on the Voice of OC website,I’m choosing to use this space to put some focus on nobody’s favorite subject: me.
Sure, they may have been a complete waste of time, a turgid mass of long-winded pretentious bullshit, utterly lacking in strong female characters, easily forgotten and amounting to as much as any other plaintive barking into the void, but goddammit, some fool was stupid enough to greenlight them, and I shall etch them in the digital ether of this website , or blog, or whatever the fuck this is, as a notice to all eternity that once there was a man named Joel Beers. who wrote plays. And every one of the sad, miserable fuckers got produced. Most of them more than once.
But First This:
But before I get to that, i guess I should say something along the lines that, for me, getting plays produced that people actually bought tickets for–and at least pretended to focus on for a couple of hours of their lives–was a fantastic opportunity. I’m sure far better writers deserved it much more. But the plays truly were secondary to the people. I worked with.
Some of my best friends (an admittedly tiny list) came through working at that theater and at least a few of them occupy that spot upon the Ultimate Test of Friendship list: If you call them from jail at 3 a.m., would they pick up?. Or at least listen to your voicemail and do something? True story: Patrick Gwaltney and Darri Kristin did.
I met the two people I married at that theater. Literally. I married Gwaltney and the lovely Tracy Purdue in a ceremony in Manhattan in 2004. The state of New York didn’t recognize my ordainment from the Universal Life Church, so they had to rent an officiant whose signature on the marriage license was legit. The only one they could find on short notice was a rabbi, who introduced me as the Reverend Joel Beers and did that get some laughs.
And even though my position as OC Weekly’s theater critic from 1995 to 2019 also afforded me the opportunity to piss off every single one of those friends more than a few times (I always felt a bit like Aesop’s bat at Stages, tolerated by the birds and the beasts in the great battle but never fully embraced by either) it’s the people, not my plays, whose memories I cherish. And if fortune smiles, there will be more memories to forge.
But forget about any more plays. I haven’t written a full-length in 14 years but if I ever do, I won’t be doing it at Stages, at least not unless they open another theater down the road. And let’s face it: ain’t none of us getting even younger.
But once there was a man named Joel Beers who wrote plays. And every one of those sad miserable fuckers got produced. Most of them more than once.
And the house where most of them happened was Stages Theatre. And here they are.
Fuck you, eternity!
Now About Those Plays
1996. Second production of “Indio,” directed by Adam Clark. Originally produced by Revolving Door Productions at the short-lived Tribune Theatre in Fullerton, 1994. A little bit of trivia. The former tenants of that theater, which is today the Back Alley Bar and Grill and was once the printing operation of the Fullerton News Tribune, were the last Hispanic theater company in this company that had its own space, El Teatro Cometa.
1997. World premiere, “Roscoe Spitzer is Afraid of Dying,” directed by Patrick Gwaltney. Better than all the ones that came after.
1998. Adaptation of “Tartuffe,” directed by Patrick Gwaltney. I think we framed it around a TV televangelist.
1999: Second production of “Hate,” better than the first at the Tribune Theatre in 1995 and the third (2012) at Stages.
2000: Adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People. ” Directed by Patrick Gwaltney.
2001: “Prophets, Profits and William Blake.”Second production. First was the Tribune Theatre in 1995. Directed by Patrick Gwaltney. Vastly superior to the first production.
World premiere of “Going to Greenland.” Directed by Patrick Gwaltney. This was basically a Revolving Door Production done at a different theater, as it featured Bradley A. Whitfield, Nicholas Boicourt, Steven Lamprinos, Darri Kristin and more than a little musing from Michael Mollo.
2002: Adaptation of Moliere’s “The Misanthrope.” Set in a Karaoke bar. Dave Barton hated it.
Directed Sam Shepard’s “True West.”
2003: World Premiere of “Rube!” Directed by Patrick Gwaltney. Subsequent productions at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center as part of the Orange County Theater Festival, and Brea Curtis Theatre were more fully realized, but nothing beats your first.
Adaptation of Joseph Heller’s “We Bombed in “New Haven. I think I was drinking heavily during this one, but even sober, I don’t think I could have ever explained it.The adaptation or the original.
2004: Fourth production of “Roscoe Spitzer is Afraid of Dying.” Directed by Patrick Gwaltney. Two productions in Los Angeles between this and first Stages show in 1996.
“
2006. World premiere of “The Don Juan Project.” Directed by Patrick Gwaltney; Forgettable.
2012. Third production of “Hate.” Directed by Barney Evans. They asked to do it and I said sure but by the third time, though the subject matter was unfortunately topical and would only get more topical–a look inside the screwed-up head of a coherent white supremacist, it really was just what it was: a half-decent episode of “Hill Street Blues.” BUT AT LEAST THIS HAPPENED!
FERMENTED BEERS 