Local Artists Land Dramatic Summer Jobs

For Deanne Lorette, 27, who just completed her graduate training in theater at UC Irvine, the Utah Shakespearean Festival provides what she calls “invaluable opportunities.”

One of the festival’s leading younger actors, Lorette is playing Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as well as a supporting role in “The Royal Family.” Last year she played Portia in “The Merchant of Venice,” Calphurnia in “Julius Caesar” and Elvira in “Blithe Spirit.”

“My preference in life is classical theater,” Lorette says. “There’s so little of that that I feel lucky to be here. It’s a wonderful place to work--not just because they treat their actors well, but because of the experience you get.

“Compared with some other festivals I’ve worked at in Los Angeles and Illinois, this is a very professional company. You can’t help but grow.”

You also can’t help but wonder whether Lorette’s UCI connection smoothed the way to Utah.

She and a dozen or so other festival troupers and staffers come from UCI. Most importantly, so does one of the festival’s two producing directors, Cameron Harvey, who oversees all artistic decisions from casting to hiring with the other producing director, Douglas N. Cook.

Harvey, 45, is both a longtime UCI drama professor and a UCI graduate. He says he is “happy to suggest colleagues (for the festival), if I think they’re the best choices.” But, he maintains, the UCI connection “can backfire,” because he wants to avoid any suggestion of favoritism.

“We really do try to guard the integrity of our choices,” he insists. “Otherwise it gets uncomfortable.”

Lorette says the connection is, in fact, a double-edged sword and that the presumed UCI advantage has backfired many times--although against women far more than men.

“For a long time UCI actresses felt the festival was a closed door,” she said. “I think I’m the first woman performer they hired from UCI in 18 years. I got lucky because another UCI director who was here last year, Eli Simon, pushed the door open for me.”

But, Lorette cautions, young actresses find it difficult as a general rule to get hired for Shakespeare. The underlying reason has less to do with sexism than with the unavoidable fact that Shakespearean roles for women are not as plentiful as they are for men.

Lorette notes, by way of example, that the young male actors hired from UCI this summer outnumber her 3-to-1.

They are Peter Massey, who plays Snug in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Bagot in “Richard II” and a senator in “Timon of Athens”; Tom Humphrey who doubles as Fitzwater and a soldier in “Richard II”; and Rob Addison, a “greenshow” performer who also plays Henry VIII’s court fool in a non-mainstage show called “The Royal Feaste.”

But certainly, in terms of backstage and managerial personnel, UCI women have fared significantly better:

* Toby Weiner, the music production coordinator of UCI’s School of Fine Arts, is the festival’s company manager, overseeing daily operations.

* Carey Lawless, the production manager of UCI’s School of Fine Arts before leaving for a similar job at Columbia University in 1992, is the festival’s production stage manager, overseeing the festival’s scene and costume shops for all six shows.

* Mandy Banks, who recently earned a master’s degree of fine arts in stage management from UCI, is the stage manager of two festival shows, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Our Town.”

“I’ve been offered a full-time position year-round as company manager,” Weiner says. “If there were a year-round season right now, I’d probably take it.”

(Although the season last only 10 weeks in summer and six weeks in spring for rehearsals, the festival has 23 employees year-round. Between June and September, the staff expands to more than 250.)

Robert Cohen, founding chairman of the UCI drama department, has nothing but praise for the festival’s value to the school’s student actors. “Utah enables them to put their training into practice under ideal conditions,” he said.

“They bring a passion to their work that the festival treasures. Their performance level is high, very high. But they need to go in front of audiences with equally high expectations. The festival gives them that chance. Working in repertory on a daily basis is not only invaluable, it’s also rare,” Cohen says.

Beyond the experience, actors are paid about $2,000 for the summer, plus living expenses. “It’s one of the best-paying summer jobs an actor who’s still in grad school can get,” says Massey, “besides being a great credit.”

Meanwhile, the festival’s Southern California connection doesn’t end with UCI.

“We’re a sort of Southland Mafia,” quips Los Angeles actor Robert Machray, referring to several of the other top actors at the festival from the Los Angeles-Orange County area.

Machray, who is starring in the title role of “Tartuffe” and is featured in “The Royal Family,” has extensive credits at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory (he was last seen there in “Happy End”). In 1990 he was nominated for a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for “The Boys Next Door” at the Pasadena Playhouse, and he heads the L.A.-based Classical Theatre Lab with Alan Mandell.

“I started scouting this festival a few years ago,” says the actor, 47, noting he was hired for the first time last summer to do Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” “Theater seems to be disappearing everywhere. But this is one of the few places where it’s growing. I think this is the great unknown festival.” (Related story, F1.)

Other Los Angeles actors who form the backbone of the Utah troupe include Michelle Farr (starring in “The Royal Family” and featured in “Tartuffe”); Jack Wetherall (starring in the title role of “Richard II” and featured in “Timon of Athens”), and Harley Venton (co-starring as Bolingbroke in “Richard II” and featured in “The Royal Family”).

The festival also draws a contingent of graduate actors from the University of Delaware.

Under an agreement with the University Resident Theatre Assn., which is a professional union contract negotiated through Actors’ Equity, festival officials have their pick of the nation’s acting crop each year.

“The word is out that Utah is a good place for actors to work,” said Rick Van Noyes, 40, the festival’s associate casting director. “University programs for students interested in pursuing classical theater are looking to us. We get a lot of calls from a lot of the training programs.”

UCI’s Massey, for one, doesn’t mind the competition.

“I love it,” says the actor, 30, a third-year graduate student. “This is my second time here, and I’ve had the chance to play everything--even a lead (Charles in ‘Blithe Spirit’ last year).”

Humphreys, 25, a second-year graduate actor, agrees: “It’s a fantastic place to learn.”

Last year he was cast in “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Julius Caesar.” This year, in addition to his small roles in “Richard II,” he plays a key supporting character in “The Royal Family.”

“I do six performances a week in repertory,” Humphreys says. “I don’t see how I could get better experience.”