Theater : A Shrewd Anniversary for Shakespeare Festival

It’s theater on the move, the modern-day equivalent of a traveling sideshow: a 40-foot truck that folds out to create a 30-by-50-foot stage. It’s “Will’s Wheels.”

“I’ve gotta schlep this all over L.A. County,” Ben Donenberg says cheerfully of Shakespeare Festival/LA’s new portable stage. Tonight, the festival celebrates its 10th anniversary with the opening of “The Taming of the Shrew” in the Japanese Gardens on the grounds of the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration.

Today and Friday, the company will present three performances to a total of 2,000 bused-in high school students. Public performances begin Saturday.

Donenberg, 38--who is founder and artistic director of the festival, and is staging this play--has set the Shakespearean battle of the sexes in what he calls “Zorro’s world,” California in the early 1800s.

“If you pick a really specific time frame, you can get locked into justifying a lot of anachronisms,” he says. “Zorro’s era works well because Shakespeare makes a lot of fun of idealized romanticism in his plays, the way men and women treat each other. We also wanted to do stuff that came out of the commedia tradition: Cisco Kid kinds of characters. ‘Taming of the Shrew’ doesn’t have political symbols; it isn’t about sexism or power. It’s about people with needs.”

This summer marks the festival’s second sojourn at the Veterans Administration. It will reprise a practice begun last year of hiring resident veterans to help with parking, grounds maintenance and ushering.

The festival has built its reputation on both quality theater and social responsibility. The first year, performing Downtown in Pershing Square, Donenberg hit on the idea of asking theatergoers to donate a non-perishable food item instead of charging admission.

“The Redevelopment Agency, Citicorp and Mrs. [George] Gershwin gave us some dough,” he says. “We raised $800 [worth of food] for the Salvation Army that year. We’re up to $1 million.” Since 1986, the festival’s annual food take has been matched by Vons Co.

But creating art is the bottom line. “We want to create a theatrical tradition,” Donenberg says. “Each season, people can come with their families and make this a part of their lives.”

The festival is supported by grants from the city’s Cultural Affairs and Community Development departments. In addition to the summer performances, it sponsors several community programs.

Its Will Power to Youth program annually hires 80 disadvantaged high school students to study and perform Shakespeare. The students are graded and paid for the intensive six-week workshop.

The festival also sponsors Will Power to Schools, which instructs high school teachers in teaching Shakespeare. “We have 120 to 130 teachers, and we develop a curriculum for them,” Donenberg said.

Their students, who will attend the opening performances, are given free texts by Dove Books; 4,000 books are donated each year.

The festival also works with students from the High School of Performing Arts. “Some of those kids will do a pre-show performance,” Donenberg says. “We’re very youth-focused.”

“The Taming of the Shrew” plays tonight through July 30 on the grounds of the Veterans Administration at Wilshire and San Vicente boulevards in West Los Angeles; Aug. 3-6 at Grand Hope Park at 9th Street Downtown; and Aug. 10-13 on the grounds of Ambassador Auditorium, 300 W. Green St., Pasadena. Information: (213) 489-4127. Admission is free at the V.A. and Downtown venues with the donation of a non-perishable food item. In Pasadena, tickets are $10 to $12.50; children are free with an accompanying adult.