A curriculum of classics

THE great-great-grandparents of drama -- the ancient Greek and Roman playwrights -- have a permanent new home at the Getty Villa museum near Malibu, where they will live off the largesse of the multibillion-dollar J. Paul Getty Trust and see how much noise, figuratively speaking, they can still make after two millennia or more.

The villa, which reopened in January as the repository for the Getty Museum’s collections of Greek, Etruscan and Roman art, aims now to foster fresh takes on the texts, tales and themes of Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus and the rest of their decisively influential clan. Like a newborn Athena popping full-grown and fully armed from the cranium of daddy Zeus, the program debuts as the only amply funded (a first-year production budget of more than $350,000), professionally acted initiative in the English-speaking world dedicated to the annual staging of the ancients.

It was launched this year with three experimental workshop presentations in the villa’s 250-seat indoor auditorium, each a radical reworking or futuristic updating of a Greek comedy or myth created by L.A. theater artists at the Getty’s invitation. Now comes Euripides’ “Hippolytos,” the first full production in the 450-seat outdoor theater.

The aim in this outdoor space inspired by ancient theaters -- including much larger ones in the Greek cities of Epidaurus and Delphi that continue to host festivals of classical Greek drama -- is to stick closely to the original plays. Unlike the anything-goes indoor workshops, the productions will aim for an ancient or timeless feel. The seldom-seen “Hippolytos,” in a new translation by Anne Carson, a Canadian poet, scholar and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winner, concerns an austere, fanatically celibate young hunter whose spurning of his own sexuality and his stepmother Phaidra’s illicit advances ends badly for both.

In ancient lore, the power of the Olympian gods to do as they pleased bumped up against limits imposed by a higher order of things called moira, or fate. It’s the villa’s fate to be surrounded by wealthy, well-organized neighbors who sued to have the outdoor theater excluded from the museum’s $275-million renovation and expansion, for fear of traffic jams and nighttime noise. Although the courts ruled in favor of the Getty Trust in a battle that delayed the project more than three years, the villa’s outdoor productions will be governed by strict conditions set by the city.

Only 45 performances a year can be staged in the theater, a rule that would limit the Getty Villa to two outdoor productions a year. Only live voices can be amplified -- and then only to a moderate peak level of 65 decibels that will be monitored at the back row. The Getty plans to end shows by 10 p.m., so the property can be cleared by its 11 p.m. curfew. Luckily, ancient plays are epic in subject but not length, typically lasting no more than 90 to 120 minutes.

In the spirit of compromise, “Hippolytos” director Stephen Sachs hopes the neighbors will extend some courtesies as well. “The last thing you want is to be in an intense scene and hear the neighbors’ television set blasting out ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ” he says, “although it might fit in, because Phaidra is the original desperate housewife.”

Sachs, co-founder and artistic director of the Fountain Theatre, an 80-seat house in Hollywood, says necessity has bred invention for this, his first go at directing outdoors. For the sound design, created by local theater composer David O, he’ll rely on what the original Athenian players used -- singing and chanting by a 16-actor cast that includes a 10-member chorus. With help from choreographer Tamika Washington, Sachs is injecting dance and synchronized choral movement, a defining element of ancient Greek drama. Key roles are being played by some of his favorite L.A. stage actors, including Linda Purl as Phaidra and Fran Bennett, head of Cal Arts’ performance program, as her servant. Morlan Higgins, acclaimed for Sachs-directed roles at the Fountain in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” and Athol Fugard’s “Exits and Entrances,” plays Theseus, the absentee father and husband, respectively, to Hippolytos and Phaidra.

The Getty chose not to open with the hoopla that a star director and famous cast might have generated. Karol Wight, the acting chief curator of antiquities who oversees the villa, says it simply makes sense to give such an unusual and restriction-encumbered venue an ample breaking-in period. Then, after it’s more of a known quantity, the villa could invite such eminences as Peter Sellars and Peter Hall to take a crack at the space, officially known as the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater.

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Drawing on local theater scene

PUTTING off star turns gives the Getty a chance to do something it’s eager to do anyway, Wight says: declare its allegiance to L.A.’s fecund theater scene, while tapping its talent. “We wanted to inform the local community that we’re not just looking for the superstars of the theater world. We’re looking to bring in a broad spectrum of people.”

The Getty is sometimes criticized for thinking globally and failing to act locally. So far, the villa’s theatrical localism has been complete: The three workshops to date have been a musical version of Aristophanes’ “The Wasps” by director-adaptor Meryl Friedman; “Liz Estrada in the City of Angels,” a new take on Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” from the Latino Theatre Company, in which adaptor Evelina Fernandez comments on violence between Latinos and blacks; and “Cafe Oublie,” from the local company Theatre Movement Bazaar. The latter was a dance-oriented, multimedia take on the myth of Apollo and Daphne, reconceived as a backstage showbiz tale set in a post-apocalyptic future depicted with the help of computer-generated images.

The Getty began planning long ago for an ancient theater program centered on an outdoor venue. “The Wanderings of Odysseus,” adapted from Homer and co-produced in 1992 with the Mark Taper Forum, and a 1994 double bill of comedies by Menander and Plautus were staged in outdoor gardens at the villa, and showed that there was a substantial audience willing to hear the ancients in a spectacular setting.

When art historian Mary Louise Hart, an expert on ancient vase-painting, was hired in 1997, shortly before the villa closed for renovations, she was assigned as the Getty’s ambassador to the classical theater world, scouting the creative landscape, making contacts, bringing back ideas.

Lacking a professional theater background, Hart began an odyssey of self-education that has taken her to scores of productions, from L.A. to Greece. She has had breathtaking experiences seeing “Oedipus Rex” staged by Japanese directors in Delphi and Epidaurus, and has tried to make the most of “private tutoring from the best people in the world” -- such as hearing Sellars remark that the way to bring the violent works of the Roman tragedian Seneca alive today is to “make them like acid rock.”

“He was making a point, that you need to rock people, give them a jolt,” Hart says. It won’t do, she came to realize, for the museum to offer theatrical museum pieces marked by extreme fealty to antiquity. For the Getty to fulfill its mission, today’s audiences don’t necessarily have to see the plays as they might have been staged in ancient Greece and Rome, but they must experience them with the same passion as the ancients.

“You’re supposed to be in an alternate state of consciousness,” Hart says. “It’s supposed to be emotional and transporting, and that’s what we hope to accomplish.”

Marion True, the embattled former chief curator of antiquities, currently on trial in Rome for allegedly acquiring looted relics for the Getty’s collection, played a key role in the planning until her resignation in October 2005. A committee of seven curators, educators and performing arts producers on the Getty staff sets theater policy; it stuck with True’s decision to hire Sachs as the debut outdoor-stage director.

Rush Rehm, the Stanford drama and classics professor who directed “The Wanderings of Odysseus” at the Getty, says the villa “will probably fall” before it runs short on relevant ancient plays and modern variants to stage. “I know of nothing comparable” to the Getty’s planned menu of at least one full outdoor production a year, along with five free indoor workshops and a sixth special presentation, Rehm says. “That speaks to the good part of the Getty, an ability to take on things that are culturally significant that nobody else is doing.”

“It’s extraordinary,” says Brian Kulick, who has picked ancient Greek plays for three of his four seasons as artistic director of New York’s Classic Stage Company. “There is not a theater in the United States that is dedicating itself singly to that repertory. If they can identify and nurture artists who are passionate about that repertory, and give them the time, space and resources to really investigate it and present it to an audience, they can grow into a theater that discovers performative language for these plays in the 21st century. That would be an amazing success.”

The chief artistic pitfall facing the Getty is a common impulse toward forced gravitas and epic-scale gestures, says Peter Meineck, leader of Aquila Theatre Company, another New York City troupe devoted to classics. “Really great actors can forget everything they learn when they do Greek drama and start declaiming it as if they’re Charlton Heston.” Consequently, audiences “have these ideas that it’s good for you, it’s boring, and you’re not going to fully understand it -- preconceived ideas that are really hard to break down. My hope with the Getty program is that they can help to break down some of the barriers.”

Sachs said he chose “Hippolytos” because of its immediacy: “It doesn’t take an understanding of politics and warfare. It’s a human drama with four central characters who are immensely rich and psychologically complex.”

The Villa Theater Lab program aims both to generate new productions for export, while importing worthwhile touring shows. Wight says budgets are $250,000 for outdoor productions, a sum that Aquila’s Meineck considers sufficient to do “a No. 1 professional production,” and $20,000 each for workshop productions that run for three performances, following a generous three-week rehearsal period. Workshops are free, although tickets must be reserved in advance by phone or the Internet. The three so far have been quick sellouts, Getty officials say. Playgoers will have to ante up $38 or $32 for the outdoor shows, $15 for previews.

Planning ahead, a Roman comedy by Plautus, probably “The Rope,” has been slotted as next year’s outdoor show, because Wight wanted to demonstrate quickly that the series isn’t solely Greek nor tragic.

The Getty’s unique advantage, curator Wight says, is that its ancient theater program is paired with a leading collection of Greek and Roman art. The hope is that the art can inform and deepen not only playgoers’ experience of the shows, but the shows themselves. Actors, writers, directors and designers will be invited to seek inspiration in the galleries, or avail themselves of the Getty’s scholarly expertise for background information and historical interpretations. A special exhibition, “Enduring Myth: the Tragedy of Hippolytos & Phaidra,” runs Aug. 24-Dec. 4, offering about 30 works, from ancient through modern times, inspired by the myth that gave rise to the play.

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Greek offerings on stage and screen

The new Villa Theater Lab will feature five play readings a year and one special presentation a year. Workshops are free, but ticket reservations are required. Special presentation events will have a ticket fee.

Upcoming indoor readings and workshops

* Special presentation of “Cabaret Lysistrata,” a two-actor staging of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” staged by Michael Cacoyannis, film director of “Zorba the Greek,” and a version of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women.” The play features Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern, who played Jesus’ mother in “The Passion of the Christ.” 8 p.m. Oct. 20 and 21

* Screening of Gregory Markopoulus’ 1964 film “Twice a Man.” 8 p.m. Nov. 2

* Screening of Jules Dassin’s 1962 film “Phaedra.” 8 p.m. Nov. 3

* Reading of “Phaidra,” Seneca’s later take on the “Hippolytos” myth, by the classical theater ensemble Antaeus Company. 8 p.m. Nov. 17 and 4 and 8 p.m. Nov. 18

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‘Hippolytos’

Where: Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

When: Opens Sept. 7. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays

Ends: Sept. 30

Price: $38

Contact: (310) 440-7300