Bebop Apocalypse.

Byline: FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 1/9/02): Obie-winning playwright/activist Amiri Baraka will give a free lecture at 5 p.m. Thursday in the Erb Memorial Union's Gumwood Room. The time was incorrect in Sunday's Arts & Books section.

LIFE HAS BEEN mighty complicated for Corey Pearlstein, the Lord Leebrick Theatre artistic director who is putting together the West Coast premiere of Amiri Baraka's "Primitive World."

"I've been working with artists who are in five different places in the country," Pearlstein says, "so the logistics and the scope of the talent coming in to be involved in the show are a remarkable quantum leap for the company."

"Primitive World" is just the kind of gritty, streetwise, in-your-face theater that Pearlstein wants for his small theater company's new Progressive Performance Series. Subtitled "An Anti-nuclear Jazz Opera," the 1982 play jumps, slams, grabs and moves in mesmerizing ways.

Written by Baraka - who 18 years earlier, as LeRoi Jones, had won an Obie Award for his off-Broadway play "The Dutchman" - the theatrical piece is episodic and aggressive. It's exactly what might be expected of Baraka, one of the mainstays of the Black Arts Movement, sometimes referred to as "the artistic sister of the Black Power Movement."

While not giving away the play's content, Pearlstein describes it as "post- apocalyptic and polyrhythmic" and "a bebop-infused breakdown of life, love and commerce as we approach the end of the world."

"It's a hard-edged, darkly comic vision touching on themes especially relevant in America today," he continues. "Very Brechtian, with a very, very strong musical component underlying all the action.

`In structure, it's not the same linear form that you get in a Neil Simon play. It talks about race and class and money in the most unsubtle of terms."

Producing Baraka's play here is, in Pearlstein's words, "quite a coup."

"If you attract national playwrights, you attract national attention," says Pearlstein, who notes that Baraka is expected to be on hand for Thursday's opening.

"Primitive World" has been performed only once before - at the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe in New York City in 1982.

The Lord Leebrick Theatre obtained the rights to produce the play when Pearlstein, who had met Baraka in 1996, called the playwright.

The director is Sherman Johnson, a Brooklyn resident who Pearlstein describes as "a writer-editor-lecturer- holistic gymnast." Johnson has worked extensively in theater, both in the United States and Europe, and is a frequent contributor to journals and music publications.

In the cast are locals Darlene Espinoza Dadras (Sado), Joe Von Appen (Maso), Iran Parker (Black Man), Acasia Wilson (Black Woman), Ken Hof (Ham) and Kawezya Hutchinson (Heart's Wife).

The play's original musical score was composed by drummer and percussionist Will Calhoun, a member of the Grammy-winning rock band Living Colour.

In Eugene, the piece will be supported by live music from New Wave folk recording artist Peter Mulvey, a guitarist (`imagine the kind of guitarist that would come into being if Leo Kottke, Ani DiFranco and Dave Matthews had a child together," Pearlstein suggests). Mulvey has performed at the Ben and Jerry's Folk Festival, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Mulvey also plays the role of Heart, and he will give a solo performance at the theater at 8 p.m. on Jan. 13. Tickets for the concert range in price from $10 to $20.

Pearlstein wanted to do "Primitive World" because it "really attacks a lot of social issues very vigorously. The opportunity to put something like that on the stage is remarkably important for a company to do."

Pearlstein also likes the piece's multicultural aspects. The Lord Leebrick Theatre has teamed up with the University of Oregon Multicultural Center and others to bring Baraka to Eugene for a free poetry performance and lecture (`Oppose Terrorism and Bushwacker Policies') at 3 p.m. Thursday in the Erb Memorial Union's Gumwood Room, 1222 E. 13th Ave. The presentation is part of the university's Martin Luther King Week observances.

Baraka also will have a post-performance talk with the audience after Thursday's opening of "Primitive World.' And he will give a music and poetry performance at 10 p.m. Friday at the Lord Leebrick Theatre; tickets for that event are $15 each, or $25 for the play and performance.

Baraka's influence on American arts and letters is wide. He is a prolific African-American writer who has created poetry, dramas, novels, jazz operas and nonfiction. He also is an organizer, editor and promoter within the avant garde movement.

He is a recipient of the American Book Award for lifetime achievement. And his short play, "The Dutchman," often is studied in college literature classes alongside plays by Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

In the 1970s and '80s, Baraka taught at Yale, Rutgers, San Francisco State and the New School for Social Research. Currently, he is the director of a children's theater group called Spirit House in Newark, N.J.

"The show has really been the fulcrum for bringing in some absolutely dynamic people to do this work in our theater," Pearlstein says. "We have a Grammy-winning musician working directly with an Obie-winning playwright and a nationally touring musician.

`All these people are going to locate themselves in Eugene in our little theater for this project - which is, I think, an exceptional testament to who the writer is and what the project is."

Although it has been challenging to coordinate the far-flung individuals, Pearlstein believes the effort will pay huge dividends for his company.

"We have great local talent, but to bring in somebody like Sherman to direct really can invigorate artistic ideas for the company," he says. "It sets a precedent.

`Hopefully, it's one we can continue with."

PRIMITIVE WORLD

WHAT: The West Coast premiere of "An Anti-nuclear Jazz Opera" by Amiri Baraka; directed by Sherman Johnson

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and Jan. 17-19

WHERE: Lord Leebrick Theatre, 540 Charnelton St.

HOW MUCH: $12 and $16 through the theater box office, 465-1506

Actors Cabaret of Eugene

For his first major directorial assignment at the Actors Cabaret of Eugene, Benjamin Newman has picked a dark comedy, Christopher Durang's "The Marriage of Bette and Boo."

Newman graduated from South Eugene High School in 1996, took an academic year off, then enrolled in the acting program at New York University. Now, he's taking another year off, after which he may transfer to another school.

In the meantime, he is staying as involved in theater as he can.

Although only 23, Newman brings considerable experience to the task. He acted in high school and college and has directed several plays as well, mostly ones he wrote himself - such as "Afraid of Worms," which he directed last summer at Actors Cabaret.

Now he's taking on the wildly weird world of Christopher Durang, and he's energized by the prospects.

"The Marriage of Bette and Boo" concerns the antics of a young couple and their unusual families, viewed episodically over a 30-year period.

"It's all about their marriage and their attempts to have a family," Newman says. `It deals with alcoholism and depression. In their attempts to have many children, many of them don't live; there's a lot of miscarriages. But it's done in a black comedy way.'

The play is an unabashedly autobiographical portrait of Durang's family. In effect, the narrator, Matt, is Durang. That's no secret; the playwright says so in the voluminous notes sent to the director.

"He talks an awful lot about the way he'd like it done and the way he wrote it and why he wrote it," Newman says. "There are a lot of subjects that he definitely lampoons. He's taking on the Catholic religion, alcoholism, the very institution of marriage itself."

Alcoholism and miscarriages may not be everybody's idea of a laugh riot, but Newman insists that, in they context of Durang's world, the situations are humorous.

The play "was very shocking when it first came out. I still think people would find it shocking, but I do think it's funny. Funny in both a laugh-out-loud, guffawing way and also the painful, funny way where we identify with it."

For this production, Newman has cast Julianna Zarzycki as Bette, with Anna Simone Barnett as her mother, Steve Mandell as her father and Janette Miranda and Jennifer Zetlmaier as her sisters. Tyler Fuller-DeWein will play Boo, with Drew Tydeman as his father and Sharon Harbert as his mother.

The cast also includes Adam Goldthwaite as Doctor (a puppet), Devin Vega as Father Donnally and Sam Rutledge as Matt Hudlocke, the only child and narrator.

Newman's production will use masks, songs, painting, puppets and commedia dell'arte stances.

"I'm not doing it as a realistic play,' he says. `I've decided to direct it in the style of a fairy tale. I've kind of set the bar up for myself. I've made it a little more challenging.

"I can guarantee that this show will be unlike anything you've ever seen at the Actors Cabaret," Newman said. "Whether that's good or bad is yet to be seen."

THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO

WHAT: Christopher Durang's dissection of marriage and family in contemporary America; directed by Benjamin Newman

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 2; 2 p.m. Jan. 20

WHERE: Actors Cabaret Annex, 39 W. 10th Ave.

HOW MUCH: $17 ($22 day of show) through the theater box office, 683-4368

Very Little Theatre

Aging Norman and Ethel Thayer are back once more to listen to the loons gliding over their beloved Golden Pond. How many more visits they will be able to make is uncertain, but director Jack Powell believes the Thayers themselves are always worth another look.

"This is a story of a love affair in which the lovers are elderly," Powell says. "Their love affair is very, very obvious. They're very gentle with one another, and very loving.

`You feel from the very beginning how much they really care and how much they've struggled through their life trying to understand the world around them - not always being very successful with it, but never failing to have each other."

The Thayers were etched in the moviegoing public's consciousness in a 1981 film - based on Ernest Thompson's play - starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Doug McKeon, Dabney Coleman and William Lanteau. Fonda, Hepburn and Thompson all won Academy Awards for their work, and Dave Grusin's theme music was a hit.

All that acclaim provides a monumental hurdle for Powell to overcome.

"It feels to me that the story is pretty much the same, and a lot of the lines are the same," Powell says. `And of course, they opened it up because they had the ability to go out on the pond and all that stuff, whereas the play takes place strictly in the living-dining room of the cabin.'

For his cast, Powell has Jay Sayer as Norman Thayer; Twilo Scofield as his wife, Ethel; and Emily Gilbert as their daughter, Chelsea. Chris Hansen plays the mailman, Don Aday is Chelsea's fiance and George Glasser plays young Billy.

Powell saw the film when it first came out, but has made a point of avoiding it since. As an experiment, he asked the cast how many had seen it; only three of the six had.

"I don't think it's had much of an impact on them," Powell says. "They don't feel to me like they're trying to play Katharine Hepburn or Henry Fonda.

`For one thing, both of these people are quite short. They're very physically different than Hepburn and Fonda, who were tall and sort of patrician-looking.

`I think that Twilo is playing Ethel a little sweeter, a little more grandmotherly. And I think Jay is even more caustic and brittle than Fonda was."

Norman's acid tongue surprised Powell.

"I don't remember the film as being quite as politically incorrect as the play is," he says. "Norman is a Roosevelt Democrat who really is very liberal, but likes to challenge everyone by playing devil's advocate and saying some very startling things.

`He can be pretty cutting at times, and at other times is very mellow. I don't remember that in the film."

Although some of Norman's beliefs don't fly well in today's world, Powell refused to cut them: "To take them all out would alter his personality too much."

To distance his production from the motion picture, Powell has shunned Grusin's haunting soundtrack. Instead, he is using the loon-lush "Sleepy Hollow" (from the album "Going to the Sun'), composed by Randy Peterson and Bill Mize, and played by keyboardist Tim Heintz.

Further, although the play is set in New England, he is avoiding Yankee accents.

The roles of Norman and Ethel are immense. Both are on stage, talking, for almost the entire play. Powell says this can be a burden for aging actors.

"Finding people in their 60s and 70s who are strong actors and who still have a good ability to retain dialogue is difficult. For myself - I'm 65 - when I get stuck with lots of lines, it takes longer to get them down.

`With this cast, it's going very well."

One reason for the play's success is its bittersweet mixture of comedy and drama, Powell says.

"This couple knows they've had 48 summers on Golden Pond, and they're hoping for another one or two. But they both recognize that they are in the twilight of their life.

`Particularly Norman. He turns 80. He's been preoccupied with death, Ethel says, ever since she met him, which was 50 years ago.

`When he has an angina attack in the last scene, she says, `For the first time, Norman, I really thought you were going to die.'

`And he says, `I've known it all along.'

`She says, `Oh, shut up.'

"There's kind of a lump in your throat when you're laughing."

ON GOLDEN POND

WHAT: Norman and Ethel take a last look at the loons in Ernest Thompson's drama; directed by Jack Powell

WHEN: 8:15 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Jan. 17-19 and 24-26; 2 p.m. Jan. 13 and 20

WHERE: Very Little Theatre, 2350 Hilyard St.

HOW MUCH: $9 and $12, 344-7751

BENEFIT PERFORMANCE: 8:15 p.m. Jan. 16 (with a pre-show dessert social at 7:30 p.m.) to benefit the Alzheimer's Association and McKenzie-Willamette Adult Day Health Care Center; $25, call 345-8392

CAPTION(S):

"The Marriage of Bette and Boo" cast includes (from left) Tyler Fuller-Dewein as Boo, Julianna Zarzycki as Bette and Sam Rutledge as Matt. The play runs through Feb. 2 at the Actors Cabaret Annex. Ethel Thayer (Twilo Scofield) tries to soothe her husband, Norman (Jay Sayer, right), in Very Little Theatre's "On Golden Pond."