TAKING IT ON THE (HIGH) ROAD TO SCOTLAND : CALARTS TO PERFORM YEATS PLAY `DEIRDRE' IN EDINBURGH.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

After staging the William Butler Yeats drama ``Deirdre'' in May before hometown audiences, faculty and alumni at the California Institute of the Arts decided it might be a creative challenge to take the show on the road.

So they went to Scotland.

The CalArts troupe traveled 6,000 miles to perform the play - set in Scotland and Ireland - at an international arts festival held for 50 years in the Scottish capital.

Three performances of ``Deirdre'' will be staged Sunday and Monday at Edinburgh's prestigious Queen's Hall, said Anita Bonnell, spokeswoman for the Valencia campus.

Reached in Scotland on Thursday, producer Susan Solt said her cast and crew were thrilled to be among hundreds of performing arts troupes from all over the world, ranging from dancers and comedians to filmmakers and symphony orchestras.

``The New York Philharmonic is here,'' Solt said, adding that artists from USC, UCLA and Pepperdine also were taking part in the festival.

``It's like a major theater convention for me,'' she said. ``It's a marvelous opportunity for me, as the dean of the theater school, to find out what my discipline, my art form, is doing all over the world.''

Yeats, a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet and playwright, based ``Deirdre'' on centuries-old Celtic mythology. The drama is considered the greatest love story of Irish legend.

The title character runs away with her lover Naoise in defiance of his uncle, King Conchubar. It was prophesied at Deirdre's birth that she would be the most beautiful woman in Ireland, but bloodshed and death would surround her.

To avert the prophecy, the king determines to marry Deirdre when she comes of age. Instead, Deirdre falls in love with Naoise, and together they escape Ireland to live in exile in Scotland.

As the story unfolds, Naoise is slain and Deirdre takes her life.

CalArts alumni Bridget Connors and Nick Erickson play the doomed lovers, while Roger Kern, a periodic visiting artist and guest professor at the college, portrays the vengeful monarch.

Others in the cast include Claudia Anderson, Christine DeMore, Shawn Ellis, Clay Storseth and Larry Eisenberg, the only student actor. The musicians who accompany the drama are Erin Barnes, Chelsea Czuchra, Carolyn Sykes and Dan Morris.

Faculty from the CalArts theater, art, music, dance and costume design programs created sets, lighting, music and staging for the production. Director Irene Connors, besides being the leading lady's mother, is CalArts' associate dean of theater and a Yeats aficionado who has directed nine of his plays.

Solt said the play is a creative outlet for the CalArts faculty, who find that practicing their craft keeps their teaching fresh.

``CalArts in based on the premise that professional artists will train developing artists,'' she said.

The college may be as well known and respected abroad as it is in its own community, Solt suggested, because the CalArts troupe received a sizable grant from an arts foundation in Scotland.

``They thought that our piece would make a really interesting contribution to the festival,'' she said.

Other arts patrons donated airline frequent-flier miles for the group to make the 15-hour flight to Scotland. All told, the trip's $40,000 cost was covered by private grants, Solt said.

Because there are so many artists in Edinburgh, the CalArts company will have to take down its set after the Sunday shows and reassemble it before Monday's curtain time to allow other performers to use Queen's Hall, Solt said.

Still, she said, the creatively charged atmosphere throughout the city is exhilarating.

``People are really excited and there's a wonderful spirit of camaraderie,'' Solt said.

``I came to CalArts from the film world. I was a producer. It was precisely to be able to do this type of thing that I left the film industry,'' she added.

Bringing a Celtic story to the stage, in front of a Scottish audience much more familiar with the tale than those who saw the play in Valencia, is a challenge, Solt admitted.

But it's also an opportunity to perform ``Deirdre'' for people with a more built-in point of reference for its setting, characters and storytelling style, she said.

``I think in some ways it's going to be a much easier crowd, because they're much more comfortable with the poetic language. They just long to hear the words,'' Solt said.

While the play is set in the era of ``clans and tribes and kings,'' the themes are timeless, and Deirdre, Solt said, ``is a very modern woman.''