VA-VA-Voom for Shakespeare Troupe’s New Locale

Shakespeare Festival/L.A., the company that has staged free, professional Shakespeare for the past six summers at John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, is moving to a Japanese garden on the grounds of the Veterans Administration in West Los Angeles.

The new site already has a new name: Stratford on VAvon. VA--get it?

Last fall, the group’s artistic director, Ben Donenberg, pulled out of the county-owned John Anson Ford in Hollywood, after a scheduling dispute with the county. Even then, Donenberg mentioned the possibility of the Veterans Administration site, which he discovered while playing basketball in the neighborhood.

Now he has worked out a deal to use the VA space for free in exchange for restoring the site and maintaining it with the help of some of the veterans who are enrolled in the VA’s compensated work therapy program.

He plans to seat 800 nightly on bleachers, folding chairs and blankets. Three weeks of “Twelfth Night,” featuring David Ogden Stiers as Malvolio, will open July 2, with Renaissance Fair-style attractions surrounding the alfresco theater. The stage will be part of a vehicle dubbed “Will’s Wheels” that will enable the festival to move it to other sites later in the summer for performances of “Comedy of Errors” by the group’s young company.

In contrast to the “Twelfth Night” company, the “Comedy of Errors” troupe will probably be non-union. Last year’s young company performed with six union contracts, and Donenberg hasn’t completely abandoned hope of identifying the additional $40,000 he says is necessary to use a few union actors. He expects, though, that the expense of converting to the new operation is likely to require this temporary backtrack on the organization’s road to full Equity status.

Equity, which awarded Donenberg $500 last year for his determination to stick with union contracts, is reluctantly approving Donenberg’s backtrack, although official approval is still required from the union’s headquarters in New York. “We’re very unhappy about it,” said the union’s Western regional director, George Ives. “We’ve told him it’s for one year only. But we recognize his problems this year.”

The union insisted that the two companies be clearly differentiated in their names. Donenberg plans to call the second troupe the “Young Professional Company.”

With the help of the new “Will’s Wheels,” the young company will probably visit more sites than ever. However, it won’t be back at South Coast Botanic Garden, which it has visited for the past two summers. Donenberg and the garden’s foundation recently parted company over the terms of the deal.

Another site in the South Bay area will be found, pledged Donenberg, and then “Comedy of Errors” also will travel to Citicorp Plaza in downtown Los Angeles (opening Aug. 11 for one or two weekends), and, for the first time, to Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge (Aug. 24-28). An additional downtown venue may be added if the show becomes part of the opening festivities of Grand Hope Park.

DOIN’ THE DOOLITTLE: When the next Ahmanson-at-the-Doolittle series was announced recently, producing director Gordon Davidson said “A Celebration of the Songs of Leiber and Stoller,” booked into the Doolittle for a Nov. 10-Jan. 22 run, would get a better name. Davidson suggested “Hound Dog” as an example.

How about “D. W. Washburn’s All-Dancin,’ All-Singin,’ Black & White, Jive Ass Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue”?

That’s the working title, said the show’s creator-director-choreographer Otis Sallid, who is currently preparing it for its summer bow at Royal George Theater Center in Chicago. Might that title be difficult to fit on a marquee?

“Make a bigger marquee,” replied Sallid.

SPEAKING OF DAVIDSON: Actor J.D. Daniels, while accepting a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award last Sunday for his performance in the Doolittle’s “Conversations With My Father,” noted that “before I was even born,” Davidson had “recognized great talent.”

Daniels is all of 13 years old.