AUGUST 2003

Arts

Call of the Wilde: Theater in Tucson Redefined

by Mae Lee Sun

Wilde; (n) 1) An Irish playhouse in the heart of Downtown Tucson full of art, laughter, comedy and song; 2) An espresso/wine bar attached to an Irish playhouse in the heart of Downtown Tucson that’s a cafe during the day; 3) An exceptionally brilliant and witty playwright for whom the Irish playhouse in the heart of Downtown Tucson is named.

Well if this isn’t the call of the Wilde, then what is? Add interactive audience response technology, state-of-the-art sound and lights, a superstar search, and you have the definition of a night on the town it wouldn’t seem natural for any twenty-first century theater buff or aspiring actor to be left out of.

Yet despite all the whistles and bells, the Wilde Playhouse, scheduled to open in October, emerged out of a passion for all things Irish, the desire to educate young people and the life savings of local writer/actor Joan O’Dwyer. After receiving degrees in creative writing at both U of A and Trinity College in Dublin, spending late nights in Tucson performing in smoky bars and doing improv at MUSE with The Peanut Gallery, O’Dwyer felt both a new venue and approach to theater was needed. When the Dinnerware Gallery on Congress Street recently became available, she purchased it and is now in the process of moving Wilde in.

“Other cities like Portland, Oregon and places in Europe have terrific theater and actually pay their actors. People there go to plays more than movies and everyone knows their playwrights and writers. Here, we know our movie stars. I’d rather have Portland be the model for my theater than Tucson”, says O’Dwyer. She adds that Wilde will be a real grown-up establishment, not for the karaoke crowd. After the show is over, the audience is expected to go home.

Clearly, her desire to create this new model of theater is paying off. She’s lobbied the City Council to bring upscale entertainment to the downtown and is already taking budding actors like U of A student Alexandra Maloney and her playhouse to the streets, teaching teenagers in local schools how to write and perform their own scripts.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to act and this is a great way to give back to the community. Theater is totally magical and when you’re educating people, you’re actually learning more about yourself, especially with children,” says Maloney, who’s equally enchanted by the opportunity to perform at Wilde.

Wilde’s artistic and administrative staff: Paula Baloun, Joel Charles, Anita Goldberg, Aliy Maloney, and Joan O’Dwyer.

As the season opener, O’Dwyer has appropriately chosen ‘Gross Indecency: the Three Trials of Oscar Wilde’, written by Moises Kaufman, author of ‘The Laramie Project’. Gross Indecency tells a riveting human drama about the scandal of impropriety and imprisonment surrounding Wilde’s affection for the young Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquess of Queensbury. Throughout the performance, the actors will remain on stage changing characters, costumes and scenes in full view of the audience. As an off-Broadway hit under the direction of Leslie Abrams, it received dazzling reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today.

Later in the season O’Dwyer will premiere her own work, ‘Mulligan’s Wake’ and an eerily-familiar non-Irish play by Tony Kushner, titled ‘Homebody/Kabul’. Written pre-9/11, Homebody/Kabul is about the historical relationship between Afghanistan and the West, our understanding of politics, self and encounters with the ‘other’, and what it is that we learn from looking at those relationships and situations.

The Wilde Playhouse and O’Dwyer however, are not strictly about stiffed lip, politically correct theater. Appreciating the value of market research and concerned with financially supporting her business as much as anyone, she’s reserved Friday and Saturday nights for “spur-of-the-moment comedy, repartee and improvisation at it’s best” with the Wilde Battle of the Improvs and the Wilde Superstar Search. Pre-screened, local individual and group talent will come forth and vie for the audiences attention via interactive response technology that casts votes to determine who is worthy of stardom and the weekly, monthly and annual cash prize.

It’s also an intimate setting in which those with disposable incomes can enjoy a cup of rich espresso or glass of elegant wine while indulging in handmade Eastern and Middle European pastries like ‘urmashitza’-a soft, marzipan-like treat made with coconut and lemon peel. Or perhaps take a walk on the authentically ‘wilde’ side and experiment with a hearty mug of Guinness stout accompanied by a ‘ploughman’s plate’ of cheddar cheese, locally baked Irish soda bread and a pickled onion.

During business hours, patrons can admire the exquisite handcraft of local textile artist and art therapist, Paula Baloun. “ I could teach Irish history by the time I’m done” she said after having captured the portraits of Irish literary giants George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Maude Gonne, honorary Irishman William Shakespeare and others, on sixteen, colorfully quilted fabric panels which will be suspended from the ceiling. She’s woven in pieces of books she’s torn apart, photographs and antique silk ties in the backgrounds of the portraits and has done such novel things as hiding Beckett’s French Resistance code name ‘Gloria’ and Yeats’s spiritual name ‘Daemon Est Deus Inversus’ in their respective panels so that people would have to hunt for them. The work is so unique, O’Dwyer feels people are likely to come from miles around to see it, never mind coming to the theater itself.

And whether or not you’re as passionate as O’Dwyer, Maloney and Baloun are about the buzz Wilde Playhouse is likely to stir in theater and the downtown, one thing for sure is that we’re fortunate in these lean, mean and not so green times, that...

“The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life”

- Oscar Wilde

The Wilde Playhouse is located at 135 E. Congress Street. For a complete schedule of events, hours of operation and general information log on to www.wildeplayhouse.com or call 770-1000.