Youth Movement Forms at the La Jolla Playhouse

The La Jolla Playhouse has named Lisa Peterson, a 31-year-old director, as the company’s new associate director, beginning in July. Peterson’s first assignment will be to direct the Southern California premiere of Elizabeth Egloff’s “The Swan” Sept. 13 at the Mandell Weiss Forum.

The playhouse also named Robert Blacker associate artistic director of the company. He has been associate director-dramaturge of the playhouse since it was revived in 1983.

Peterson’s appointment reflects a commitment by the playhouse to reach out to young theater artists, said artistic director Des McAnuff. As a member of the artistic team, Peterson will help pick artists and projects, focusing on those from her own generation.

“As we get a little bit older, there’s a natural tendency to want to work side by side with your peers as opposed the new generation, and it’s extremely important to the health of the playhouse that the next generation is well represented,” McAnuff, 39, said.

“That’s what gives our work its vitality--that it comes from artists in their 20s and 30s. I want that to continue when I am an octogenarian.”

Peterson signed a two-year contract with the playhouse, but the playhouse’s intention is that her position will be permanent, McAnuff said.

Peterson, who grew up in Santa Cruz, is now directing Craig Lucas’ “Reckless,” for a May 15 opening at the Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Conn. She won a 1991 Obie Award for her direction of Caryl Churchill’s “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” at New York Theatre Workshop. A 1986 graduate of Yale University, she co-adapted and directed Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves,” also at New York Theatre Workshop, and directed Athol Fugard’s “My Children! My Africa!” at Baltimore’s Center Stage.

Blacker, 44, noted that the addition of Peterson should also give the playhouse a new perspective based not just on age, but also on gender.

“It’s important to note that she’s a woman, and it was important for us to bring on to our artistic team someone who would bring us a perspective other than that of white males,” he said.

“As we continue to expand, I think we’re looking toward expanding the vision and the scope of our artists to more fully represent the full spectrum of our American society and all of its diversified cultures and points of view.”

It’s been a good year for the Old Globe Theatre’s ties to New York. “Jake’s Women” and “Breaking Legs,” both of which had their world premieres at the Old Globe, are currently running there. And Monday’s announcement of the Tony nominations recognized August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” which had its California premiere at the Old Globe before running on Broadway, as well as Jack O’Brien, the Old Globe’s artistic director, who was nominated as best director for the Lincoln Center production of “Two Shakespearean Actors.” The Tony award ceremony will be televised May 31 on CBS.

“Two Trains Running” is Wilson’s third critically acclaimed work to play the Old Globe before Broadway. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson and his longtime director, Lloyd Richards, have a longstanding invitation to bring his new work to the Old Globe in a co-producing arrangement with other theaters. Wilson is currently at work on a new show, O’Brien said.

O’Brien said he was “thrilled to pieces” but “couldn’t be more surprised” by his nomination as best director for Richard Nelson’s play, which had only a limited run as part of Lincoln Center’s subscription season in February--he said he’d figured he was out of the Tony race when the New York Critics Circle and the Drama Desk had passed him by.

The acknowledgment is particularly gratifying since he’d gone after the play, he said. He’d called Gregory Mosher, then artistic director of New York’s Lincoln Center, to tell him “he better well hire me,” O’Brien said with a laugh.

O’Brien said it’s highly unlikely that the Old Globe will ever mount “Two Shakespearean Actors”--the 27-character show is simply too expensive. But he holds out hope that he can talk American Playhouse into financing a feature film based on the show. Which O’Brien of course would like to direct. “I keep praying that they’ll find the money.”

O’Brien was nominated once before--in 1977 for his direction of “Porgy and Bess.” He doesn’t expect the Tony nominations to change anything.

Still, the award had “an extraordinary cachet, particularly in the New York industry,” O’Brien said.

“I don’t approve of these awards, and I don’t believe in them, consequently I’m thrilled to get it. My price goes up--but not in San Diego.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The La Jolla Playhouse’s first Pay What You Can tickets of the season will go on sale Saturday for the May 16 matinee performance of “The Glass Menagerie” at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Tickets can be purchased beginning at 11 a.m. at the Playhouse box office, at Pyramid Books at 220 Euclid Ave. and at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park. . . .

“My Mind in Ruins with the Standup Thinker,” conceived, written and performed by Underground at the Lyceum veteran Loren Hecht, will be co-produced by Blackfriars Theatre and Common Cents at Blackfriars’ Bristol Court Playhouse May 11-19. The show will run concurrently with Blackfriars’ “Getting Around,” on the show’s dark nights, Mondays and Tuesdays at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets are $6. For information call 232-4088. . . .

This year not only marks the 500th year of Christopher Columbus’ journey to the shores of what we now call America; it also marks the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. “Sepharad ‘92,” a new touring multimedia musical presentation, written and directed by Israeli dramatist Dan Almagor and starring Israeli musical star Rivka Raz, celebrates the rich Jewish culture in Spain before that expulsion. The show will be presented locally by the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Centers and Congregation Beth El at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla on Sunday at 7:30 p.m., 457-3030.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

‘SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL’ AT SUSHI

John Fleck’s first big impact on San Diego theater came when he gave an acclaimed performance as the granny in “The Granny” at the Old Globe Theatre in its 1990 winter season. In 1991, he inadvertently made a different impact on the national theater scene when he and three other artists, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes and Tim Miller, were denied fellowships by then-National Endowment for the Arts Chairman John E. Frohnmayer for what is commonly thought to be political grounds.

Fleck lost his $5,000 grant for his work in progress, “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell,” although he determined to finish it anyway. The piece has evolved into an attack on mass media stereotyping, with Fleck playing a 100-year-old shrunken person reading gibberish from an unraveling roll of toilet paper. An acidic commentary on our times, the show premiered at the Mark Taper Forum’s Taper Too in January and opens tonight at Sushi Performance Gallery as part of the company’s 10th annual Neofest festival.

Shows are at 8 p.m. today through Saturday, with an additional performance Saturday at 10 p.m. May 16 performances are at 8 and 10 p.m. At 852 Eighth Ave., 235-8466.