By and for the People

If you’re under “house arrest,” you can’t leave your familiar digs. You’re restricted by some higher authority from venturing into the rest of the world.

Figuratively speaking, the audience at “House Arrest: An Introgression,” the work-in-progress that opens Friday at the Mark Taper Forum, will be about as far from being under house arrest as an audience can get.

Instead of staying in its assigned role as the passive recipient of the play that’s being performed, the audience will be expected to provide much of the second half of the production.

After sitting through a 90-minute presentation by actors on the subject of the American presidency and the media, and then taking a break for intermission, the audience will be asked to participate in a “community conversation” that will take off from the topics raised during the first half.

“The play is the trampoline to help enable the conversation,” explained Robin Kramer, who is organizing the community participation.

The production as a whole is the brainchild of Anna Deavere Smith, the artist who previously brought to Taper audiences her “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” a solo performance in which she portrayed a number of people she had interviewed about the 1992 riots after the police beating verdict.

The first half of “House Arrest” is based on a new set of Smith interviews and source materials, focusing on the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton--and the media treatment of those chief executives. Smith is directing this part of the show and is expected to join 12 other actors onstage in performing it.

But Act II of “House Arrest: An Introgression” will focus on the “introgression,” which, as Smith explained it, is a biological term describing what happens when species leave natural habitats and move onto others’ turf, “with the implication that something will happen to both species.”

In this case, she said, she wants to put herself in the position of learning from the audience, just as the audience normally hopes to absorb insights from the playwright and players.

“House Arrest” was originally planned as a full production instead of a work-in-progress with audience participation. An early version was presented at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in 1997. But a few months later the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, and the show has since been repeatedly postponed and revised, as Smith attempted to incorporate elements of the news into her production. It was also affected by recent developments in DNA research regarding Jefferson and his reputed alliance with slave Sally Hemings. Smith and Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson finally decided to present the work in a relatively unpolished form that would allow for plenty of audience feedback.

Unlike standard post-play sessions, however, everyone involved hopes these discussions will not be about the play as much as about the issues it raises. To encourage this, well-known moderators will guide the conversations, while other public figures will be on hand to provoke dialogue.

As of press time, the list of moderators at various performances includes KCRW-FM’s “Which Way, L.A?” host Warren Olney, Rabbi Laura Geller, L.A. Human Relations Commission Executive Director Joe Hicks, Times columnist and “Life & Times” co-host Patt Morrison and attorney Angela Oh.

The list of other “expert” participants includes conservative pundit Arianna Huffington, former Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, TV producer Norman Lear, state Sen. Tom Hayden, Jefferson / Hemings historian Annette Gordon-Read, city council members and journalists.

Asked whether the most famous L.A. resident involved in recent events in Washington, Lewinsky, might participate, Kramer replied that “a forum is best shaped when many voices are heard and no one person dominates. It should be a shared experience in a non-touchy-feely way that leaves us thinking. It’s not about whether a particular voice is in the room.” Lewinsky’s attorney, Richard Hofstetter, said his client does not expect to attend “House Arrest.”

Audiences over the course of the 11 performances of “House Arrest” will include approximately 400 less well-known representatives of about 40 community groups, who already will have met within their own smaller circles to discuss some of the issues, without benefit of seeing the play. A few of the groups: Amnesty International, Beyond Baroque, Chinatown Service Center, Museum of Tolerance Associates, National Black Gay & Lesbian Leadership Forum, Rock the Vote, United Teachers Los Angeles.

Coro Southern California, a civic affairs leadership training organization for which Kramer once worked, provided facilitators for these smaller pre-show meetings.

Ideally, members of these smaller groups will be ready to discuss the issues without being rigidly rehearsed, Kramer said. She hopes that people from widely contrasting groups may discover that they share some views, and that they will all find ways of relating events in Washington to their own communities. Kramer, best known as Mayor Richard Riordan’s chief of staff from 1995 until June, called upon her many civic connections to help organize the “community conversation” half of “House Arrest.”

With this kind of advance legwork and “the artistic appetizer” of Act 1 paving the way, Smith said she hopes the audiences “will reflect on these things differently,” more thoughtfully, than they have during the past year of discussions about the Lewinsky scandal. “Art has a great capacity for entering into the discussion with complexities that media deadlines may not allow for,” she said.

Then again, she acknowledged, “maybe I will learn that they don’t care, don’t want to talk about it.”

That could lead to some long silences, but Kramer said the moderators are skilled at engaging people in conversation and assuring that as many people as possible are heard.

The concept had a run-through last summer at the Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue that Smith is running for three summers on the campus of Harvard University, thanks to a Ford Foundation grant. A workshop version of “House Arrest” was followed by a prototypical audience conversation. However, Smith said she was concerned that the Harvard crowd, many of whom had attended other events at her institute, was more prepared than the average Taper crowd might be.

She said she hopes the preliminary conversations in the community groups in Los Angeles will prepare parts of the audience to serve as “a spark to the conversation, a way so that it won’t just be catch-as-catch-can.”

Smith is grappling with the concept of conjoining the arts and civic dialogue. She related a story about Twilight Bey, a gang truce organizer depicted in her “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” and the man after whom the production was named. Although he showed up for a Vogue photo shoot that was held in South-Central in association with that production, he never made it to the Taper to see “Twilight.” Later, when Smith was attending the Million Man March in Washington, “who should I see but Twilight Bey?” She asked him why he never got to the Taper to see “Twilight.” He replied that he “just couldn’t make it.”

“How come he can go 3,000 miles to see Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March, but he couldn’t come 20 minutes to see a play named after him?” she asked. She hopes to erase that 20-minute barrier with “House Arrest,” “but I can’t solve that by myself,” she said. “I have to find partners who are interested in the same thing”--and she hopes the audiences for “House Arrest” will fill that role.

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“HOUSE ARREST: AN INTROGRESSION,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave. Dates: Opens Friday. Regular schedule: Tuesdays to Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m.; on April 18, 2 p.m. only. Ends April 18. Prices: $15 to $25. Phone: (213) 628-2772.