San Diego Magazine / August 2004 / Lights, Sites and Nonstop Action

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Lights, Sites and Nonstop Action

IN JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS, Dale Morris has turned his little 6th@Penn venue into a theatrical hot spot. He’s scheduled productions almost nonstop, even on Mondays, when stages are usually dark. And several, like this year’s Kimberly Akimbo, Shirley Valentine and The Road to Mecca, have won abounding accolades from critics and audiences.

Even more, Morris handles a San Diego Theatre Scene site and an accompanying weekly newsletter, which he e-mails to 4,500 local stage aficionados. Now he’s cohosting a Web-based talk show called San Diego Theatre Scene On-Air. It’s part of a larger Web site, San Diego– based World Talk Radio, and airs on Thursdays at 3 p.m. You can hear it at www.worldtalkradio.com (you’ll need the Windows Media Player, a free software download); follow the arts and culture links.

“I was contacted by World Talk Radio about the idea of doing an arts-related talk show,” Morris says. “Ed Keyes, president of WTR, is very much into the arts scene. I immediately agreed to do the show as an extension of my Web site.” Morris realized he needed some help for the program, so he enlisted Jenni Prisk, an actor and theater buff who writes a column for his newsletter. “That was a good move on my part,” Morris says. “She’s now really the backbone of the show.”

He’s excited by the response, at last count nearly 600 listeners. “I consider that a great success,” he says. “My newsletter took off very slowly from just a hundred or so names. I expect the radio show will do the same. It’s been great fun, and the e-mails I’ve gotten from listeners have really been gratifying. If this could somehow develop into a local radio show, it would be incredible.”

THE BAD NEWS FROM LAMB’S PLAYERS is that Chauntecleer, the new musical planned for October-November, won’t be ready, so Dial M for Murder will fill the spot. That setback, however, was more than offset by a wealth of good news.

First, the company reached an agreement with the Ray & Joan Kroc Community Center to occupy the center’s Joan B. Kroc Theatre, offering productions for the rest of 2004. Then the Lamb’s folks acquired the restaurant next door to their Coronado home venue, allowing them to expand and upgrade the theater’s lobby space.

Lamb’s will use the 600-seat Kroc Theatre (6845 University Avenue) as a second space, presenting the troupe’s Play House series for families, plus productions to supplement the regular season. The slate starts August 12 with a reprise of one of the company’s greatest hits, the gospel musical Smoke on the Mountain (through September 26), followed by The Boy Who Fell Into a Book (September 30–October 24), which Lamb’s offered earlier this year, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (October 28-November 21) and The Gifts of the Magi (November 26–December 26).

Lamb’s, San Diego’s third-largest theater organization, continues to thrive. The company’s annual summer production at the Lyceum—this year an update of their popular musical Boomers—continues until August 22. And even the Dial M substitution may turn out to be good news, given that Lamb’s 2002 staging of the film noir classic Detective Story was one of that year’s best productions.

CARLSBAD’S NEW VILLAGE ARTS THEATRE, another troupe that’s coming on strong, has scored a coup. For the company’s summer Shakespeare in the Park production, Twelfth Night, Dakin Matthews has done the dramaturgy and adaptation. Matthews, an associate artist at the Old Globe, frequently does acting and dramaturgy there, and this year won a New York Drama Desk Award for his Broadway adaptation of the Bard’s Henry IV. Twelfth Night is presented free August 12-15 and 19-22 on the lawn at La Costa Canyon High School, staged by Old Globe associate director Brendon Fox.