Theaters across Sonoma County striving to please sophisticated audiences with new, different shows

Outside major cities, the live theater scene can be a largely arid landscape of standby musicals, stand-pat comedies and occasional oddball experiments, with too few truly creative oases.

Sonoma County's new season of stage shows, however, displays fresh signs of life. A quick scan of the fall's cultural habitat yields these new sightings:

This past Friday, the Sonoma County Repertory Theater in Sebastopol opened the original drama "Drake's Drum," set simultaneously in the 16th and 20th centuries, in collaboration with the Independent Eye, an innovative troupe with a national reputation.

The Pacific Alliance Stage Company's current production, "The Ives Have It," is director and co-star Hector Correa's selection of six, short one-acts by New York playwright David Ives. The result is an original program, different from the playwright's own previous multi-play revues. "You try to do something for the first show of the season that's not known," Correa explained.

Petaluma's Cinnabar Theater, established 35 years ago primarily to perform classic operas, will present "Beatbox: A Raparetta" later this month, created and performed by the Felonius One Love Hip Hop group from Oakland and DJ Raw of San Francisco.

The Pegasus Theater Company in Monte Rio, which revived Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" last season, takes a bold step in late October with "Bent," Martin Sherman's spare-the-audience-nothing drama about gay prisoners in Nazi camps. First done in the late '70s, the play is still daring - and such a rare departure for Sonoma County theater that the whole drama community is buzzing about it.

"I saw Pegasus is doing 'Bent' and I said, 'Wow!'" Actors Theatre Artistic Director David Lear recalled. "Some of those people are out there taking risks. They've raised the stakes."

Lois Pearlman, marketing director for Pegasus, said the decision to produce "Bent" came after long and lively discussion.

"It's daring in the sense that the show is explicit," she said. "There is explicit violence, and there is a sexual section of the play that is verbally explicit. There was the sense that more people will come to the show if you do something people are comfortable with, but there's a certain point at which comfort becomes boredom."

Innovation and initiative aren't new to Sonoma County theater. Nor does longevity guarantee stodginess. Last July, near the end of its 34th season, Summer Repertory Theatre at Santa Rosa Junior College sparked a monthlong round of letters to the editor by staging "The Full Monty," complete with a full-frontal nude male finale.

Actors Theatre has dedicated itself to new works and stimulating theater since it started 20 years ago, and continues to seek out risky plays. Lear will direct "Smell of the Kill," a black comedy about three suburban wives, next April at the 6th Street Playhouse.

"I think audiences need to be sophisticated, and educated by the theater they go to," Lear said. "I think that's the responsibility of all theaters, to keep raising the expectations. We want to say, 'Try this. It's different.'"

Lear also remains active in the Loading Zone, a company he co-founded six years ago to develop plays through workshops and introduce new writers. The troupe performs in a 43-seat theater at Santa Rosa's Kid Street Learning Center.

The eagerness to try something new is spreading. The Santa Rosa Players opened the 6th Street Playhouse in February with "Mame," and in June, staged their third production of "Guys and Dolls" within three decades. But next March, the Players will open the far more provocative "Urinetown."

Scott Phillips, managing artistic director of Sonoma County Rep and co-star of "Drake's Drum," believes theaters need to keep pace with the audiences.

"People in this county are well-educated," he said. "That opens the door for some newer, slightly edgier material." The Rep's new season includes "Humble Boy," a modern reinterpretation of "Hamlet," and Harold Pinter's 1978 play "Betrayal," hardly a new work but still challenging after all these years.

Argo Thompson, executive director at 6th Street Playhouse, believes the county's theaters and audiences seek something more sophisticated and substantial than cheap shocks or self-indulgent experiments.

"I think we're recognizing that the audience is ready," Thompson said. "There has been a transplant of audiences from other areas that are used to thought-provoking theater. It's contemporary theater, not avant garde or necessarily experimental."

A theater can spark new audience interest with even a modest departure from past formula. Last month, Santa Rosa Players sold out its run of the family musical "A Year with Frog and Toad," which premiered on Broadway just two years ago. The Players ended up booking eight more performances for later this month.