from The LATimes:
Drawing Inspiration From the Gods
Stephen Legawiec borrows from world myths to create uncommon productions for his Ziggurat Theatre.
By F. KATHLEEN FOLEY
Philosophers from Plato to Paglia have long acknowledged that myth is society’s building block,
the barometer of a common world culture extending back to the cave. But just what place does myth have in Hollywood, where the high concept is king and humanistic considerations commonly yield to the youth demographic?
That’s an issue Stephen Legawiec, founder and artistic director of the Ziggurat Theatre, has set out to address, one production at a time.
During
the past half-dozen years, the Ziggurat Theatre has made a name for itself
with evocative, visually stunning productions inspired by world myths.
The company’s inaugural production in 1997, “Ninshaba,” featured two Middle
Eastern goddesses as central characters. “Twilight World,” mounted in 2000,
was a loose adaptation of the Tereus and Procne story from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.”
In 2001, “Aquitania” employed the French legends of Charlemagne as a jumping-off
point for a lighthearted meditation on time and utopianism. “Red Thread,”
Ziggurat’s latest production at the Gascon Center in Culver City, opening
Friday, borrows freely from a Chinese folk tale for a timely parable about
a heroic female assassin who must break her new vow of pacifism to save
the kingdom. Ironically, Legawiec makes a living as a television promo
writer–a professional distiller of high concepts. But if by day he is
a spinner of spiels, by night he’s a weaver of tales–the curiously timeless
original theater pieces that he creates.
A multi-tasker
with a vengeance, Legawiec has written, directed and largely designed (sets
and makeup) every Ziggurat production since the company’s inception. He
comes by his interdisciplinary skills naturally. The son of noted Polish
violinist and composer Walter Legawiec and Eleanor Legawiec, a secretary
and homemaker, Legawiec was an art major before he switched to acting–a
painful transition, as it turned out.
“I went to two graduate schools for acting–first Cornell, then Rutgers,” Legawiec explains. “They both kicked me out. They thought I wasn’t any good. That was a pretty severe experience.”
Experience that later stood him in good stead. “Directing comprises so many things,”
he says. “I had a design sense because of art school and a musical sense
because of my father. I think that my art and music and acting backgrounds
all coalesced into the raw skills that one needs for directing.”
Those
skills impressed Robert Velasquez, Ziggurat’s resident costume designer,
from the outset. “I like Stephen’s work because it’s so innovative,” Velasquez
says. “He writes everything himself, and his work is so unique. That’s
the real challenge. You can’t just pull things from costume shops. Everything
must be designed.”
After
his acting school debacle, Legawiec eventually teamed up with his friend
Steven Leon (now a Ziggurat board member) to found the White River Theatre
Festival, a Vermont theater that evolved from a summer-only venue to a
six-month season. During the winter months, when the theater was dark,
Legawiec lived in Boston, where he began toying in earnest with the notion
of myth.
“My family
is Polish,” he says. “And being a Polish Catholic, you are really steeped
in ritual, because of the Mass. I thought a lot about the importance of
myth and ritual in theater–an area I had never turned my attention to
before.”
Legawiec
used his Polish heritage as a starting point for his initial exploration.
“I assumed everyone in Poland was working in myth and ritual,” he says.
“Of course, that was far from the truth.”
Acting
on that mistaken assumption, Legawiec wrote to the Krakow-based Teatr Stary,
Poland’s leading repertory theater, explaining that he was a young American
theater director interested in observing a Polish theater’s rehearsal process.
To his
amazement, his inquiry was met with a firm invitation. “They were very
accommodating,” he says. “They sent me the schedule for the whole year
and said, ‘Come when you can.'”
Legawiec
spent the winter of 1990-91 in Poland, arriving in time for the country’s
first post-Communist presidential elections. “It was a very tempestuous
time for the country and the theater,” he recalls. “Under the old Communist
system, actors couldn’t be fired; they were employed for life. For the
first time, the theater was in the position of having to fire people.”
In the
midst of the political upheaval, however, the Teatr Stary remained surprisingly
laid-back. Legawiec was particularly impressed with the theater’s lengthy
rehearsal process. “They would rehearse something for three or four months,
until it was ready to open,” he marvels. “That kind of unlimited rehearsal
time was a real revelation to me.”
A more
profound revelation was to follow–Legawiec’s visit to Jerzy Grotowski’s
theater and archive. “I didn’t know much about Grotowski at the time. I
just knew he was important,” he says. “I talked to the people who ran the
archive, and they gave me Grotowski’s book, ‘Towards a Poor Theatre,’ and
videotapes of his productions. That night, I slept in the theater. I read
the book from cover to cover and watched the videotapes. It was a surreal
experience.”
And a
life-altering one. “Grotowski talked a lot about myth in his book, and
it was clear that all his staged productions used ritual in a big way.
Grotowski’s philosophy really had meaning for me. And I was also struck
by the idea that Grotowski spent a year or so on each individual production.
He had no time limit.”
Returning
to his Vermont theater, Legawiec chafed at the strictures he’d formerly
accepted as routine. “When I was confronted with my short little two-week
rehearsal periods, I didn’t feel I could go on,” he says. “So I proposed
to my non-Equity actors, ‘Give me two extra hours a week to work on a piece.
Maybe we’ll perform it, maybe we won’t.'”
That
venture, the Invisible Theatre Project, resulted in “The Cure,” later remounted
in Los Angeles in 1998. Subtitled “A Dramatic Ceremony in One Act,” the
play also marked Legawiec’s first experiment with invented language, a
technique he returned to in 2001’s “A Cult of Isis.”
Although
the words in Legawiec’s invented language pieces may not be intelligible,
the meaning is–a distinction Ziggurat member Jenny Woo appreciates.
“When
he experiments with invented language, Stephen is trying to tap into the
subconscious, to express something more guttural and emotional,” Woo says.
“At other times, his work is very verbal and intellectual. You have to
listen to the words and really pay attention. But the invented-language
pieces do the opposite. They distance people from the literal understanding
so that they can merely feel.”
After
his Vermont theater folded, Legawiec moved to L.A. and set out to form
a new company, implementing the principles he’d developed with the Invisible
Theatre Project. Actress Dana Wieluns, a charter member of Ziggurat, then
known as the Gilgamesh Theatre, remembers those days.
“I responded
to an ad in Back Stage West that called for actors interested in a long
rehearsal process and new theatrical forms,” Wieluns says. “I remember
the ad made that distinction. It was a call for actors wanting to work
in the theater as opposed to film and television. That first piece, ‘Ninshaba,’
rehearsed for six months.”
In L.A.,
where actors routinely ditch small-theater commitments for more lucrative
bookings, Legawiec’s leisurely process was a hard sell. “On that first
project, we started with nine actors,” Wieluns recalls. “By the second
rehearsal we were down to six, and a week later there were only three of
us. The others realized they couldn’t commit for that length of time.”
What
inspired such loyalty among the die-hards? “The reason I keep working with
Stephen is that he’s one of the few people who embraces the theatrical,”
Wieluns says. “He wants to put on stage the kinds of things that can’t
be committed to film or TV. I think for Los Angeles that’s a unique thing.”
An unapologetic purist, Legawiec views the gap between theater and other media as a great
divide. “It seems to me that the spiritual component exists in the theater as in no other medium,” he says. “I’ve never had a spiritual experience in the movies, the feeling that you’re part of something larger, or you are beholding the mystery of life.”
Legawiec routinely travels the world to research his plays. On a trip to China in
September, he immersed himself in Chinese opera, a style that influences
his staging of “Red Thread.” The play derives from an obscure folk yarn
written during the Tang dynasty. Despite the antiquity of his source material,
Legawiec’s updating resonates in ways he never anticipated.
“The
story’s about an assassin who swears off killing just when the kingdom
needs her most,” he says. “Coincidentally, the play deals with war versus
pacifism during a time of crisis.”
The timing
may be coincidental, but the message of “Red Thread” is as fresh as when
the story was written 1,200 years ago. That’s typical of the Ziggurat Theatre,
as it crosses cultural boundaries and spans generations in its own continuing
saga.
“RED THREAD,” Gascon Center Theatre, 8737 Washington Blvd., Culver City. Date: Opens Friday at 8 p.m., then Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 16. Prices: $15-$20. Phone: (310) 842-5737.
Arthur Magazine 