Without A Net

Coming untied at People's Light; Wilma's light fantastic.

It's not unusual to find theater people with a few knots loose. But at People's Light last Sunday, the discovery required some fast thinking.

A central set piece in the company's current production of Arabian Nights is a huge 20-by-20 fisherman's net. It does double duty as a lacy canopy and as a sort of undulating trampoline, in which role it must support several actors as they pretend to be struggling against the waves of an angry, roiling sea.

The fishing supply house that sold the net to People's Light (price: $600) guaranteed that it was tough enough to hold 20 people.

And indeed, the company has been been frolicking in the "waves" for about two months now, ever since getting initial instruction on "networking" from an instructor with Outward Bound, which uses fishermen's nets in trust exercises.

During Sunday's matinee, however, two actors, discovered a problem. Tumbling about in their first-act roles as dueling sea creatures, they noticed that the knots were beginning to fray.

Stage manager Chaz Brastow knew that the second act featured a scene in which the net would have to support five children.

He also knew that there were critics in the audience.

He decided to pull the net.

"Better tell the reviewers they're not going to get the net in the second act," he said to communications director Mary Bashaw. "I ain't putting actors in it."

In the break between the matinee and the evening performance, the tech staff dreamed up an appropriately nautical solution to the problem.

"They rewove the support line and burnt the edges," says Bashaw. "It just became evident that this is what is done with mooring ropes."

It's the kind of thing they probably teach you in Outward Bound.

***

There were no nets in sight at the Wilma gala Saturday night, but the weather was plenty fishy. Because of the downpour, the outdoor ceremony to celebrate the first lighting of the Wilma's big neon nametag was transferred inside.

With a black-tie crowd seated before him in the new theater at Broad and Spruce, Artistic Director Jiri Zizka announced that the change in plans was actually quite appropriate. Theater, after all, is about imagination, he said — so, when Mayor Rendell flipped the oversized switch at stage left, everyone could imagine they were outside watching the sign light up.

The entertainment portion of the evening began with a "ta-da-da, ta-da-da, bum-bum-bum" (the vocalization Blanka Zizka used to accompany her impromptu Czech folk dance) and ended with a "va-va oop," the refrain sung by a terrific ensemble of NY actors imported for the evening to introduce Philly to Avenue X.

The musical, an Off-Broadway hit about street-corner singers and race relations in 1963 Brooklyn, opens at the Wilma in February under Blanka's direction (her first musical), but only one of the performers seen Saturday will be involved (Jerry Dixon, who'll be the music director). Composer Ray Leslee was in attendance; watching the performance in Philadelphia, a town where doo-wop has a long and fabled history, he said he felt like the show had come home.

Also on the eclectic bill: PA Ballet leading lights Jeff Gribler and Anne White in a reprise of Doug Elkins'Narcoleptic Lovers, a hit at last month's Risque Cabaret; incandescent NY cabaret star Mary Cleere Haran doing an illuminating selection of Lorenz Hart songs (despite the unfortunate choice of "I'll Take Manhattan" as a lead-off number — please, Mary, our inferiority complex!); and Pearce Bunting in whiteface and tutu, among other costumes, who as master of ceremonies was called upon to make even more bad lighting jokes than I just made in this paragraph.

One more note: eagle-eyed Avenue of the Arts-watchers may have noticed a slight discrepancy between the Wilma sign as completed and the design sketches first circulated. The difference? Original drawings had called for the "W" to perch atop the building's roof.

"But the laws of physics wouldn't permit it," said Wilma spokesperson Emily Atkinson. In order to make sure the letter was safely moored, it had to be moved downward slightly to its present spot.

***

Last year she danced with Brad Pitt.

This year she sold Denzel Washington a cigarette.

Drucie McDaniel clearly likes to hang out with famous guys.

Or, rather, casting directors for films shooting in Philadelphia like how Drucie acts with famous guys.

Unfortunately, she doesn't think her stint in Fallen will attract quite the attention she did with Twelve Monkeys; while her brief mentally-impaired dance scene in the latter film showed up in all the trailers, she thinks she was "out of the frame in every shot" in her scene as a 30th St. Station cigarette vendor whom Washington uses as a diversion during a chase.

She must have been convincing, though: "People kept trying to buy things from me."

This week is a busy one for McDaniel. Two shows she's directing are opening at the same time: Top Girls at the University of the Arts and Phila. Theatre Caravan's production of The Frog Prince and Other Enchantments at the Annenberg. McDaniel, in her seventh year as Theatre Caravan's artistic director, adapted the Grimm fairy tales herself.