“Yeah, so this scene is pretty much the worst intervention ever.”
Leslye Headland, the 28-year-old playwright, director and artist-in-residence of the Iama Theatre Company, is giving notes. It’s about 1 p.m. Thursday, and the six-person cast of "Reverb" has run through roughly two-thirds of the show without stopping. The dreary green proscenium of the Working Stage, a 50-seat storefront theater just off Sunset Boulevard, has yet to be repainted from the last show.
"Reverb" is not a cheery, Wildean comedy of wit. The fifth in Headland’s series of Seven Deadly Plays—in which each is themed around a cardinal sin—"Reverb" tackles the offense of wrath. Dorian and June, played by Wes Whitehead and Melissa Stephens, are a recently reunited 20-something couple spiraling into a cycle of violence. Part Neil LaBute, part "Fool for Love," the play is an incisive picture of emotional dependence and abusive relationships. That said, there are plenty of jokes and a boatload of pop references—everything from Phil Spector and Facebook pages to Pitchfork reviews and Rock Band.
Headland’s plays speak directly to this generation of post-college castoffs, to the disparate swaths of those who work as assistants to high-powered moguls, who crash perpetually on couches, who openly despise their friends for getting married.
But are members of this generation willing to pay $17.50 to see their problems onstage? “Her plays elicit a response,” says Whitehead, who is also Iama’s artistic director. “It’s the identification, where people realize ‘I know that guy, I was that girl, I just got out of that relationship.’ These are real, relatable characters that still manage to stay theatrical.”
Audiences have grown steadily since Iama’s debut show, "Cinephilia," which took on the sin of lust. "Bacheloerette" (gluttony) drew actual bachelorette parties that bought group tickets and filled the house, cackling at and commenting on their onstage counterparts. "Assistance," a tale of greed told through the lens of young corporate assistants, brought in repeat customers after news of the show made its way through the online tracking boards frequented by Hollywood assistants.
Headland’s initial proposal of seven plays was just the ignition that the founders of Iama, who cribbed their name from a Saturday Night Live skit, needed to get moving. The 12 actors who make up the company came together in Los Angeles in 2007, though most of them had already met in NYU’s theater program. The idea was that company members would take on all roles of production in a cyclical fashion: acting, producing, designing, board operating, box office. They would produce original work by new writers. They would keep the overhead low, the budgets manageable, and their eyes on Craigslist.
In this industry town, where theater is often the byproduct of actors waiting to be plucked for film and TV, Iama’s devotion to the stage is fully grounded in its counterintuitiveness. Whitehead, an L.A. native, speaks of Iama’s formation as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “We don’t know how to make films. We weren’t trained in that. We were trained in theater. This is what we know how to do.”
Maybe it’s because no one told them they couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s because they came from New York. Frank Megna, the owner of Working Stage and a New York transplant himself, doesn’t deny this possibility. “They have a kind of unity and a dedication that’s pretty rare here,” he says. “They know that the work is the most important thing. Most actors are just on the phone between rehearsals, thinking about where they need to go and what they have to do next.”
But there’s still a week to go until opening night. Costumes must be found, lighting cues set, fight choreography rehearsed again and again. Headland darts around the empty house rattling off notes. During rehearsals, she howls at scenes in which the moments are working and snaps her fingers when action needs to move faster. “They bought me a metronome because I do it so much,” she laughs. “I’m such a jerk-off.”
Dressed in a blouse, skirt and tights reminiscent of "Who’s That Girl"-era Madonna, Headland is by turns hilariously self-effacing and coolly serious when discussing her craft. She has directed four of the five plays. “My job right now,” Headland says, “is kind of like being a coach for marathon runners. And this last weekend is the part where they hate you, because you’re on this bike, cruising along with the water bottle and the timer, telling them to hurry up. Of course, they’re the ones doing all the running.”
Headland cut her teeth directing theater, and from as early as she can remember, she fantasized about doing plays. “I was the girl with the three younger siblings, and I would write these little skits and rehearse them and we’d perform for our parents,” she recalls. “It was their way of tricking me into babysitting.” While in college, Headland “fell backwards” into a ground-level job at Miramax. Over the next four years, she worked her way up the ladder until she found herself as an assistant to a high-level executive. Then she quit. “I thought there was going to be some kind prize at the end,” she says, “but there wasn’t.”
Headland’s plays, however, have brought her an agent, a manager and growing recognition in, of all places, the film business. Her screen adaptation of "Bachelorette" caught the attention of Universal execs, and she could end up spending 2009 working in Final Draft rather than Microsoft Word. But for now, there are more important issues to deal with—like working out the blocking for the intervention scene. And getting a proper couch. Headland points to the deflated-looking futon that’s been slipping across the floor and causing the actors no end of grief. “Everything will be fine,” she says, “once we have that couch.”
"Reverb" runs through Feb. 22 at the Working Stage Theater.
Meet the cast of the Iama Theater Company»
George Ducker is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
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