George Mason's TFA Plans 18-Month Hiatus

Theater of the First Amendment, the small Equity troupe that performs on George Mason University's Fairfax campus, will suspend operations temporarily after its scaled-back First Light Festival of new play readings on Saturday.

The hiatus, which could last about 18 months, says Managing Director Kevin Murray, is intended to allow the struggling company to redesign its "business model" and reemerge as a more "significant" player in the local theater scene.

The decision came at a meeting earlier this month that included Murray, Artistic Director Rick Davis and Bill Reeder, dean of GMU's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The group decided that "after 15 years of doing business the same way, it was time to reinvent the theater," Murray says. Continuing to mount shows would make it impossible to focus on the central issues of increasing underwriting for the nonprofit beyond what the university provides and finding a space TFA can call its own. As a professional theater in a university setting -- not unlike Rep Stage at Howard Community College -- TFA has had to limit its runs to three weeks, even for hits.

"We've always been a little theater with big aspirations, and we haven't had the staff and the focus of the larger entities here to really make it happen," Murray says. But university officials have hinted that within a few years, TFA may have its own full-time home on or near the campus, he says, as part of a planned Prince William Center for the Arts -- a joint venture of the university, Prince William County and the city of Manassas.

"We're excited about this. We think this is really the best news we could ever get from this university. It's not another story of a theater shutting down. It's a theater reinventing itself."

Hellman's Forgotten 'Garden'

A Lillian Hellman play with no villain, no high drama?

American Century Theater in Arlington will present just such an animal -- Hellman's slyly comic, ruminative "The Autumn Garden," Thursday through April 15. A minor Broadway hit in 1951, the little-known piece wends its way through emotional dust-ups, delusions and little tragedies at an upscale summer guest house on the Gulf Coast.

Hellman biographer Deborah Martinson says the play was Hellman's response to her critics in the late 1940s, when, "after 'The Little Foxes' and 'Another Part of the Forest,' she was accused of letting all the seams show, very contrived -- creating a melodrama with recognizable villains and heroes that were flat -- and she hated that."

"The Autumn Garden" has "no recognizable villain . . . no recognizable heroes, and I think that might have been part of the point," says Martinson, an associate professor of writing at Occidental College in Los Angeles. In it, Hellman deals subtly with homosexuality and divorce, infidelity, loneliness and disappointment.

Explains Martinson, "I think the play is about integrity and . . . creating an identity for yourself that you can live with. I think her characters have compromised too much, and one of the things she's exhorting the audience to do is 'come on, be honest with yourself.' "

Director Steven Scott Mazzola says Hellman wrote about two kinds of people in "The Autumn Garden" -- those who can change their lives, and those who are stuck. "I think it's a testimony to her skill as a writer: She can write about both possibilities," says Mazzola, who has made surgical cuts in the wordy script. (Hellman hadn't had time to do her usual final edit, then butted heads with director Harold Clurman during rehearsals.)

Some have called the play Chekhovian, but Mazzola disagrees. "People think Chekhovian is about people who are stuck and who are apathetic and who are trapped. She touches on some of those issues, but . . . it's purely Hellman. It's got her humor and her sharpness and her integrity and her toughness."

Follow Spots

· Carla Hubner of the "In" Series has submitted a proposal to Source Theatre's board for a consortium of arts organizations to manage, perform in and rent out Source Theatre so the building owned by the debt-ridden company can remain an arts venue. The Cultural Development Corp., which runs the Flashpoint arts incubator at Ninth and G streets NW, also has submitted a proposal. The city, which has received copies of both proposals, has announced it would forgive Source's mortgage if Source were administered as a performing arts venue with an element of community service for low-income audiences.

· Charter Theatre will present a reading of a new comedy, "Fear Itself," by Mario Baldessari, Renee Calarco and Jim Helein of the Dropping the Cow comedy troupe, Monday at the Warehouse Theater. Call 202-333-7009 or visit http://www.chartertheatre.org/ .

· The politically focused Extreme Exchange will present a reading of "What I Heard About Iraq," featuring Jennifer Mendenhall and Tim Getman, Monday in the H Street Playhouse. On March 27 at Round House Silver Spring, they'll present "Innovative X-Plays: Is It Worth It?" -- new 10-minute plays by area theater artists. Both events are at 7:30 p.m. For reservations, send e-mail to: extremeexchange@gmail.com .

· Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, writers of "The Exonerated," will talk about that reality-based anti-death-penalty play on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Call 202-544-7077 or visit http://www.folger.edu/ . A similar event will take place Saturday at Provisions Library, 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW (202-299-0460). The full play will be performed March 24 at George Mason University's Center for the Arts. (Visit http://www.gmu.edu/cfa .)

· Washington expat Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, whose play "The Velvet Sky" just had a world premiere run at Woolly Mammoth, is poised for another premiere in New York. "Based on a Totally True Story" opens April 11 at Manhattan Theatre Club.