The Central New Jersey Home News from New Brunswick, New Jersey • 73

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package their dream By HANNELE RUBIN Home News staff writer I aking charge of the George Street Playhouse in New I I Brunswick was like building a II whole new theater company, LJ says Producing Director. Gregorys. Hurst The founder of the 9-year-old Pennsylvania Stage Company in Allentown, Hurst took over at George Street Playhouse on a full-time basis in June. The next month, Hurst hired Wendy Liscow, associate artistic director at Pennsylvania Stage Company for the. past three years, as associate artistic director.

She replaced Maureen Heffernan. And New York entertainment lawyer Mi- chael Gennaro joined the staff in July as general manager, replacing Jeff Cohen. 'We're all fresh," said Gennaro. "There's a building here, but in a sense, we're all starting from ground zero." Starting from ground zero means building a strong fund-raising base, drawing a broad and devoted audience and attracting talented actors and first-rate works, all three agreed. "I don't know another (theater company) where they replaced 100 percent of the production staff and 85 percent of the administrative staff," said Hurst After the resignation of playhouse founder Eric Krebs in June 1987, most of the remaining George Street staff left.

Not only did Hurst replace the production staff and most of the administrative employees, but he created new managerial and fund-raising positions to increase the theater's revenue-generating capabilities. "Suffice it to say that the development arm of George Street Playhouse is still in its nascent stages," said Hurst. Last year alone, the playhouse almost doubled its operating deficit from $110,000 to $200,000, he said. "We have accomplished more in the past four months t. than in the past four years" in terms of corporate fundraising, Hurst said.

He expects to raise close to $100,000 in corporate money by October, and a total of $200,000 this The theater's recent success in fundraising may be partly due to the expansion of the' playhouse board of directors. "We've added men, women and minorities to our board," with a broad range of talents and abilities to contribute to the playhouse, he said. In addition, Hurst is inviting philanthropists to help name the playhouse's two theaters, which Hurst nondescriptly calls George 99 and George 367 after the num-ber of seats. All of the changes at George Street lend a certain degree of excitement and uncertainty to the coming season. In preparation for welcoming George Street's new audience at the "grand opening" in October, the carpets were cleaned George Street Playhouse's new team: General Manager Michael Gennaro, The Home NewsMare Aschw Associate Artistic Director Wendy Liscow, something that's important to us right now, then I don't do the play I think all work in some way has to reflect contemporary concerns." But audiences may be scared off by new, or "experimental" productions, he said.

So new plays being produced at George Street Playhouse are referred to as "premieres." Observers at other local theaters have said that this is not just a matter of terminology. They say that Hurst is "commercially" inclined that he is less adventurous and daring than his predecessors and tends toward plays with proven appeal rather than breaking new theatrical ground. "I don't think 'commercial' is the right word," Hurst said. "I think that we do theater that is for everyone, and I want to appeal to the broadest possible audience and have the greatest possible impact on people's lives." This season represents "an adventuresome artistic spirit combined with, I think, an astute producing sense. "Some people see me as a P.T.

Barnum," Hurst said, smiling. "That means I know cTm tired of people psychoanalyzing me, said the star of 'Stealing "They don't do that to Morgan Fairchild. Jodie Foster a gang rape in a bar, based on the New Bedford, Mass. incident in which a woman was brutalized on a pool table. The film's graphic rape scene already is attracting notice in the media.

"Yes, it's a very difficult scene to watch. The cruelty of it is astronomical, but that's the way it should be," she said. As for "Backtrack," it's a Dennis Hopper-directed film, and that about says it all. "I play a conceptual artist who witnesses a mob killing and Dennis plays the hit man who's sent to get me," Foster said. "It seems simple enough, but I didn't realize the extent he could make something odd that wasn't." "Stealing Home" stars Mark Harmon as a failed baseball player who is made responsible for the ashes of a friend, played by Foster, who has committed suicide.

Foster appears only in flashback scenes. Although it is being lumped in with the other baseball movies released this summer Durham," "Eight Men Foster doesn't think of it in those terms. "It's not a baseball movie. It's a sentimental education about what peopje are By PATTY LADD tos Angeles Daily News Stars from the worlds of music, motion pictures and television will all be on hand for the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards, which will be telecast live from the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday on the MTV cable channel.

Arsenio Hall, who recently made his motion-picture debut as Eddie Murphy's cohort in the hit movie "Coming to America," will be one of the co-hosts of the evening's festivities. Hall achieved national popularity during his stint as the host of "The Late Show." Prior to that the stand-up comedian had been a regular on the comedy-club and concert circuit He was discovered in a Chicago nightclub by singer Nancy Wilson, who funded his move to Los Angeles and helped him get settled. The 2V4-hour awards show has gained a reputation for being anything but ordinary in its four previous productions. It will feature performances by Cher, INXS, Rod Stewart, Depeche Mode, the Fat Boys, Jody Watley and Guns 'n Roses. Elton John, who received the special-recognition award with producer Bemie Taupin in 1987, will perform live via satellite.

Presenters will include Justine Bate-man, Cyndi Lauper, Teri Garr, Melanie Griffith, Robert Downey Tawny Kitaen and Belinda Carlisle. Dick Clark is the executive producer. The show will feature the presentation of 17 awards for excellence in the field of video music, including best male, female and group videos; best new artist; best choreography, special effects and direction; the best overall video; and the Hall of Fame and Viewers' Choice the best video of the year as selected by the MTV audience. Unique voting process The winners are chosen by a unique three-part voting process. Ballots for phase one were sent to record company execu tives, record and video retailers, radio station program directors, the press, attorneys, agents pnd artists.

They narrowed down a list of 644 videos that were exhibited for the first time on MTV between May 2, 1987, and April 1, 1988. This resulted in 10 semifinalists in each of 16 general and professional categories. A second vote narrowed the field to five finalists in each category, and a third chose the winners. The second and third ballots for general-category nominees were open to the entire voting body for the MTV Video Music Awards. Nominees and winners in the professional categories were selected by video producers, directors, technicians and artists.

The Hall of Fame and Viewers' Choice winners were selected by the viewing audience, who cast their ballots by calling a special 900 number. MTV has attempted to create a cutting-edge, unpredictable visual style since its inception in August 1981. The often-irreverent MTV Video Music Awards are typical of the channel's attitude. Robert Pittman, the programming executive who conceived MTV, described his creation as "a new form for television designed especially for TV babies; a channel with no programs, no beginning, no middle, no end." Lately, however, MTV is undergoing a fundamental change. Although it continues to proclaim its desire to be untraditional, wacky, state-of-the-art TV, it is embracing many of the philosophies of regular commercial television.

Music videos still comprise the heart of the networks programming, but there has been a definite trend toward more traditional programs such as game shows, talk and news shows and specials. Tom Freston, president and chief executive of MTV Networks, said: "We started out as a rock 'n' roll network. Now we want to become a generational network, a fuller service, with the same attributes." Arsenio Hall, seen here in the Eddie Murphy movie "Coming to America," will co-host the MTV Video Music Awards on Wednesday), Jr' 'yy how to package my artistic dream." An oversized note pad facing his desk proclaims: "We read your minds GSP has ESP Enlightening, Spectacular, Plays." Hurst put six productions on the playlist. Four are popular and established works, and two have never before been performed. George Street Playhouse's 15th season begins with "Little Shop of Horrors," a mu sical comedy about a man-eating plant It is by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.

The show will run from Oct 5 through Nov. 6. "The Subject Was Roses," winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, focuses on a young son's return from World War II to his middle-class family. The play, which features Emmy Award-winning actress Isabel Sanford of "The Jeffersons," is being rewritten for an all-black cast Hurst said. It runs Nov.

16-Dec. 11. "Tales of Tinseltown" is about a young Midwestern farm girl finding stardom in Hollywood. Hurst described it as an "al most sort of a pop-Brechtian" production. The play has never been produced, and runs Jan.

4-29. Being 80 years old in the 1980s is the subject of a play titled "The Eighties." It stars Tony Award-winner James Whitmore, and Audra Lindley, who played Mrs. Roper on the television show "Three's Company." This play, written by Tom Cole, is also a "world premiere." It covers a wide range of issues concerning the aged. "The Eighties" runs Feb. 8-March 5.

From March 15 through April 9, "The Mystery of Irma Vep," by Charles Ludlam, will take audiences into a manor house and an Egyptian crypt. Arthur Miller's popular play, "All My Sons," will run from April 19-May 14. For the period May 24 to June 18, four plays are being considered. For information about tickets and schedules, call George Street at (201) 846-2895. The playhouse is at 9 Livingston Ave.

ask her made of. It's about the series of consequences, people and events that touch you during your life and make up what you are. What's that got to do with baseball?" Foster, who was born in Hollywood and still lives in an apartment in her old neighborhood, made the switch from modeling to films in 1974, in Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." She toyed with television but returned to films in "Taxi Driver," "Bugsy Malone" and "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane." After "Foxes" and "Carny," in 1980, she went to Yale. Before graduating in 1985, she had appeared in several more films, including "Hotel New Hampshire," and was thrust into the world spotlight when would-be assassin John Hinckley said he attempted to kill President Reagan to impress Foster, whom he had never met. Foster declined to discuss the Hinckley matter, saying she must hire bodyguards to protect her from kooks each time the incident is talked about in the media.

Her mother, Brandy Foster, has managed her acting career from the start, and the actress said she is happy with her mother's blueprint "My goal is longevity in this business and the plan is to accept roles that are different" the actress said. "If I did a comedy, I next did a drama. If I did an artsy film, I followed it with a down-to-earth film. "I don't want to be in a $35 million film that doesn't say anything. As a matter of fact I don't do big films at all.

I guess that's why I'm still working. I don't put all those nooses around my neck, and I don't make those billion-dollar errors." "And the result is that I'm very happy with my life right now," she continued. "I like where it's been, and I'm sure I'll like where it's going. I know there's someplace else to go, but I'm just not sure where it is." What makes Jodie run? Don't Producing Director Gregory S. Hurst and left to right.

recently and painters were touching up the theater inside and out. "I don't want to be negative about the past, but I did inherit a theater whose audience had dwindled over the past couple of years," Hurst said. "What people think of the George Street Playhouse is their per- ception of the last 14 years," and that is expected to change. The artistic caliber of the productions is improving, Hurst He has said the playhouse will find its audience as it determines its own identity during the next couple of years. "Our obligation is to enlighten, to entertain, and not to pander to what we think an audience wants," because it is difficult to predetermine what will appeal to an audience.

Hurst said. 'Contemporary concerns' "Any play that we do has a reason for being presented now, and I think that over time, the best way to define an organization's vision or mission is to look at the body of its work. If I don't think that the particular play speaks passionately to 1988 Warner Bros. The actress, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a teenage prostitute in "Taxi Driver," said she eventually learned to deal with her classmates, and the experience has enhanced, or at the very least changed, her acting style. -1 "I seem to approach my roles differently now," she said.

"I approach them as a director might. I look at scripts as literature, and try to determine what they mean, what is their intent and how they affect people. 'Symbolic structure' "Scripts don't only have an emotional structure, they have a symbolic structure as well." I After "Stealing Home," Foster stars in "The Accused," which is scheduled for an October release, and "Backtrack," to be released in early 1989." In "The Accused," she plays the victim.of By BARRY KOLTNOW Orange County Register LOS ANGELES She's bright not afraid to talk tough and her choice of screen roles sometimes boggles the mind, yet Jodie Foster does not think of herself as particularly deep. "I'm tired of people psychoanalyzing me," the 25-year-old actress said in an interview in her hotel suite here. "It seems to be the new trend in interviews these days, to try to figure out Jodie Foster.

I don't know why they do that. They don't do that to Morgan Fairchild. "I suppose it's because they've watched me grow up in public. They've watched my personality grow, my smile change and my gestures develop, so they think they're an expert on me. Well, they don't realize that there's nothing to figure out." Foster, whose new film "Stealing Home" opened recently, modeled for a Coppertone ad when she was 3 and has been working ever since, including the period she studied literature at Yale.

She studied hard enough to graduate magna cum laude, but she admits that the academics were the easy part. Her social education at Yale was another matter. "Every minute of the academics was fun, but I had a lot to learn about social behavior" Foster said. "I was retarded about a lot of things, because I never got the social lessons that most kids get when they were 12 or 13. "I never hung out with kids my own age until I got to Yale.

I had always worked with adults, and you can get away with a lot when you're around grown-ups. I grew up in an arena where you want to please everybody and you're not supposed to be honest with people. I got to Yale, I wanted to be liked so I lied. If they wanted to hear something, I'd tell them what thy wanted to hear.".