Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 39

t-3 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT 'The West Wins? is nlannine a state visit j. PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE 3l, 2002 1 WEST FROM PAGE E-l re i I 4 1 1 fas Jl I "These people owned these farms in their family tor 150 years, which was a great turn-on for us," Ahern said. "That's what it's all about, the center of America, and that's what Tommy was looking for." Another bonus: Ahern said Pittsburgh has the infrastructure talent, crews, equipment to support the "West Wing shoot "Pittsburgh has a great pool of people," he said. "It's just been incredibly friendly here and helpful." Nancy Mosser Casting is looking to hire 300 extras, stand-ins and photo doubles for the weeklong shoot Anyone interested should visit www.mossercasting.com for a registration form and send that with a photo to Mosser at 239 Fourth Suite 1217, Pittsburgh, 15222. Call 412-434-1666 for more information.

After filming in Pennsylvania, some of 'The West Wing" crew will continue on to Washington for a few additional days of shooting before returning to the show's home base on Warner Bros, sound stages in Burbank, Calif You can reach Rob Owen at Post questions or comments to www.post-gazette.comltv under TV Forum. ago. Keezer was in Los Angeles on business, heard they were looking for locations and met with them to tout the benefits of filming in Western Pennsylvania. "We were the only film office that was able to take our photos of loca-tionsl and present them in person, which is real important because this business is a relationship business," Keezer said. "People buy from people they know." After that meeting, Keezer followed up with additional pictures and a box filled with two pounds of soybeans "so they wouldn't forget It was a fun little marketing thing and it did get their attention, which is half the battle with these things." She drove producers through Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Armstrong, Lawrence and Mercer counties on their scouting trip 400 miles in a single day.

"Dawn Keezer, who's incredible, convinced us to come out here," Ahern said. "I scouted llocations with executive producer Tommy Schlamme on July 19 and he said, 'NeaL, we're staying Ahern said Western Pennsylvania appealed to him over Maryland because the farms were older. tary CJ. Cregg (Allison Janney) will be there, too. "We'll be out in farm country," said Ahern.

"We found several options. It might be in an area of Mercer County." In the episode, communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) and his assistant Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) get left behind and spend much of the episode trying to catch up with the president's motorcade. Other locations find the trio on country roads, at a remote gas station, a diner and a train station. "The West Wing" shoot will be the first extensive Hollywood production in the region since "The Mothman Prophecies" filmed here in early 2001. Ahem said he and his crew scouted locations in Indiana; Austin, Texas; Wilmington, N.C., and Maryland, but the work of the Pittsburgh Film Office and a recent visit sold producers on Pennsylvania.

Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, which represents Allegheny and the 10 counties that make up Southwestern Pennsylvania, said discussion began with "West Wing" producers about four weeks From left to right, Agim Kaba, Jessica R. Dunphy and Peyton tist play the young people who will hide from the law and their families on college campuses in "As the World Turns." Contemporary American Theater Festival shares the spotlight with Shepherdstown 111111 1 1 i ii i ir 4brld' at By Rob Owen Post-Gazette TV Editor "The West Wing" won't be the only TV show to Elm in Western Pennsylvania in the coming months. CBS's daytime soap "As the World Turns" will shoot five scenes on the University of Pittsburgh campus on Sept. 19. It's part of the show's "Catch Us If You Can" bus tour, which includes visits to nine other college campuses.

The story line that takes "As the World Turns" to colleges involves three young characters: Lucy Montgomery (Peyton List), Alison Stewart (Jessica Dunphy) and Aaron Snyder (Agim Kaba) flee fictional Oakdale, 111., their families and the law and try to hide on college campuses. Actors Hunt Block, Terri Colom- I iin.te'HiiiiiMMnliiii M.mi4mM. uHb. Til Will i i 1MP wminwwmwiw mi mm iiiimn mn iij" Qbt on Sept. 19 "Carnegie Mellon is a conservatory-type school, and for us to tap into their theater resources might be difficult because their training program is so intense," Goutman said.

Goutman, who will direct the location shooting, said the story came before the "Catch Us If You Can" promotional opportunity. "We knew these kids had to be on the run, because one of our young teens is accused of a crime he did not commit and he thinks the only way to handle it is to take off with his girlfriend," Goutman said. "The idea of hiding out in colleges was an idea I've had for a while." Episodes filmed at all the colleges will air from late October through November. An exact air date for the Pitt scenes has not been set I' -lif ft 1 no All Discounts Taken Off Lowest Ticketed Price. CASH! mnrm Pitt's door bino, Benjamin Hendrickson and Paul Leyden will also be in Pittsburgh for filming, and about 20 college-age students will be cast as extras, some with speaking parts.

Executive producer Christopher Goutman and casting director Mary Clay Boland will be on campus Monday scouting locations. Boland will return Sept. 12 on a bus to audition students from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Those auditioning do not have to be Pitt students.

Anyone with a head shot photo is encouraged to bring it Show spokesman Alan Locher said the University of Pittsburgh was picked because Pittsburgh is a market where the show does well in the ratings. Executive producer Goutman is a 1976 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, but he's fond of the Pitt campus. iii frliili' i t-Tfir- iltirm "mi I mtA ii Mi tarsai rssn mhimji'm VISA 141 ii I 3 KaM l'J win STAGE FROM PAGE E-1 with 18th-century buildings, glorious gardens and a lot of nice people many of whom can be found at the regular Sunday morning farmers' market that fills the street behind the little whitewashed town library. All that is delectable enough. But what makes Shepherdstown a cultural destination is the Contemporary American Theater Festival and it's improbable by any standard that this small town and its Shepherd College should host such a professional festival, making a developmental home for a growing roster of American playwrights.

In its 12th year, led by founder and producing director Ed Herendeen and managing director Catherine Irwin, the festival fills four weeks with full stagings of four new American plays, often world premieres, given in repertory in two theaters. In addition, there are staged readings, lectures, show discussions, showcases, art exhibits and music. The festival has a track record that makes serendipity possible. Having planned to see three plays in a day and a half, we got a bonus: A last-minute addition, a noontime reading by George Wendt and Matthew Arkin (New York's "Dinner With of a new play by Richard Dresser. That offset our disappointment at not seeing the fourth show, Lee Blessing's "Thief River." If Dresser is familiar, it may be from his "Below the Belt," produced at City Theatre.

Other playwrights produced by both theaters include Jeffrey Hatcher, Craig Wright and John Olive. For actors, the festival casts out of New York names such as Wendt and Arkin are unusual, but the company is generally strong. The audience has responded, coming this year from 24 states, approaching 11,000 over four weeks, accepting Herendeen's invitation to assist in the birth of new American plays. Still, the whole thing town, festival, audience is small enough so that in just two days you start recognizing and chatting with other audience members, festival staffers, actors and townspeople. Go have a drink after the evening show in the gardens behind the Mecklenberg Inn and you'll run into many all over again.

It's like summer camp, but more fun, and for adults. This is probably what the Berk-shires were once like. Craig Wright, "Orange Flower Water" In this world premiere, Wright creates plausible Midwestern everyman speech, as his "The Pavilion" showed last year at City Theatre, and interweaves it with a prickly intelligence capable of comicsomber insight His subject is infidelity and what it does to two couples, their children and by extension the town, country and cosmos in which they live. Crisply directed by Leah Gardiner, the play proceeds in six staccato scenes ana three monologues. David (Jason Field) and Beth (Libby West) are unhappily married to Cathy (Mercedes Herrero) and Brad (Paul Sparks), both of whom are oblivious to their discontent.

We watch David and Beth cross the line into infidelity, Brad and David spar, both couples fight, Cathy and Beth meet at another game and Beth and David choose a house to cement their new relationship. The play covers several years in quick jumps. Each scene has revelation and enigma who knows what when, how deeply do feelings go? The debate is really about the nature of love and what we owe to others. The audience is busy finding itself, adjusting to these four as they unfold. Brad is a foul-mouthed louse, but he's loyal.

Cathy is aggressive, demanding sex (and getting it) even as David is departing, but she shows a caring side. David and Beth are the crux. "What could be worth hurting someone else this, much?" they ask. But is their love Jason Field and Ubby West in Craig Contemporary American Theater Festival WHERE: Shepherdstown, W.Va. (take Route 1-70 south from Breezewood, Route 65 to Sharpsburg, Route 34 the last few miles).

WHEN: Through Sunday. 9 TICKETS: 1-800-999-CATF; www.catf.org. just the projection of their own dissatisfaction with themselves? Wright lets the chips fall where they may. The dialogue is frank and hurtful. Sex is simulated, convincingly, and there's partial nudity.

Emotions are raw. The four actors play with the considerable honesty the text demands. My dissatisfaction comes at the end, in a final monologue by David that breathes a hopeful acceptance I don't think the play supports. He ties this to the sweet smell of the flower water of the title. But the truths of the play are darker.

Sam Shepard, "The Late Henry Moss" Act 1 is quintessential Shepard, an edgy face-off between two long-estranged brothers over the corpse of their father. It's exhilarating: Big, blustery older brother Earl (Kevin Carrig-an) seems in command, but cool, wraith-like Ray (Paul Sparks) is obviously a force. The confrontation is funny, primal and grim, none the less gripping for being reminiscent of "True West." In acts 2 and 3, the story of father Henry's (Michael Goodwin) death gradually unwinds. Somehow involved are Conchalla, a mysterious Mexican woman (Sylvia Roldan Dohi), a subservient neighbor (Mateo Gomez) and comically bewildered taxi driver (Jason Field). The power balance shifts as Ray presses toward some sort of truth like a vengeful fallen angel.

That truth, as you'd expect, remains mysterious. Henry Moss has been spiritually dead for years, ever since he beat his wife. Conchalla is a figure of death or resolution, awakening Henry from a drunken stupor enough to recognize his sin and die for real. The ritual played out are the two brothers freed? I doubt it: The past remains a burden. Herendeen directs with taut authority, making especially good use of a whirring ratchet wrench, clacking bracelets and clicking cigarette lighter.

Carrigan and Sparks are electric together, but Goodwin is weak as the father vocally repetitive, without the depth Shepard implies. Act 2 particularly drags. Ken Cobb Wright's "Orange Flower Water." The good news is that the great Western mythmaker is back from his sojourn in movies, refreshing the stage with his uncompromising visioa Catherine Fiiloux, "Silence of God" Sometimes a play bites off more than it can chew. That's certainly true of "Silence of God," which resurrects the Cambodian holocaust of the Khmer Rouge in the person of the captured Pol Pot The central figure is Washington Post reporter Sarah (Mercedes Herrero), child of the Eastern establishment, complete with a house in Nantucket. She falls in love with an older Cambodian poet Heng (Ron Nakahara).

With her facility in the Khmer language, she secures a 1998 interview with Pol Pot (also played by Nakahara) now weak and held hostage but still the object of torturous international intrigue. The play is set in various times and places in the United States and Cambodia in 1998, with flashbacks. Sarah's relationships with her dead father, government officials, other reporters, Heng and Pol Pot all overlap, but her personal story is left incomplete, overshadowed by the specter of Pol Pot and his ravaged country. I felt serious overload, in spite of passages of feeling and beauty. Fiiloux and director Jean Randich use a light box as a Nantucket beach and a Cambodian altar; secular and spiritual rituals of the two countries alternate; Sarah recites poetry.

Over everything hangs the Cambodian tragedy and America's complicity or inactioa That Pol Pot proves so banal in person accentuates the mystery of evil. Nakahara is an unhistrionic Heng and a creepy Pol Pot in one memorable scene playing both in tableau. JoJo Gonzalez is memorable as a variety of Cambodians. Herrero's Sarah never conveys a center that makes sense of all the demands the play makes. This is a world premiere with work still to do.

Richard Dresser, "Rounding Third" Dresser here is in a funny, sunny mood. Don (Wendt) is a longtime coach of a Little League team, an old-time, blue-collar, beer-sucking, win-at-all-costs type; Michael (Arkin) is his new assistant, a wimpy white-collar guy with a hapless son and a let's-just-nave-fun ethic. The scene where they meet is a classic of comic one-upmanship and cross-purposes. The two-man play then follows them through the season as they address the boys, watch games and develop an arms-length relationship, with revelations about their personal lives. Dresser builds in some warm fuzzies, but he avoids the extremes of sentiment The play's strength is in its comic mimicry and gentle satire.

I can't imagine two better interpreters, and indeed this reading came about because Wendt and Arkin will do the play's premiere this fall at Chicago's Northlight Theatre, u.impiy. hi i niiua mot iii nm wnnmjyiitimn.t m.xmrmwi iuiaJyu uijyx ALL SALES FINAL! Quantities are limited to the stock on hand. All Items subject to prior sale. Sorry, no returns, refunds, exchanges, coupons, rainchecks or layaways. I uhu nuurei MON-SAT SUNDAY ALUtr L-l ifill i i i FKJ IH wf.