Claude Purdy

When the going gets tough, Claude Purdy has coffee. Usually, the resident director at Minneapolis' Penumbra Theater crosses the street from his home to a neighbor's house where he shares a cup of that traditional stimulant for creative exchange. But this is no ordinary suburban coffee klatch; for the last 10 years his neighborhood confidant has been August Wilson, the playwright whose sagas of black America are on their way to becoming classics of theatrical literature.

When the going gets tough, Claude Purdy has coffee. Usually, the resident director at Minneapolis' Penumbra Theater crosses the street from his home to a neighbor's house where he shares a cup of that traditional stimulant for creative exchange. But this is no ordinary suburban coffee klatch; for the last 10 years his neighborhood confidant has been August Wilson, the playwright whose sagas of black America are on their way to becoming classics of theatrical literature.

The production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," scheduled to open Thursday at the James A. Doolittle Theatre, has been canceled because of poor advance ticket sales. "It really hurts my heart, but we had to bow to practical necessity," said Los Angeles Theatre Center general manager Carol Baker Tharp. Claude Purdy's staging of August Wilson's drama played a successful extended run at the LATC last summer. The Doolittle booking, scheduled through Nov.

Los Angeles Theatre Center plans a season of brand-new plays with an international flavor for the first half of 1990. Four of the five world premieres announced Monday by the theater are set entirely or largely outside the United States. The season will kick off with the theater's annual Festival of Premieres, featuring Anna Deavere Smith's "Piano" (Feb. 3-March 11), Eduardo Machado's "Stevie Wants to Play the Blues" (Feb. 17-April 8) and Lisette Lecat Ross' "Dark Sun" (March 10-April 29).

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" led the pack as the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter of of the NAACP announced the recipients of its 1987 Theatre Awards on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Theatre Center production of August Wilson's drama about racial tension behind the scenes at a 1927 Chicago recording session won 12 of the 112 awards, which will be presented in a ceremony at UCLA on Nov. 2. This is the first year the Theatre Awards have been separated from the rest of the National Assn.

The night I saw it on Broadway, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" felt more like a delaying action than a play: an hour's wait for a 10-minute bus trip. August Wilson's drama makes a much stronger impression at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Even when nothing is happening, something is getting into a position to happen. And when it does, it's devastating. The time is 1927, the scene a recording studio in Chicago, far in from the lake.

Padua Hills lives on. After a bumpy start this year (including a previously announced cancellation), the 10th annual Padua Hills Playwrights' Workshop/Festival has touched down at the Boyd St. Theatre, where, beginning Thursday, five new pieces will be performed in repertory. "It feels like a miracle that we've done it--because it's been a struggle every year," offered artistic director Murray Mednick. "Since we left Pomona (College) four years ago, we've had to scramble to find a place.

It is always interesting to see ourselves as others see us, if not necessarily always pleasant. On occasion it can even be compelling, depending on whose eyes are doing the looking. Poet/playwright Derek Walcott's experienced eyes are doing it at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where his "Viva Detroit" opened over the weekend. But the object of Walcott's focus, however ambitious, remains boxed in tight two- and three-shots.

There aren't many theater openings at Christmas time. So we're devoting this week's column to a glimpse of scheduled theater events in 1989. The Mark Taper Forum starts off with Jon Robin Baitz's "Dutch Landscape," directed by Gordon Davidson opening Jan. 19.

George C. Wolfe, who wowed audiences last year with his "The Colored Museum," was back in town recently to wow them again with his adaptation of "Spunk" (newly opened at the Itchey Foot Ristorante). Starring in this collection of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston are Bruce Beatty, Loretta Devine, Charlaine Woodard, Harry Waters Jr. and Hawthorne James, with Chick Street Man on blues guitar. "I loved these stories," Wolfe said of his decision to stage the work (which may extend)

If August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," which opened over the weekend at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, is about anything, it is about African-American cultural loss, greater than any other for having been so entirely involuntary. It is rare to find a playwright such as Wilson who, play after play, seems to deepen and broaden his themes. But how far can Wilson bend the rules of dramaturgy? In "Joe Turner," he marries an absence of attention to detail and outward realism with elements of myth and passion.