Pacific Conservatory Of The Performing Arts

At the top of the ad for "The Living Room," which continues at the Wilshire Ebell through Sunday, is a large picture of Shelly Garrett. Then the copy begins: "Shelly Garrett's Living Room. It's . . . Shelly Garrett's new comedy-drama stage play. If you saw Shelly Garrett's 'Beauty Shop,' hey! Wait . . . wait until you step into his living room!" Would you assume from this that Garrett wrote "The Living Room"--or that he's in it, or even that it's about him? Wrong on all counts.

The annual Theaterfest of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts is in the middle of one of its more modest seasons. Three of its six shows have been seen before at PCPA, and two of the others have been seen often in Southern California, though not at PCPA. However, in its sixth slot, the Theaterfest is introducing Larry Shue's "The Nerd" to, well, northern Southern California (it was seen last year at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre in San Diego).

While on tour in Europe in 1973, members of the Chilean folk group Inti-Illimani received word that they had been exiled from their homeland after a political coup overturned the elected government of Salvador Allende. The musicians settled in Rome for 15 years, until they were finally given permission to return to their home in 1988.

"Ragtime," the musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel about American life in the early 20th century, garnered 13 of Broadway's Tony Award nominations on Monday, two more nods than Disney's stage adaptation of "The Lion King," which inspired new respect from the theatrical community for its producer. The nods intensify the competition between the two corporate giants--Livent, which produced "Ragtime," and Disney--who have recently become major fixtures on Broadway.

The 19-foot high pair of cardboard legs harks back to the advertising come-on from an old James Bond movie, or the lascivious prop for a popular MTV video. But in Marlane Meyer's "Etta Jenks" (at the Los Angeles Theatre Center to March 13), the spread legs frame a picture that is anything but sensational. Set against the backdrop of a young woman's descent into the pornography trade, "Etta" is a morality tale, a stark vision of where the body ends and the spirit begins.

The summer-like weather last weekend turned theatergoers' thoughts to alfresco theater--and what awaits us in the leading outdoor venues this summer. Let's start with PCPA Theaterfest, an institution that appears poised for a comeback.

Anyone who likes theatrical gross-out but considers it a purely contemporary phenomenon (aside from Oedipus piercing his eyes out and Medea slaughtering her own young sons) and who thinks that violence in the classical theater is restricted to extemporaneous swordplay amid earnest perfumed soliloquizing should get a bang out "The Revenger's Tragedy," an early paragon of the snap, crackle and pop of the Jacobean theater.

A suggestion: Tell your boss you have to leave work early today. Otherwise, you might not make it up the coast in time to catch some of tonight's events. Opening this evening: The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA Theaterfest) at Santa Maria's Allan Hancock College will present Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker," tonight through April 17 at the campus' Marian Theatre. The play, which ultimately evolved into "Hello, Dolly!"

Two generations, three theater organizations and four actors come together for Ron Milner's new play, "Checkmates," starring Denzel Washington, Paul Winfield, Rhetta Greene and Gloria Edwards. It opens Thursday at the Inner City Cultural Center. "It's one of the few plays written in the last year about black urban professionals and what they're going through," said director Woodie King, whose National Black Touring Circuit is co-producing with Inner City and Marla Gibbs' Crossroads Theatre.

In my book, summer is all about being outdoors. So when friends raved about the kid-friendly productions at Theaterfest, the outdoor summer repertory theater of the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Solvang, it sounded ideal. But Solvang? The Danish-themed place in the Santa Ynez Valley? The city, founded in 1911 by Danish educators building a folk school, started out nobly enough.