By Donald H. Harrison
LA MESA, California — After seven years of being dark, Lamplighters Community Theatre will again live up to its name by turning on the electricity. However it will be in a new 90-seat venue in a small shopping center at 5915 Severin Drive, where the theatre group will present a staged reading of Daughters of the Appalachians.
Written by Linda Goodman and directed by Lamplighters president and artistic director Mark Loveless, the play is a series of six monologues by backwoods women who find their voices in a male-dominated society. Each performance will be held at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 25 through Saturday, April 27.
An actress in the play who purposely does not capitalize her name–renee levine– got her start in theatre at the Jewish Community Center of Denver about the time she was the age of her grandson Joseph, 10. That led to repeated performances in a group called Jewish Youth Variety, which staged fundraisers for B’nai B’rith and the Jewish Community Center. After moving to San Diego, levine performed at the old JCC on 54th Street and in “Cabaret” fundraisers for Tifereth Israel Synagogue, where her family were members. From there at the urging of Jim Sultan, a synagogue member who was also vice president of Lamplighters, she joined the community theatre’s board of directors. She has been at it ever since. As for not capitalizing her name, well as it was said in the musical Gypsy, “you gotta have a gimmick.”
One can hope that the staged reading of Daughters of the Appalachians goes better than the first Lamplighters performance that levine was associated with as a member of the backstage crew. Middle of the Night was a horror–not because of its plot, but because of all the disasters that befell the production. First a rain storm flooded the old Lamplighter Community Theatre. On another night, there was a heat wave, requiring fans to be set up in the audience and towels taken from a freezer between scenes and wrapped around the face of one elderly actor to keep him from fainting. “I think we had a black out another night,” levine remembered.
Also, levine laughed, it is to be hoped that the spirit of Cleo Anderberg, a Lamplighter board member who had been levine’s “theatre godmother” likes the first production in the new house. More than a few people believe that Anderberg, who died of cancer, wasn’t ready to leave the old theatre and therefore haunted it. It was believed that whenever Anderberg’s spirit didn’t like something her photograph hanging on the lobby wall would suddenly shift to a crooked position, levine said. When things were going well, the picture stayed where it was supposed to.
Some people thought those who believed in Cleo’s ghost were crazy. One electrician, however, was quickly convinced, when the lights he was hanging unexpectedly kept going on and off, levine recalled.
The original 125-seat Lamplighters Community Theatre, which shared its location with the city library, was situated between the fire department and a new police station. When the police station went in, Lamplighters had to move — post 9-11 security regulations saying that a business should not be located between two buildings that house first responders.
Under its agreement with the city, Lamplighters Community Theatre paid a percentage of its ticket sales to the City of La Mesa, but no rent otherwise. In the years since the 2006 closure, the Lamplighters board looked and looked for a venue of comparable size with as low a rent as possible.
This location doesn’t have as much space, or as much seating, but, on the other hand, “parking is much better,” levine said brightly. Furthermore, the theatre is close to the Amaya station on both the orange and green lines of San Diego Trolley.
In the new theatre’s first production — which will involve only three performances — levine will play Nelveeda Hawkins, a character whom everyone else thinks is crazy, but who prefers to think of herself as simply eccentric. She’s not a nice person, according to levine.
Taken as a whole, the six women who are portrayed by levine and Michelle Burkhart, Leslie Drew, Fran March, Raylene Wall and Jane Harris “aren’t really respected until they take a stand” and live “by a code which they follow of being true to your family,” levine said. She added that her own takeaway reaction to the play was being impressed by “the strength of these women, how they excel in their own way. They weren’t first-rate citizens, they were ‘owned’ basically by their husbands, and lived in a harsh region. Yet they had remarkable strength.”
Harris, who suggested the play, lived in the Appalachians and in addition to her acting duties, served as dialect coach for the rest of the cast.
Tickets to the Lamplighters’ “comeback” production may be reserved by calling the box office at (619) 286-3685.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com