Over the past two decades, Tom Jacobson has established himself as one of L.A.’s most adventurous and original playwrights, creating such risk-taking winners as Bunbury, Ouroboros, The Twentieth Century Way, and his extraordinary Bimini Baths Trilogy. I can’t, unfortunately, add Bauhaus Weimer, Part One of his World Premiere triptych The Bauhaus Project, to that list.

Admittedly, I already had trepidations going in based on the press release I’d received.

Seeing “five struggling Southern California art students create a dramatic presentation on the history of the famous Bauhaus School” didn’t sound particularly promising, but since it was Tom Jacobson’s latest for Open Fist Theatre Company, I decided to give Bauhaus Weimer a try.

A getting-to-know-you sequence (not the one in the above photo) introduces the students who are in danger of being kicked out of their particular disciplines: environmental design major Owen (Jack Goldwait), theater major Ellis (Katarina Joy Lopez), graphic design major Bree (Chloe Madriaga), fine art major Kai (John C. Sweet), and music major Duck (Sang Kim).

Hoping to impress the school administration, Owen proposes putting on a play about the German art school that revolutionized architecture and design from 1919 to 1933 when the Gestapo shut it down.

Getting Ellis, Bree, Kai, and Duck on board proves no easy task, but Owen eventually manages to do just that, and before long the fivesome are enacting a series of short scenes in which they portray historical figures with names I’d mostly never heard of like Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Gunta Stölzl, Maria Kipp, Fritz Ertl, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lionel Feininger, and Oskar Schlemmer, so many indeed that despite their best efforts to distinguish one from another, I found their narrative hard to follow and my mind drifting almost from the get-go.

Act Two’s can-we-stay-or-must-we-go theatrical presentation has the students donning assorted accessories and assuming assorted European accents to play the aforementioned historical figures exactly as a group of students, only one of whom has studied acting, would play them, with exaggerated gestures and over-the-top accents.

On the plus side, I did enjoy Goldwait, Kim, Lopez, Madriaga, and Sweet’s authentic performances as contemporary Southern California students under Martha Demson’s direction, though it makes no sense that Duck, whose ESL level is intermediary at best, should suddenly become adept at mimicking multiple foreign accents including Russian, German, and native-speaker American.

Richard Hoover’s scenic design morphs effectively from college classroom to the setting for the production’s play-within-a-play sequences with Gabrieal Griego’s projection design establishing both the play-within-a-play’s assorted locales and the art works for which Bauhaus became famous and Gavan Wyrick’s expert lighting adding to the atmosphere.

A quartet of properties designers (Barbara Bragg, Richard Hoover, Bruce Dickinson, and Ina Shumaker) join forces to create dozens upon dozens of props, with composer Tim Labor’s original music providing a subtle underscoring throughout.

Best of all are Michael Mullen’s costumes, an array of coats and hats and accessories that transform students into a multitude of historical figures.

John Dimitri is production stage manager. Sarah Zuk is assistant director. Grace Berry is assistant lighting designer. Cate Caplin is intimacy director. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

It’s a risky proposition for Open Fist Theatre Company to stage The Bauhaus Project as a pair of plays in repertory, since only those who take to Bauhaus Weimar will be inclined to return for Bauhaus Dessau/Bauhaus Berlin.

Though I salute Tom Jacobson and Open Fist for risk-taking writing and leap-of-faith programming, I’m going to pass on Parts Two and Three.

Open Fist Theatre Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.openfist.org

–Steven Stanley
July 19, 2024
Photo: Francisco Hermosillo III

Tags: Atwater Village Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Open Fist Theatre Company, Tom Jacobson