Arts Listings

The Virago Theatre company, resident in Alameda, is currently staging the premieres of two short plays by Bay Area playwrights, The Death of Ayn Rand, by John Byrd (directed by Robert Lundy-Paine) and A Bed of My Own, by well-known Oakland actor and director Robert Hamm (directed by Laura Lundy-Paine) at Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda. 

The Death of Ayn Rand is “an absurd comedy about the final hours of Ayn Rand,” said Laura Lundy-Paine. “She has bizarre hallucinations; her views on life seemed so concrete to her that these disorient her—clowns, characters in movies appear, as well as a strange, lewd nurse. It starts out somber, then gets stranger and stranger. Her assistant keeps trying to tell her he loves her, but gets brushed aside. 

“It’s based on some facts from the circumstances of her death, but takes it much further. It was in our playreading series last summer, and we chose it for full production.” 

Robert Hamm, well known to East Bay theatergoers for his appearances in recent years with Aurora and Wilde Irish, among others, besides his directorial work (and past artistic direction of Altarena Playhouse in Alameda), has been writing since youth, taking up playwriting in the 1990s, but A Bed of My Own is his first play to be produced. “I’ve never submitted a play, nor have I been asked!” Hamm said. “But Laura [Lundy-Paine} had heard it some time ago in Will Dunne’s play-writing workshop showcases.”  

Hamm described the play and its hook: “It’s a three-person love-hate triangle. Rose invites her unassuming ex-husband Reager over for dinner, where he finds the real reason he’s there is to get rid of Stan, her live-in lover, who’s been in bed for eight months.” 

Hamm mentioned the background for this skewed, almost primal scene: “I was a substance abuse counselor in the Midwest; Rosie’s partly modeled on the leading prostitute and heroin addict in Rockford, Illinois. Also, I remembered a Life magazine story about Brian Wilson [of the Beach Boys], who was clinically depressed and stayed in bed two years. I’d say Stan’s making an extreme expression of power. He feels, because of some information he has, that he has power over Rosie. And Reager (I don’t know where that name came from; it just rang in my ear) is like a child trapped in the middle, feeling he should make it all right.”  

Both Hamm (who acted in Virago’s fine production of Lyle Kessler’s Orphans a couple of months ago) and Laura Lundy-Paine discussed what it was like to work together on a play by an actor-director. “We worked together first on a proper working arrangement,” said Hamm. “I spent more time away from rehearsal than I would have expected. It was the flip side of the coin for me. Actors and directors try to interpret a work, though in both roles I’m trying less to leave a personal stamp than to find the author’s truth, a more classical position.” 

Lundy-Paine commented on how she and Hamm talked through every page of the script and cast the play together. “It looks at different ways people can be utterly cruel to each other,” she said. “How they serve their own ends relentlessly, and somebody gets caught in the middle, as they fight, make up, and fight again.” 

Why the two plays together? “Well, for one thing, the bed’s centrally located in both plays, with a character who can’t or won’t get out,” said Lundy-Paine. 

Virago, committed to producing a musical and the premiere of a new play each year, emphasizes they accept new scripts for their staged play-reading series. The next musical hasn’t been chosen; Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is being considered. In the fall, a live sit-com by Dan Brodnitz will be filmed. 

THE DEATH OF AYN RAND and 

A BED OF MY OWN 

8 p. m. Fridays and Saturdays through July 7 at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave. in Alameda (not far from the Park Street Bridge). $17 ($10, students and seniors). 865-6237. ViragoTheatre.org.