Taper, Waiting for ‘Room,’ Turns to Mamet’s ‘Oleanna’

David Mamet’s “Oleanna” has filled the first slot of the regular Mark Taper Forum season, a Jan. 16-March 13 spot that previously had been reserved for a play from the Taper’s New Work Festival held last winter.

“We’re not quite ready” to do the New Work Festival play, Lisa Loomer’s “The Waiting Room,” said Taper boss Gordon Davidson. Loomer’s play will receive its first full production later this summer in Massachusetts. Then, “if it needs more work,” it may go through a Taper workshop next season and “we’ll bring it up (to the mainstage) in the following season.”

There also is “a clearly advantageous financial reason” for doing “Oleanna”--it uses only two actors (“The Waiting Room” would use nine). Davidson called it “the most prudent choice” for a season that later will include two large-scale productions, “Bandido!” and “The Heavenly Theatre.”

The selection of “Oleanna” means that no plays by women will be on the Taper mainstage next season. And it may draw fire for another gender-related reason--it’s a story of a university professor accused of sexual harassment by a student, that angered some women (and a few men) for political as well as dramatic reasons.

Indeed, after Davidson saw the play with his own family, “we went and argued” and “the sides were clearly drawn--daughter and mother vs. father and son.”

By contrast, “The Waiting Room” is not just by a woman; it’s about the image and treatment of women through the years.

Davidson was asked if women might feel left out of next season. “Along with others,” he replied. “I’m keenly aware of that. I’m trying to reach into all areas. We don’t ignore it.”

This will be the first time the Taper has staged a play by Mamet, who last year received a $25,000 Timothy Childs grant in order to work on new projects at the Taper.

The production of “Oleanna” isn’t part of the Childs grant; that money is intended for a staging of Mamet’s program of one-acts, “The Old Neighborhood,” at the Taper, Too--a project for which Davidson has not yet found enough money. But “Oleanna” will help develop the relationship that began with the grant, said Davidson.

GOTHAM WEST: The next Ahmanson-at-the-Doolittle season is shaping up as heavily New York-oriented. Three New York hits, by and about New Yorkers (though one of them isn’t actually set in New York), are on tap so far.

The season is expected to include Herb Gardner’s “Conversations With My Father” in the fall, “Falsettos” in the winter and Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig” next summer. The spring offering is still to be nailed down, and won’t be spelled out in the renewal brochures that will show up soon in subscribers’ mailboxes.

Davidson, who programs the Doolittle as well as the Taper, was born and raised in New York. But he doesn’t think of the plays as “New York plays.” They’re “family plays,” he said, “but they’re all very different.” He acknowledged they’re not Los Angeles plays “except in so far as they’re about people and families.”

“My goal is to stretch the audience,” he said. He doubts that the fourth play will also be a New York play. “But I can’t guarantee (that it won’t be).”

The “Falsettos” company will be a new one, launched at the Doolittle and then going on tour, said co-producer Fran Weissler. But director James Lapine will still be in charge, and some of the original cast members may be a part of it. The show’s Southern California premiere was at the Old Globe earlier this year, but the first part of it, “March of the Falsettos,” was seen at the Doolittle in 1982.

DEAF WEST WATCH: Deaf West Theatre Company has taken a two-year lease on the Heliotrope Theatre. The company had been using facilities at the Fountain Theatre, but “we wanted to be independent,” said Ed Waterstreet, artistic director. And the company wanted more space; the former Heliotrope (now the Deaf West) is slightly bigger than the Fountain.

The first season in the new theater will open with a solo performance, Bob Daniels’ “Am I Paranoid?,” on Oct. 1, and continues with productions of “A Doll’s House,” “ ‘night Mother” and Linda Bove’s “Sign Me a Story.”