Wilma Theater

The 1984 that the Wilma Theater unveiled last night makes a strong impact as a piece of multimedia theater, a horror story told in the manner of a nightmare. The production is also an expressive and engrossing summing-up, politically and aesthetically, for artistic director Jiri Zizka, the Czechoslovakian emigre who knows whereof George Orwell speaks in this vision of the totalitarian state in absolute triumph. So does Pavel Kohout, the exiled Czechoslovakian playwright whose adaptation is used.

Mayor Rendell yesterday called on a group of the city's top business leaders to support the Wilma Theater as "one of the key portions of the Avenue of the Arts project. " His administration, he said, is "committed to making a reality" of "an arts and culture district second to none. " The mayor made his pitch to about 50 representatives of the business and cultural communities, who assembled in the 31st floor atrium of the ARA Services Building on Market Street. The Wilma staged the event to give impetus to its capital campaign, now in its fourth year, aimed at raising $6 million for a new 300-seat theater at Broad and Spruce Streets.

A new Wilma Theater will rise in what is now a parking lot at Broad and Spruce Streets, a site the city has been struggling to sell for eight years, Philadelphia officials and the developer said yesterday. The 300-seat theater will be included in a parking garage designed to eventually serve a new wing of what now is the Hershey Philadelphia Hotel, Mayor Goode said at a news conference. At the same time, the project's developer, Norman Wolgin, said the Hershey has had financial problems and soon will be replaced by an international hotel operator that intends to bring in European tourists.

In the cold, hazy light of a December afternoon, Blanka and Jiri Zizka stood at a podium gazing out over a small and buzzing crowd assembled at the northeast corner of Broad and Spruce Streets. This was The Day for the Zizkas, Czech emigres whose theatrical visions have driven the once-obscure and tiny Wilma Theater in less than two decades to critical acclaim and national prominence, and now on this day, to a new official home nestled within a spanking slab of a parking garage on South Broad Street, the Avenue of the Arts.

Capping a successful season that began with a move to a new performance space, the Wilma Theater yesterday received 19 nominations for 1997 Barrymore Awards for theatrical excellence, more than any other Philadelphia-area theater. Each of the company's first four productions in its new theater at Broad and Spruce Streets on the Avenue of the Arts received at least one nomination. Avenue X received nine nominations, Quills six, Arcadia three and The Ruling Class one. The Walnut Street Theatre garnered the second most nominations with 14. It was followed by Bristol Riverside Theatre (10)

The Wilma Theater posted a banner across its website late Wednesday to announce that Jiri Zizka - a cofounder of the modern Wilma on Broad Street and a major force in Philadelphia's evolution as a vibrant city for live theater - had died. No details were posted and no one was reachable at the theater after 10:30 p.m., when word of the posting began to spread. Zizka, with his wife, Blanka Zizka, came from Czechoslovakia and formed a relationship with the theater company they would take over and move into new directions.

The Alfred Bloomingdale we are introduced to at the Wilma Theater is a man who believes in the absolute efficacy of property and power over love as a winning principle. His sexual tastes are no surprise. They fit in with those of his favorite author, the Marquis de Sade. "You've heard of S and M?" he asks a pretty model in one of the more absurd lines in a play that is shot through with howlers. Now, Alfred Bloomingdale was a real person, a member of Ronald Regan's kitchen cabinet, a Yale-educated philanthropist whose family once owned the famous department store.

The big scene in The Concert at St. Ovide Fair is played in total darkness. The blind protagonist has extinguished all light to gain the advantage over his cruel tormentor. The audience at the Wilma Theater is in the same fix as the villain. There is no way of getting a fix on the position of the attacker, who slips about in the blackness with the ease of one who knows no other environment. Sensory deprivation is a dramatic device that the playwright, Spain's Antonio Buero-Vallejo, has used elsewhere.

"Macbett," a grotesque comedy by Eugene Ionesco, translated from the French by Charles Marowitz. Directed by Blanka Zizka; set, costume and special props design by Hiroshi Iwasaki; original music and sound design by Adam Wernick; lighting by Jeff Brown. Presented by the Wilma Theater at 2030 Sansom St. through Nov. 15. Eugene Ionesco's biggest joke of the evening is his program note that he "ended the name of my play 'Macbett' with two t's so that it wouldn't be confused with the play by Shakespeare.

Work on the new Wilma Theater at Broad and Spruce Streets, a key component of the Avenue of the Arts, has been halted since last Thursday by pickets from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union of stagehands and other theater technicians. The union is seeking to represent technical personnel at the new house, scheduled to have its grand opening next month, as the first step in a campaign to organize all the area's midsize theaters. At present only the city's largest theaters - including the Academy of Music, the Forrest, the Merriam, the Zellerbach, and the Walnut Street - have contracts with the backstage union.

It's not uncommon for theater companies to try out plays in readings — generally single-night affairs with invited audiences and a cast of actors who sit on the stage without props, costumes, lighting or set design, accompanied only by scripts. The reading of a new play called 8 at the Wilma Theater on Monday evening will be a little different. It will still be theater without the trimmings, but open to the public at $20 a ticket. The play has become a theatrical event in cities across the nation in the last few months, with 140 future bookings on professional, community, and college stages that stretch into 2013 and as far away as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe.

BalletX looked like a new company when its Spring Series opened Thursday night at the Wilma Theater. In many ways it was. Founded in 2005 by Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, the contemporary ballet company has performed regularly ever since, but not frequently enough to sustain a dedicated roster of dancers. Instead, it relies mostly on freelancers and guest artists, with just a few returning each season. I hadn't seen the troupe recently, so it was a pleasant surprise to find so many dynamic, gutsy, high-energy dancers on stage.

It's curtains for the Greater Philadelphia Theatre Alliance, the organization serving theaters and audiences over two decades of explosive growth that raised the number of professional stages in the region to more than 50, the highest ever. The alliance released a memo Wednesday saying it would fold June 30, at the end of its fiscal year, a victim both of tough economic times and the theater community's success; in the struggle for funding sources, it increasingly competed with the theaters it serves, many of which needed its services less as they became ever more robust.

Theater Carousel The story of a summer romance that leads to hardship & heartache. Closes 4/22. Villanova University - Vasey Hall, 800 E. Lancaster Ave., Villanova; 610-519-7474. $23-$25. Crowns A woman moves in with her Southern aunt & is introduced to the role hats play in the local culture. Closes 4/29. Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water St., Wilmington; Box Office: 302-594-1100. $35. Curse of the Starving Class Dark comedy about a farm family dealing with financial ruin & ruthless debt collectors.

Theater Professional/semi-professional A Reptile Dysfunction Musical comedy. Closes 3/30. The Mask and Wig Club, 310 S Quince St.; Box Office: 215-586-3729. $30; $15 students. Azuka Theatre: Hope Street & Other Lonely Places Five Philadelphians united in loss & love search for answers in the big city. Closes 4/1. First Baptist Church, 123 S. 17th St.; 215-733-0255. www.azukatheatre.org. $22-$27. Brat Productions: Let's Start a War Satirical punk-themed cabaret show about a cocktail party where the kitchen staff are plotting to overthrow the rich.

Sunday It's a joke Back in the paleolithic heyday of print - that would be the 1950s - slick magazines prospered and thrived, all featuring gag cartoons, one-panel works of art that illustrated a joke while also limning a world of comfort and affluence that the era aspired to, while at their best also hinting at the anxiety behind the facade. Sylvia Getsler , a rare female freelancer whose work was published in mags including the Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, and Ladies' Home Journal, focused on children as her subjects while slyly satirizing her times.

Through April 8 at the Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce Streets. Tickets $39-$66. Information: 215-546-7824 or www.wilmatheater.org .

The Wilma Theater has teamed up with a Roxborough 4-H Club to recruit actors - small woolly ones, to be precise - for its production of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class . A cool breeze blew in late last week as members of both the theater company and the Manatawna/Saul 4-H Club prepared the loading dock for the three two-week-old Southdown lambs that will be in the show. The members opened up the dock and, on a large piece of black tarp, built a tall, makeshift wire enclosure.

Actress Megan Slater has been eating her vegetables and, she says, spending as much time at the gym as possible. She has given up caffeine, so that when she drinks her first coffee in weeks about 4 a.m. Saturday, she'll get the full effect. "I'm trying to be really sure I have as much energy as possible," she says. She'll need it. Slater, five other actors, and director Madi Distefano will be pulling an all-nighter beginning at 8 p.m. Friday at Plays & Players Theatre in Center City.