'Touch the Water' (Cornerstone Theater Company)

For the fourth play in its four-year, six-production cycle of original work exploring how laws impact contemporary American life, Cornerstone Theater Company is premiering Julie Hébert’s Touch the Water, a river play (through June 21). After plays on immigration, reproductive rights and penal retribution, the “Justice Cycle” turns to law and the environment.

Touch the Water delivers its environmental message in an environmental staging by Director Julliette Carrillo. The audience bleachers face a found-art set by Darcy Scanlin sitting beside a rare stretch of Los Angeles River where water and vegetation have reclaimed it from the concrete. The “River,” a 50-mile channel that travels from the western San Fernando Valley through the Glendale Narrows and L.A. Basin to Long Beach, serves as the central flood control system for (and punch line for jokes about) metropolitan L.A.'s unnatural landscape.

The overarching tone of Hébert’s script is one of loss, with the concrete trough as a symbol of man's break with nature and lack of vision for an urban landmark that would bring L.A. beauty, recreation, and civic pride in the way the Seine serves Paris. However, the play is itself a lost opportunity. While Carrillo’s design and technical team have given the play a wondrous world for its premiere, with a compliant moon joining Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz’s award-worthy lighting design on opening-night, Touch the Water, like a walk along the broken channel floor, proves an uneven ramble.

According to the playbill, the Justice Cycle explores “how justice functions in society.” But there’s more of ‘cycles’ than ‘justice’ to Touch the Water: natural cycles of rain, run off, and reclamation; human cycles of spiritual rebirth and social responsibility; a real meandering subplot about cycles of violence; and, most importantly, the life-cycle of cement: “Snakes shed their skin and are reborn,” one character says. “Rivers are snakes.”

Although the play's heavy nativist tone and anthropomorphizing may undercut the aspects that are factual, a redevelopment plan exists to make the L.A. River a real waterway that retains its flood-control functions while returning it to a natural habitat and adding recreation benefits.

Admirably, Carrillo dives in after Hébert, investing the proceedings with sincerity and reverence. These Cornerstone plays are the product of careful real-world participation, going to the community members for their expertise, and in some cases to draft cast members. While nice on paper – particularly grant applications – from a purely theatrical standpoint, non-actors can compromise the impact. While Someday (reproductive rights) and For All Time (retribution) did not suffer from their expanded cast, the drop off in Touch is more noticeable.

Cornerstone's mission is a two-way street: giving voice to urgent issues and unheard communities through theater, and promoting back to those communities and their extended publics renewed appreciation for the power of this art form. Touch the Water's dual responsibility is to inspire its audiences to appreciate the majesty of nature and the magic of theater. Real actors are alchemists who need protection, too. Fortunately, two of Cornerstone's real magicians – Shishir Kurup and Page Leong – are here to share their considerable talents, and break up the non-actor speeches that recall the skit portion of a seminar.

While Hébert's script may be trying to satisfy too many constituencies, her lyrics – co-written with composer Kurup – are a solid contribution, delivered on a sound system that, despite mic'ing all the actors, never draws attention to itself. Costumer Soojin Lee creates a fantastic menagerie of river wildlife by recycling everything from flattened aluminum cans to coat hangers. And, without benefit of spot operators. Alcaraz employs a warm palette that always bathes its actors with pinpoint, flattering light – even when they are on the opposite bank of the river. Quite an achievement. Kudos, too, to stage manager Marisa Fritzemeier and her board operator.

Touch the Water, a river play, by Julie Hebert, directed by Juliette Carrillo; music by Shishir Kurup; lyrics by Kurup & Hébert; Cornerstone Theater Company • May 28-June 21, 2009 (Opened, rev’d 6/4) World Premiere

WITH Neetu S. Badham, Lane Barden, Matt Borel, Ceci Dominguez, Ricky Dominguez, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Rachel Garcia, Liebe Gray, Ubaldo Hernandez, Joel Jimenez, Shishir Kurup, Page Leong, Joe Linton, Lewis MacAdams, Laural Meade, Pat Payne, Gezel Remy, Jennifer Villalobos, Terry Young, and Laural Meade & Rachel Garcia, puppeteers MUSICIANS Danny Moynahan, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Marcos Nájera, Shishir Kurup, Neetu S. Badhan PRODUCTION Darcy Scanlin, set; Soojin Lee, costumes; Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz, lights; Benajah Cobb, sound; Danny Moynahan, music direction; Marisa Fritzemeier, stage management

Photo Illustration: Against L.A. River backdrop, Lewis MacAdams (Roger Vadim), Page Leong (Isa Pino, Shishir Kurup (Luis Otcho-o Authermont), Rachel Garcia (Ardea, a Great Blue Heron). Show photos by John Luker; L.A. River by Timo Elliott (Wikipedia)