THEATER

Danny Ferrez has season tickets to Lamb's Players Theatre. He ushers at The Old Globe so he can see a bunch of stuff for free. If you hurry-but only if you hurry-you can catch him at La Jolla Playhouse or 6th@Penn or Cygnet or Diversionary, unless, of course, he's busy taking in something at the Lyceum or the Civic. And he already misses Theatre in Old Town, which on Jan. 1 ceased to exist as we knew it. If theater's a clock, Ferrez is the alarm, its thunderous peal cutting a swath all the way to will-call at every turn.

When the chance arises, Ferrez feeds his fix in a climate not traditionally known for its benevolence toward performers. Some of the “actors” at this kind of venue have been known to take their lives in their hands at last call, with a bouncer or two suggesting that they not pursue a comeback anytime soon. But if you're with Black Kat Theatre Company and you're onstage at The Hole tavern in Point Loma, Ferrez is watching you as closely as I watch ER reruns.

Now, that's close (especially when the episode features Kellie Martin's legs).

“It's so in-your-face,” Ferrez said. “And it's definitely that much more inviting in a bar, with drinks and the social atmosphere. They can express their views, too, as opposed to a more public setting, where it's gonna disrupt something. They're just great.”

Black Kat artistic director Tisha Tumangan is banking on that disruption, and not the kind she says has spawned a couple fights since May, when Black Kat started working at the venue under its current name (you may remember the company as Girl Next Year). Like Ferrez, Tumangan sees untold possibilities for a roily community forum here, a grassroots platform that as often as not keeps the audience engaged after the final curtain.

“In a traditional venue,” Tumangan said, “once the show's over, the experience is over; you get in your car and drive home, and that's kind of the end of it. What we love about being at The Hole is that people are encouraged to stick around and talk to the cast and talk with each other about what they've just seen. Our audience members aren't removed from the process. They really become part of it. That's one of the things that has helped us have a return audience and start to build a following.”

That following likes its take on public affairs served way to the left. Liberal politics is the company's stock in trade, one that will culminate in 2006 in Review: A Living Newspaper, starting Thursday, Jan. 18. Five writers and six performers will weigh in on San Diego's employee-pension debacle, the anti-gay hate crimes in Balboa Park last fall, the Dick Cheney hunting accident, the state of security at America's airports and whatever the hell else comes to mind. In similar quarters, such topics are made to order. So-called “pub theater” is very successful in pockets of Great Britain and Western Europe, where live performance takes on far more political overtones than it does here.

The concept isn't lost on at least one American city. Good luck getting in without a reservation to Atlanta's New American Shakespeare Tavern, no stranger to sellouts and waiting lists. It all started in 1984, when the sleepy pub opened a one-week run of As You Like It-suddenly, the stupefied owners found themselves scrambling to meet an otherworldly demand. Today, the 250-seat bar is the site of a year-round season of Shakespeare and other classics. It staged Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie in 2006, and Cabaret is coming up in a few months. The venue even runs a summer theater camp and acting workshops for elementary school kids.

By comparison, The Hole's performance space is outdoors and seats only 55. Nonetheless, Tumangan reported, attendance is decent amid Black Kat's routinely one-act adaptations and the quality of artistic thought they reflect.

“There's something to be said for working under those kinds of constraints,” she said. “If we're going to present something in a one-act, we have to be very selective about what we do. It helps in the editing process.”

That first show in May was a case in point. Black Kat presented The Complete Works of Shakespeare-Abridged, chopping, channeling and spoofing Bill all the while. Its Titus Andronicus was spun as a cooking show, in deference to the Shakespearean fate of Tamora, an evil mom whose sons' corpses are baked into a pie she's served (no word on how she washed it down).

Ferrez was there to see it all. He said the piece was “just as unique and cutting-edge as their political banter. A lot of their stuff pushes buttons, and it's so intimate. They're not just selling a play; they're selling an art form.”

And maybe, along with it, a proletarian forum for local debate.

2006 in Review: A Living Newspaper runs through Jan. 27 at The Hole, 2820 Lytton St., Point Loma. $10. 619-645-1158.

Write to marty@edarts.info and editor@SDcitybeat.com.