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INDEX
This Week's Openings
Upcoming Highlights
Recent reviews
Partner Theaters
PAGE TWO
Lauren Yarger: 'Butts' in Seats
Douglas Theatre 2011-12
ANW moves to Pasadena
BLOGROLL
theater
MARK BLANKENSHIP
The Critical Condition
ISAAC BUTLER
Parabis
MATTHEW FREEMAN
On Theatre and Politics
GEORGE HUNKA
Superfluities Redux
CHLOE VELTMAN
Lies Like Truth
jazz
PAMELA ESPELAND
Bebopified
JAMES HALE
Jazz Chronicles
ENTRANCES
Meet Buddha at the Bootleg
It might alternately be promoted as L.A.'s most unusual "meet and greet" for 2012. The 2500-year-old founder of Buddhism, Buddha, will be reincarnated in the performer-personage of Evan Brenner, beginning February 3 at the Bootleg.
The theater that presented the sensational Nine Circles [our review] converts to the Budd-lehg for the month of February, presenting the West Coast premiere of writer-performer Brenner's profile. And if meeting the founder of a major religion isn't enough of a draw, the production is staged by John C. Reilly.
With a Masters in Dramatic Writing from Loyola Marymount and film and TV credits as a writer and director, Brenner's most
important credential is his 20 years studying Buddhism. In 2003 he began intensive studies in the Therevada tradition of canonical sutra.
It is his interest in the Buddha’s life as an expression of spiritual struggle and achievement that inspired this production.
"I found myself discouraged by the confusing and contradictory array of Buddhist teachings," he says in the press release. "So I set out to discover what I perceived to be the source of the Buddha’s teaching. I became deeply engaged in the sutras which are really quite dramatic and work really well as a story. And so I had a eureka moment: what if I did the Buddha
as a one-man play — in his own words, taken directly from the sutras?"
According to Brenner, this is "no dry tale: the Buddha's life stands among the great archetypal adventure stories."
Brenner workshopped the play for two years before premiering it at Boston Center for the Arts in 2009. So far the tour has played in Pittsburgh and Denver.
The Bootleg Theater is located at 2220 Beverly Blvd., in Los Angeles. Performances begin February 3 and continue on Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. (except 2/24). Tickets are $30. For more information call 800-838-3006 or click here.
CHATTER
Duriing its first week, the episode was the most downloaded in This American Life history.
– Mike Daisey
referring to a story on his play, The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs
Download it yourself
Steve Martin said to me you should make an album of [standards] and I remember telling him "Who the hell would buy it?" And he said, "I would." Which is exactly what he did.
– Steve Tyrell
exlaining where the first 50 copies of his 'A New Standard' went
Full interview
Waiting for
'Everyman'
Our favorite Jackson Browne song includes the lyric "Each has his own ticket in his hand, and as the evening descends, I sit thinking 'bout everyman.
When evening descends on January 28, Parson’s Nose Productions (PNP), a Pasadena-based company seeking to "introduce classic theater to all ages," will hope Angelenos have their tickets in hand for the Everyman, the fifth production of its 2011-12 Season.
The 15th Century morality play, adapted to a 50-minute film by director ? in 2002, in which God, less than pleased with man's behavior sends Death to mete out judgment of the representative Everyman. Caught off guard by His imminence, EM asks for time to put together his defense team. Most of them have scattered, save Knowledge and Confession, and with them he gains a foothold towards salvation.
Company member Michael Faulkner directs this adaptation by PNP Artistic Director Lance Davis.
"It’s a wonderful start to the new year," contends Davis. "A time of reflection, resolution and renewal, that reminds us of our own mortality, our faith, and our hope. It’s uplifting, and we need that these days."
And, these days I sit and think about all the things that I forgot to do, says Browne.
The 50-minute play is performed at the Lineage Performing Arts Center, located at 89 South Fair Oaks Avenue in Old Town Pasadena. Performances are January 28 at 7 p.m. and January 29 at 2 p.m.
For tickets or information call 626-403-7667 or click here.
INNOVATIONS
Two Plays, 140 Characters
In a move that will "twit-ilate" social media proponents, be closely watched by performing arts marketers desperate for improved sales, and be moaned by those on the stage who are about one electronic disruption from a career change, Center Theatre Group will hold a special "Tweet Seat event" tonight, January 26, simultaneously in the Mark Taper Forum and Kirk Douglas Theatre
Inspired in part by the concurrent runs of the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (in Culver City) and Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park (downtown), the in-show twitter-permits are one-night only. After tonight, any tweetiing about the show will have to be after the curtain comes down and during intermission. The linkage between the shows is that Clybourne Park is the fictitious name Ms. Hansberry used in Raisin for the real Chicago-area Washington Park where, as a young girl, she witnessed the discrimination that she would immortalize in her ground-breaking play. More background in the Theatertimes review of Raisin's Ebony staging at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center last April - here
For "Tweet Seat," a limited number of Twitter users who are both theatregoers and social media enthusiasts (but most importantly reach a total of 90,000 Twitter followers) will sit together in a designated area. Their comments will stream via the hashtag #WhereWeLive and scroll continuously on Douglas and Taper lobby monitors – hopefully after latecomers caught in a hold have been able to see the live feed of the play.
If tweets come in the form of a question, a moderator at each theater will step in to "provide insight." CTG New Play Production Associate Malcolm K. Darrell gets the wrangling assignment at the Douglas, while CTG Literary Associate Joy Meads will be birddog the flowing stream at the Taper.
It might be something fun and help the non-theatergoing world take more of an interest. However, it does recall a quote from a recent conversation we had with jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon, who said about a certain kind of audience member she has noticed. "They're tweeting and they're texting and they're filming and they're doing whatever, in the moment, and maybe they're saying, boy she's great, you'll never guess where I am. I mean I don't know what they're doing. But I do know they're not in the moment that we're trying to create."
Nevertheless, we wish the folks at CTG great success with their tweeters, while stressing that it's only at these two theaters, for these two performances, and only for those invited to participate. For everybody else, at every other theater, and every other performance, watch the freakin' play!
Twelve must be enough for Lyric's 'Enuf'
To open its 2012 Season, the Lyric Theatre will present Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. The production opens Friday, February 10 (following two previews), and runs for 12 performances only, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m., through March 17.
Lyric Artistic Director JC Gafford directs a cast of Darlene Bel Grayson, Michelle Campbell, Mystie Galloway, Monica Quinn, Derf Recklaw, Yvette Saunders, Samiyah Swann, and Nia Witts. Choreography is by Fernando Christopher, and Dorrie Braun is producer.
Winner of an Obie Award, and nominated for a Tony, the play follows seven black women on their individual journeys. The stories blend to form one, united portrait of pride and power. The 1976 play was recently adapted to the screen by Tyler Perry.
Tickets are $20 and may be purchased here or by calling 323-960-1055.
The Lyric Theatre is located at 520 N. La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles, 90036. Street parking is available. For more information on For Colored Girls ..., the Lyric Theatre, and the 2012 season of plays, click here.
This Week
A Raisin in the Sun
opening January 22
Kirk Douglas Theatre
Last year, we were swept up by the Ebony Repertory Theatre's revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. In the Theatertimes review, we called the production, directed by Phylicia Rashad, "remains both testament to social injustice and timeless literature." CTG is now offering the intact production at its Kirk Douglas Theatre. This is a must for theatre devotees and their younger mentees. As with plays of the period, it takes its time getting where it's going. But, as a result, it covers a lot of ground, and it's ground that needs revisiting. Performances continue through February 19 .For tickets or more information call 323-957-1884 or Click here.
Troilus & Cressida
through February 19
Porters of Hellsgate
Whitmore Theatre
Arden Shakespeare's David Bevington calls Troilus and Cressida "hard to fit into the usual Shakespearean categories – comedy, history, tragedy, romance – ‘because it has so many elements of all four’ … an experimental play, characterized throughout by an intermingling of mode, tone, genre and style." The Porters of Hellsgate will produce the rarely produced "problem" play to open their sixth season. Artistic Director Charles Pasternak directs. Runs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. through February 19. For more information click here.
REVIEWS
Alternate ending
Peace in Our Time, The Antaeus Company
Another of The Antaeus Company's debt-defying acts of valour. It adds another layer of empathy between cast and characters, as an embattled company of actors embodies the defeated denizens of Shattucks' pub. Casey Stangl directs.
Photo: Steve Hofvendahl
Read review
It's elemental
Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, Geffen Playhouse
Alan Alda has attracted an A-team of colleagues for his new play. Daniel Sullivan's Broadway-ready cast and production is a treat for Angelinos. It's unlikely there has ever been a more brilliantly conceived and executed physical production in the Geffen's smaller Audrey Skirball Kenis Theatre. Photo: Anna Gunn
Read review
A Will, a way
Twelfth Night, A Noise Within
A Noise Within opened its permanent home with Twelfth Night Founding artistic directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott had as much to be proud of as grateful for. Their core acting company had infused the production with playfulness and confidence, and their supporters had came through in a searing recessionary climate that dried funding pools like desert oases. Photo: Geoff Elliott
Read review
Infernal Iraq
Nine Circles, Bootleg Theater
In Equivocation, playwright Bill Cain had playwright Bill Shakespeare reluctantly construct a plot around a recent event – in that case the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Now Cain bases his follow-up, Nine Circles, on an incident in 2006 where U.S. soldiers brutally attacked a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family.
Photo: Paul Dillon, Patrick J. Adams
Read review
Thrown for a loss
Double Falsehood, Coeurage Theatre Company
Double Falsehood, one of the works scholars believe may be a "lost play" of Williams Shakespeare's, gets a current staging by the valiant Coeurage Theatre Company that begs the question, was it "lost," or tossed. Photo: Valorie Curry, Jeremy Lelliott
Read review
How the play began
How the World Began, South Coast Repertory
Each side in the stalemate over how he world began sees itself as a light against the forces of darkness and as these intractable opinions become insufferable, the dramatic action stalls and Treischmann's play is threatened with extinction. Photo: Sarah Rafferty Read review