Engine 28 reporter Walter Ryce, on loan from the Monterey County Weekly, asks regular folks in downtown Los Angeles about their relationship to (or lack thereof) Los Angeles theater. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdPSQrnEmqo&w=560&h=349] Walter RyceIf you like graphic novels, film, popular uprisings, urban hikes, horseplay, stage plays, John Adams or Philip Glass, city skylines, hip-hop, underground art [...]
Lost Moon Radio, Episode 10: Fluent in Fringe
June 20, 2011 By
Lost Moon Radio is three fringe shows in one: • A rock band doing comedy songs and parodies; • A crack five-person comedy troupe; • A touching yet comedic relationship drama between this live series’ recurring character Jupiter Jack and—huh?—rock legend Ann Wilson of Heart. In two years, the Lost Moon Radio troupe which writes and [...]
BLINK and You Might Miss Me: A Fringe Film Career
June 19, 2011 By
Larry Blum seems like a very likeable guy. He’s carved out a unique career in Hollywood and New York, chronicled in this autobiographical one-man show. Every one of Blum’s brushes with fame is accompanied by a photo or video, but these is not your silly uncle’s vacation slideshow. Among the highlights: Blum auditioned for Bob [...]
Cowboy Mouth at the Fringe: Cow Flop
June 19, 2011 By
Hey, Slim (Justin O’Neill): if you want to nail this proto-punk mad-love classic by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith, don’t look down at your hands while you’re playing guitar. Take more lessons before you attempt to portray a rarified rocker. And learn to pronounce “Grammercy” like a New Yorker; it’s not “Grah-MERCY.” Oh, Cavale (Claire [...]
Spilling Your Guts in the Spotlight: A Podcast
June 19, 2011 By
You know that dream where you’re standing naked in front of an audience? For author/actor Summer “Rain” Sinclair, it’s a reality that’s happened three times this week. Sinclair strips herself bare in her one-woman show, Born Again Bohemian, part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. OK, she’s not physically naked. But emotionally, Sinclair hides little as [...]
‘Asleep at the Wheel’: Waking Up
June 19, 2011 By
About a dozen people learned more about sleep apnea, narcolepsy and cataplexy than they might have reasonably expected on a Friday night at a Hollywood Boulevard bar/improv comedy club. They also gleaned insights into the joys and sorrows of American health care, the Los Angeles metro bus system and the precariousness of low-wage jobs. All [...]
‘Julius Caesar’ on Fast-Forward: Podcast
June 19, 2011 By
Orson Welles in 1937. Photo: Carl Van Vechten, courtesy Library of Congress How do you make Shakespeare edgy enough for the Hollywood Fringe? You resurrect a 75-year-old script edited by a brash, young Orson Welles. Listen to the review here: JuliuscastFinalCloud by Engine28 Julius Caesar: The Death of a Dictator, through Sunday, June 26, [...]
Fringe: In the Cards for Magician Jon Armstrong
June 19, 2011 By
Jon Armstrong, a fixture at Hollywood Fringe headquarters, was getting some lip from a fellow magician. “All he could do was prattle on about everything he was a master of. About how he could do this, he could read minds, he was a great stage magician, he was the most incredible thing since sliced bread.” [...]
Does an Apocalypse Have To Be All Bad?
June 19, 2011 By
A friend was recently at the playground with her children when a stranger began to explain in detail about how the end of the world was fast approaching. Talk about an uncomfortable conversation to have in front of your children: “Mommy, does the Mayan calendar include my birthday? Or just the end of the world [...]
Family Dysfunction Fuels Hollywood Fringe
June 19, 2011 By
If you’ve never hated the family that you also love, stand up. Now sit down, preferably in some water, because your pants are probably on fire. Almost all of us have, well, complicated relationships with our families. And ever since Shakespeare wrote Hamlet’s bloody tale of extreme familial dysfunction, playwrights have counted on family drama [...]
Is L.A. Theater Just for N.Y. Actors?
June 18, 2011 By
The tired question “Is L.A. a theater town?” was quickly dismissed at a panel discussion hosted by the L.A. Times’ Culture Monster last week. (Of course it is.) The harder question was about theater actors in Los Angeles. After all, the conventional thinking goes, don’t West Coast theaters benefit from having a huge pool of local [...]
Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night: Three Music-Fueled Shows at the Fringe
June 18, 2011 By
Tight combos rocking hour-long sets late at night in small spaces, on a street where you can quickly dash from one venue to the next, with booze always near at hand. For years, that was my accustomed Friday night — but as a local band columnist, not a theater critic. Fringe festival programming has a [...]
‘Feeling Feeling’
June 17, 2011 By
A recent study found that women whose first relationship was marked by constant approval-seeking – asking, for example, “Do you love me?” again and again – are more likely to be depressed and have relationship problems for the rest of their lives. Darla, the bundle of insecurities at the heart of Feeling Feeling, an offering of [...]
You Can’t Always Get What You Want: ‘Another Effing Family Drama’
June 17, 2011 By
June’s coming home for closure. She finds it, but not in the package she expects in Another Effing Family Drama, Catherine Pelonero’s Hollywood Fringe Festival production playing at ArtWorks Theatre. June, a pharmacologist, wants to confront her declining mother about serious childhood issues, including her father’s sexual abuse. But while June is grounded in reality, [...]
Postmodern Shakespeare, Four Plays, Four Ways
June 16, 2011 By
We just can’t get over the Bard. Even at RADAR L.A. and the Hollywood Fringe, dueling festivals devoted to the theatrical cutting edge, the ultimate warhorses are still running strong – though they are, of course, all dressed up in postmodern garb. Leading the buzz meter is Titus Redux, which premiered to accolades last year [...]
Fear and Brooding: Twain’s ‘Ghost Story’
June 16, 2011 By
Read Mark Twain’s A Ghost Story and you’ll get a hybrid tale that teases readers with all the clichéd elements of suspense but ends with one of the author’s signature lessons on human folly. See the story adapted from page to stage in a 20-minute production by Los Angeles’ Wicked Lit theater company and you’ll [...]
