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 [...]
RADAR L.A.: Experimental Mardi Gras
June 19, 2011 By
Remixing New York’s Under the Radar Festival for the West Coast, the RADAR L.A. Festival reflects a shift in contemporary theater, colliding international work with the Los Angeles theater scene. Under the leadership of Mark Murphy of Redcat, Diane Rodriguez of Center Theatre Group and Mark Russell of Under the Radar and New York’s Public [...]
‘Solitude’: Waxing Philosophical, Waning Into Tedium
June 18, 2011 By
A stiff but stylish drama inspired by the philosophical musings of Octavio Paz, the Latino Theater Company’s Solitude attempts to imagine a Mexican-American existentialism but achieves only everyday, generalized angst. The action, such as it is, begins at a funeral where Gabriel (Geoffrey Rivas) mourns the loss of both his mother and the 20 years [...]
‘Hot Pepper’: Downsized Dance by Chelfitsch
June 18, 2011 By
Anyone who’s ever worked in a cubicle will recognize the fluorescent-cool pecking order of corporate culture in Chelfitsch’s Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and The Fairwell Speech. The Japanese company opened its dance theater piece which runs through Sunday at LATC as part of the RADAR L.A. festival. It’s lunchtime and three temp workers listlessly shuffle into [...]
‘State of Incarceration’: Locked Up, and a Little Locked Out
June 17, 2011 By
You walk down a hallway at Los Angeles Theatre Center and into a large, brightly lit room. But where do you sit? Painted black wooden boxes line a wall and row on row of metal bunk beds with thin, tightly tucked blankets confront you. You file in with others and some climb to a top [...]
‘Titus Redux’ Review and Impressions
June 17, 2011 By
My podcast review and impressions of ‘Titus Redux’ – an update of William Shakespeare’s ‘Titus Andronicus’ by the Not Man Apart and New American Theatre companies. [soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/17364125"] Walter RyceIf you like graphic novels, film, popular uprisings, urban hikes, horseplay, stage plays, John Adams or Philip Glass, city skylines, hip-hop, underground [...]
Stehlin on ‘Titus’: Finding Narrative in Abstraction
June 17, 2011 By
If you indulge in the HBO series Weeds, you know Jack Stehlin. And if you don’t know his role as Drug Enforcement Agency Captain Roy Till, you probably know him from any number of “angry cop” roles he’s played throughout the years. So perhaps his role as a war-torn general back from the front in Titus [...]
Backseat Drivers: How Moving Arts Ignites ‘The Car Plays’
June 17, 2011 By
It turns out that it’s not that hard to get car-dependent Angelenos to sacrifice their vehicles for a few evenings. “There’s a lot of enticement, because if we use your car, you’re going to get the best parking spot,” said Steve Lozier, producer of Moving Arts’ “The Car Plays: LA Stories,” a series of one-acts [...]
‘Amarillo’ Climbs the Wall in Search of the Disenfranchised
June 17, 2011 By
A man goes into the desert and dies … or dreams. Storywise, that’s it. But this spare scenario allows for kinetic visual imagery and a series of bilingual monologues to anchor Teatro Linea de Sombra’s Amarillo. The setup merely explains that people vanish — physically, spiritually, metaphorically — for all sorts of reasons. They could [...]
Pretty Ronnie’s ‘State of Incarceration’
June 17, 2011 By
Ronnie Walker barely moves. He faces a corner of the prison yard, relaxed, swaying gently. When a fight breaks out, the correctional officers bark, “Yard down!” and then begin screaming at him. Why hasn’t he dropped to the ground as ordered? Walker is a tall man with regal bearing, but he now looks around [...]
First Take: The Method Gun
June 16, 2011 By
In The Method Gun, Austin-based collective Rude Mechs explores the “cult of acting” as an ensemble, abandoned by their guru, rehearses for performances of a reimagined Streetcar Named Desire. Minutes after attending the opening night performance at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, Ca., Engine28 reporters Kerry Lengel, Rebecca Milzoff, Kathryn Osenlund and Walter [...]
Relentless: ‘Titus Redux’
June 16, 2011 By
Here’s a parlor game for all your dramaturg friends: Prod them for their opinions of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. The aesthetes among them will point out that no less than T.S. Eliot called it ”one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written,” then back up their charge by citing scholars who doubt the Bard [...]
Rectangular Anger: ’2 Dimensional Life of Her’
June 16, 2011 By
Puppets — and menace — in the ballroom 2 Dimensional Life of Her, the first production of the RADAR L.A. International Festival of Contemporary Theater, might better qualify as experimental film than any conventional idea of theater. The show emerged from the solitary drawing practice of Australian artist Fleur Elise Noble with the urgency [...]
’2 Dimensional Life of Her,’ Revisited
June 16, 2011 By
Since its Tuesday premiere as part of the RADAR L.A. festival, Fleur Elise Noble’s enigmatic and captivating hybrid experience 2 Dimensional Life of Her — part film, part theater, and all art installation — has generated a lot of “you’ve got to see this!” conversation. A once grand, but long disused ballroom in downtown L.A.’s [...]
‘The Method Gun’: Rude Mechs Leap, Moving Us
June 16, 2011 By
Five actors stand, facing downstage and smiling at the audience. One is in a brilliant orange jumpsuit. She holds an old, faded kitchen timer. On a whiteboard upstage, an overhead projector beams “Training Technique: CRYING PRACTICE.” She sets the timer. The actors look into the audience. One whimpers, another is all fluttering lower lip, and [...]
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 [...]
Sometimes It Rains Apples: ‘Ground to Cloud,’ ‘Myth and Infrastructure’
June 15, 2011 By
Despite its age, the term performance art remains a useful one, if only because no other phrase encompasses so many types of alternative theatrical expression in which you hear so much about “environments.” Whatever you choose to call it, a double bill ranging from the unfocused to the movingly lucid continues through Saturday at the [...]
Intro to RADAR L.A. with Laura Spencer
June 15, 2011 By
What is RADAR L.A.?. June 14 – June 19, 2011 When Theatre Communications Group announced its 50th anniversary conference would take place in 2011 in Los Angeles, Ca., a festival in the works for nearly five years set a date. RADAR L.A., an international festival of contemporary theater, launched on Tuesday. The five-day event features [...]
Chekhov’s Widow Faces Love, Death: ‘Neva’
June 14, 2011 By
A Chilean company finds the bitter side of humor The psychic whiplash inflicted by Teatro en el Blanco’s Neva, one of four plays to inaugurate the RADAR L.A. festival on Tuesday night, goes far beyond the race your eyes must make (if you do not speak fluent Spanish) between the flashing text of the [...]
