[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdPSQrnEmqo&w=560&h=349]

E28 is about finding new ways of telling a story, training arts journalists, and engaging and interacting with the audience. The hope is that this experiment in journalism would gather, curate, analyze and have an influence beyond the 21 NEA Fellows who are at the heart of the Engine28 six-day pop-up newsroom.

What the 40 journalists who came together to produce Engine28 are taking away can be summarized by Laura Spencer, who said, “Possibilities! This made me feel more possible.”

The journalists met, most never having worked together before, and in many cases, ranged far from their media comfort zones to cover a time of intense theater activity in Los Angeles.

Engine28 may be a pop-up, the essence of ephemerality, but it had to pop-up in a real space. We needed a home with desks and chairs and places to create team projects, as well as quiet nooks for one-on-ones between an editor and a reporter. The LA STAGE Alliance generously provided this and more by turning over its office to us in an old firehouse on Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles. With the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism we were set.

But where were we going? What would be our final destination?

Engine28.com will remain online, archived indefinitely. And as a model it is infinitely replicable. It popped up once, so it can pop up again. Wherever journalism is needed, that’s where e28 potentially can go. That’s really the big idea.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to and participated in this 2011 NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater experiment.

Sasha Anawalt
Publisher, Engine28.com
Director, NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater
June 20, 2011

Jeff Weinstein

So for help, we reached out to editors and critics who have vigorous, passionate journalism in their blood, and look who we got: Susan Brenneman from the L.A. Times, Laurie Ochoa of Slake, Dominic Papatola from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, and Howard Shapiro of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Add to this jaw-dropping “edit me!” staff the talents of USC’s Edward Lifson, L.A. Weekly’s Steven Leigh Morris, Suzi Steffen from the University of Oregon … and even more wonderful folks who tossed more ideas into the air than we could possibly catch.

I learned so very much, but two things stand out. In the new newsroom, “digital” and “editorial” aren’t resentful experts chained together, but equal partners in creativity. And because we challenged and inspired one another during these exciting and exhausting 18-hour workdays, something wonderful happened: we strangers became a team.

For that, my grateful thanks.

Jeff

The Lost Moonscape. Photo by Christopher Arnott.

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 performs the Lost Moon Radio revue has developed ten different hour-long “episodes,” each with its own theme. This one concerns “Travel,” and the comedy’s both grounded and far-fetched.

The setting is the Orange County Fair, and Jack’s patter is brought to you by “KXOJ Radio—The Juice!” Surly, self-reflective DJ Jupiter Jack (a conscious attempt by the Lost Moon company to create a Garrison Keilloresque master of ceremonies character for the indie-comedy generation) announces the show’s myriad live songs and comedy bits as if they were tracks on his radio show: “That was ‘Why Does This Camp Exist?’ by The Juvenile Victims of Scarecrow Bill.’”

The commercial breaks include ads for “Confectioners Without Borders—Delivering decadent morsels to the most vulnerable among us” and a Girls Gone Wild video directed by Werner Herzog.

Even when comic concepts seem on the obvious side, the writing and performances often elevate them. Anyone who’s a sucker for songs about New York will be on the floor when cast member Dan Mahoney breaks into a Big Apple anthem in which every landmark mentioned is a national chain (“The Starbucks on 34th and 7th! The Starbucks on 34th and 8th!”). Lauren Flans’ streetwise rap about “Wine Coutnry” is a showstopper, with snarling rhymes about going for “a ride in my Maserati, because we’re about to kick it like Paul Giamatti. Having a full band backing up the comedians helps, and not because they avail themselves of vaudevillian rimshots. Despite the easy comparisons to A Prairie Home Companion, Lost Moon Radio is a high energy endeavor.

This is one industrious 11-person ensemble, so self-assured and fully staffed and in synch that Lost Moon Radio exists on a separate plane from the many seat-of-their-pants frolics elsewhere at the Hollywood Fringe. The professionalism would almost be off-putting, if the performers weren’t so intent on entertaining you, and on impressing each other. Whether grinning when a colleague nails a line or rocking out with the band, this is an ingratiating bunch.

The players are even apologetic about having to strike their set. “If we run around like nutcases right after we’re done,” they announced at the start of Sunday’s presentation, “it’s not because we don’t love you. It’s because we have to break it down crazily fast.”

Luckily, they have that whole crazily fast nutcase thing down to a science, both after and during this frantic, fetchingly funny revue.

Lost Moon Radio. June 23-25. Hollywood Fringe.

Larry Blum, the other guy in the room with the stars. Photo courtesy the artist.

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 Fosse.

He was one of the lucky ones granted admittance to the yard sales where Cher got rid of her fancy gowns.

He was flashed and groped by Van Johnson.

He is the proud possessor of Lucille Ball’s driver’s license.

He was in a national touring company of A Chorus Line during the show’s first flush of success.

He appeared in the classic gay porn film L.A. Tool & Die.

He danced in TV specials with Bob Hope, Barry Manilow, Bea Arthur and Roseanne.

He was one of the original Solid Gold Dancers.

He was in the cult sensation Xanadu. On the set, he convinced Olivia Newton-John to date Matt Latanzi, her future husband.

He’s spent years as a stand-in for movie stars who won’t rehearse.

His other longtime gig is escorting winners up to the podium during TV awards ceremonies. As Blum saucily puts it, at these celebrity gatherings, “I peed next to some of the biggest members in the Screen Actors Guild,”

This is a well-written monologue with some cute puns and wry comments. The videos are just fascinating, especially the montage of scenes from soap operas where Blum’s role is to simply walk across the room in the background.

A  look at a life led in the shadows of the stars, this is also the tale of an out gay man who attended the legendary New York wake for Judy Garland’s body in 1969, danced at the hottest gay clubs of the ‘70s, and can still fit into most of the outfits from his illustrious past—garish garments which he pulls out of a trunk and hangs on a clothing rack during his show.

Some story. So why does Blum tell it as if he’s reading it out of a book he memorized? The stilted, rote delivery undoes what otherwise would be an exceptional monologue. If his story has you wondering why he always danced or stood in the background and never made it as an actor, Blum’s performance—as himself!—in BLINK and You Might Miss Me provides an unmissable clue.

BLINK and You Might Miss Me. June 25. Thatre Asylum. Hollywood Fringe.

The book-strewn set of Cowboy Mouth. Photo by Christopher Arnott

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 Kaplan)!: When you jump into Slim’s arms and wrap your legs around his waist, it doesn’t look like you’re in the throes of lust or lunacy. It looks like you’re trying to pull off a carefully rehearsed circus trick.

Let’s not forget you, Lobsterman (Spencer Howard): Your crustacean interloper role is weird enough without you needing to belabor the play’s final moments and slow everything down to a crawl.

Finally, to whoever provided those piles of books to the set: Are we to believe that these crazed lovers, who quote Baudelaire and worship Johnny Ace, would have these as their bedside reading material? Arthur Miller? Shakespeare? Sinclair Lewis? O. Henry? The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?

As for director Samuel Hunter: Well, you got through it. That’s something. Tough show to do. Why you did it, it’s hard to tell from your production, which is so scriptbound and choreographed it lacks any of the madness which is essential to this dark, cruel, rock & roll passion play.

Cowboy Mouth. Theatre Asylum. June 23-26. Hollywood Fringe.

Culture Clash was founded in 1984 in San Francisco. The ensemble, now based in Los Angeles, includes Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza.

On Friday, June 18, as part of the Theatre Communications Group conference in Los Angeles, Sigüenza emceed a Playwrights’ Slam at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel. Engine28’s Laura Spencer caught up with the Culture Clash co-founder during a short break.

Engine28: The theme of this year’s TCG conference in Los Angeles is: “What if…?” — a question to encourage theater professionals to examine and discuss the future of theater.

What’s your “What if…” question?

Sigüenza: We (Culture Clash) have been doing theater for 27 years. And we’ve seen all the “What ifs.” Since we began in 1984, theater always seemed like it was on the verge of extinction because of TV, MTV and radio … technology always threatens us.

But technology is actually helping us now because now we’re using the technology in our pieces. For example, we just did a piece called American Night: The Ballad of Juan José (2010). I just did a piece called A Weekend With Pablo Picasso (2011). We used a lot of video images, and high-tech digital sound in new and exciting ways; it really enhances the theater experience. Theater adjusts with the technology. I don’t think it’s going any place because you really can’t substitute a live performance.

I think theater has to keep up with technology and keep it very entertaining. Of course, content is very important. I believe in a theater that has content, thas something to say that you don’t get in Hollywood, that you don’t get in TV. I think theater is really the last soapbox where we can actually get up there and say something that’s honest, that’s urgent, that people want to hear ultimately.

Engine28: Culture Clash has been together for 27 years. What’s sustained the group for that long?

Sigüenza: I think what’s kept Culture Clash relevant is our society, unfortunately. The themes that we were dealing with in 1984 when we started are still with us: immigration, high school dropouts, teen pregnancy, racism, xenophobia. All of these things are still in our society, if not more.

When we started, it was 1984 and Reagan was in office. And people put Reagan up as a god, but I remember Reagan invading El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua. These were our Iraqs back then. These were wars that we waged in Latin America. And now we’re waging them in the Middle East. And our society is paying for it. Our middle class is paying for it.

When you’ve been around as long as we have, you see the patterns, the patterns of governments coming in, invading countries, feeding the  machine – the military machine. You see the middle class going down, you see gas prices going up. So I’ve seen all this. Nothing really worries me. It’s going to get better before it gets worse.

Engine28: The current mayor in Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, is Latino. And the Latino population of Los Angeles is growing (note: according to the 2010 census, white: 49.8 %, Hispanic or Latino, 48.5%). Do you feel that your relationship with Los Angeles changed?

Sigüenza: Yes. After 27 years of being in the business in theater and living here in Los Angeles, Culture Clash has become an institution. We didn’t set out to become an institution. But after a while, you do become an institution and you do have a legacy.

The city of L.A. has been really nice to us. They just donated a home to us: the Westlake Theater, which is in MacArthur Park. And it will take maybe a couple of years to renovate it, if the funds are there from the state. But the city of L.A. has embraced us, although we were founded in San Francisco. They have really embraced us as their group. And a couple of us (in Culture Clash) are commissioners, mayor-appointed commissioners. (Siguenza is on the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Authority Commission).

I’m very proud to be an Angeleno. I think Los Angeles is a very exciting city because it’s on the Pacific Rim. We get all those influences. We get influences from the south, from Mexico, from South America. And influences from Asia. So it’s a very great influx. There’s another energy, there’s another point of view here in California that you just don’t get on the East coast.

And it’s a theater town. We have over 200 non-equity theaters here. And that’s something to celebrate.

Engine28: Did you attend the recent discussion hosted by the Los Angeles Times: “Is Los Angeles a theater town?”

Sigüenza: I did not attend that. But I know that L.A. is a theater town. I’ve been doing theater for 20 years and I’ve been making a living. Culture Clash has to tour out of the state to make money to sustain us. But have had successful runs here in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, the shadow of Hollywood is always looming. And so I think that influences the work a little bit. I think that people are looking for a job. They’d rather go to another audition, to audition for TV rather than a play. So it has a big influence on the scene here.

But at the same part, it’s very refreshing when you see experimental theater here in L.A. And it’s very experimental. It’s probably more experimental than other cities.

Engine28: Could you talk a little bit about Pablo Picasso? You wrote and performed in the one-man show A Weekend With Pablo Picasso earlier this year, which included painting on stage. Reviewer Philip Brandes called your ability to paint credibly as Picasso “a visual tour de force as the commissioned artworks come to life.”

Sigüenza: This year, Culture Clash took a sabbatical so we could work on other things. And I wrote a play called A Weekend with Pablo Picasso, which was produced at San Diego Repertory Theatre, Alley Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center… . I had an opportunity to do my play there (LATC) and it was a big hit, a great hit. And it was real different from the Culture Clash stuff. This was about Picasso, a European, a Spaniard living in Europe painting. A master of 20^th century art.

As an artist I was very influenced by him and inspired by him, and so I wanted to write a play about this man. That’s something that I couldn’t do with Culture Clash, but that’s fine. We have to branch out and do whatever is on our minds.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Summer "Rain" Sinclair in "Born Again Bohemian." Photo: Brooks Wachtel

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 she ponders why her father abandoned her and why the heavenly version her mother pushed as a substitute wasn’t enough.

In an intensely personal one-hour show, Sinclair tells the story of her hippie parents, her mother’s conversion to an inflexible brand of Christianity and the ache of her father’s absence (“ … every kid needs a father figure, right? A man you can wrap your arms around, curl up in his lap and he’ll make it all better, right?” Sinclair asks).

It’s hardly the stuff of great tragedy; no one dies or gets cancer. But before you say, “Get over it,” consider this: most of us stuff down the distress of even an ordinary childhood and limp through life with unexamined demons creating barriers to fulfillment. Sinclair’s determined not to do that.

Sinclair’s Born Again is is one of numerous Fringe stand-ups including Yellow Dress, Talking to Yourself and Christmas in Bakersfield that can be described as staged versions of the literary memoir — an exploding genre that’s losing its novelty. Be they book or play, some work; others don’t.

Born Again does, or rather, will. It’s an early-stage production whose script is a moving target. Sinclair had performed it only one other time the night l stumbled onto it at the Open Fist Theatre.

As Sinclair acts out her childhood, she speaks, sings and dances out her feelings. At one point she lies on the floor, kicking and releasing a can’t-be-faked, gut-wrenching scream from deep within.

For me, such public display of emotion is the stuff of nightmares. Even in one-on-one therapy, I have almost never cried. So I wondered: what it’s like to open up like that front of an audience of strangers — or worse, an audience in which a handful of people actually know you? And why would anyone do that? I talked with Summer “Rain” Sinclair about the vulnerable experience of spilling her guts onstage.

Click here to hear the Podcast: Summer Rain Sinclair by Engine28

Born Again Bohemian. Hollywood Fringe Festival.  8 p.m. Thursday, June 23 and Friday, June 24; 3 p.m. Sunday, June 26.

MARSHA NORMAN, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of ‘night, Mother and co-founder of the Lilly Awards:

1) “Artistic directors have to realize that wonderful plays by women are being written and available. The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, TCG and the Lilly Awards are all great resources for finding them.”

2) “Artistic directors need to question their assumptions about what the audience wants to see. There’s a lingering perception that people don’t want to see stories by and about women, and that work by women is not ‘commercial.’ But in fact the real numbers show that plays by women certainly are profitable. Yasmina Reza and Winnie Holzman are two of the most commercially successful playwrights today.”

3) “Theaters need to recognize that we need to tell all the stories of all the people. And the people need to put pressure on artistic directors to do so. For instance, the Public Theater’s upcoming 2011-12 season offers no plays by women. None. That lack of parity should not be acceptable to its audience and subscribers—nor, for that matter, its board.”

4) “The problem is not lack of talent or material. There are plenty of female playwrights and directors. They need to be mentored and encouraged, and they need to make themselves visible.”

5) “The NEA and other arts organizations need to recognize that women are clearly a disadvantaged minority and create proactive programs to address the problem.”

* * * * * *

ALEXIS GREENE, editor of Women in Theater Magazine, published yearly by the League for Women Theater Professionals:

1) “Well, first of all, there is a struggle to produce statistics on exactly how many productions are written by women, or directed by women. Yes, there are some numbers, such as the ones used by Julia Jordan and others, but those are based on faulty databases. There needs to be an ongoing study across the industry.”

2) When asked if LWTP would be conducting such a study: “Well, that would take money.” When asked if LWTP would be applying for grants to fund such a study: “That is under discussion.”

3) “We need to ask ourselves as women, What is keeping us from moving forward? We’ve come so far, but what is keeping us from this last step of being more visible in the arts? How do put ourselves out there, the way men do? I really don’t know what the answer is. There are a lot of woman producers on Broadway, you know. So why don’t they hire woman playwrights and directors? It’s a mystery.”

4) “Maybe it’s just a matter of time.”

5) “You know, this whole Julie Taymor thing, her being fired, is almost a signal that women have arrived — no kid gloves. She wasn’t treated any differently from how a man would have been in the same circumstances.” Pause. “Maybe I’m looking for positive things in the wrong places.”

*  *  *  *  *  *

LAURA SHAMAS, co-founder of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, a self-described “grassroots advocacy ad hoc group” of 200 women and men who started meeting in the spring of 2010 to “take positive action”:

1) “We’re interested in consciousness raising, of course, but also about doing things that can bring about change. People need to start trying to do things that would bring about more participation by female theater-artists across the board. For instance, we’re partners with the Hollywood Fringe, and have been helping to spotlight the female performers. Anything that can be done to bring attention to female artists.”

2) ”We’re making a documentary short that showcases female playwrights and presents these statistics in a fun, interesting way, as well as discussions of the female playwriting experience.”

3) “We’ve been conducting a study on female playwrights in L.A. and believe studies need to be done in every city. Statistics originally came out of New York. Now we have some here, and some have been done in Chicago as well, but every theater community needs to conduct studies to use as a barometer of fair participation.”

4) “LAFPI is sponsoring mixers which have been wildly successful. We did one last month with directors labs and will have an upcoming one with only female theater artists. We believe that anything we can do to help female theater artists get access to space and resources is useful.”

5) ”Personally, I’ve decided this year to see shows only by female playwrights. It’s a question of economic support. How can we financially support theater written or directed or starring women? This isn’t something everyone has to do, by any means, but it has helped me think about where our money goes, and how that affects the situation in a very real way.”