By Guy Zimmerman

Lemi Ponifasio (Photo courtesy of “The Clinic”)

As part of a collaboration between Chile and New Zealand, on April 7-9, REDCAT is hosting Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio’s Amor a la muerte (Love to Death). An international artist, Ponifasio champions both experimental performance and Indigenous peoples. Amor a la muerte stems from events after the Chilean police murdered a Mapuche activist and farmer. (The Mapuche are the most numerous Native tribe in South America, occupying parts of Chile and Argentina.) This work brings together Mapuche composer and singer, Elisa Avendaño Curaqueo and Chilean contemporary flamenco dancer Natalia Garcia-Huidobro.     

STAGE RAW I saw your Tempest: Without A Body many years ago in LA. That piece was inspired by the arrest of Maori activist Tame Iti, I believe. What led to Amor a la muerte?

LEMI PONIFASIO With Tempest: Without a Body, I was at the Liverpool station when the bombs went off in London. And I was trying to think what that was. And then on the plane back to New Zealand, there was almost nobody on the 747. And when I arrived in New Zealand, I saw Tame Iti being arrested for shooting an Australian flag, it was supposed to be a New Zealand flag. And then it took the idea of what we are afraid of, this vampire or this werewolf, the terrorists even in New Zealand with Tame Iti. So these things trigger a sequence of thoughts and reflections. And that’s exactly what I’m doing with this new project. I mean, you are coming to the theater partly to watch me think. And then there is a poetic dimension to that thinking which is why we’re all both there. We are trying to create a dimension where we can make reflections and hopefully we can hear ourselves and each other without imposing any ideology or any points of views about things. We can self-realize something rather than being told. Maybe I’m trying to explain to you what the theater is to me.

If you presuppose things like I’m working with movement or I’m working with body, those things just create the tension in space that makes us move like music in our contemplation. If there’s anything I’m working with, it’s probably just space and how to shift the space. Because when we think theater or we think art, we immediately think of symbolism or codes of western education, of art and things like that. Probably 90% of what I’m doing, I have no idea what I’m doing. You just create a ceremony. It doesn’t require an instruction book of how to make drama, or make art or something. What you’re really trying to make is to bring forth a dimension of the cosmos, the dimension of poetry, the dimension of spiritual things. Because I think people don’t come to the theater to be distracted or just to understand things. You know, you go to school for that. I think people come seeking a spiritual transformation. It is the reason artists write poems or write music, or because reality as prescribed, it’s not enough.

“Love to Death” (photo by Lemi Ponifasio)

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“I don’t know Mapuche culture. I don’t know Spanish. I don’t know flamenco, but that’s not something that I focus too much on, because culture is just a proposition. It’s not a law of how to live your life, and culture also means our differences. I think what we have to do is to find something that unites us.”

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SR You speak of the ceremonial dimension of theater work and providing a platform for people who normally, we don’t hear from. I wanted to bring this around to your collaboration, your ongoing collaboration with the Mapuche artists, the artists from Chile.

LP It began this collaboration with the festival, Carmen Romero. I was invited to Chile with my piece Birds with Sky Mirrors. Of course, festivals always ask, what are you doing next? I noticed these people protesting and what’s been in the media, the newspapers. It was about Mapuche. I thought those would be interesting people to work with because they’re trying to say something. In about 2013, I think, we started a conscious effort to create a group of artists to work together.

I went down to the South, traveled, saw the communities and talking with old people as well. Then towards the end of one of the workshops I did with these young people in the south, in came this woman (Elisa Avendaño Curaqueo). She came in and then she started talking to these people. I ask my translator, who is this woman? They said, “She’s a Mapuche woman and a singer,” so I ask her to sing. After she sang, then I realized that this dimension that she brings to the space as soon as she sings is what these young people should be thinking about or should follow rather than me.

Maybe I was waiting for someone, because with the Mapuche, it wasn’t a political thing against the government but about how to reconnect people with their multiple layers of their DNA, their cultural frames, because it’s powerful enough. To speak about colonization and all these things, those things are real, but to address them, you yourself have the responsibility to learn your culture, to learn your language. If you don’t make a decision about the frames of how you’re going to live your life, then you’ll always be living in another person’s frame, no?

Natalia Garcia-Huidobro, the Flamenco dancer, was a translator for me that was helping me with the project I was making with them, with the Mapuche people. I found out that she dances, so that was a surprise. Both of these cultures, I don’t understand. I don’t know Mapuche culture. I don’t know Spanish. I don’t know flamenco, but that’s not something that I focus too much on, because culture is just a proposition. It’s not a law of how to live your life, and culture also means our differences. I think what we have to do is to find something that unites us.

“Love to Death” (Photo by Lemi Ponifasio)
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“The theater needs a bigger goal than everyday life struggle, because everyday life struggle is a survival mentality. What makes us human is not survival mentality. That’s where the art creates the human being.”

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SR I’m struck by how you create through a curiosity about what’s possible—what will happen if I put on stage these elements? Then they speak for themselves.  

LP The effort to create is really an effort to get away from reality, culture, information, habits, functionalism, all these things of everyday life. What you’re trying to do with yourself, it’s the same thing you want to do with the audience. You want to make them hold their bodies and face the void and then it starts there.

What I want from the theater is a sense of silence, a sense of stillness. Our eyes open in the dark room to another dimension of who we are, another dimension of ourselves that is not a repeat of what’s on the news or what people are fighting. The theater needs a bigger goal than everyday life struggle, because everyday life struggle is a survival mentality. What makes us human is not survival mentality. That’s where the art creates the human being. We have to find a way to care, to understand each other. These are the qualities that I believe the arts, when I say the word arts, I’m thinking what I’m trying to do, but I’m hoping to achieve with that, because art is just a very generalized word for anything that we don’t understand sometimes or a form of business.

My concern is always about how disconnected we are. Our disconnection with our environment is also an outcome of civilization. The models that we organize ourselves also needs to be brought into question.

What I’m saying is that, if you are connected to something, then you recognize the value of the existence and the dignity of that thing or that person. That’s the problem, and that’s what I talk about. That’s what my work is about. If you understand the beauty of something, then why will you want to destroy it? We have left beauty behind as a component of our human existence.

Just the gathering of material now replaces it or the gathering of attention or the gathering of other kinds of addiction. I don’t know. In the theater, even the theater itself has also lost it’s meaning, it’s place in this context. It’s now that the theater people are following something instead of leading the society. It feels like leadership to talk about how we understand humanity and understand the earth and our existence. We either leave that to the church or leave that to politicians. We leave it to other people. Even the artist is leaving the whole thing to an industry.  Art is no longer a creative experience, but a consumer experience, losing our place in this deciding of how we should be in the world. For me, this is a concern for artists. Without becoming an activist, to try and bring poetry.  Making art itself is a declaration that you are on the side of beauty. You are on the side of the weak. That’s your manifesto if you want to be political about it.

“Love to Death” (Photo by Alex Wagh)
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“When Europeans came to Chile, like they did in many other places, they told the local people, ‘You are not human. You need to be saved or all these things. Your culture is barbaric or backwards.’ This has been going on for how many years. What do you think? Do you feel any value in your life? You live with the shame of your own existence. It’s difficult.”

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SR I was struck before that what you provide is a space of dignity. It’s not so much empowerment. It’s more to dignify someone by providing them with a space in which they can, in a sense, express or reveal something.

LP When Europeans came to Chile, like they did in many other places, they told the local people, “You are not human. You need to be saved or all these things. Your culture is barbaric or backwards.” This has been going on for how many years. What do you think? Do you feel any value in your life? You live with the shame of your own existence. It’s difficult.FSR

It’s clear that the European culture is not enough. It’s been a very successful culture for sure, but it’s not enough. It’s like flying with one engine on a big Airbus 380. Now the world is telling us it’s not enough. Nature is telling it to us. There is an abundance of choices that we can make in every field of knowledge or spirituality. The recognition given to Mapuche on the political side in some ways goes towards establishing this dignity or to put the Mapuche on stage and to hear what it sounds like, what it smells like, what it feels like. Rather than us talking about these people, let them be in the room with us, and share the same space.

The people I work with normally don’t have a platform to be seen. So I put them on the stage so that we can stop talking about them and let them talk to us. If that’s political, then that’s okay.

Guy Zimmerman is a playwright and director. Since 2001 he has served as the artistic director of Padua Playwrights.

Amor a la muerte, conceived and created by Lemi Ponifasio; REDCAT, 631 W. Second Street, dwntwn.; Fri.-Sat., April 7-8, 8:30 pm; Sun., April 9. 3 pm https://redcat.org

A World Premiere Opera 155 Years in the Making

Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer)
By Socks Whitmore

Camille Zamora and Monica Yunus (Photo courtesy of the artists)

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“This piece is a gem, a beautiful little jewel . . . You hear elements of Verdi, Liszt, chromaticism that’s unexpected; I wonder how much composer Pauline García Viardot influenced the writing of the day?”

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The world of opera is an ever-shifting landscape, but it’s no secret that the best-known works in the field have historically been written by men. Is this because men were the only artists generating work at the time? Far from it. Today, the classical operas of talented women composers are finally beginning to gain recognition, and this coming Friday, March 3, one such treasure will emerge from the vault for its first professional production, over 150 years after it was first created in 1867; Le dernier sorcier, or The Last Sorcerer, written by Pauline García Viardot with a libretto by Ivan Turgenev, will be reincarnated by the “arts peace corp” organization, Sing for Hope, at the Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater. The prodigious effort is led by the company’s co-founders and acclaimed vocalists, Monica Yunus and Camille Zamora, who are also performing leading roles in the production.

A two-act chamber opera described as a “feminist eco fable,” Le dernier sorcier follows the aging Krakamiche, a formerly powerful sorcerer whose riches and power have faded to near nothing; and his daughter Stella, an independent young woman who craves authentic connection and a vibrant life. Because Krakamiche once stole the forest land from its magical inhabitants, the fairies are upset by his presence and play pranks on him to teach him a lesson. Meanwhile, the Fairy Queen lends both Stella and the nearby Prince Lelio her aide in order to facilitate a romance. Through the combined efforts of the various characters, The Last Sorcerer embraces lessons in humility and living in harmony with the natural world.

Says Yunus, who plays Stella, “In my time at Juilliard, I don’t remember [singing] scores by women. . . it really is exciting to be able to bring something [to life] with such care and creativity surrounding it.” She cites the rich musical language as the primary vehicle for the show’s themes of power and progress, gender equality, environmentalism, and restoring a broken natural order. From the intelligence of the vocal writing to the empowerment of Stella as a character who can’t be swayed to change her desires, the influence of the composer Viardot’s own 19^th century life as a trailblazing female musician is tangible within the opera. “This piece is a gem, a beautiful little jewel… You hear elements of Verdi, Liszt, chromaticism that’s unexpected; I wonder how much she influenced the writing of the day?”

An Unsung “(S)hero”

Camille Zamora (center, in white) with students and faculty at Savanna High School where students are creating artwork and props that will be featured “The Last Sorcerer” at The Wallis. (Photo by Hannah Burnett)

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The composer was herself a French mezzo-soprano who launched her extended vocal career at the age of 17 and quickly became a distinguished musician at the epicenter of 19th century European culture.

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Zamora, who plays Reine, says that Viardot was a “force of nature . . .  People understand that [she was] this fierce woman who for 150 years has not gotten her due.” The composer was herself a French mezzo-soprano who launched her extended vocal career at the age of 17 and quickly became a distinguished musician at the epicenter of 19th century European culture. A friend and collaborator to Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, the novelist known by her pseudonym George Sand, and other household names, Viardot’s extensive career onstage inspired many composers to write for her voice or dedicate their compositions to her. However, Yunus adds, “Pauline had such a storied musical palette;” she served as a music educator to the next generation of women musicians and composed in a variety of styles, often as part of her teaching practice. She wrote five known salon operas in her lifetime, three of which featured librettos by her novelist lover Ivan Turgenev, but like other non-men of the era, her works never received the same acclaim as her male counterparts. It was accepted, or perhaps expected, that she wouldn’t have access to the same resources as the mainstage works of the time, so she organized workshop productions of compositions like The Last Sorcerer at home in her Baden-Baden villa using a limited orchestration and a cast made up of her students. Her audience of peers (including prominent music-makers Liszt, Johannes Brahms, and Clara Schumann, amongst others) hailed the piece as a treasure.

In spite of the noted high caliber of musical writing, Le dernier sorcier never had the opportunity for a professional production. The 1870 German language performances in Weimar and Karlsruhe were clumsily translated and poorly received, and after Viardot’s passing, the original manuscripts for her works went into various archives and private collections. There, they virtually vanished for more than a century. It may be hard to believe that a whole opera could go missing, but as Zamora points out, “It seems absurd, and yet… it isn’t unexpected. I would say it’s representative of women doing great work in the 19th century.” For decades, The Last Sorcerer was all but forgotten…until Harvard University’s Houghton Library acquired the vocal/piano manuscript, where it then found its way into the hands of Camille Zamora and Adriana Zabala (the mezzo-soprano playing Prince Lelio in this production).

“When I want to do something, I do it in spite of water, fire, society, the whole world.” — Pauline García Viardot (1821-1910)

Zamora recalls that her attention was first drawn to Viardot by a track from Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, a vocalist known for bringing lost scores to light, which inspired a years-long conversation with Zabala (a champion of new work and work by women) about the overlooked female composer. With the blessing of the Harvard Library, Zamora was able to transcribe and publish the manuscript of Le denier sorcier, and pen an English narration to pair with the score.

“I knew that we had limited resources,” Zamora says. “We didn’t have tons of time to be in the rehearsal room with our wonderful international cast learning the French dialogue and sharing it in that way, so I thought, okay, an easy solution that highlights the fairytale aspect of the opera is to make it sort of a storybook. … I took Turgenev’s libretto and some scholarship written on the work [by Nicholas Žekulin], put them into a blender, put on my storytelling hat, and created a narration that fills in interstitially between each musical number.” She also notes, “This is handy because we’re singing the piece in the original French and we don’t assume the majority of our audience speaks French, so [our narrator’s] storytelling moves the plot forward.”

The narration was originally intended for a different realization of the work; Zabala and Zamora first spearheaded the release of a world premiere recording, which debuted in 2019 on Billboard’s Top Ten Classical Chart. Featuring a unique team of acclaimed musicians alongside the Manhattan Girls Chorus (including Zamora herself singing the role of Stella), the passion project aimed to inspire more productions of Viardot’s work. Little did they know then that the next opportunity would land in their own laps. When Zamora and Yunus were invited by the Wallis to serve as Artists-in-Residence for its 2022-23 season (its first live performance season since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), and to additionally collaborate with the Wallis through their organization Sing for Hope as its Company-in-Residence, they realized that “Pauline’s benevolent spirit” may have smiled upon them.

“As our Sing for Hope anthem says: ‘Dream big, speak loud,’ Zamora says. “We have had a rather crazy and joyful season that’s still in process, but frankly we are doing crazy, huge things on a shoestring [budget] … I think a lot of artists would have done something simple and small-scale, but we immediately said, ‘We are in this incredible community, this gorgeous theater, [with] this incredible team… Let’s do something really big.’”

Sing for Whom?

Camille Zamora on a classroom visit to Savanna High School (Photo by Hannah Burnett)

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“There is no more raw, unmediated form of expression than there is in using art in times of human intensity . . . In a hospital setting, in a transit hub, places of high stress, [both] tremendous beauty and of tremendous panic and heartbreak. Sometimes the act of sharing the unamplified human voice in that kind of a context can feel quite miraculous.”

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The scale of Yunus and Zamora’s ambitions is hardly surprising when one takes a glance at their collaborative beginnings. The two first met while studying at Juilliard, but the event that brought them together was in fact a tragedy; on the morning of 9/11, the Juilliard campus was less than five miles away from NYC’s original World Trade Center, sharing the block with a firehouse among the first responders. Yunus and Zamora organized a memorial performance of “songs of comfort” at the Lincoln Center, bonding over their common pull to arts advocacy work and an ability to see “art delivery systems” beyond the traditional performance venues and art galleries. After the event’s success, the two took a look at their goals and what life after Juilliard might hold for them, and set off on the path that would lead them to found Sing for Hope.

“We like to say that it just added to our goal set,” Yunus states. “We definitely wanted to pursue singing, which we have done this entire time alongside building Sing for Hope. We really wanted to explore the applications of music and community . . . what arts can do for society . . . and at the time, that wasn’t something that had a curriculum at a conservatory like Juilliard, so we really had to figure that out for ourselves. . .  (It was definitely a journey of many, many emails.) . . . As aspiring musicians in an industry that can sometimes really hyperfocus on self and perfectionism, this was a way for us to get out of that.”

In 2010, Yunus and Zamora launched Sing for Hope Pianos, a global arts initiative that commissions artistically painted pianos that are then placed in schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and other public spaces for all to enjoy. Since then, Sing for Hope has gone on to produce performances and cultural experiences to promote wellness in health facilities and treatment centers; create educational programs that serve youth in grades K-12 in partnership with major agencies (including The United Nations); and earn the status of official Cultural Partner of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

Reflects Zamora, “There is no more raw, unmediated form of expression than there is in using art in times of human intensity . . . In a hospital setting, in a transit hub, places of high stress, [both] tremendous beauty and of tremendous panic and heartbreak. Sometimes the act of sharing the unamplified human voice in that kind of a context can feel quite miraculous.”

Le dernier sorcier serves as the cornerstone production for Yunus, Zamora, and Sing for Hope’s residency at the Wallis, but its impact doesn’t stop there. One high priority value for the pair of artist activists is to engage community, and in particular to provide artistic opportunities to youth. Zamora points out, “My intention was not to go to Juilliard and study music and play these beautiful pianos, when the majority of kids in the city I live in… have never seen or touched a piano.” (The Last Sorcerer at the Wallis features the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus as the opera’s cast of fairies, and set pieces by students from Savannah High School designed around themes of climate action and gender equality.)

“Yes, we’re gonna do an incredible opera production,” Zamora shares. “But we’re gonna do it in a way that actually ensures that a group of kids are transformed, and not just because they witness what we do, but because they come and witness what they are capable of.”

The decision to utilize local youth was an easy one — it offers both the heartbreaking symbolism of who will have to clean up the world shaped by our current climate crisis, and the proof that this story can be told by anyone. After all, the people that Sing for Hope wants to reach aren’t the people buying opera tickets. Yunus observes the context of the industry that surrounds opera and music making: “Artists are essentially freedom fighters, and we find ourselves delivering our art in a system that’s exclusionary.”

 In the recorded album’s accompanying booklet, Zamora states: “Le dernier sorcier deserves our attention because it’s funny, fresh, poignant, and profound, and it conveys its larger ideas in compelling, endlessly hummable ways. . . This sense of self-determination and sheer joy courses through Pauline García Viardot’s music, elevating us. It reminds us, as the Fairy Queen sings, that there is always hope.”

Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer), by Pauline García Viardot with a libretto by Ivan Turgenev, is being performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills; Friday, March 3, 7:30 p.m. https://thewallis.org

Contra-Tiempo aims for Joy and Social Justice

By Julia Stier

Contra-Tiempo: Photo, courtesy of the The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

This weekend, Contra-Tiempo – which is celebrating its 15^th anniversary in February – is bringing its latest show, joyUSjustUS, to The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Stage Raw spoke with the company’s founder and director, Ana María Alvarez, about creation and engagement.

Alvarez is of Cuban decent. Her father was a labor organizer. In other interviews, she’s talked about her grandfather being her first dance partner. Not surprising, then, that she majored in dance and politics at Oberlin College in Ohio, before receiving her MFA in Dance from UCLA (’05).  The title of one of her early works became the name of her company.

Anna Maria Alvarez

STAGE RAW: Let’s start with origins. What led you to create Contra-Tiempo?

ANA MARIA ALVAREZ: My master’s thesis at UCLA was about tackling the idea of salsa as a metaphor for resistance, and looking at dance really as a way to transform the way we were having conversations about politics and pushing back and engaging, specifically around the ideas of immigration. So that really led me to create this piece called “Contra-Tiempo,” that then wound up becoming a company because I was touring it and performing places. It wasn’t that I went into school thinking I was going to create a company, it’s just this piece kind of blew up. I wound up finding that it made more sense to create a company rather than continuing to do this work without an infrastructure to support it. Now I have several large bodies of work and smaller pieces touring all over the country and the world. We do summer intensives for young people, and tons of arts education and residency work all over the country.

SR: What do you hope audiences take away from a Contra-Tiempo performance?

AMA: I hope that the audience sees themselves in the work, no matter who they are or where they come from. What I love about our company is that we’re an incredibly diverse group of movers, dancers, humans. The idea is that even though we are speaking about specific issues or specific ideas from our own personal lives, these ideas, these experiences, these stories connect, and can relate to many different kinds of people. Connection is what I desire to create for audiences. I’m also really interested in people seeing themselves as a part of something bigger than themselves. That idea of hope and resilience and the power of people, and the power of people working and connecting together meaningfully is what I hope they get.

Contra-Tiempo: Photo, courtesy: The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

I’m [also] really interested in reframing narratives. I think we have a lot of ways that we think about the world around us that are shaped and framed by patriarchy and racism and these larger systems that sometimes feel like they’re not in alignment with how we feel or how we want to live our lives, but they absolutely control us in many ways. So I’m really interested in interrupting that, and really proposing that we can generate and recreate narratives, and also re-educate ourselves to be able to make new and more powerful decisions about the future, and not be at the mercy of these systems.

SR: I read somewhere about the “Contra-Tiempo engagement methodology.” What does that mean?

AMA: We use the word engagement specifically because it’s about connection. Many companies think of their engagement work or their outreach work as something separate than their artistic work. For us, our artistic practice, our art-making, is intrinsically linked with the ideas and values of our engagement pedagogy. They’re not separate. Our engagement is the art-making, our art-making is the engagement. The art-making is really a tool to connect. Art has really this powerful capacity to change the way we think, to change the way we behave, to change the way we relate to one another, and to ultimately really transform the world as we know it.

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Contra-Tiempo: Photo, courtesy The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

SR: The press materials say that this particular show is about embodying stories of joy and justice. Where are these stories coming from?

 AMA: I’m very interested in building the work from the micro to the macro, so coming from a place of personal stories is always my interest as an artist.

When we created this work, we created it inside of a partnership with Community Coalition in South LA. Every Friday night we did these sabor sessions, which were these radical joy sessions that we did for two years. We threw these workshops, but they were really more like experiences. We connected with community members around stories of joy and justice and community, and there are these things called choreographic labs, where [throughout the two years] we would bring pieces of the work, get feedback, and engage the participants in their own creative process to generate work, and then do what we call council, which is a story circling practice

Courtesy: The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Several of our dancers are trained to lead council, which means they get to facilitate these story circles, practiced by indigenous peoples all over the world – where there’s a talking piece and people speak from the heart and listen from the heart. It’s an incredible mechanism to build community, but also to hear one another’s stories and share each other’s stories. Through council practice, we kept hearing stories about mothers. We kept hearing stories about family, specifically around grandmothers and mothers. So that helped us to drive the direction of the piece towards our own mother and grandmother stories. 

Contra-Tiempo Dance Company’s joyUS justUS will be playing at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. Fri-Sat., January 17-18, 7:30 p.m. Visit thewallis.org Audience members are welcome to join Alvarez for a pre-show talk about the creative process behind the show at 6:15. After the Saturday performance, audiences are invited to a toast to celebrate the company’s 15^th anniversary.

2019 Hollywood Fringe Roundup

By Stephen Fife
Through August 24

This year, on the 10^th anniversary of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, there were 414 shows, up from around 300 shows only two years ago in 2017.

Several of these received extensions of a few performances or more, and I highly recommend catching any of them if you can.

However, among shows that have closed, Stuff I Think Is Funny and Good, is a sketch comedy show that came with high praise from many quarters. It did not live up to that billing for me. The theme of most of the sketches by Emily Bolcik, Mandi Bossard and Dandy Terkin is how weird and crappy it is to be a young person right now. In the first sketch, a young couple in bed tell each other what they are most afraid of. The woman (Ms. Bossard, I think, but the show had no program) tells her husband that her greatest fear is that a thief will burst in while she’s in the bath and get a whiff of her unwashed vagina. The description of her foul-smelling privates goes on for a very long time. Another sketch has a young woman wanting to leave a sleepover with her woman friends because she is embarrassed to fart in front of them. The sketch ends (spoiler alert) with her farting in front of them and everyone hugging. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I found it neither funny nor good.

Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road? (Photo by Matthew Hennigar)

Performing at the Complex on Thursday, July 11 at 10 p.m., Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? by Matthew Hennigar is a 90-minute “comedic quest” (to quote the press release) in which actors are each assigned a word from that familiar joke and try to figure out their meaning and purpose in “the real world.” At some point they meet up with the answer — “To get to the other side” — with, again, each word assigned to a new set of actors; and an existential crisis ensues. The play boasts of “a critically-acclaimed London run.” Hmmm. I would have liked it twice as much at half the length.

The young Bob Leggett outside of band practice in Livin’ The Dream (A Journalistic Journey). (Photo from Prince Edward Academy)

Livin’ The Dream (A Journalistic Journey) is Bob Leggett’s homage to the Hollywood Fringe. Bob has been a critic at every Fringe, where he has become a beloved figure for his pats on the backs to all the performers. In fact, he has loved so many of the one-person shows he’s seen that he thought, why not create one about my own life? Hard to tell, though, how seriously to take Bob’s “Dream.” As he recounts his “adventures” in his high school band, there’s a rip in the time/space continuum that may never heal. Then again, maybe he’s satirizing the many terribly self-serious one-person shows that proliferate during Fringe. When he finally gets to an interesting subject — how his first marriage broke up because his wife was bi-polar and suicidal — he quickly abandons it, saying, “But that’s too private for me to go into.” A part of me felt like yelling: “No Bob! That’s exactly what the memorable shows at Fringe have done, explore ‘private’ places.” While another part of me was wondering if this was an inside joke for Fringers who had seen many such memorable shows, and who would get the put-on of his avoidance. It’s hard to believe that anyone as smart as Bob Leggett would seriously present their memories of band practice for our enjoyment, so I’m going to come down on the side of sly self-mockery and a good-natured, tongue-in-cheek send-up of the autobiographical format. But there’s such a thing as being too oblique, and Bob Leggett still has me guessing.

Georgan George and Troy Rossi in A Night Out, by Harold Pinter.

In Harold Pinter’s A Night Out, a man around 30 (Troy Rossi) who works in an insurance office still lives at home with his overbearing mother (Georgan George). He is the sole focus of her attention, and her smothering affection has killed any interest he has in lighting out on his own. This reticence to go out in pubic includes the big office party — though his office mates finally convince him to go along. Once there, a girl falsely accuses him of groping her; actually, she does it as a favor for another man at the party who has chided our hero for being “a momma’s boy.” This so enrages our hero that he goes home and lashes out at his mother, then finds his power by humiliating a prostitute. It’s a dark, dour play, somewhat dated, but it still packs a punch. The stripping away of the hooker’s last shred of dignity is something that David Mamet “borrowed” for a key scene in his play Edmund, revealing in both cases the source of an empowering misogyny.

Meghan Parks in Wigfield. (Photo by Peter Carrier)

Wigfield is also quite dark, but comically so. Adapted from a book of the same name by Pamela Eberhardt, it tells the twisted tale of would-be writer Russell Hokes (Scott Golden) who wants to write a book about King Arthur’s Knights, but quickly changes to doing one about “disappearing small town America” because a publisher pays him a big advance. He starts looking around for the right “small town” and happens upon Wigfield — which in fact is not a town at all, but simply a collection of squatters who get by turning tricks for truckers and other unsavory acts. This setup is funny and very promising, made even better by the collection of talented actors (Eric Curtis Johnson, Pam Quinn, Bedjou Jean, Emily Clark) who keep coming back as different characters. There’s a maniacal ax killer on the loose — also funny and promising, but then it becomes about saving the town (that doesn’t officially exist) from watery extinction, and it takes a few too many twists and turns to sustain its intended humor. The shame here is letting the play get so plot-heavy that it drowns out so many wonderfully inventive performances.

Lara Helena and Davida Sal in Tales from the Powder Room at The Complex. (Photo by Warren Saire)

Tales from the Powder Room by writer/director Robyn Migel takes place in the ladies room at a high-powered corporate office, where a series of loosely-connected monologues and scenes dramatize the pressure on women in a male-dominated workplace. While a few of the vignettes stray into obvious and over-worked subject matter — such as the opening monologue, where a woman debates with herself over the emotional price of seeking success — there are enough startling dramatic moments and personal revelations to make this worthy of attention. My favorite scene is when two assistants (Burgandi Phoenix and Lara Helena) are griping about what an unholy bitch their boss is, when the toilet flushes and the boss (Sandi Milne) emerges from a stall and lays into them. The boss then delivers a monologue to the audience that turns all our assumptions about her upside-down. Another powerful scene pits a conservative Christian office worker (Helena) against a trans woman (Davida Sal) recently added to their “team.” Both actors display a fearless intensity, and the scene leads to an unexpected and satisfying conclusion. Excellent performances highlight how attractive this play may prove to be for women actors of any age looking for a spotlight to shine in.

Callie Ott in Dear Jeff: A Musical About Suicide & Domestic Abuse. (Photo by Harley Alexander)

Dear Jeff: A Musical Comedy about Suicide & Domestic Abuse is very funny, very sad, and very…real. Callie Ott is that rare performer who is as good a writer as she is a singer. Based on her own experiences, it tells a harrowingly personal tale of falling in love with a bad man who is a good lover. So good in fact that he openly cheats on Callie with several other women, who seem only too happy to be cheated on themselves as long as they can remain a part of this man’s love life. One of the funniest songs in the show is a duel between the normally-shy and anxious Callie and her boyfriend’s other main lover, a streetwise younger woman who takes on Callie in a savage and hilariously weird battle. There are strange twists and turns here, but they all lead somewhere, they are all building to a fascinating climax, in a journey of self-revelation. I’m honestly not sure if I would be applauding as loudly for her boyfriend’s demise if Callie Ott were not such a good singer and witty lyricist, and if she didn’t keep blowing the audience away with her bravado. Ott more than lives up to the expectations that her reputation (and brilliance) have already garnered.

Matt Ritchey in Blackboxing. (Photo by Matt Kamimura)

Finally, Blackboxing is the curious title for Matt Ritchey’s zany and compelling show. Ritchey is a master Fringer, having created and directed a slew of memorable Fringe shows in the past. He clearly delights in the “out there, anything goes” nature of the Fringe, while also being very aware of the many bad one-person shows that it has spawned. This show-within-a-show is a wicked satire of just such a bad show; in fact, it is to Fringe what Spinal Tap was to “Rockumentaries.” Starting with a scrawled-over program for a show called “A Cry for Help” — I actually went back to the house manager, thinking he had given me a program for the wrong show — Blackboxing gives us Travis (Ritchey), a first-time writer-performer who somehow thinks he understands the subtleties of writing and performing while admitting he’s a complete amateur. He’s also the worst nightmare of stage manager Jim (Jim Niedzialkowski), having handed the beleaguered professional a bunch of sheets with 245 hand-written cues. (The show is subtitled “Man vs. Stage Manager.”) It’s a treat for any theater-lover to see how Ritchey and director Matthew Martin keep all these balls in the air — as satire, physical comedy, original song-and-dance, primal scream, family drama, meta performance piece, and more — while continuing to shade in his portrait of a theatrical novice headed for a breakdown.

Yes, it’s a parody of everything the Fringe represents, but it’s also a celebration of Fringe, and of the elements of pure theater. Unlike Bob Leggett’s show, I always knew what Ritchey was going for, while at the same time he was always surprising with how he got there. There are some transitions that could be developed further, and the final slide into seriousness arrives too quickly and ends too abruptly. But Blackboxing — that is, playing around in a blackbox theater space — is one of the most inventive pieces to be seen at any Fringe, and one that hopefully won’t disappear when the final curtain has fallen on the 2019 Hollywood Fringe.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?: Thurs. July 11, 10 PM at the Flight Theater at the Complex, 6472 Santa Monica Blvd. www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/5798?tab=tickets. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

BLACKBOXING: Sat. July 13, 10 PM at the Dorie Theatre in the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd. www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/5704?tab=tickets. Running time is 55 minutes, no intermission.

DEAR JEFF: Wed. July 24, 8 PM at Studio C, 6448 Santa Monica Blvd. www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/5884?tab=tickets. Running time: 55 minutes, no intermission.

TALES FROM THE POWDER ROOM: Fri. August 9, 8 PM at the Dorie Theatre at the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd. www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/6190?tab=tickets. Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission.

INDECENT

Paula Vogel’s play comes to the Ahmanson from Broadway
By Stephen Fife

Indecent, the play by Paula Vogel and directed by Rebecca Taichman, recently opened at the Ahmanson Theatre in a re-mounting of the Broadway production. I was fortunate enough to see that Broadway production towards the end of its run, and I have to say that it was far superior to the version playing here. This is partly due to the cavernous nature of the Ahmanson, which simply overwhelms intimate/delicate shows like this one; and is partly the result of other issues, which I will go into later. Nevertheless, it still retains some of its magic, and magic is always worth checking out.

Indecent tells the pilgrim’s progress story of the Yiddish play God of Vengeance from its completion in 1907 by Sholem Asch through Asch’s expulsion from the United States in 1952. Asch’s play is about a brothelkeeper who raises his virginal daughter upstairs while running a brothel with young girls in his cellar. As it happens, I adapted God of Vengeance myself for the Jewish Repertory Theatre, who produced it Off-Broadway in 1992. In fact, I met director Taichman in 1998 when Joseph Chaikin directed a revival of my adaptation in Atlanta, and she came down for the last week of rehearsal. She knew Chaikin from the Yale School of Drama, where a year before this, Taichman had presented The People vs The God of Vengeance as her thesis project. While I never saw Taichman’s project, she had described it to me back then as alternating scenes from Asch’s play with scenes from the 1923 Obscenity trial against the Broadway cast of God of Vengeance.

For several years after this I kept hearing about different productions of Taichman’s version, often in the Boston area, never very successful. Then in 2010 she joined forces with playwright Paula Vogel, who had been drawn to Asch’s play many years earlier for its groundbreaking presentation of a lesbian love scene. It was Vogel’s idea to expand the scope of the play back to its origins, and to invent the central character of Lemml, the country yokel who happens to attend the first reading of God of Vengeance, which is also the first play he’s ever encountered. Lemml falls in love with Asch’s play, and he becomes its perpetual stage manager and proponent. Lemml is also the narrator of Vogel’s play, and he helps to connect us with the constantly shifting onstage action.

The problem, however, is that Vogel and Taichman call their play “The True Story of a Little Jewish Play.” These are the words that greet the audience when we enter the theater, projected on the back wall above the seated cast. But you cannot have a “true story” with a fictional central character, can you? This may sound like carping, but to me it calls into question what other fictional elements may be present here, as well as why they felt the need to brand their play a “true story” to begin with. I’m also offended by their calling God of Vengeance a “little Jewish play” — it has 28 characters and a running time of three hours — while also referring to it in the text as “the greatest Jewish play ever written.” (What makes it greater than The Dybbuk or The Golem?)

None of these factors, however, will prevent audience members from enjoying the play itself with its swirl of Jewish history, as Asch’s determination to tell the truth at any cost runs into rejection from well-to-do assimilated Jews in New York City and genocide from the Nazis in Poland. The cast I saw on Broadway had also been involved in developing Vogel’s play for several years, and they were a true company, with a dedication and passion rarely seen anymore. At the Ahmanson, Elizabeth A. Davis and Harry Groener have replaced two of these cast members, and — while both are very talented performers — the authority that was there before has been diffused. It’s still an entertaining evening, but the soulfulness and depth of suffering is no longer there, and the theatrical gimmicks are now more apparent.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.—Civic Center; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed. & Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.; through Jul. 7. (213) 628-2772 or www.centertheatregroup.org. Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission.