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One Hundred Years of Fortitude

A long-view case for laboratory theater in L.A.

By Bryan Brown & Olya Petrakova

Theaterlabor SEANCE. Photo at top: Double-Edge Theatre

The Los Angeles theater scene (particularly its intimate venues) has often, over the last few years, been compared to a laboratory. At its best such a comparison is meant to highlight the scene’s ability to act as an incubator for new work capable of moving into larger theaters or tour through exchange programs internationally (see Steven Leigh Morris’s recent concerns over the fate of the AEA referendum for one such instance).

However, the term laboratory is an overarching word in our culture today, what the cultural critic Raymond Williams called a keyword, and is therefore open to complex and often contradictory meanings.  For instance, in response to Morris’s concerns, in a Bitter-Lemons post now taken down after that site’s re-design, Colin Mitchell defines laboratory theater as a “risk free experimental” enterprise that serves some members of the L.A. community but does not adequately represent the “entertainment” aspect of the L.A. theatre scene, though “risk free” can hardly describe most laboratories in the arts and the sciences, given the investments of time and funding in both. Furthermore, the dualistic juxtaposition of “experimental” and “entertainment” suggests a typical North American perception of laboratory theater stemming from the 1960s avant garde — where experimental is often equated with impenetrable, confrontational, shocking, unfinished, or exhibitionist, with the latter being seen as epitomized in the Performance Group’s Dionysus in ‘69 (see clip 21:30 of Brian de Palma’s film of D69).

Nevertheless, such work is primarily created in response to a commercial culture that equates entertainment with the superficial, thus the binary separation of “laboratory” work with commercial work – even though much commercial work emerges from the laboratory process of multitudinous readings and workshops.

An important influence of so-called experimental work was Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Teatr Laboratorium — the theater most often associated with the theater laboratory.

But the laboratory theater tradition started 50 years before Grotowski (1933-1999), with the quests of European intellectuals to take the best of the past into the future, while fulfilling the promise of a new century. Such seeking and striving was particularly potent in Russia and, for convenience, the start of the theater laboratory can be marked in 1905 with the creation of the Theatre-Studio by Constantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold.

The notion of a laboratory theatre then expanded dramatically within Russia’s ecology of revolution that lasted from 1905-1928. This ecology promoted an inter- or trans-disciplinary thinking, wherein terms like experimental and entertainment, innovation and tradition, revelation and revolution were not opposites but complementary impulses that, when harvested together, could inspire new forms. Performance became an integral medium for human betterment, and the theater laboratory became a place for the creation of newly transformed audiences (spiritually, politically, socially).

At the same time, the theater laboratory was (less grandiosely) a space in which the discipline was advanced through committed investigation into the craft of performance. The idea of searching without a preconceived destination was essential, but the form of the search, or research, might be a new system of acting, the clarifying of the newly created director’s role and function, the discovering of new forms of scenic design, or the attempts of amateur clubs to guide their audiences towards a newly empowered understanding of themselves — what we might term placemaking or applied theater today.

Laboratory Theater Comes of Age

Ang Gey Pin FEAST OF YOU SHEN

In order to better understand such a laboratory theater tradition, the Laboratory Theatre Network was created in 2012 with a grant from the Britain’s Leverhulme Trust. Organized by the Centre for Performance Research (CPR), the Network’s partners are Poland’s Grotowski Institute, Denmark’s Odin Teatret Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium and NYC’s Hemispheric Institute. However, the Network is by no means confined to these four institutions. Rather, it has comprised a number of theater- makers and scholars from Europe and North America, including the authors of this post Olya Petrakova and Bryan Brown of Los Angeles-based ARTEL.

Recently a concluding conference for the Trust’s backing of the Network was held in Falmouth, England, from February 27-March 1, 2015.  Entitled “Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: 100 years of fortitude,” the conference aimed to collaboratively assess the history and trends of laboratory theater in order to propose new performance models that lie between mainstream professional theater and the theater/performance studies discipline.

The Network has always been committed to incorporating the Americas into its purview, but travel impediments had kept it from being able to host a conference in the United States. Luckily, this final gathering was able to invite a handful of companies and scholars from the U.S. to more fully round out the North American aspect of the laboratory conversation. Alongside ARTEL, members of SITI Company, Double Edge, and Urban Research Theater were able to attend.

The three days were jam-packed with PowerPoint presentations and group discussions about the various strains of laboratory theater practice arising out of the United Kingdom, the USA, and continental Europe. Discussions often focused on organizational structures, such as horizontal versus hierarchical (Ellen Lauren gave a particularly illuminating presentation of how SITI developed from these tensions), women’s roles in companies, institutions and training (a topic often overlooked but readdressed powerfully in Ali Hodge’s Core Training), legacies and lineages (with a particularly plucky discussion of the rock’n’roll approach to laboratory theater-making in 1970s England), as well as practical application.

Three very different work demonstrations and performances were made by Ang Gey Pin, Moon Fool and Theaterlabor, each highlighting the range of aesthetics emerging from a laboratory tradition while illustrating the depth of commitment to the craft that’s central in a laboratory process.

Moon Full:

Gey Pin and Moon Fool both come from a song-based tradition (think Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards or Gardzienice) but apply their musicality to dramatic action in strikingly different ways. Theaterlabor on the other hand is an ensemble of a completely different breed. More akin to Odin Teatret, Theaterlabor embraces the challenge of new approaches for each project. They have created large open-air spectacles, dance-theater collaborations, art installations, and operas. Their performance of Seance was a darkly comic journey of possibly true personal narratives recounted in a physically compelling style reminiscent of the Russian director Yevgeny Vakhtangov’s work with statuary and gestural structures.

The Network has done much to advance the history and rationale behind the laboratory theater tradition, and as the conference ended, it was clear that despite the numerous variations there are fundamental elements to a company grouped within the tradition: a theater laboratory is an organization committed to training, long term ensemble practice, discovery of new aesthetics, diverse social commitments, and the archiving and sharing of knowledge. Boiling it down, the authors of this post believe a laboratory’s key components are investment, ensemble as family, and the desire to advance knowledge for the field.

Back to Los Angeles

L.A.’s Theatre Movement Bazaar ANTON’S UNCLES

Bringing this back into the world of Los Angeles theater, we can look at a recent Facebook post by L.A.’s intimate theater veteran and television star French Stewart advocating for a “Pro-99” Actors Equity Association (the U.S. actors/stage-managers union) referendum vote to support theaters of up-to-99-seats. (The referendum resulted in a landslide vote of support for L.A.’s small theaters and that result was resolutely ignored by the union.): “99 pays me with beauty. And citizenship. It gives me the opportunity to be an art prospector. I’d like the right to measure my own wealth,” Stewart wrote.

Stewart’s statement sits nicely alongside one made by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo when asked to describe his experiences of touring Europe during the mid-1980s: “Musicians [in the States] weren’t afraid to go out and work really hard for satisfaction more than success. That’s what it came down to – you were working for some other notion of glory than financial.”

The “great reckonings” that have taken place over the last century in the little rooms called theater laboratories are primarily ones of a personal investment to a process and to a family. The work ethic of continual commitment to these twin engines is the search for some other notion of glory outside the conventional terms of experimental or entertainment.

And such commitment has advanced the theatrical culture.  Angelenos who saw SITI’s Rite (performed by Ellen Lauren less than a week after presenting in Falmouth) can attest to how the search for new forms and new engagement continues in the American laboratory tradition.  Equally, the L.A. scene itself produces compelling laboratory work with wildly different aesthetics and end results. A brief list of notable companies includes Theatre Movement Bazaar, Critical Mass Performance Group, Ghost Road Company, Rogue Machine, Bootleg Theater, 24^th Street Theatre, Poor Dog Group, Son of Semele and Sacred Fools.

May the continued legacy of laboratory theater serve the LA theater scene well, as new choices are made for what, how and most importantly why we do what we do.

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The Burn to Write

Michael Phillip Edwards’s Blood returns to the Hollywood Fringe this summer

By Deborah Klugman

Michael Phillip Edwards. Top image: Marie Tomas and Phrederic Semaj in Edwards’s play Blood

Michael Phillip Edwards is a writer, director and performer for stage and screen, and a multiple NAACP Image Awards nominee. His one-act plays, Blood and Sister just closed at Theatre/Theater in Los Angeles. Blood is returning in the Hollywood Fringe this summer.

A supernatural fable, Blood tells the story of an African-American man and an Irish woman whose marriage in Jamaica was officiated by a voodoo priestess. Unbeknownst to them, she’d bound a third party to their union, a succubus called Blood. Now, years later, the sex-starved spirit has risen up, threatening them with death unless they resurrect their now moribund passion.

Sister, a solo show, is a gritty tale set in here-and-now Hollywood. The central character, Denise, is an aspiring actress who makes ends meet by prostitution. There are other characters whose narratives are woven into hers – other hookers or ex hookers and their johns or boyfriends.

Edwards’s play Runt received the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Scotsman Award, establishing him as its first black writer/performer awardee. He wrote and directed I Am Not Sam, which was workshopped in the Stafford Room at the Geffen Playhouse, The Good Negro at the Stella Adler Theatre, Paula Neiman’s Nat Turner, featuring Roger Guenveur Smith at Greenway Court, and Burn, with Ingez Rameau.

Besides Runt, Edwards’s other L.A. stage appearances include Long Bridge Over Deep Waters at the Ford Theater.  He has directed seven feature films, most recently a feature documentary for Netflix,  Haunted Jamaica, as well as the feature film Murder 101, now in wide release and on VOD.

STAGE RAW: Where did the spark for Blood come from?

MICHAEL PHILLIP EDWARDS: I woke up one night and saw a shadow “humping” my nether region. At first I thought I was dreaming but then I realized I wasn’t and shoo’d whatever it was away. I saw it fly into the corner of the roof. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Next day, I catch my wife on a chair putting holy water around the house. She saw it too. After that, I became fascinated with succubus lore, did some research and waited for the inspiration for this play to arrive.

SR: What are the Caribbean/African influences?

MPE: The Caribbean and Africa have a lot of fables and cautionary tales. Blood is me writing an adult version of a cautionary tale while facing the tail end of a marriage I’m no longer a part of. A lot of my films and plays come from an early Jamaican childhood. We lived in a very rural area. My family had a servant named Parson and he would tell my brother and me cautionary tales meant to keep us safe from riptides, flash floods, dense fogs, strangers at night etc.

And my God, were some of those stories scary. Super strong spirits that could carry you out over the ocean and drop you, vicious creatures that lived between the walls. All of these grotesque characters, according to Parson, existed to warn us, help us on our journey. But they didn’t suffer fools. Fail to listen and they’d either eat you or . . . whatever. And over time I’ve come to realize how much that world is trying to communicate with and help us.

An abandoned Caribbean plantation reputed to be haunted.

SR: Are there parallels between these tales and European ones, do you think?

MPE: If you go back to true Grimm’s fairy tales or true Aesop you’ll see it’s nothing new that I’m doing.

Did you intend to write a black comedy or was your focus on writing a drama with dark comic elements?

The short answer is that I thought I was writing a very funny comedy with a cautionary element. Sitting with audiences I saw something much darker than I had intended. 

Were you intending a comment about the relationship between the sexes?

This alpha male wanted to write a play that investigated the possibility that a woman’s sexual appetite is far greater than mine, and the likelihood that my ego could not handle her releasing who she really is.

The two characters are relatively privileged people, rather spoiled to my mind.  Is that intended as a significant component of the story?

It’s important these two have all the free will in the world. I enjoy channeling characters who consider themselves “free.” Having the African-American “He” character not bear the stigma of being downtrodden financially – and yet still have to deal with internal racial issues – was important to me.

How important is the bi-racial element of the story?

It’s important. Both characters are wealthy, accomplished individuals able to have what they want. “He” reveals he wants a white woman because he was told as a child in 1960s Alabama, he could not have this. She reveals an attraction for either black men or anyone she believes to be “a hard warrior type” willing to die for something they believe in. Irish- and African-Americans have a long history of “warrior attraction”; you’ll see me reveal that in plays and films from me yet to come.  I thought I’d play with it here as well.

What does the play say about people generally?

That we are and always will be children to the greater truth that awaits us. These two are children (and to some degree spoiled) but aren’t we all?

The larger point being . . . ?

Enjoy your life, flaws and all, but leave a little space for humility. Respect the unseen potential to get to the next level of truth within and without. 

One critic has commented on the “sprinkling” of Beckett he sees in this play.  Do you agree?

When it comes to “minimalism,” I’m honored to be compared to the author of post-modernism. But my real influence comes directly from Second City in Toronto; When I was 17 years old, watching Mike Myers – before he was on Saturday Night – perform live on stage, commenting on the current events of the day. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, Spaulding Gray are also great influences.

What kind of theater stirs your admiration?

People creating theater out of nothing; idiosyncratic micro-movements without set or props communicating something that was obviously burning inside to come out. Athol Fugard once spoke of watching theater in the poor Apartheid-afflicted townships just outside of Capetown. In a tiny room packed to the rafters, he’d watch two actors on a stage, with only one or two chairs, create some of the most intense theater he had ever seen.  I think the “burning to communicate” is the trick. You don’t need much when a story’s burning to come out.

How do you write?

My writing process is simple. I have an idea, a visual non-linear idea. I wait for it to start burning. Then I sit down and don’t do anything but eat, sleep and write. No matter how long it takes I don’t let anything interrupt. I stay in until the play, screenplay is done.

Erica Gimpel in Edwards’s play Sister

And where did Sister come from?

Sister, like my other one-person play Runt was written in anger. I had a family member fall into prostitution. She was sexually assaulted by an elder family member at a young age and never fully recovered from the incident growing up. I spoke with her while she was on the street. I listened as best I could to some of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard. I listened because most of the family would not. She didn’t stay there long, but the stories she told me stayed with me.

Were you intending to make a social statement with this play?

Not against prostitution. If you’re a liberated woman and it’s your desire to be a free-minded courtesan, so be it. What I’d like to see harshly dealt with here is the failure of the family to protect children from the commonly practiced subhuman habit of incest or in-house sexual assault. This robs children of light. It leaves them broken. It limits the choices the children make when they grow up and then we as a society judge those choices as though we had nothing to do with it.

The play isn’t a sermon on this. Society knows everything under the sun already. Working with the incredibly meticulous Erica Gimpel (who told me she refused to play a victim), I’m proud to have developed with her what I believe to be an organic character study of a woman forced to create her own path to light and free-will, while dealing with the aforementioned circumstance of having her life dimmed in childhood.

Sister isn’t a play about victims. It’s a love letter to Los Angeles and to all the warriors who come here from somewhere else seeking a higher version of themselves. Some with stories like my sister’s, some not.  

What’s next?

Developing a future for Blood and Sister is first. Blood is scheduled for the Hollywood Fringe in June.

I’ve recently delivered a feature documentary I directed to Netflix titled Haunted Jamaica, which is due out in July. I have two new narrative screenplays I’m shopping around. And in the theater world look for a new one person play I’ve completed. Casting that now. The burn continues.

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Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Getting audiences to show up at our theaters.

Reported by Vanessa Cate

L.A. Theater Network is open to anyone and focused on how to advance L.A. theater as a community, both in terms of individual companies and shows, as well as in the larger sense of identity. The question posed at the April 18 meeting at Chekhov studios in Glendale focused on ways to build audiences. Ashley Steed led the discussion, resulting in eight proposals:

1. A Theater Festival to showcase what the city has to offer

Different from the Hollywood Fringe, this “Theaterpalooza” would be a one-day event in which as many theater companies as possible could perform and advertise themselves simultaneously. Despite different theater companies being so spread out across the city, for one day we would be together, reaching both new and seasoned audiences and offering a diverse palate of theatrical enjoyment as well as (hopefully) gaining media coverage – the theater community’s answer to a books festival.

2. A “Fitness Pass” for Theater

The suggested pass would allow theater-goers to see a multiple shows at participating theaters for one charge. “How do we make this pass sexy, accessible, and cheap enough?” Jon Lawrence Rivera posed — along with the additional question of getting enough theater companies to participate.

3. Guerrilla Theater: Bring our theater directly to audiences, rather than the other way around

In a society used to their entertainment being instantly gratifying and low risk from the viewpoint of one’s own couch, does Netflix and Youtube impede audience cultivation? Don’t let it! Jessica Salans urged a proactive “Guerilla Theater” approach that would bring theater scenes to audiences in the public. In coffee shops, at grocery stores, at gas stations – people would be unable to ignore the theater going on around them, and hopefully inspire and encourage them to seek more out for themselves. The contrary effect being that, if the performance is poorly executed or overly aggressive, it might cause audiences to flee in annoyance. How can we use street theater to seduce an audience into becoming more curious about live performance?

4. Make it easier to find us with a strong, streamlined Internet presence.

If non theatrically savvy persons seek entertainment for the evening, how will they look for what to do? There are droves of theater sites, but none is necessarily a “go-to” for the uninitiated where they can find everything that is currently playing. The closest might be Goldstar.com. But this notion was met with displeasure from within the meeting. “We don’t use Goldstar because it devalues theater, and we don’t get the data from ticket sales,” said Ashley Steed.

Deciding on putting focus into one site, whether it be beefing up the theater portion of ExperienceLA.com, or supporting Stage Raw as a flagship for intimate theater, a decision should be made as a community so it might be more clear where to look for what’s playing and other relevant information.

Google and Yelp are still realities we cannot ignore. A strong presence on Yelp can be imperative. As an example, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group gets more business from Yelp than from all other sources combined.

5. Branding

Branding for L.A. Theater has been an issue for some time. Hashtagging #LAThtr has been the best we’ve been able to come up with, and its use since its inception in 2010 has been inconsistent, though promising. If we can all get on board — with either #LAThtr or some other strong, clear branding — and perhaps even with the city’s help, maybe we can make more progress and be viewed as a legitimate and valuable artistic destination for Los Angeles residents and tourists alike.

6. Encourage children and families to attend theater

Though cross-discipline, LACMA was cited for its NexGen project, which provides free admission to children 17 and under with one adult, along with offering other kid-centric activities. This grooms children early on to become art enthusiasts in adulthood who will seek out events and raise children of their own to do the same. This idea, if implemented in some way in theater (as 24^th Street Theater has been doing with L.A. Unified School District), would also encourage families and groups to attend shows, which as Douglas Jacobs explained, is essential for diversifying our audiences.

7. Make L.A. Theater an EVENT

Making theater an event, including discussion, talk-backs, and even check-ins a week later. Creating atmosphere upon arrival, and discussion at the conclusion. But why stop there? “What is your audience doing a week later?” Invite them back for conversation or activity that can broaden the experience and increase retention.

8. Unity

Even in the midst of the passions ignited by AEA and the 99 Seat Plan, one good thing that has resulted in the past several months is an increasing amount of unity and dialogue within the theater community. Many or all of these solutions depend on a united effort, and getting different people and companies involved in what are really our common goals.

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Neil LaBute, on his play The Break of Noon

Trying to Redeem the Human Mess

By Steven Leigh Morris

The meister of messy and cruel romantic relationships, in works such as In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things, Fat Pig and Reasons to Be Pretty, playwright, screenwriter and film director Neil LaBute shines a spotlight on atrocious behavior. For this, he’s often described as a misanthrope, i.e. that being the literary stepchild of David Mamet, LaBute writes from the assumption that human advancement stems from a toxic brew of amorality and immorality.

That is, of course a judgment, and LaBute insists he tries not to judge, but rather to examine the darkest recesses of his central characters – an aim consistent with ancient Greek scribes. Is Sophocles a misanthrope because Oedipus the King murders his dad and marries his own mother? Is Aeschylus a misanthrope because Clytemnestra murders her husband in cold blood? Is Euripides a misanthrope because Clytemnestra’s son and daughter, Orestes and Electra, murder their mother in the same pool of frigid blood?

In these plays, and in LaBute’s, nobody really wins, because the game itself is so toxic. The only victor is the fellow who finds a different playing field.

The reception to LaBute’s plays has often been mixed while he’s maintained a solid cadre of fans. His 2010 play, The Break of Noon, however, is one of the few of his works to be almost universally panned by critics; it premiered at MCC Theater in New York, and that production, directed by Jo Bonney, transferred to the Geffen Playhouse in L.A.

George Villas in the City Garage production of The Break of Noon (Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein)

At its core, the play bears a striking resemblance to Moliere’s Tartuffe, which is perhaps what captured the imagination of French director Frederique Michel, who has re-staged the production at Santa Monica’s City Garage. (It plays at the troupe’s Bergamot Station theater through May 24.)

In a sequence of mostly two-character scenes, the play focuses on a protagonist named John Smith, who is the lone survivor of an office shooting and, as such, becomes convinced that God intervened on his behalf, and that his purpose in life is to spread the holy word of his personal savior. John Smith is not exalted in any way. He is, in fact, a mediocrity and an adulterer, who, in the midst of the carnage, found the presence of mind to take a cellphone picture of the shooter (instead of actually helping any of the wounded all around him), and exploit that snapshot for financial gain, and fame, and the furtherance of his newfound religious calling. Nobody believes in his calling except himself – not his wife, his mistress or the police. He is, in short, an unsympathetic protagonist who stumbles onto a meaning-of-life derived largely from his own hypocrisy and turpitude. If it were more jokey, and John Smith were obviously a con-man, this play might be as popular as Tartuffe. Instead, by design, in what LaBute has called one of his most introspective plays, John Smith, an otherwise unremarkable man,  believes in his salvation and takes it just as seriously as his responsibility to credit The Man Upstairs for it. This is probably why the play is so unpopular.
 

Gerard Depardieu as Tartuffe

 If you watch Gerard Depardieu’s almost moribund, earnest Tartuffe, you’ll get a sense of where Bonney’s staging may have gone awry – a knotty, introspective potential that disappeared in the flash and pace of Bonney’s staging.

Michel is famously inured to being overly worried about whether her productions are popular (a predilection she shares with the author), and her production is both more lugubrious, more grandiose and more terrifying than Bonney’s. Like Depardieu’s Tartuffe, it follows not a villain but a man genuinely amazed by his destiny. His conversion is not a con – the stock-in-trade  Tartuffe model. Rather, it’s the earnest struggle of a shallow man and, by extension, a merciless assessment of religion in the hands of simpletons.

Detroit-born LaBute is the son of a hospital receptionist and a long-haul truck driver. After growing up in Spokane, Washington, he studied theater at Brigham Young University, where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He spoke with Stage Raw before heading off to London to speak with producers about a new project there. This interview took place about a week before the City Garage production opened.

Villas and Kristina Drager (Paul M. Rubenstein)

STAGE RAW:  The Break of Noon is so different from most of your plays. Where did it come from?

NEIL LABUTE I had grown up around faith and faith-based questions most of my life. I went to a non-denominational church when I was a kid, then I went to an undergraduate private school [Brigham Young University]. I think questions of morality and faith and all of those intangibles that we deal with are interesting.

It struck me as an idea of someone who survived a catastrophic moment like an office shooting. I didn’t want to do something, where what he was saying wasn’t true, at least not in his eyes That doesn’t mean [God’s intervention] is what happened, but that’s what he thought happened, that he was saved, and set aside. He took a picture and thought it would be useful for his word that God wanted him to get out.

I find that fundamentally, and it’s not just an American preoccupation, but faith becomes such a big part of people’s lives, but they’re really wanting something tangible, yet faith is based on thin-air.

 So I wanted it to be something like a Mystery play, following an Everyman, moving towards clarity or self-revelation. So taking something like a Mystery play and putting it in the context of something as American as mass shootings, that was interesting to me.

SR: You wanted him to be earnest?

NL: He doesn’t even understand why he’s been singled out. Why would it be me. There were far better people, more faithful people, more religious. He ultimately feels it’s not his place to question. Everybody else questions, of course – his wife, his mistress, the police.

SR: Did you set out to write a religious play?

NL: What I didn’t want to do was create a play that was about religion – there’s no other religious figure in the play – I wanted it to be temporal, showing his connection to a lawyer, a policemen or the child of someone who died in there. And so, I wanted to approach it in a way I hadn’t seen previously on stage. More about the mess you make when you’re trying to clean up a mess.

SR: In so many of your plays, and all the messes you create for your characters, you seem to be winking at the, well, mess. This one feels very different in that regard.

NL: There wasn’t too much of a wink in my approach to it. Honestly, it was a person who was baffled by the circumstances he finds himself in. Oh, God, why did you take a picture? But you did, and it’s worth so much money, and it’s something you could use if you do have a message to get out.

There was the reveal in the final monologue: If I’m honest with myself, he figures, I was one of the ones who was the catalyst for this [mass killing]. That this person who did this, we pushed him, we bullied him. I may have been the catalyst.

Yet I think it’s representative of my life as a playwright to keep asking questions that I don’t have the answers to. I worked on this play, re-wrote it, and I still don’t know if I got it right. Did I create a perfect play. God, no. I know that. Watchable? Has it gotten the right production yet? I don’t know.

One of the questions, I like that part of the job, I like asking questions. I like wrestling with fundamental things like right and wrong and God and faith, and I think that makes certain theater-goers less than comfortable.

Why is this unsavory protagonist the one who’s going to tell me about God? No matter how it’s crafted, you never know how much you’re going to displease everyone. Occasionally you do, maybe that’s the job! There’s nothing you shouldn’t wrestle with.

SR: Whoever said that a protagonist has to be likable? Is Willy Loman likable?

NL: Like, dislike, the key is, they have to be interesting. That’s the path for me. They can be difficult and disarming, but the best ones still compel you to ask are they going to pull themselves out of their mistakes? My job is to write a character who holds your interest.

Katrina Nelson and Villas (Paul M. Rubenstein)

 SR: Was there much development work in the first production?

NL: In New York I was there all the time, re-arranging. Of all my plays, this one is the black sheep of the family. You have a place in your heart, you say, that was the toughest kid to bring up. You love them in a different zone.

I’m adept about writing about “the troubled couple.” But I’ve got to write about what interests me, whether people love it or not.

SR: Are you involved much with the production at City Garage?

NL: Not really. I worked with them on a [recent re-staging of LaBute’s first play] Filthy Talk, and they have a particular approach. If they want my help I’ll help them and jump in.

SR: Do you take a different approach to your comedies from plays like The Break of Noon?

NL: I try not to judge the characters.. I’m obviously not a documentarian, I create fictive worlds. Within those, I create psychologies that make a certain amount of sense, but I don’t really feel judgmental. Although I’ve said things like, it’s funny that people think I’m a misogynist when I think I’m much harder on the men than on the women. I don’t go in saying, oh I hate this guy. Actors have said that, and I say I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know why you signed on. I’m a dramatist, I have to find ways to justify what my characters do.

In The Break of Noon, I was trying to be honest, what would I do if I found myself in this crazy situation. What would I do? And not having a jaundiced view, nor a religious view, what would someone do who has given not too much thought to the beyond and the spiritual and is suddenly confronted with this?

In [LaBute’s 2014] The Money Shot, I found comedy to be very difficult to do. What is it that makes people laugh? That’s your main goal. Those characters were devised for maximum laughter, not for depth of feeling or the worry of getting the emotionality right. The last question is always, is this funny? That’s a different game.

As singular as the people in Noises Off can be, you still want them to be human beings.

The Break of Noon is being performed by City Garage at Bergamot Station Building T1, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 24. Sundays pay-what-you-can at the door. (310) 453-9939, www.citygarage.org.

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Whoever Won is Almost Beside the Point

The First-Evah Stage Raw Theater Awards

By Steven Leigh Morris

Daisy Eagan, on the shoulders of Michael Shepperd, hoisting the Pro99 banner. (Photo by Tim Norris)

How odd it is to throw an awards ceremony where whoever wins accolades doesn’t matter much – or at least as much as it otherwise might.

Through an odd confluence of events, largely out of own control, the purpose of the first Stage Raw Theater Awards on April 13 at Los Angeles Theatre Center (hosted by Celebration Theatre, Alec Mapa and Parvesh Cheena, in partnership with LATC) metamorphosed into a galvanizing party, a rally of sorts, for the Pro-99 movement, whose theaters have been widely belittled as a nuisance to serious-thinking professionals by the actors/stage managers’ union, Actors Equity Association. The union has offered a promulgated edict (in the guise of a democratic vote) to eliminate the availability of L.A.’s biggest arts and culture incubator, The 99-Seat Theater Plan. The political rally aspect made sense, given how the Stage Raw Theater Awards continue the L.A. Weekly Theater Awards’ tradition of honoring the best work in theaters of up-to-99-seats.

Stasha et al on the runway (Photo by Tim Norris)

In his remarks from the stage, Stage Raw critic Bill Raden thanked AEA for “their well-intended, if deluded proposal to pull the plug on what is unarguably the most vibrant and daring if still emergent intimate stage scene in the nation has unwittingly taken what had been a loose community of common self-interest and galvanized it into a movement.”

The question of the night was not “Will you still love me tomorrow?” but rather, “Will we be standing tomorrow?”

And with the conflicting emotions of confidence and dismay accompanying that question, the ceremony acknowledged the original plaintiffs in the room – union actors who, in 1987, had the courage to sue their own union for the right to create art that stirred them, for less-than-union rates on L.A.’s intimate stages, after their union had told them “No, you can’t.”

The consequent 1989 out-of-court settlement that so peeved the union essentially said, “Yes, you can, but nobody should be making money off this.” And that’s pretty much how things unfolded – hundreds of theaters generating money-losing productions that fueled local economies, propelled the careers of local playwrights, and generated many subsequent, Equity contracts for actors – for over a quarter of a century.

Co-hosts Alec Mapa and Parvesh Cheena feeling angelic. (Photo by Tim Norris)

Representing what he satirically called “the old guard,” which also included Tom Ormeny, Maria Gobetti, Allan Miller, Salome Jens and Joe Stern – Gary Grossman passed a torch of leadership to newly anointed Queen of the Angels Rebecca Metz, one of many spokespeople and rabble-rousers for the Pro-99 movement. Metz thanked feminism for stirring her ire upon being accused of hysteria, and for people telling her she that she doesn’t really know what’s in her best interests. She was, of course, referring to AEA’s pronouncements of why the 99-Seat Plan needs to disappear.

Career Achievement recipient Jon Lawrence Rivera spoke passionately about the tradition of his Playwrights Arena (dedicated to L.A.-based scribes) and the need to continue providing opportunities in L.A. theater for artists of color.

Two weeks before the event, only 60 tickets had been sold, which certainly gave us pause. That’s when Tracey Paleo, Kevin Delin, Gregory Crafts and Marc Wheeler kicked into social media overdrive on Stage Raw’s behalf. Aside from the event being live-streamed on Twitter, trending regionally and generating over 2 million impressions, a mere three hours before the theater doors opened for the public, the event numerically sold out, eventually over-reaching the theater’s 500-seat capacity.

Presenter French Stewart with Michael Franco (Photo by Tim Norris)

To be critical, and we must, the room was too hot, the bar-line was excruciatingly slow, the bar then closed before the show was over, and we ran out of Kimchi’s great post-show food.

A mere 60 minutes before the house opened for the start of the show, the ornate Stage-Raw-branding chandelier (to be suspended over the otherwise black stage) got stuck for 20-minutes in the elevator between the second and third floors – a little disconcerting given the now heaving lobby. LATC tech “Wayne” was unperturbed. He said that gave him a chance to dust it off and to repair its electrical lines. The house needed to open 10-minutes late while the chandelier was being hung. At 7:30 p.m., a switch got flipped, and all the twinkly lights came on. It felt like a kind of miracle, representing the larger miracle that was unfolding in the lobby. As we opened the theater doors, I was told that a New York Times staff reporter was in the house. “Surreal” doesn’t even begin to describe that sequence of events.

This is the theater. Our theater. How it falls apart, and how it comes together, is anybody’s guess.

Michael Shepperd and The Celebration Theatre. (Photo by Tim Norris)

 The Awards jury included Bill Raden, Mayank Keshaviah, Jenny Lower, Pauline Adamek, Deborah Klugman, Myron Meisel, Neal Weaver, Steven Leigh Morris, Lovell Estell III, Paul Birchall, Terry Morgan and Bob Verini

For more coverage on the awards, read KCRW, American Theatre Magazine, and BroadwayWorld.com.

The Awards Recipients:

Fight Choreography

Ahmed Best, Backyard, Echo Theater Company

Video/Projection Design

Hana S. Kim, The Ugly One, Ensemble Studio Theatre/L.A.

Queen of the Angels

Rebecca Metz

Adaptation

Aaron Posner, Stupid Fucking Bird, Circle X Theatre Company and Theatre @ Boston Court

Playwriting

Benjamin Brand, Taste, Sacred Fools Theater Company

Sound Design

Christopher Moscatiello, Penelope, Rogue Machine

Career Achievement

Jon Lawrence Rivera

Lighting Design

Pablo Santiago, The Brothers Size, The Fountain Theatre

Costume Design

 Jenny Foldenauer, Everything You Touch, Theatre @ Boston Court and Rattlestick

Playwrights Theater

Set Design

DeAnne Millais, Taste, Sacred Fools Theatre Company

Production Design

Everything You Touch, Theatre @ Boston Court and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Two Person Performance

Donal Thoms-Cappello and Chris L. McKenna, Taste, Sacred Fools Theater Company

Supporting Female Performance

 Kelli Anderson, One in the Chamber, 6140 Productions/Theatre Planners

Supporting Male Performance

Joel Polis, My Name Is Asher Lev, The Fountain Theatre

Male Comedy Performance

Hugo Armstrong, The Behavior of Broadus, Burglars of Hamm and Sacred Fools

Theater Company

Female Comedy Performance

Ann Noble, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia, LGBT’s Davidson/Valenti Theatre

Solo Performance

Ben Moroski, The Wake, Theatre Asylum

Comedy Ensemble

The Ugly One, Ensemble Studio Theatre/L.A.

Ensemble

Wedding Band, The Anteaus Company

Original Music

Matt Almos, Brendan Milburn and Burglars of Hamm, The Behavior of Broadus,

Burglars of Hamm and Sacred Fools Theater Company

Choreography

Ken Roht, The Behavior of Broadus, Burglars of Hamm and Sacred Fools Theater

Company

Leading Female Performance

Cara Pifko, O Réjane, Bootleg Theatre

Leading Male Performance

David Selby, A Delicate Balance, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble

Musical Direction John Ballinger, The Behavior of Broadus, Burglars of Hamm and Sacred Fools Theater Company

Comedy Direction Award

Stuart Gordon, Taste, Sacred Fools Theater Company

Direction Award

Jessica Kubzansky, Everything You Touch, Theater @ Boston Court and Rattlestick

Playwrights Theater

Musical of the Year Award

The Behavior of Broadus, Burglars of Hamm and Sacred Fools Theater Company

Revival Production Of The Year Award (of a 20th- or 21st-century work)

Wedding Band, The Antaeus Company

Production Of The Year Award

Everything You Touch, Theatre @ Boston Court and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

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Dress to the Ninety-Nines!

Answers to frequently asked questions about the upcoming Stage Raw Theater Awards

By Steven Leigh Morris

Joel Polis, Anna Khaja and Jason Karasev in The Fountain Theatre’s Stage Raw Theater Awards-nominated production, MY NAME IS AHSER LEV. (Photo by Ed Krieger)

Question: What are you talking about?

Answer: The first-ever Stage Raw Theater Awards, co-presented by The Celebration Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and co-hosted  by Alec Mapa and Parvesh Cheena, are around the corner — Monday evening, April 13, at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A. Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 7:30, post-show catered reception from 9 to 10:30.  

Question: Why should I care?

Answer: Because it’ll be a great party, which we all desperately need, and because you care about the great, embattled 99-seat theater in L.A. All of these awards go to theaters of up to 99-seats, just like the L.A. Weekly Theater Awards, which these have replaced. However, the jury is much the same.

Question: You mean, there are NOMINEES?

Answer: Yes, The nominees list is here. Our jury was seeing hundreds of shows all through the calendar year of 2014. There were heated debates over who should be on the list, and this is what they came up with. 

Question: Okay, I get that someone who is named on the list is a nominee. But who’s a nominee in ensemble or revival categories?  

Answer: That’s a very good question. The nominees for ensemble awards are all actors listed in the program of the nominated production.

For Best Musical, Revival, and Production of the Year awards: nominees include producers, directors, actors, writers, stage managers, choreographers, designers, and composers listed in the program.

For the Production Design award, nominees include producers, directors and designers listed in the program.

Question: What do I wear?

Dress to the ninety-nines.

Question: What does “dress to the ninety-nines” mean?

Answer: I don’t know. We’ll see on April 13.

Question: How much are tickets?

Answer: $25 + a processing fee, that includes entertainment and the catered buffet dinner. You can purchase tickets here.

Question: Do nominees get in for free?

Answer: No. We set the ticket price at a level we figured was affordable for the community, and would allow us to put on the best show and best spread possible. Stage Raw is a pioneering digital venture just over one-year old. We believe that our community deserves the best we can offer, and we want to guarantee that we are able to continue providing local theater reviews and innovative content for years to come. Every couple that buys tickets to the theater awards ensures one review of a 99-seat theater by one of Stage Raw’s qualified and dedicated critics. The Stage Raw Theater Awards this year are a celebration and a Pro99 rallying cry, and an evening celebrating the very best that 99-seat theater has to offer. Even if you’re unable to attend, please consider donating to Stage Raw, so we can become your destination for L.A. theater.

Question: I’m an actor and a nominee, and I just lost my job. I care barely pay my rent, let alone pay $25 + processing fee for the awards show, even if the price is fair. What can I do? 

Answer: We have no intention of turning away any nominees for reason of financial hardship. Please contact me or our marketing director Shelley Leopold,  and we’ll work something out so you can attend.

Donal Thoms-Capello and Chris L. McKenna in TASTE at Sacred Fools Theater Company. (Photo by Jessica Sherman.)

Question: Can I pay at the door?

Answer: Yes, but they’ll stick you with a $10 “tax.” Believe me, Stage Raw will see none of that revenue. To avoid that, buy your tickets early.

Question: What if I have other questions?

Answer: Feel free to contact me at: steven@stageraw.com

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Photo credit of Charlotte Miller (above): Jody Christopherson

Playwright Rising

Charlotte Miller and her new play, Thieves

By Deborah Klugman

Samantha Soule (background) and Sarah Shaefer (foreground) in Charlotte Miller’s THIEVES (Photo by Ryan Miller)

Playwright Charlotte Miller has been affiliated with Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre, an off-Broadway company which nurtures developing playwrights; Weathervane, a financing company whose projects have so far been movies; and Rising Phoenix Rep, a coalition organization for theater professionals. Miller’s play Thieves opened March 18, and is one of three plays by female playwrights commissioned by Rising Phoenix Rep and Weathervane Productions. Her other plays include Raising Jo, The Magic Club, Favorites, Fur and Barn.  The latter was produced by Rising Phoenix last year. Miller was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She moved to New York to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from where she graduated in 2003. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

STAGE RAW: When did you decide that you wanted to be a playwright?

CHARLOTTE MILLER: I decided to start writing when I was about 22 or 23. I had gotten out of school for acting a couple of years before and was really frustrated with everything about the industry.I was interviewing with agents and auditioning for plays that I didn’t like and waiting tables. I would get an audition and blow it because I didn’t like the writing, or I would blow it because I liked the writing and I would get too worked up to do a good job. It was a kind of dark, terrible time because I wasn’t doing the work I had moved to New York to do.

SR: What was your first writing experience?

CM: I started writing as a sort of private outlet and then I took a 6 week class with this amazing playwright named Brett C. Leonard. He was that perfect combination of tough and encouraging and really didn’t pull any punches when it came to the work. Then I studied with Lucy Thurber at Primary Stages for a little while and ended up assisting her for a couple of productions.That’s where I learned what diligent playwrights do in rehearsal. Lucy is a remarkable teacher and writer. She has such a breathtaking work ethic, but she also balances that with a sense of play. She is so generous with actors, with everyone really. I think that those two teachers, their influence, were the experiences that led me to the water with writing.

Cast of THIEVES clockwise around table from far left: Samantha Soule, Sarah Shaefer, MacLeod Andrews, John Wojda (standing), Chris Bellant, Addie Johnson. (Photo by Ryan Miller)

SR: Do you identify yourself as a woman playwright?

CM: I do identify as a woman playwright., but it’s not something I think about when an idea is gestating.

Is feminism vital to your work, do you think?

I think it would be an honor to be considered a feminist playwright but I don’t know if people think that my work answers the right questions to be considered so. But I like being a woman, although I find it deeply frustrating sometimes. I write strong women, I think that comes through.

In what way does being a woman impact on your work?

I don’t have the same experience of the world as men do. I could write a war movie with violence and all male characters – but it would be from my perspective, as a woman. I think it would be impossible for my gender to have no impact on my writing. Moving through the world as a woman requires a lot of adaptability.

Sarah Shaefer and Samantha Soule (Photo by Ryan Miller)

How do you get your ideas?

I just have something that crawls around in my guts and I write it because I feel like I have to.

In creating your characters, how much is personal experience and how much imagination?

It’s the two things woven together. Sometimes it’s familiar characters in unfamiliar circumstances. Sometimes I write about people that I think have nothing to do with me but then as I bring them closer I realize that they’re always a part of me. There’s always some truth to what I write, something that’s emotionally autobiographical. Some things are more literal than others but for the most part it’s a fifty-fifty split.

In broad terms, what is Thieves about?

Thieves tells the story of three estranged siblings and their father reuniting after the death of their mother. It takes place in East Texas, which is a place dear to my heart. I spent a lot of my childhood there. It’s a family play, about why families need each other, how they damage each other, and why they can’t seem to stay apart.

Addie Johnson and Samantha Soule (Photo by Ryan Miller)

How did you get involved with Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre?

I worked at Rattlestick as an assistant and then I had a couple of readings of my scripts. The people there were immediately welcoming and they made it clear from the beginning that they cared about my work. I’ve grown up with them in a way so it’s nice to head west with them like this, as an artistic family, along with Rising Phoenix Rep and Weathervane.

What playwrights do you like?

I love a lot of playwrights. Some heroes are Pinter, Chekhov, Albee, Tennessee Williams, and Irene Fornes, Annie Baker, Sarah Ruhl, anybody in the 13P crowd is awesome . . . I like a lot of different stuff, I love everything from Richard Foreman to Beckett to O’Neill to Genet… I’m all over the place.

Obviously I have a deep love for Lucy and Brett’s work, I love Daniel Talbott’s writing. . (Daniel Talbott is artistic director of Rising Phoenix Rep. His play Slipping was produced here in Los Angeles in 2013.) He’s directing Thieves. He’s a true Renaissance man. He tells brutal and beautiful stories whether he’s directing or writing or both, he’s magic.

Do you have a favorite play or plays?

I don’t. There’s too much out there. It’s always changing and it depends on what I’m working on or where I am in my own development, I guess. Some plays I carry around for structure and some I carry around for the feeling. I had a year where I needed Uncle Vanya close and another [when] it was The Maids. At the end of the day both of those plays are equally important to me, so I can’t call any play my favorite.

Thieves performs at El Portal through April 4. (818) 508-4200, www.elportaltheatre.com Read Stage Raw’s review here.

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A Union Divided

View from L.A.: Actors’ Equity Association members march to protect the area’s intimate theaters from their own union

Compiled by Stage Raw staff

Benjamin Burdick regroups the marchers outside the North Hollywood Metro station

Responding to Actors’ Equity Association’s recently announced “promulgated” plan to require minimum wage payment to union actors for rehearsals and performances in L.A.’s theaters of up to 99-seat theaters, an estimated 350-400 actors marched from Crown City Theatre on Camarillo up Lankershim to AEA, where they had a rally led by Frances Fisher, Benjamin Burdick and Jeff Perry, defending the right of actors to work pro bono in non-profit, money-losing theaters if they find intrinsic rewards doing so. French Stewart joined Fisher and Perry at the start of the march for a press conference for TV reporters that was held on Lankershim at the bottom of the Zombie Joe’s Underground block. The march began at about 3:30 or so and was strung out along Lankershim for blocks and caused a mid-afternoon traffic jam from passing rubberneckers. Many cars honked horns in support. The actual rally on the sidewalks in front of and across the street from AEA began around 4 p.m. and lasted around an hour.

The union insists that minimum wage is the law of the land, and that it can no longer tolerate the abuse of its membership by producers in theater companies where only the actors don’t get paid.

Rally in front of AEA

Opponents of Equity’s new plan say that the union’s argument is a ruse to avoid having to administrate the current, cumbersome 99-Seat Plan, which brings them no fees but which provides a unique garden of creative opportunity for its members. They argue that, under the current plan, participants beyond actors also volunteer and even lose money, and to suddenly impose a minimum wage standard in an era of exponentially rising rents and production costs will diminish the quality and innovation in those theaters by prying the majority of union actors from these theaters. Furthermore, the argument goes, there’s no proof that those theaters impede the availability of whatever limited contract work is out there, as Equity has suggested. (Over 60% of the area’s union actors participated in the current 99-Seat Plan over the past five years.) Another argument is that the producers being demonized by the union are more often than not Equity actors who used the current plan to form theater companies comprised of their peers and colleagues. This last point explains the members’ fury that appears to have caught the union off-guard.

Both Equity and the actors agreed in the settlement of the plan in 1989 that the theaters should be restricted to 99-seats in order to avoid financial exploitation of performers by producers, and to allow actors to work pro bono at such theaters for token reimbursements — an arrangement that has never been challenged legally. 

For an op ed on related issues, read here.

And for a contrary view, read here.

What follows are excerpts from the march:

Rick Steadman outside Crown City Theatre

“I think if this proposal actually does go through the way that it is written, there will be very little small, intimate theater taking place here in L.A., and that which does happen will be small casts or non-equity, and it would be to the detriment of the entire L.A. cultural scene.” — Rick Steadman AEA member and former member of Theatre of NOTE

“Last fall I was in a show [Absolutely Filthy] that began at my home now, Sacred Fools, and we won a New York Fringe. That’s right New York, one of our little shows won. And that same show also went to contract at South Coast Rep and is still moving forward today. And I can also directly link being seen in 99 seat shows and getting hired for on-camera work — directly. Absolutely directly. [But that’s] not the reason that I do that at all. I do it because it’s a place where I can originate roles in exciting new plays. So I get to play parts I could never get to play in shows that would never be produced anywhere else. I have friends who make their living doing on-camera work, and who have told me they are jealous of me because of the amazing 99 seat theater that I’ve gotten to be in.” –Curt Bonnem, AEA member, and member of Sacred Fools Theatre Company

Robert Stoccardo outside Crown City Theatre

“I worked at in New York. I came out here, I wrote a show, I immediately got produced by Artists Confronting AIDS, and then I joined NOTE. And if you told me that Ed Harris and Amy Madigan could be at NOTE Theater watching Hardhat Area by Leon Martell and I was three feet away performing in front of them — this is the most exciting night of my life. This is the most exciting incubator in America, and to destroy all this talent, all these playwrights — their ability and their right to work and create — is something that is dystopian and almost sounds like it is coming from the Tea Party.” –Robert Stoccardo — AEA member, and member of Theatre of NOTE

“If this 99 seat plan has any kind of changes like have been proposed by Actors Equity, it will kill the 20 theaters that we have in the NoHo Arts District along with the rest of the other wonderful theaters that we have in L.A.”–Nancy Bianconi, NoHo Arts District

“I’m proud to be with you here today. I had a high school teacher who was crazy and she told us, ‘Find a play. Decide who you want to work with. Go to the cafeteria. You guys, go into the hallway.’ Then I went to Illinois State University, and I met Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich and Terry Kinney and Gary Sinease, etcetera, etcetera. Nine of us started the Steppenwolf Theatre in 1976, and we worked for no money for four years. I’ve looked back a million times since then, you guys. It was the allowance, the lesson, the beauty, the crucial nature of self-determination as an artist that has kept me alive. So many times. Unemployed. Looking for work. The ability to teach a class. The ability to cook up a play and do it with my daughter right now at the Odyssey. Work. Volunteer for five months out of love for our art and Eugene O’Neill and feel I can still grow. To have that self-determination in my hands, a proposal that would try to shut off the spigot of us keeping our souls alive is doomed. It’s not going to work. It’s ridiculous. It is not going to work. I have heard we have 6,500 L.A. County members, and if 99 percent of us vote now, and people who have never lived in L.A. overrule it and say that it’s gone, then we’ll cook up something else. We won’t call it 99, we’ll call it We Love Theater and We’re Doing It — Fuck You. The NEA visited Steppenwolf when we were two-years-old, and we listened and we were sucking up as best we could for funding, and John Malkovich said, ‘I have one thing to say. I hope you give us money, I think we deserve it. But I don’t give a fuck if you do, because we’re gonna still do this. Do you hear? We’re gonna still do it.'” — Jeff Perry, co-founder of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Jeff Perry, Frances Fisher, French Stewart (and unidentified woman) speak with reporters on Lankershim Blvd. at the beginning of the march on AEA headquarters.

“We are a large group of Actors Equity members and theater patrons, people who love 99-seat theater. We are telling Equity that this proposal to shut down 99-seat theater as written is not right for us in this L.A. theater community. We all want change, but not this change. And this demonstration is to let the world know what we’re doing. They’re imposing a minimum wage in this proposal on actors, which sounds good on paper but is unsustainable in the 99-seat theater plan. The 99 seat plan was never created for actors to make money. It was created as an incubation ground for new playwrights, large casts, designers, directors to all come together and ply their craft so their ready to go do television and film and whatever. We all come from the theater, and when we’re not working at paying jobs, we hunger, we yearn to get back on stage, where it’s us and the audience. And the collaboration, there’s nothing like it in theater.”–Frances Fisher, AEA Member

The video below, consisting of more testimonies in support of voting NO on Equity’s non-binding member-referendum,  was produced by Pro99.com, which sponsored the rally.

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INTERVENTION

5 minutes of drama in response to Robert O’Hara’s “Barbecue”

Michał Szymaniak

11.03.2015

CHARACTERS:

FIT ELIZA

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

FIT ELIZA

hey guys it’s me again. we only have five minutes so let me get you up to speed real quick. in your comments you often ask how you can get a figure like mine where I get all the energy I graciously share with you on my vlog how to be happy and basically have a good cool and healthy life. so my advice is take matters into your own hands. if you’re unhappy about your parents not being with it not understanding english and because their stuff’s all old and their furniture’s not exactly modern-looking so that you’re embarrassed to invite your classmates over and basically because your parents don’t exactly look like something out of one of those glossy mags that’ll put you back two figures in zlotys and more like something off the back page of a daily the one with ads that go looking to give away wall unit in good condition

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

elizka you mind getting your mother some water? and maybe you could you know untie me while you’re at it huh? cause I feel stupid all tied up like this like some loser and say what you will but this kind of cramps my personal freedom of movement and ability to get around.

FIT ELIZA

just a mo mom I’m talking to people on the internet right now. in a sec I’ll show you five ways to help you stop being ashamed of your not-quite-keeping-up-with-the-times parents who most likely do not look as good as kanye west and kim kardashian. if you ever felt a pain deep inside your little red heart because your parents are the people sitting on that musty couch in their slippers and watching game-shows this tutorial is for you. join me on a five-step intervention that will change your life for the better naturally. so this is my mom who’s been struggling with a few extra pounds for some time now. as you can see helen of troy she ain’t. tell them something about yourself mom.

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

do I talk into this? this is the camera right? so I’m the mom of my daughter ania

FIT ELIZA

eliza mom eliza. how many times do I have to tell you I changed my plain-jane name into something that sounds more exotic

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

yes dear yes eliza. and my husband and eliza’s father left me which as a coworker of mine later told me was caused by my low self-confidence

FIT ELIZA

mom I think we’re all impressed by your self-promotion skills and knack for pr but

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

and I’m also struggling with a few extra pounds which is why

FIT ELIZA

which is why you’ll gladly submit to the special therapy I designed for you

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

exactly I don’t know I’m not entirely sure I want to be like you know straight out of a magazine I think I’ve changed my mind you know

FIT ELIZA

what magazine. magazines can’t make you straight. never mind here we go. I’m all excited from all the emotion. I have the first step behind me guys. namely immobilizing the patient because I’ll be calling you the patient for now mom. black duct tape works best. ropes or cables are also good but I recommend duct tape. I used supertape brand it only cost two zlotys and there’s some left over for next time or some other time. available at your local newsstand. how are you doing mom? everything ok is the tape keeping you stuck?

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

it’s a little tight here you know I think this isn’t the best kind of tape you could buy. I know that being a mother I should be willing to make sacrifices for my daughter and for everyone generally as per the saying if they smite you on your right cheek you should let them tape you to a chair

FIT ELIZA

you’re never satisfied never happy and then you’re surprised when dad walks out on you. treat this as a game mom. no more grumbling. step two namely a good honest talk to make the patient realize that unfortunately they’re the ones who brought this state of utter neglect and totally being stripped of any chance to have an intriguing life upon themselves. start with a simple question. why would you say your husband and my father walked out on you.

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

because I lack self-confidence for one. because I’m always unhappy about something that’s two. I’m also fat and out-of-fashion. I’m fat because I don’t eat well and I’m out-of-fashion because I have no taste and no opinion about anything actually. because I was simply raised to believe that it’s better not to stick your head out because that’s bound to get you killed raped and then thrown in jail for good measure.

FIT ELIZA

as you guys can see this is a hopeless case. good thing you have me. now let’s move to step three of our lifestyle makeover namely changing the eating habits. you go to the fridge the pantry or wherever you keep your food and if it’s under the bed heh-heh you can go there. bring all the patient’s favorite food products. in our case it’s mainly animal products tongues knuckles brains yuck. don’t you know hasn’t anyone told you that eating animals isn’t just out of fashion but terribly unhealthy. throw it all in the garbage render it or better still process it all back into the animals from which it was made and set it free.

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

so what am I supposed to eat now. what if we have guests what do I serve them?

FIT ELIZA

first of all the last time we had guests over was when the priest came caroling a year ago. second here you go mom pills meds supplements tablets. it’s all for you to take for breakfast lunch and dinner. remember the rule is eat little but often. take them one after the other

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

I don’t want to. you’re being very mean to me no gratitude for letting you out into this world and there’s no way I’m swallowing all those chemicals.

FIT ELIZA

a pill for sagging skin a pill for wrinkles a pill for lack of taste and one to change your personality a pill for excess abdominal flab

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

I resent that. the excess flab on my abs is your fault just so you know. I got fat after giving birth.

FIT ELIZA

here you go eat all this in small portions and swallow slowly. no? okay fine I’ll stuff it in your mouth don’t clam up don’t make a scene don’t act childish. very nice. now wash it down so you don’t choke.

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

what have I done to deserve this what?

FIT ELIZA

you fed me the same things when I was a kid nothing but pork chops and poor ground-up animals and carcinogenic preservatives so I don’t know what your problem is. meanwhile with a better future for everybody in mind I’ve become your personal trainer and for the money you’ve been putting away out of your measly supermarket cashier’s salary for the past twenty years

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

the money I was putting away to go to the sanitarium in ciechocinek

FIT ELIZA

for that selfsame money I bought you a lifetime supply of healthy organic diet food that will get your weight down and give you a taste of the real world in the process because the diet I designed for you is modeled on angelina jolie’s. step four namely why are you crying mom is it because you’re happy

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

but I really wanted to go to ciechocinek see the world maybe meet someone it’s not like I’m that old

FIT ELIZA

no need to cry mom they’ll be tearing down your ciechocinek to make way for a shopping mall any day now

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

and my own daughter’s ashamed of me I’m a hopeless mother they should put me in some museum for mothers who are too old to live like normal people I dunno they should move me to some reservation or container town. I’ll never be good-looking healthy and interesting enough for you to show me off to your classmates or invite me to a party and say look what a hip mother I have so open to young people she’ll even do shots and snort lines and go to raves with you

FIT ELIZA

you’re not a hopeless mother god all this is going to get me crying like this was some soap you’re my mother plain and simple what can I do only why don’t you want to be fit and slim new and fresh reinvented pampered cleansed restored transformed and presentable so I don’t have to be ashamed of you if I happen to win an oscar or some other award

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

I don’t know baby I don’t know I guess I can’t I guess I’ll always be fat and dull I guess I’ll always be eating blutwurst and boiling water in a pot I guess that’s the way it’s going to be and there’s nothing you can do give me a hug ania

FIT ELIZA

my dear mommy my wonderful outstanding cashier from fresh market my lovely darling let me untie you and hug you and love you and accept you the way you are from start to finish from the dirty shitty streets through the bazaars and thrift stores through the villages around old state-farms where there’s nothing to do but hack yourself to death with an ax through the crosses in the schools and fucked-up housing policies to the flag gone white from all the lard and red as an old wino’s grizzled face I love you because now I know you’re part of who I am and that

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

if I hadn’t given birth to you

FIT ELIZA

I wouldn’t be here

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

give me a hug

FIT ELIZA

hugs

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

love me

FIT ELIZA

I love you

SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MOM

why don’t I go get this duct tape off huh

FIT ELIZA

sure mom. sorry you guys the situation got a little out of hand but I’ll be back tomorrow and tell you about the last two steps of the makeover. soon my ugly old mother will become a mother on top of global trends with a new post-rebranding face with tall skyscrapers and sick clothes. ttyl. you’ve been watching fit eliza’s vlog hang in there and cya. kisses.

[ssba]

Szczepan Orłowski

Talismans of infinity