[ssba]

michał kmiecik

blanket case

since this is supposed to be a five-minute piece, have it played along with laurie anderson’s “born, never asked,” the fifth track on “big science,” which lasts 4’58” – two seconds either way shouldn’t make much difference

starting point:

But the fact is: people with money are better than people without money.

People with money are better schooled, better fed, better trained, better cultured.

They’re the people who go to museums and opera and the theatre, and, you know,

they’re taking their kids there, and the kids get this culture and shit and it makes them smarter.

lucas hnath “red speedo”

finishing point:

convince me it isn’t so

so what?

Convince me people without money are just as good

o no no no no no

anything but money please

we’re not talking about money economics and the economy

not this time not here no and that’s final

do you understand the gravity of the situation?

yeah I thought you didn’t

let’s talk about something else

I’m tired

so awfully tired

I don’t want to talk about it got that?

Let’s talk about something simple please

something nice you can communicate

something I’ll be able to

something I can take a position on

like emotions or feelings or

and the unchanging human condition

that never fucking fails to move me a great deal

especially when it gives me a chance to feel sorry for myself

leave me alone I want to lie here don’t bother me

don’t bug me I’m working hard

and I really want to get under my blanket my pillow

finally switch some show on and watch a film all the way through

instead of dozing off fifteen minutes in

when the action finally gets going

and yes I am making money

this year it so happens

since the beginning of the year has been pretty awesome for a change

compared with say the year before

and the one before that and the one before that

which translates you got it

into zero love life into broken-off friendships

and yeah since you’re asking

my sex life is a monologue but

but such is the unchanging human condition

whoa there if that’s what this is about

I’ll have you know I’ve had other human conditions too

that’s not what I was

only that the unchanging human condition of people with money

compared to the human condition of people

who don’t have money for shit

especially in the situation that don’t butt in

that we’re in the bottom line is

how do I put this the standard of living of our parents’ generation

we’re not getting there anytime soon if ever

oh spare me the

I will spare no one

I have no intention

when will you get this get your head around this

dammit why don’t you finally realize

I have a mentality with twenty-five-years of mileage

a mentality with many a mile under its belt

down freeways and lack of freeways

and don’t tell me about getting there

I could give you lessons in getting there son

because I’ve gotten wherever I dreamed of getting

and all the ground I covered on my unmaintained mentality

down roads and missing freeways

has gotten to the brake-pads or lack thereof

and if it goes on like this then

from the height of my

I’m really working hard for all I got

and what it can get me in the future

it’s wearing down grinding down

the brake-pads of my patience

and if you start spouting off again

I’ll smack you see if I don’t

naturally putting an end to the discussion

jesus but that wasn’t what I

so what was I?

I need you to focus now

please

well?

so there’s the condition changing or unchanging

of people with and without money?

I’m sorry I can’t focus here

you’re rustling real bad from under this blanket

pestering me with your annoying

commentary you got off some dark corner of the internet

and the essentially right-minded bullshit shoveled my way under this blanket

I’m resting got that see?

I’m resting me a hard-working person

sundays I’m off in the afternoon

afternoon what am I saying night

the first night in ages

when no one’s blabbering

no one’s giving me shit mailing calling me

the first free truly free night for so long

and I’m not going to bother about what you’ve got to say

I’ll be lying I’ll be lying got that

I’ll be lying under a blanket

and you’re not convincing me this is

a bout of goodbye-cruel-world-I-gotta-go-now depression

because this fucking isn’t depression

this is me doing the keep the sabbath thing

anyway it’s sunday

and thinking about the state of the world

not to mention the aforementioned human condition

is not something you’re getting me to do bub

now I want you to get out of my head bub

and don’t come back until monday

not until my morning paper

of which I might not understand a thing

but that’s no longer your concern

as a hard-working person I coped

and I know what I managed to overcome

and I know you’re frustrated because

solely because unfortunately

it turned out this way unfortunately

unfortunately for you of course

but what can I do

from under my blanket and pillow well?

Well nothing

and unfortunately

nothing

oh and

nothing

nothing quite simply nothing

now I want you to get out of my head

and leave me here under the blanket

in my absence of and that’s relevant under this blanket depression

because this isn’t me feeling down

this is just a rest

I’m resting

I’ve worked hard for this worked hard

now I’m resting

get the fuck out from under my blanket

fuck off

[ssba]

FATSO IN EXOSKELETON

JAY                   Mateusz Łasowski

BIG DADDY   Julia Wyszyńska

KATE MOSS             Michał Jarmicki

THE MASS

JAY This is Big Daddy, he sweats like a pig, looks like a pile of shit and weighs 256 kilos, but one look at his 300-square-meter Manhattan suite, lovely wife who’s in the best Hollywood productions, and you’ll think: Here’s a guy who knows a thing or two. Now anybody who thinks his daddy gave him Fort Knox for his 18^th birthday ought to know that the only thing his daddy ever gave him was this fucking diabetes gene. Even water makes him fat. He gets fat when he takes a deep breath. But he’s not scared of fat he’s not scared of anything because he’s free.

BIG DADDY My name’s Big Daddy and I am a child of a lesser God. I’m not good-looking, I’m not the best at anything, I wasn’t born rich or smart. So why am I happy? Because I choose to be, because I’m not the sum of what other people think about me. Everyday I look at my face in the mirror and I see a sumbitch who’s happy AF. Fuck what people are saying about you, fuck what other people think. Fuck your diet, fuck the yo-yo effect. I love putting on weight. I love life, I love candy and I love when it makes me fat. Let us pray for extra pounds!

KATE MOSS Dear Lord, surely a couple of pounds isn’t too much to ask, I want to step on that scale and see the dial max out, it’s a piece of cake to you, Lord

JAY Kate Moss is in the house. How’re you doing, Kate?

KATE I feel alive.

JAY Did you ever feel any other way?

KATE I used to wake up scared I’d find a gray hair, I never smiled for fear of getting wrinkles, and I spent all day thinking about my skin and not about what’s underneath. I was addicted to looking beautiful.

JAY I hear that cost you a lot.

KATE I’ve been on a diet since I was two. Though it actually started a lot earlier. My mother was so obsessed about keeping slim, her tits made lo-fat milk.

JAY How was that possible?

KATE It’s down to the subconscious, most likely. Scientists are still trying to figure it out.

JAY Isn’t it weird how we spend years building a prison for ourselves, then wonder why we can’t get out of it? Kate, you looked like a million dollars.

KATE I was the queen of hang-ups. What I hated most of all was my great big nose. I had plastic surgery to make it smaller. It seemed too small after that, so I had surgery to get it bigger. Then it turned out too big. I had 20 nose-jobs in all before it finally came out right. Big Daddy helped me realize that it looked exactly the same as it did when I started.

JAY That’s true, Kate. How did you feel in your former life?

KATE I was always hungry and angry because of the diet. That’s why I beat up all those paparazzi. Whenever I put on 100 grams, I would punch myself in the face once for each gram. I did cocaine and meth to get away from it all. I had a couple of suicide attempts.

JAY And how do you feel now, Kate?

KATE I feel great now!

BIG DADDY I see you’ve gained a lot of weight.

KATE I don’t care because I’ve finally learned to love myself. When I look in the mirror, I think: Kate, you sure are ugly. I don’t need to pretend anymore. Life doesn’t frighten me anymore.

JAY I’m happy to hear that. What happened when you gained weight?

KATE I was abandoned by fair-weather friends who wouldn’t go to the Oscars with me anymore. And then there’s the media attention. I’m getting lots of new offers. Besides, nobody recognizes me on the street anymore, and I can live a normal life. I have real friends now.

BIG DADDY There’s just one way to be happy. Get fat and learn to love the ugly you. It’s a ticket to a fascinating experience. Think about it. You weigh 200 kilos. You look like a monster, smell like an animal, and you start seeing things in new perspective. When you can’t even walk you don’t worry about your feet looking ugly; when you can barely breathe, you don’t think about your nose being too big. You get some distance, see the bigger picture, and then you can go back to your old weight. Don’t be scared of fat.

JAY That’s right. There’s good fat and there’s bad fat. They say that, in the old days before He made the world, God was resting, getting ready for the great and unthinkable task to come, and when He was resting like that, all the inactivity made Him fat, and that was when fat first came into the world. Good fat reminded the Lord that He shouldn’t rest too long, that he should boldly create the world, and generally spurred him to action. Bad fat discouraged God from working miracles, slowed Him down, took His breath away, and kept needling Him, saying: you’re nobody, and you’ll never make anything of yourself. All of your bodies are a battlefield when you’re sleeping and spreading love, when you’re working and eating the fruits of your labors. What will you tell the Lord when you lose the war, how will you justify your sloth? But do not fear, for I shall lead you in the name of the good fat.

BIG DADDY 1 Ever obese.

KATE MOSS Ever tubby.

BIG DADDY and KATE MOSS Ever fat.

JAY And now, write down a wish and slip it between those belly folds, and it will come true.

They write down their wishes. KATE MOSS lifts his shirt. Many pieces of paper are sticking out from between his belly folds. The characters slide their wishes in. JAY picks out one of them.

JAY I’m fat and I want to lose weight.

KATE MOSS You’re as thin as a rail, Jane.

BIG DADDY That’s not true! I’m always stuffing myself.

KATE MOSS You stuff yourself?

BIG DADDY I keep drinking green cocktails. My favorite green-cocktail recipe is: Arugula, spinach, leek, lamb’s lettuce, celery sticks, and my secret ingredient: a crisp green dollar bill.

KATE MOSS You used to put dollar bills in your cocktail to make it taste better?

ANOREXIC 1 I did.

BIG DADDY It was my favorite cocktail because it always made me throw up.

KATE MOSS You sure wouldn’t win Master Chef with that recipe.

BIG DADDY It takes a master too, though. Anyone can make a cocktail and barf it up. The trick is to make barf taste good.

KATE MOSS How can barf taste good?

BIG DADDY I use a lot of artificial flavorings, they’re so artificial they don’t get digested, thanks to which they never lose their original taste.

JAY Wait until you hit 200 kilos and compare yourself to a current photo – that’s when you’ll see the difference.

BIG DADDY That’s my worst nightmare!

JAY So tell me, why are you really here?

BIG DADDY To lose weight.

KATE MOSS Lose weight why?

BIG DADDY So I can be happy.

JAY Why are you treating yourself as an unnecessary addition to your body?

BIG DADDY I am my body.

KATE MOSS Imagine you weigh 200 kilos. So you don’t like the way you look, but say you run into an old friend, and that makes you happy. Does happiness only come from the body?

BIG DADDY i don’t know. I just want to be happy.

JAY To be happy, you simply need to stop thinking about your body and set your mind on being happy.

BIG DADDY That’s it? What do I do?

KATE MOSS Look, when you read a good book or hear some good advice, there comes a time when you have to get a grip, overcome your stupid fears, and start enjoying life.

BIG DADDY That’s it?

KATE MOSS I don’t know, I’ve never been happy.

JAY Or maybe you were happy but didn’t think of calling it that?

BIG DADDY Actually I don’t know if I want to be happy or not, because I don’t know if I’d like it.

KATE MOSS So why do you want to be happy?

BIG DADDY Friends of mine said it would help me.

JAY That’s easy.

There was once a sad and hungry little girl who found herself at the foot of the hamburger mountain. She wanted to find out what was inside. She took a plastic spoon and started digging a tunnel, when a chunk of the mountain broke off and fell into her mouth. It was really tasty so the little girl kept digging and eating chunks of the mountain. She dug and dug and, even though she was already full, she kept eating out of gluttony. When she finally dug all the way to the center of the mountain, she saw it was empty inside. It was the realm of the empty calorie. The little girl was dumbstruck and finally understood the big secret. She was at once full and already hungry, full and empty on the inside. That was happiness.

Pause. Jay confers blessings.

JAY Blessed be gynecomastia, asthma, crooked front-teeth, breasts that are too small and breasts that are too big, small hands, and big protruding ears. Eat up. I bless your bunions, your squints and small penises. Those are your treasures. Behind every hang-up and hardship there is a treasure. In the name of fat, in the name of fat, I say, let there be folds in your flat bellies. Fat loves all things, forgives all things, bears all things, and heaps its flabby bulk on all things. Fat suffereth long, and is kind; fat envieth not; fat vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

That’s all for today, now go and pray, but make sure you come back tomorrow, children of a lesser God.

[ssba]

An Equity Fable

Sent by John Flynn from an author who wishes to remain anonymous

Once there was a small island full of people who loved to dance. The government of the island noticed that most of the islanders had to dance on a rocky hillside – There were a few plush places down by the beach but, for the most part, only tourists got to dance there. So the government sent out a survey and asked: “Do you want to dance in the rocks?” And most people said no. So the government issued a declaration that dancing on the rocky hillside was now forbidden.

So the islanders asked: “Where will we dance?”

And the government answered: “Well, you can buy a piece of land without rocks and dance there.”

But the people said: “We can’t afford to do that.”

And the government said: “Yes, but you said you didn’t want to dance in the rocks.”

And the people said: “Yes, but we do want to dance.”

So the government issued a proclamation commanding that the people who cared for the rocky hillside:

“Clear all the rocks so the people can continue to dance.”

The people who cared for the rocky hillside, who loved the rocky hillside, were dismayed because they didn’t know how they could possibly clear the land. They didn’t own the equipment. They weren’t even sure if the equipment existed on the island. They loved the dancing. They had begun to take care of the land because they loved the dancing. They had no money.

The people who cared for the rocky hillside went to the government and said we don’t think we are able to clear the land for the dancing – we would like to help because we all are dancers and for many, many years we have done our best to provide a place for the islanders to dance.

The government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

And the people who care for the land said: “but they do want to dance.”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

And the people who care said: “Did you tell the people there might be almost nowhere to dance if they don’t dance in the rocks?”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks. If you want to continue to provide a place for people to dance you must clear all the rocks.”

The people who care said: “We would like to help but we do not think we have the money to clear the rocks.”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

So the people who care for the land went back to the hillside and told the dancers there that soon there would be no more dancing.

The dancers asked: “Why?”

And the people who cared for the land told them that the government said that they, the dancers, said they did not want to dance in the rocks. This caused great confusion. There was much discussion about what had been said and what had been meant.

Finally one dancer said: “But as long as we choose to dance here we can, can’t we? The government can’t be telling us we can’t dance if we want to dance.”

Most of the dancers thought this was a very good point and so the people who care for the land went back to the government and said: “The people who are dancing on the hillside have said they DO want to dance, even if they have to dance in the rocks.”

But the government said: “There are other dancers who don’t want to dance in the rocks and we have to listen to them.”

And the people replied: “They don’t have to dance there if they don’t want to.”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

And the people who care replied: “But some people, many people, do want to dance.”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

And the people replied: “So the people who don’t want to dance can tell the people who do want to dance that they can’t dance?”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks. If you want to continue to provide a place for people to dance you must clear all the rocks.”

The people who care said: “Many people have cleared small portions of the hill so the dancers can dance. They have promised people they can dance there. People have paid to see the dance. People have spent their whole lives clearing what they can on these little patches of land on the hillside.”

And the government said: “The people have spoken. They don’t want to dance in the rocks.”

So the people who care said: “Are there any alternatives?”

And the government said: “We are going to allow the people to vote but we’re going to remind them that no matter how they vote the decision is ours to make.”

So the people who care went back to the dancers and said the dancers who don’t dance have told the government that you shouldn’t dance either. The dancers were amazed. They couldn’t understand. Why would the dancers who don’t dance care. Why wouldn’t the government let each dancer decide for themselves?

The people who care for the land said: “We think they think that if you stop dancing here some of us who care for the land will go buy property on the beach so you can dance there.”

The dancers were dumbfounded. They looked at each other. One couldn’t help herself and she began to giggle. Soon all the dancers were laughing. The one who had first giggled finally drew in a sharp breath.

She said: “This government does not understand who we are. The ministers do not understand why we dance. How can we talk to them? What can we do?”

Her dancing partner said: “We must vote so they understand that before they change who we are and what we do they must understand who we are and what we do.”

There is a better way. Vote no on the current Equity proposal.

[ssba]

Stage Raw’s International Digital Play Festival

Intercontinental Pipeline

By Steven Leigh Morris

No, we’re not sending oil across continents, we’re sending theater.

On Saturday, March 21, 1 p.m., Stage Raw premieres its International Digital Play Festival, a year-in-the-making theater-exchange between artists and audiences of Los Angeles, California and Warsaw, Poland. The event takes place at The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Avenue in Pasadena – and simultaneously at Teatr Studio in Warsaw, which will be linked via webcam to the Pasadena theater. The Pasadena audience is invited to partake in a Polish-style reception.

The afternoon will include live concert readings of five-minute playlets (broadcast directly to Warsaw) by U.S. writers John Michael Johnson, Nancy Keystone, Brian Polak, Brian Sonia-Wallace and Alicia Tycer. These works are in response to full-length new Polish plays posted on the Digital Festival platform of Stage Raw, which were selected curated by Joanna Klass of Warsaw’s Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

(Each of these full-length plays — by Wojtek Ziemilski, Magda Fertacz, Szczepan Orlowski and Darota Maslowska — is receiving some form of live presentation in Los Angeles as part of Culture.pl and the Polish Consulate-Los Angeles’ city wide festival, Polish Theatre Month, Los Angeles.)

Warsaw Playwright Wojtek Ziemilski

Meanwhile, interspersed among the Pasadena-based live readings, Warsaw will broadcast five-minute Polish playlet-responses (super-titled into English) to the Pasadena theater. These playlets are responses to four new U.S. plays posted on Stage Raw. (These are plays by Sheila Callaghan, Lucas Hnath, Robert O’Hara, and Alice Tuan, and were selected by Pier Carlo Talenti, Literary Manager of Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.

The International Digital Play Festival is a laboratory experiment in how creative rather than critical responses to larger work may open a new window of comprehension into the original full length plays as well as how they’re being received on a different continent. The Pasadena event is being produced by Mark Seldis, with technical support by Luis Reyes.

Tickets to Stage Raw’s International Digital Play Festival in Pasadena are free. Please RSVP here.

[ssba]

Eastern Europe in Southern California

Polish Theatre Month, 2015

By Steven Leigh Morris

A platter of new Polish stage works is being hosted citywide by UCLA, Son of Semele Ensemble, The Odyssey Theatre, Ghost Road Company, and Theatre @ Boston Court (hosting Stage Raw’s International Digital Play Festival). All four plays in the Digital Play Festival can be read, in English here.  A full schedule of events is listed below:

[ssba]

The Wooster Group and LAPD Go Po-Mo

By Myron Meisel

Photo by Steven Gunther

 Is it an oxymoron to speak of “a cappella karaoke?” Yet that’s what New York’s durable The Wooster Group performs in its return to REDCAT with a “record album interpretation” of the fabled 1976 Rounder Records release featuring Sister R. Mildred Barker and the United Society of Shakers of Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Well, Side “A” anyway, the flip side in this 50-minute presentation remains unsung.

The quintet of severely dressed, trembling women vocalize accompanied only by the intermittent hushed background sound of the original vinyl LP, which was a popular and influential one for the then-new indie label.

The Shaker movement originated in the mid-18^th century as a mutation of the Quaker revival in England, which, under the leadership of Mother Ann Lee, who later would incarnate the Messiah redux, emigrated in 1774 to escape persecution and settled eventually in the area of New Lebanon, NY.

Photo by Steven Gunther

 “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing”, characterized by ascetic communal living within principles of valuing traditional gender roles equally (by dint of their conviction that both God and Christ were each dually male and female), claimed 6000 adherents in 18 communities by the 1850s.

A charismatic movement devoid of ostentation except in their possession by the Holy Spirit, the “Shakers” embraced both sexual celibacy and religious ecstasy. They left a legacy, of course, of furniture, handicrafts and architecture, but also thousands of “gift” songs of surpassingly simple beauty (the most famous appropriated by Aaron Copland for Appalachian Spring). However, aside from the album in question, there is little other authentic field recording aside from 1996, when Joel Cohen and his Boston Camerata visited surviving sect members and adapted more of the extant work on two CDs.

As is customary with The Wooster Group, even this minimal action is self-consciously framed, here by a male MC who explains how the company had previously assayed other such Album Interpretations: one based on the pop instrumental kitsch of Hula!, and another concocted from Dr. Timothy Leary’s 1966 spoken word farrago under the performing title of L.S.D.(…Just the High Points…)(1984). Refreshingly, the presentation mostly respects the plain spiritual sisterhood and applies neither irony nor condescension toward their religious commitment and unorthodox beliefs.

 Nevertheless, does sincerity alone suffice to achieve actual authenticity? I think not: while the Woosters clearly can identify with the women’s zealous adherence to vocation and their joy in disciplined sacrifice on its behalf, their relative self-effacement in this rather mild bit of conceptual art hardly compares to the innate intensity and fervor of the gift-songs themselves, no matter how accomplished the players may be in projecting an impression of ego-less mimicry. One takes away the impression that it can, after all, be a sin to be simple.

Nor did this viewer find the project remotely revelatory. As someone who bought the record back when it was new (and still has it on the shelf), who continues to listen daily to vinyl on the turntable, and for whom folkloric and ethnographic recordings are a routine part of the home musical experience, there was neither novelty nor totemic power to the invocation of antique sounds or to rehabilitated technology.

Still, The Woosters admirably honor the two basic tenets of good cooking: start with quality stuff, and don’t fuck it up. Even so, I’d sooner recommend downloading the entire album, with twice as many numbers, or rooting out the 1984 Ken Burns documentary on the Shakers, itself barely longer than the Wooster presentation.

Karaoke of a different stripe was on offer with the Los Angeles Poverty Department marking its 30^th anniversary with a revival of its long-acclaimed Red Beard/Red Beard this past weekend at Highways. The bona-fides of LAPD’s activist commitment remain beyond doubt, and the intimate Highways space showed off one of LAPD’s signature shows with compelling fervor, even while its artistic goals feel questionable. 

 Photos (left and above) by Matias Jaskari

Red Beard/Red Beard is played simultaneously by two troupes of ten players to two separate audiences on each side of the space, facing television monitors on which what is perhaps Akira Kurosawa’s greatest film (1965) plays in Japanese without subtitles (for about 110 minutes of its 185 minute length). Those subtitles are acted out by each troupe simultaneously, though rarely synchronously, so one hears the Japanese dialogue, the spoken English by the actors in front of you, and that by the other troupe on the far side of the theater as a sort of reverb effect that by now has become a long standing post-modernist cliché. Periodically, the two troupes rotate places to play to the other audience.

LAPD has always upheld determined diversity in casting, not merely in terms of racial or ethnic groups, but also in social outreach, persuasively making the case for Skid Row artistry and culture. It cares not about audience expectations of comfort and usefully stretches our ideas of what professional performance can look like. Notwithstanding, its standards are high, and the entire enterprise maintains a concerted level of engaged passion and consistency of tone. Its primary goal is to expand upon Kurosawa’s achievement by projecting his humanistic values of compassion and recognition that good works require practical guile and considerable inner resources of strength.

The message comes across clearly and effectively, but for most of the performance I inescapably fixated almost entirely on how remarkable the film was, all the better without reading the subtitles, even if the handsome digital rendition of the image was no more than a suggestive simulacrum of the appearance of 35mm film projected on a screen. Although LAPD had more than adequately made its points by the time the show was over, I could not help feeling left out of the remainder of the movie, recalling Kurosawa’s pointed reaction when refusing to truncate his adaptation of The Idiot: “If they (the producers) want to cut it in half, they had better do it lengthwise.”

Early Shaker Spirituals, created by The Wooster Group and directed by Kate Valk, performs at REDCAT, nightly at 8:30 p.m., except for Feb. 1, which is a 3 p.m. performance. https://redcat.org

Red Beard/Red Beard, created by John Malpede of LAPD and directed by Malpede with Henriëtte Brouwers, performed at Highways Performance Space. It is now closed.

[ssba]

Some of My Best Friends Were Scientologists

Allen Barton, on his new play, Disconnection

By Pauline Adamek

Playwright Allen Barton, director Joel Polis and actress Carter Scott in rehearsal. (Photo by Ed Krieger)

 Writer-director (and classical pianist) Allen Barton gained critical acclaim last year with his play Years To The Day, presented by Skylight Theatre Company. It was a futuristic satire of our self-important discussions of movies and tech gadgets via the reunion of two long-time friends at a coffee shop. During their meeting, they psychically and spiritually disemboweled each other. Barton’s latest play, Disconnection, tackles cult-like religions and organizations.

Inspired by painful, personal experience, this new work rigorously assesses the various facets of freedom of speech, thoughts and beliefs. In the drama, the playwright holds up to scrutiny what he calls “totalitarian, highly-restrictive modes of thought” that exist in popular religions today. 

A church associate for about seven years, Barton was eventually ex-communicated from the Los Angeles fold of Scientology, and suffered the subsequent destruction of his friendships with other members. (The play’s title refers to the term used to cut off communication with former members.) Specifically, the play covers the damage that was wrought on his relationship with his mentor and long-time piano teacher, Mario Feninger. 

Barton is now an official Steinway Artist, “As a pianist, I’m still active, I usually perform every 18-24 months. I’ll prepare a 60-90 minute program and perform it here in L.A. as well as in Boston, New Hampshire, sometimes New York as well. I’ve recorded five CDs that are out there on iTunes.” He’s currently on the short-list as a piano soloist with the Boston Pops for a Gershwin concern in May.

Still, he devotes most of his time to writing plays, teaching advance-level acting courses at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, administrating the school there, and maintaining his Playhouse blog “The Study & Pursuit of Acting.”

Allen Barton grew up outside Boston, attended Harvard University, after which he moved to L.A. In 1990 he joined the Beverly Hills Playhouse as a student, and by 1992 he had entered into a close apprenticeship with its founder, Milton Katselas. Barton worked with Katselas for the next 16 years until Katselas’s death in 2008.

Recalls Barton, “Katselas was a famous and talented teacher, but also infamous for being a Scientologist. As I got to know him better, and the staff of the Beverly Hills Playhouse and some of the students who were also Scientologists, I became curious as to what it was all these people were into. There was no calling, I wasn’t horribly messed up and ‘looking for answers,’ nor was there any particular pressure to do so from Milton or his associates.”

Barton delved into some of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s books, and through Katselas’s largess was able to attend free courses at the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. “I found the information there helpful. A bunch of my friends from the Beverly Hills Playhouse were already involved, and they had a wonderful piano in the lobby that I enjoyed playing. I acted in several of their in-house films they made to illustrate various facets of Hubbard’s philosophy.”

Barton became known for those performances, gaining some special attention as a result. “They sent me down to join the Freewinds ship in the Caribbean for a month to play piano during mealtimes. So, being young and unmarried and with some time on my hands, studying Scientology with a bunch of cool people in a very nice building, getting to act here and there and getting paid for it, getting free trips to play piano on a swell ship in the Caribbean – you could do worse in your 20s in Los Angeles.”

Luke Cook and Carter Scott in Disconnection. (Photo by Ed Krieger)

Katselas became instrumental in furthering Barton’s piano training – introducing him in 1992 to his first teacher in L.A., Bernardo Segall, and even paying for several of the initial lessons. Barton studied under Segall for several years, until Segall’s death. Next Barton went on to study with Mario Feninger, whom he’d learned about through his Scientology connections. “Mario was a longtime guy – 50-plus years in the church but our relationship was strictly teacher and student. He altered much about how I played, solved physical problems I was having with my technique, and was in general just a complete mensch. We had many conversations about the Church, and by that time I’d become pretty savvy with the ins and outs, the goods and the bads… Mario and I saw eye to eye on much of that.”

Somewhere around 2001, Barton says he saw a distinct cultural change within Scientology. Suddenly, a steely-eyed dedication to the cause became in vogue. It became more militant, less friendly. Barton began to tune out. “I watched Milton get embroiled in disputes over there about this or that, and became aware of their ‘disconnection’ policy as it affected Milton and the [Beverly Hills] Playhouse in those years. Students began ‘disconnecting’ from the theater; we were being asked to ‘disconnect’ from other students.”

Barton found it abhorrent. By 2003, Katselas himself became subject to “disconnection” by almost all of the Scientologists who had studied and worked with him. He was suddenly out of fashion – not dedicated enough to the cause, and excluded from special Church events.

“They took exception to his teaching style and they became quite puritanical on how he chose to live his personal life. I was there at ground zero for all of this,” recalls Barton. By this stage, Barton has become CEO for the Playhouse. “The behavior I saw, the write-ups, the ‘knowledge reports’ that people filed on Milton and the Playhouse, the screaming and yelling – it was just psychotic bullshit!”

Barton distanced himself from Scientology in disgust. He says he refrained from speaking out, partly because he felt he didn’t have a means to do so and partly in respect of Katselas. “It just wasn’t my place to make a fuss while working for him. In 2008, when he died, I felt freer to speak out because I was now the owner of the company.”

Allen Barton

Additionally, Barton had begun extensive research via online blogs and published books. He saw news reports about and by former staff members, some of whom he had known. “My eyes popped out of my head at what they were describing as going on ‘behind church walls.’”

Finally, in 2012, Barton participated in an interview with Lawrence Wright for his book, Going Clear, granting Wright key information about Katselas’s experience. As a result, Barton was issued with his own “Suppressive Person Declare,” which meant that all Scientologists had to disconnect from him per the policy of the church. “This included Mario, my piano teacher, who I had been helping with a personal situation. Two weeks after he came to see me to ask for help, he sent me a little card in the mail stating, ‘I can no longer communicate with you.’”

Furious, Barton picked up the phone but was reluctantly told by Feninger that he had been ordered to disconnect by Church staff. “He didn’t want to, but he didn’t feel strong enough for a fight at his age. By then I had written two plays, and I knew right away what my third would be, including its title. My journey with Scientology, which began with curiosity in 1994, fell off with disdain at 2001, and had reached its terminus with anger in 2013. Anger is a great place from which to start writing,” the playwright adds.

Barton emphasizes that Milton Katselas and Mario Feninger were first and foremost his mentors. Neither one was ever his Scientology “recruiter” – rather, they simply were influential figures in his life that shared this particular philosophy.

He says he was “in” the Scientology church from 1994 until 2001 or so. “But you don’t have a membership card. You don’t sign something declaring, “I’m a Scientologist.” It’s a matter of what you choose to say, how you present yourself. I wasn’t that ‘in’ because I was never much of a cheerleader; I wasn’t a proselytizer. There are many, many more people who’ve invested years, decades, hundreds of thousands of dollars, etc. ad nauseum. These people truly paid a price for their involvement, and then spent years getting their lives back once they woke up. I was in it more for the curiosity, the fun, the friends, and the community.”

He sounds happy to admit he “barely ever spent a dime on the joint. I was very fortunate that way. For me, it wasn’t some glorious path to spiritual freedom, and perhaps my non-religious background and maybe my higher-than-average education helped me out; I was able to see the patterns as they emerged and realized what I was dealing with. So when it rubbed me the wrong way, I was able to talk back, to make counter-arguments, and I was out of there.”

For all that, Barton insists he didn’t want to write a docudrama all about Scientology. “It’s a minor cult and is of little significance in world affairs.” He claims he’s more interested in the specifics as they inform a larger portrait of human experience. “Theatre works best as a metaphor, not necessarily as a literal experience. I wanted the freedom as a writer to move without being beholden to every Scientology factoid.”

Barton maintains he uses Scientology merely as the starting point for Disconnection. “My play is not about it. I don’t mention the word ‘Scientology’ or refer to L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology is just an echo of other systems — totalitarian, controlled thought systems. ‘Scientology’ is analogous — the inspiration for the play.”

Much as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is really about the witch-hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Barton asserts that Disconnection is non-literal in a similar fashion. “I wanted to create an experience where if someone knows about Scientology, they’ll come in and feel I nailed it, that it’s been researched by having lived it. But I also needed to create an experience where someone who knows nothing about Scientology can also understands every word of the play, and hopefully care about the characters and what happens to them. It has to speak to both audiences. I think as a dramatist, that’s your responsibility, not to balkanize your work so that only some small speck of the populace can understand it.”

As for its potential impact, Barton says, “I hope audiences come out with some concept of what a controlled-thought system can do to people, how it affects different people in different ways, whether in religion or government or a school. And I hope they simply have a provocative, thoughtful evening at the theater.”

Disconnection is being performed by the Skylight Theatre Company at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 South Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills; Fri., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through March 1. (213) 761-7061, https://skylighttix.com

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The Artist-With-Kids Conundrum — 150 Years Ago

Bringing back turn-of-the 20^th century muse Gabrielle Réjane

By Deborah Klugman

Most people familiar with theater history have heard of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. Fewer recognize the name Gabrielle Réjane, a French actress and international megastar whose career spanned 1874 to 1920, during which time she toured Britain, Russia, North and South America, as well as her native France.

Ilana Turner’s first play, O Réjane, currently playing at the Bootleg Theatre in Westlake through December 6, brings the French muse back to the stage.

Read Lovell Estell III’s review.

Réjane began as a comedienne but expanded her repertoire, becoming known for her naturalistic style of acting. As a renowned stage actress, she was portrayed on canvas by Toulouse-Lautrec, Boldini, Sargent and Beardsley, among others.

Besides her stage work, Réjane distinguished herself by taking control of her career. She insisted on making her own choices at a time when women had few legal rights. Beginning in 1906, she managed the Réjane Theater, where she performed until her death.

Stage Raw talked to Turner about the work.

STAGE RAW: What gave you the idea to develop this project?

ILANA TURNER: One day, magically, my dear family friend Willie told me about her grandmother. Willie’s grandmother, Réjane, was the subject of the Toulouse-Lautrec print that was hanging on Willie’s wall. Having spent my childhood wanting to leap into Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, I was immediately intrigued.

SR: So how did you put O Réjane together?

IT: I started researching Réjane in what feels like eons ago, in 2007. I went to Paris on a Réjane pilgrimage in 2008 with Adrien Reju, Willie’s granddaughter, who co-wrote the music for O Réjane. We toured the Théâtre de Paris (formerly Théâtre Réjane) and the Odéon. Later, I toured the Moulin Rouge.

I started weaving text from the plays Réjane performed with my original text. Adrien was already interested in writing music, and I knew I wanted the show to use movement without being a musical.

How was Réjane different from Sarah Bernhardt or Eleonora Duse?

Bernhardt mainly played tragedies and her style was melodramatic. Réjane was first known for comedy, and even when she played dramas, her style was much more naturalistic. She connected her own life and observations of life to her work in a very modern way.

Eleonora Duse and Réjane were about the same age, and also close friends. Duse was interested in “eliminating” herself as an actress from her characters, and believed acting was a spiritual feat.

Sarah Bernhardt was 12 years older than Réjane and gave her a big break in a play called La Glu. Despite a reputation for being chilly to other actresses, Bernhardt liked Réjane’s work in La Glu, and the two became lifelong friends.

The Museum of Modern Art Film Library film Great Actresses of the Past has silent footage of all three of these remarkable women.

What were some of the highlights of Réjane’s career?

Réjane played the first French translation of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. When she performed for Ibsen in Copenhagen, he said she was one of the finest Noras he had ever seen.

Other famous roles were Germinie Lacerteux, adapted from the Goncourt Brothers novel, and Catherine Hübscher, Napoleon’s real-life laundress in Madame Sans-Gêne. She also resurrected Henri Becque’s La Parisienne, which originally had flopped after only a few performances. Eventually a production of La Parisienne starring Réjane became a huge hit, but not until after Becque’s death. 

Was there something besides her art that made you want to write about this woman?

Reading about Réjane, it struck me that for her, life equaled art. She did things in life and on stage at almost the same time. Réjane acted like a modern woman even though she lived over 150 years ago. She won the right to sign her own contracts 59 years before married French women were allowed to. She was a world-famous actress and a theater impresario but she was also a working mother who fought hard to balance the demands of a successful career and a family.

I have two girls of my own, and I very much relate to the storm and emotional havoc engendered between the pull of a child and the pull of one’s necessary work.

There’s a lot of physicality and movement in this play. Where did that come from?

Ilana Turner’s O REJAN: Photo by Alex Berry

Movement has always been a huge part of my life. My father was a professional musician and a writer/editor. I was a professional figure skater and a trained dancer. Tempo and words have always guided me.

What I’ve always loved about theater is its ability to tell stories using movement, music and text at the same time. When I went to create O Réjane, I knew I wanted to physicalize and orchestrate parts of the story, so I sought out a director who was also interested in telling unabashedly ‘spectacular’ stories.

How did you meet your director, Christopher Silversten?

In 2009,  I took part in a workshop [he] was teaching at Au Brana Cultural Center in southwest France. We worked on text from Antigone, and I was struck by his ability to use the text, movement and rhythm cohesively. My script is dense with original text, quoted text and history, and I thought his use of rhythm could keep the play moving really well. Thankfully, Christopher was interested and we have been developing O Réjane ever since. 

When I saw the play, I was struck by designer Alex Berry’s innovative settings. How did she come to be part of the project?

Alex Berry designed two shows for Christopher’s company Awake Projects. I was really impressed with her work for Awake, and Christopher pitched her for this project. She had an ingenious, affordable way to stage the most difficult part of O Réjane. 

Which was?

The show explores Réjane’s life on-stage and off-stage. Scenes take place in clearly delineated on-or-off-stage spaces, initially imagined on a stage that revolved. Revolving stages cost a lot, so during workshops we had been using a curtain hanging from a pole held by actors. Alex came up with the idea of building characters small flats on wheels.

One side of each flat is a canvas on-stage backdrop, and the other side is a character’s off-stage dressing room. Actors move and rotate the flats to set the scenes of O Réjane.

Actress Cara Pifko has a special quality – an inner glow. She seems really suited for this role. How did you come to cast her?

Cara Pifko and I met in Kerrie Keane’s Acting Gymnasium [in North Hollywood]. I really liked her work, and we clicked as people. I invited her to do a table read of a new draft of the script I’d finished and loved her take on Réjane. I believed every word out of her mouth almost immediately. Christopher and I invited her to work on the character in a workshop that fall. She brings an innate sense of her own rhythm and movement to text.

Cara Pifko, as Gabrielle Rejan. Photo by Joseph Will

After two more workshops together, including one when we were both pregnant, Cara and I had our second kids 36 hours apart. (Our first kids are only months apart). The whole process has been à propos for women working on a play about women working and having kids at the same time. It seems Réjane wasn’t the only one whose life and work run parallel. 

What is next for you?

I am talking to theaters in other major US cities, London and Sweden about O Réjane. I also have my eye on Edinburgh Fringe Festival next summer.

There are also two new plays in the works. The first uses the framework of, and partially adapts, a traditional Greek women’s story, with my original text, to explore life in the culturally rich and economically poor modern state of Greece. The Scandinavian play is a modern take on the myths about Norse goddess Frejya, who was a real badass with two daughters. For future plays, I’d like to continue to partner with relevant established cultural institutions.

O Réjane closes this weekend, Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; through Dec. 6 at Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., LA. (213) 389 3856, www.bootlegtheater.org
 

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Musical Theatre Guild Remembers the Forgotten

By Myron Meisel

Musical Theatre Guild’s cast from its recent presentation of Triumph of Love (All photos by Alan Weston)

A hidden secret treasure of the local scene, Musical Theatre Guild for over 15 years has unearthed obscure, neglected or forgotten musicals, or ones that were never successful enough in New York to make it to Los Angeles. Perhaps most prominent among them was the first local presentation of Steven Sondheim’s Passion, although among the superlative offerings were terrific renderings of Stephen Schwartz’s Rags, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Allegro, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene and Sondheim’s maiden effort, Saturday Night, as well as a Parade that was far better vocalized than in the Mark Taper production years later.

Of course, there’s always a catch. In a most resourceful compliance with the Equity Staged Reading code, each of these usually quite challenging extravaganzas is rehearsed within 25 hours, primarily over a long weekend preceding the performance. Consequently, MTG concentrates on essentials: score and script. Onstage before the audience, everyone remains on book, scripts usually in hand. There are no production values, save for functional lighting and costumes. Big set-pieces are skipped. Dance numbers can be rudimentary, although I will never forget a duet of “Mountain Greenery” in Rodgers & Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court that perfectly distilled perhaps the entire heart of musical comedy in 2-1/2 minutes of unalloyed bliss.

Necessarily the results can be uneven, but more often than not, these highly professional talents get to the core of these works, and one thing can always be counted on: They nail the songs. It’s also true that one of the hallmarks of musicals that fall out of the repertory is that they often are saddled with weaker books, though MTG provides a rare opportunity to hear these texts and to experience even well-known numbers in their original, often revealing, context.

Shannon Warne in Triumph of Love

For many years, MTG was eclipsed in attention by the tonier Reprise!, which operated on higher budgets and ticket prices and is now regrettably defunct. But I’ve always found MTG to be the more daring enterprise with far more acute taste and sense of adventure. Even on a bum night, which are few, everyone shares an unique experience of the fringes of an long-endangered species of an indispensible artform, crafted with love and secure technique, even at the price of polish and illusion.

After many years at the Pasadena Playhouse and the Alex in Glendale, MTG has moved to the Westside territory previously the province of Reprise! The Moss Theater at New Roads School makes a felicitious space. Unfortunately, this season, has so far been a rockier one than usual, with intriguing choices of titles, several of which have turned out not to have unfairly dismissed in their initial Broadway failures: Death Takes a Holiday and Sweet Smell of Success were rather forlorn candidates for musical adaptation, though as always with numerous offsetting points of interest. On the other hand, it was delightful to encounter Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with its theatrical context intact, and the revival of Cy Coleman’s City of Angels worked quite well despite the loss of critical design elements. I was a little surprised that MTG would revive such a recently long-running local hit as Ruthless!, but this decidedly minor piece was executed with appropriately over-the-top verve.

Triumph of Love (which MTG presented most recently at Santa Monica’s New Roads School) somewhat unaccountably made it to Broadway in 1997, where it closed after a mere 87 performances (conceivably, it could have obtained more traction in off-Broadway environs). A product of the past generation’s most welcome renaissance of Pierre de Marivaux (The Game of Love and Chance, False Confidences), this attempt to musicalize a dazzling 1732 play tends of vulgarize its elegances, while the mostly decent songs flatten the fizz of the original more than they carbonate it.

Eileen Barnett and Kevin Symons in Triumph of Love

The music by Jeffrey Stock tends to the accomplished generic, while the lyrics veer between the pedestrian to an intermittent sparkle of wit, though rarely at the level of the original dialogue they displace. Still, it’s a genuinely strong vehicle whose original virtues cannot entirely be obscured. It has terrific bones, this tale of a Queen of Sparta who pursues the love of a man who is the heir to the throne usurped by her father from his, as she disguises herself and her attendant as men and in those impersonations manage to seduce the affections of every other man and woman in the cast.

Given the rigors of under-rehearsal (and Los Angeles actors, whatever the rap on their limitations, through deep experience are the best cold readers in the world), the players’ comedy chops were well-honed, the action surprisingly fluid, and of course, everything was beautifully sung. What they could not accomplish was the larger task of obscuring the innate weaknesses of the project with the extended work required to create a camouflaging spectacle. What they did laudably achieve was to afford the audience the singular opportunity to encounter an unlikely bit of esoterica and address the intrinsic curiosity of lovers of the form.

The best is yet to come, one expects, because the balance of the season includes on February 8 the truly legendary and possibly never revived 1954 The Golden Apple with the immortal songs of Jerome Moross and John LaTouche (originally directed by Norman Lloyd, who turned 100 last week in his bid to become as nearly indestructible as Irving Berlin and George Abbott), on April 12 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and, most extraordinarily, on June 14, the West Coast premiere of Sondheim’s latest musical, Road Show (formerly known as Bounce), as misbegotten as any consequential endeavor in musical theater in recent memory, an absolute must. So mark all calendars appropriately.

For more information on Musical Theatre Guild, visit www.musicaltheatreguild.com

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Stage Raw is throwing a “thank you” holiday party at the Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz, Dec. 22, 7-10 p.m. To celebrate our (almost) one year of existence, we’ll have food, drink, a jazz band, and readings by John Fleck, Sharon Lawrence, Suzanne Lummis, Alan Mandell, Vanessa Claire Stewart and French Stewart.

$5 parking available at the Bank of America (Hollywood Blvd., and Vermont Ave) and also at various lots along Vermont Ave., between Hollywood Blvd. and Franklin Ave.

Pay what you can:  Suggested donation for the party, $20.

RSVP HERE (This takes you to the PayPal Donation system, where you can donate any amount, and you’ll be on our RSVP list. You’ll also receive a receipt from Pasadena Arts Council, as well as a record of your tax-deductible donation — for this event only, applicable for any amount greater than $20).

If you wish to pay by check, it should be made out to “Pasadena Arts Council — STAGE RAW” and sent to: Pasadena Arts Council, 65 S. Grand Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105; Phone: 626-793-8171; Fax: 626-793-5521.

Any contribution to the site from now through Dec. 22 will place you on the party list.

If you don’t wish to make a donation, but would like to attend the party anyway, RSVP to steven@stageraw.com