Full-Court Press

First-time-playwright Amir Abdullah discusses Islam, basketball and friendship in his Pray to Ball at the Skylight Theatre

By Deborah Klugman

Photo by Ed Krieger

Amir Abdullah’s first play, Pray to Ball, opened last weekend at the Skylight Theatre. A writer and actor, Abdullah grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, earning his BFA from the University of Miami and his MFA in acting from Penn State University. Following graduate school, he arrived in L.A. in 2010. The play deals with college sports and religion, and pivots on the lifelong bond between two college basketball players and what happens to their friendship when matters of faith come between them. It also spotlights hypocrisy and prejudice, and the conflicts and trials faced by American Muslims today. Abdullah also performs in the play.

The drama was developed through Skylight’s Theatre’s INKubator program for new works, under the aegis of the company’s artistic director, Gary Grossman.

STAGE RAW: Tell me about the story and the characters.

Rickie Peete and Amir Abdullah in Pray to Ball (Photo by Ed Krieger)

AMIR ABDULLAH: It’s about two superstars, college basketball players.  The main character is an incoming freshman named Hakeem.  The antagonist’s name is Lou.  He’s a sophomore.  He’s been there one year and has been waiting for his buddy to come.  These two guys that have a strong bond that goes beyond the court, that goes beyond what we see.  They are planning to play together [in college sports] for one year and then go to the NBA, be millionaires, have a wonderful time.  It’s been their plan since high school. But plans don’t always work out the way you want them to.

SR:  Is Hakeem a Muslim?

AA: No, not at the beginning. Hakeem’s mother dies and he’s thrown for a loop.  He’s searching for something to grasp onto.  And he’s drawn to Islam.  Eventually he gets more into it and that causes problems with Lou.  It’s a complete turnaround from everything they planned and had wanted to do.

So the main conflict is with Lou over his conversion to Islam?

Not entirely.  There are a lot of things he goes through once he’s converted to Islam.  He starts to see cracks in the armor of the followers of the religion.  He sees a lot of hypocrisy.  And so he has to decide whether he’s going to stick with it or go back to his old life. It’s a crisis that involves trying to find something that he can hold onto and believe in – but seeing that it may not be right.  I think that’s something that everyone at some point in their life deals with.

What drew you to this arena? 

Number one, I’m a big fan of sports.  I’m interested in the culture that surrounds college athletes, the kind of day-to-day work these guys have to put in and their team dynamic.  And I’m interested in the way they are perceived by the fans. These kids are 18. And you have 45-, 55-, 60-year-old-men following their every movement.  But these kids are not necessarily looked at as human beings. They are looked at as a number on the back of a jersey.  [The fans] don’t really care about the kid. All they care about is the performance.

That was the spark. And then I wanted to explore the religious angle, offer some insight. We see what goes on with Muslims on TV, but how many people have actually talked to a Muslim or attended a service. So for me it became: How can I merge those two?

Were you ever a ball player?

No, I was a theater major in school. But a friend of mine who played on the team at the University of Miami, Cyrus McGowan, was willing to open up to me. He was instrumental in hammering out the finer details of being a basketball player at a big university.

You said that you wanted to give people some insight into the Muslim experience but you also said Hakeem had some negative experiences with some of the other folks within his religious circle. Do you think people might take away something negative?

No.  I think people will see a complex relationship, a complex view of religion.  I don’t want this to be a passion piece. I don’t want to damn it either. There’s a gray area.  Every religion, every ideology, every political party has its own messy things that are part of it.  And I’m not doing my job as a storyteller if I don’t show the full picture. Not just the view on something like 24 where every Muslim is a terrorist.  And not every Muslim is squeaky clean.  You gotta show what’s in the middle.

Writing a play is a difficult and ambitious undertaking. What made you decide to attempt it?

When I was in graduate school at Penn State, I had some very influential professors. We were studying acting but they also pushed us to do something beyond that. They always told me, you have to write.  You have a story to tell.  That thing just resonated with me. And so I wrote from what I knew. I know Miami. I know Florida pretty well. I know sports. I know Islam.  So in some ways it was natural to do this.

You’ve published a brief writer’s commentary about the play on Skylight Theatre’s website.  It indicates that you feel that the voice of the Muslim-American artist doesn’t get enough expression in our community.  Am I correct?

Yes.  I’m talking about artistic expression as it relates to dealing in everyday life.

There’s no Muslim-American artistic tradition?

Amir Abdullah

You are pushed away from it. A lot of American Muslims are pushed into careers like doctors, lawyers The goal is to support a family. And to support a family, you want to be in something with a high success rate That’s great. But……

But isn’t that cross-cultural? I experienced the same thing in my tradition, which is Jewish.

But the difference is – if I attend a Seder, we’re singing songs, we’re story-telling. That’s intrinsic in the belief. The Holy Koran is very melodic,  but an exploration of what’s going on in everyday life — that is not explored. Secular music is not encouraged.

What about visual art?

It’s limited. Religious calligraphy, that sort of thing.  And when it comes to the stage: as far as American Muslims go, we don’t do it.

So one of the things you want to say is that artistic expression is not encouraged among Muslim Americans and should be?

Yes.  The Imam at the mosque isn’t necessarily going to tell me everything that I need to know.

And you’ve found some of that in the theater?

I’ve learned so much from being in the theater. I’ve gained so many different perspectives.

Have you encountered prejudice in your personal life?

Absolutely. I personally don’t identify with the Muslim stereotype, but I have my name.  It’s on my passport.  It’s on my license. There’s always the extra screening and being detained at the airports.  Or people will make comments or we’ll have eggs thrown at us. My parents are very orthodox and very visible in the community in Jacksonville, Florida.  There have been bomb threats at the mosque where I grew up.

I used to wear my religious hat in high school.  In middle school, I used to wear a kufi. I did my best to identify as a Muslim. But the world changed for everybody after 9/11. I remember distinctly somebody saying to me, “I hope your family didn’t have anything to do with this.”

How old were you then?

I was 15-years-old when that tragedy happened.  And people tend to look at you unfairly. That’s the reality. It’s like being the only black kid in class or the only Jewish person in town. Fairly or unfairly, you have to be the voice of your people.

What do you want people to take away from your play?

I want this play to be accessible to everybody, regardless of ideology.  I want everyone to be able to take something away.  For most of the people coming in to see the show, they know most of it, the journey that it takes. For them, hopefully I am holding up a mirror to our society so that they can see the hypocrisy, what we do to push people away.  For a non-Muslim audience that is less informed about the religion or has never met a Muslim, I want them to be in that world and be exposed to it. There are a lot of different layers to this play.  Everyone is going to take something different away.

Pray to Ball is being performed at Skylight Theatre, 1816 ½ N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through June 8. https://skylighttheatrecompany.com

Also, read Lovell Estell III’s review.

The Australian Theatre Company Launches in L.A.

By Pauline Adamek

Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Nicole Kidman. Phil Noyce, George Miller, Baz Luhrmann . . .

Ever since the swashbuckling days of Errol Flynn, people have been marveling at the wealth of talent that emerges from Australia, sometimes even complaining about the “Aussie invasion” of US screens.

Well, hang on to yer hats, mate, because the Gum Leaf Mafia is about to storm Hollywood’s theater stages as well — welcome to Aussiewood!

Intent on sharing Australian stories, voices, culture and talent — as well as collaborating with topnotch American practitioners — co-producers Nick Hardcastle and Nate Jones have formed the U.S.A.’s very first Australian stage troupe — Australian Theatre Company. Following initial discussions late last year, by mid-March the company had raised over $50,000 via a Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign in order to get going. The ATC will mark its debut with the Los Angeles premiere of Holding the Man, adapted by Tommy Murphy from the best-selling memoir by writer, actor and activist Timothy Conigrave. Featuring an all-Australian cast and directed by Hollywood acting coach Larry Moss, opening night is set for May 10 at the Matrix Theatre.

Initially set at Xavier College, an all-boys Jesuit Catholic school in Melbourne during the 1970s,  Holding the Man tracks the 15-year-long love story between two young men. The title refers to a term used in Australian football rules, referring to a transgression that incurs a penalty.

The original stage version of this emotional memoir remains one of the most successful Australian theater productions of recent times. The play premiered in 2006, enjoying a critically endorsed, sold-out season at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company (one of Australia’s leading theaters dedicated to new-writing), and became the troupe’s highest-grossing production in its 30-year history. After multiple productions around Australia, the play transferred to London’s West End in 2010.

Nick Hardcastle with Karen Lanyon

At the Australian Consul General’s home in Brentwood, Stage Raw spoke with the company’s co-founders Nick Hardcastle and Nate Jones about their launch, and asked them why form an Aussie theater company here in L.A. Why now?

Nate Jones (left), with Adam J. Yeend

Hardcastle expressed amazement that nobody had done this before. “We only started talking about this last November, and we are launching it in April, with our first full-scale production opening in May. When I met Nate it felt like — ‘yes!’ — two people who shared the same enthusiasm, the same vision.”

“It’s very exciting,” added Jones. “. . . a bit of a whirlwind!”

Hardcastle mentioned the breadth and quality of Australian talent here, “but also L.A. has so many theaters and different spaces . . . We can turn over many projects and tell more stories and involve people — but really, the first thing for me was the range of talent here.”

Hardastle and Jones are really plugging into the ethos of the 99-Seat Theater plan in L.A., and why it has generated such a burst of activity.

Harcastle explains: “We’re all desperate to be busy and be creative. ‘Oh my gosh — I’ve had 17 television auditions this week, maybe two call backs, but I haven’t booked anything for six months. I’m an actor — I wanna work. I’m a director — I wanna direct. I’m a writer — I want to see my words come to life.’

“So we just want to harness that talent, as well as provide an opportunity for us all to develop and take advantage of the American practitioners that we have access to here, who are so amazing at what they do and are willing to shepherd us and help us grow us as well.”

ATC’s cast of “Holding the Man”

Why Holding the Man for ATC’s launch? First, they’d worked on it before.

“I had been involved with it for a really long time,” Jones said. “Most of our cast members, as well as Nick, have some attachment to this amazing story.”

Hardcastle said he’d use The Matrix as the company’s home base, if possible. But he’s looking outside those walls.

“We want to develop a broad range of theater, and theater isn’t just plays. We’re hoping to stage all sorts of independently produced live entertainment, cabaret, musicals, romance — we’re very open. We’ll stage rehearsed readings that we can do in pubs, that kind of thing.”

Holding the Man opens on May 10 and continues through June 29, with performances on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Previews Thursday, May 8 and Friday, May 9, 8 p.m. General admission is $34.99. The Matrix Theatre is located at 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90046 (west of Stanley Ave., between Fairfax and La Brea). For reservations and information, call 323-960-7735 or go to www.holdingtheman.us.

Show  Info;  ATC’s Facebook Page

Connect to Matrix Theatre Company

The Mildest-Mannered Flame-Thrower in Los Angeles

City Garage’s Charles Duncombe

BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

Charles Duncombe

Imagine, the playwright-actor Molière in his 17^th century theater being grilled by a grants officer from France’s National Endowment for the Arts. The officer asks Molière to provide empirical evidence of whom his plays are reaching, cost versus expense ratios, and which kinds of plays are the most popular. What was once simple patronage by the King Louis XIV – funding had its own drawbacks, including the need to grovel – has now turned into a government grants dance (a different kind of groveling). Bend the art to obtain the funding for it. Prove your case with survey results. Google Analytics doesn’t actually come up in this scene, but it could.

Moliere, hanging around in the Comédie-Française (photo by Steven Leigh Morris)

“When they like the play they applaud,” Molière explains, dumbfounded, to the grants officer. “When they don’t, they throw things.”

This kind of joke forms the essence of playwright Charles Duncombe’s satirical wit.  A few critics of this repartee contained within Duncombe’s latest play, Bulgakov-Moliere (at City Garage in Bergamot Station through June 1), snorted contemptuously at the anachronism, but shuttling ideas from the 17^th century into the 21^st is precisely what Duncombe does, and has been doing for decades in his tenure as City Garage’s resident playwright, designer and Producing Director.

“Bulgakov-Molière” (Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein)

In 2001, Duncombe adapted Heiner Müller’s Frederick of Prussia into a work with a coda in the title: George W’s Great Dream of Sleep. An actor playing the former pres sat above and behind the historical drama about the brutal Frederick, and dozed off. A week into the production came the 9/11 bombings of the World Trade Center; the subsequent tragedy and related waves of patriotism compelled City Garage to cancel the show. Sometimes theater changes the world, sometimes it’s the other way around.

“Frederick of Prussia: George W’s Great Dream of Sleep” (Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein)

Duncombe’s partner, Artistic Director Frédérique Michel, stages all the works at City Garage. The pair have been putting on abstract yet mostly politically charged theater for decades. Early on, they presented plays by Harold Pinter in a makeshift theater on the Santa Monica Pier. For many years, they leased a former city garage (converted into their theater) off an alley behind Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. After that arrangement ran dry, they converted yet another Santa Monica space in Bergamot Station

Duncombe and Michel (Photo: courtesy City Garage)

My admiration for them stems from their defiant determination to do plays that only a minority of Americans had even heard of, and to put on adaptations, written and designed by Duncombe, of heady works by the likes of Müller, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Reiner Fassbinder, to throw politics all over their stage like confetti.

With the possible exceptions of China and Russia, the United States is the only place where discussing politics in the theater is considered a delicate matter — even through parody. This is particularly odd given the popularity of overtly topical, political satire on TV shows such as The Daily Show  and The Colbert Report. These shows are serving exactly the same, politically mocking role played by the likes of playwrights Vaclav Havel in communist Czechoslovakia and Athol Fugard in Apartheid South Africa. The hostility to politics in our own theater is baffling. Duncombe knows all this.

“It’s a peculiarly American idea that politics is divorced from art,” says Duncombe. “That theater isn’t responsible for provoking a dialogue – how dare you bring politics into art. It just doesn’t belong in the theater. You go into the theater for emotional voyeurism.”

And so he continues to insert political satire and indignation into his plays and adaptations. Duncombe is almost like some Monty Python character who taunts any Goliath or drama critic who’s hanging around – go ahead, hit me, beat me. Just try it!

Through most of 2012 and much of 2013, Duncombe and Michel worked with me on a new version of my play Moskva – a contemporary adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita set in Putin’s Russia. (The theater staged the play at the end of 2013, and it was initially supposed to be performed in repertory with Bulgakov-Molière, until Duncombe and Michel came to the realization that they simply hadn’t the human or technical resources to pull off such an ambitious pairing.)

During much of the time we were discussing rewrites, Duncombe was enduring the tortures of throat cancer treatment – brutal radiation —  with an attitude somewhere between stoicism and good cheer. Somehow, when we met then, he just shrugged off the side-effects almost cheerfully. It’s not that he avoided the topic but he was quick to change the subject.

Duncombe is living proof that much of L.A. theater is not an attempt to woo the film and TV industries that still dominate our cultural landscape. Rather, the theater is a reaction against it, what playwright Jon Robin Baitz famously called “an antidote to the toxicity of living in a company town.”

How bizarre it must be for Duncombe to leave performances of Bulgakov-Molière to attend his day job for ABC as a writer on a reality show.

“Bulgakov-Molière” (Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein)

Duncombe’s Bulgakov-Moliere is a multi-layered fantasia about the somewhat dissolute Russian novelist Bulgakov grappling with Stalin about what was allowed in Soviet art, and what was not.  For his part, Bulgakov wrote his own play about that equation. It was called Molière, and it studied that playwright’s troubled relations with the Catholic clergy in Paris (who didn’t like his plays at all), as well as with the French King, who did like his plays but who was beholden to the Church. The king was also Molière’s sponsor and employer. Bulgakov was looking at Stalin’s policies through the prism of artistic tyranny in 17^th century France.

Mikhail Bulgakov

In Duncombe’s play, Bulgakov is dragged away by the KGB to a theater, in order to watch a production of his own play, Molière, and perhaps to learn something from it. The heart of the matter, for Duncombe, comes from an emblematic line in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, “Cowardice is the greatest of all human vices.”

There’s a certain mythology about the bravery of people standing up to dangerous authority, facing the risk of prison or death – playwrights Vaclav Havel, Athol Fugard, the Soviet troubadour Vladimir Vysotsky, and countless journalists in Putin’s Russia. Duncombe takes the view that Bulgakov – though as brilliant as novelists come – was not in that same moral company, that he was doing what was expedient to save his own skin.

Explains Duncombe, “When we collaborated on Moskva, I went back to do more research and became more invested in Bulgakov’s personal biography, what he was going through in his life, and I realized there was this critical moment in his life:

“Molière had just been banned, [Bulgakov] was writing to Stalin to appeal. He had, at that point burned his only copy of The Master and Margarita. I thought, what a great launching point to have him fall asleep – Woland [the devil in M&M] appears in a distorted version, poking and prodding him with issues that Bulgakov struggled with through his life – the artist’s obligation to stand up to the State, free expression. He didn’t. And that’s what’s so interesting. I think that’s why he was obsessed with the idea that cowardice is the worst of all human vices.”

Kat Johnston and Nathan Dana Aldrich as, respectively, Moliere’s mistress Madeleine Béjart and Woland in “Bulgakov-Molière” (photo by Paul M. Rubenstein)

Duncombe says that he wanted to focus on Woland needling Bulgakov “on the issue of his own lack of ability to stand up to the Soviet State, to Stalin, to the censors. He’s not willing ultimately to be a dissident artist. He feels neglected. He doesn’t have the courage to be the man he wants.”

There’s also a right-wing American radio broadcaster and born-again Christianity referenced in the play “The relationship to America isn’t exactly parallel,” says Duncombe, “but the polarized dialogue over the place of religion in politics, and American attitudes toward religion, have interesting parallels to Molière’s time.”

Some critics found those characters gratingly out of place. Not so Stage Raw’s Lovell Estell III, whose review is here

There is, in fact, a place for politics in American theater, in certain constrained circumstances. Take, for example, the many plays honoring singer/social crusader Paul Robeson on our stages over the past few weeks (including Philip Hayes Dean’s Paul Robeson at Ebony Rep, and Daniel Beaty’s The Tallest Tree in the Forest, now at the Mark Taper Forum.) They tackle the delicate business of glorifying a labor-rights activist and communist sympathizer with a defiance that matches the defiance of their central character. These are studies in American heroism.

Duncombe is defiant in exactly the opposite way, writing a play about an artistically brilliant central character who failed to live up to his own moral standards. City Garage has a habit of doing anti-heroic plays. It’s just how they see things, in opposition to the way most of us want to see things in the theater, which is what Duncombe calls “emotional voyeurism.” Now that’s defiance.

Bulgakov-Molière continues this weekend at City Garage, Building T1, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. (pay what you can), 5 p.m.; through June 1. (310) 453-9939, www.citygarage.org

To Be Equal, Not a Sequel

An Exhibition of Posters on the Dominance of Male Artists in Galleries

BY PAULINE ADAMEK

Carolyn Campbell: Marlborough Gallery

While it is generally accepted that there is an imbalance in gender representation in the art world that tilts towards male artists, the data for galleries — meaning the actual numbers of artists who have secured gallery representation — have not been visualized and publicized since the Guerrilla Girls’ efforts in the 1980s.

Robin Hextrum

Siobhan Hebron

Enter (en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Talley Poster Project — a collaborative effort curated by artist Micol Hebron. The exhibit strives to expose the continued, gaping gender imbalance of artists who get their works professionally represented. It does so by featuring numerous visual accounts of the actual numbers of male versus female artists with works at top-tier venues. Now showing at ForYourArt gallery on Wilshire Boulevard in the Fairfax District through May 9,  (en)Gendered (in)Equity was first seen late last year at West LA College Art Gallery.

Dan Levenson

The exhibition is a crowd-sourced, social engagement art project in which over 500 artists from around the world have now joined the effort. Timed to open during Women’s History Month, the exhibition currently features over 250 posters.

Denise Johnson (thick n miley)

The artists were invited to select any number of galleries, and then, for each gallery, to create one poster (24” x 36”) representing gender ratios there, in whatever style or medium they chose.

Christy Roberts

Launched in Los Angeles and initially focusing on L.A. galleries, the project is now in its second phase, extending its gaze to galleries in New York. Subsequent visualizations will include Berlin, London, Chicago, Santa Fe, Portland, Pittsburg, and other cities.

Artist Carolyn Campbell spoke to Stage Raw about her participation.

STAGE RAW For your part in the exhibition – how did you select the images to serve the concept of the exhibition? 

CAROLYN CAMPBELL: “Initially, I was naively hoping to find more 50/50 representation in galleries. I wanted to illustrate a hopeful balance, but after noticing the great disparity in gender representation, I opted instead to address that issue in the galleries I selected.”

SR: How many did you choose and what formed your statement? 

CC: “I chose Marlborough Chelsea, a satellite of the main Marlborough Gallery, one of the world’s leading artist reps. Not surprisingly, the Chelsea branch ranked among the most egregious examples of New York galleries when it came to gender inequity at 93% male and 7% female. Kerry Schuss Art, at 73% male and 27% female, was not as bad, though not great, yet I was encouraged to see the great reviews his women artists have received. I hope that Mr. Schuss will take note of that fact and work a bit harder to add more women to his roster. The two female figures in my works (photos of 19^th century sculptures from Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris) are overwhelmed with exasperation in response to the gallery tally for these two dealers.”

Carolyn Campbell

Some background on your photography work at that Paris cemetery?

“I have been writing about and photographing Père Lachaise Cemetery for close to 30 years. The breathtaking architecture and sculpture of the tombs marks the final resting places of some of the world’s most beloved artists, from Chopin to Delacroix and Rosa Bonheur to Gertrude Stein and Oscar Wilde to Modigliani. The female figure in funerary iconography is traditionally linked to the Seven Virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude and Justice. The two images that I chose for the (en)Gendered (in)Equity exhibition are powerful examples of how women embody some of the deepest qualities of the human condition.

Carolyn Campbell

(en)Gendered (in)Equity is in some ways a reboot of the awareness campaign raised by the Guerrilla Girls. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City staged a large group exhibition entitled An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture.  Of the 169 artists represented, only 13 were women. A group of women artists — some prominent, others on the fringe — decided to do something about it. Concealing their true identities for fear of a backlash from the establishment, they called themselves the Guerrilla Girls, even adopting the obviously fake names of dead female artists to preserve their anonymity in interviews. For their acts of politicized street art, the women donned monkey masks and pasted posters all over Soho that revealed and damned the art world for their prevailing exclusion of women artists. In an interview that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air radio show, “Frida Kahlo” said, “We decided to find out how bad it was. After about five minutes of research, we found that it was worse than we thought: the most influential galleries and museums exhibited almost no women artists.”

(en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Tally Poster Project, an exhibition of posters curated by Micol Hebron, remains on view at ForYourArt, 6020 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles;

Monday-Thursday: 11am-5pm; Friday-Sunday: Various Times. Through May 9.

Found Object Puppets

Designer Adrian Kohler, on a Dream that closes Saturday

BY PAULINE ADAMEK

Saskia Portway (Titania) and company (Photo by Simon Annand)

South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company recently gained acclaim for its collaboration with playwright Nick Stafford and the Bristol Old Vic’s production of War Horse. The Tony-Award winning phenomenon made its world premiere at the National Theatre of Great Britain’s Olivier Theatre in 2007, and later played in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre, in 2012. A unique theatrical experience that combined intense drama with elaborate staging and dazzling puppetry, War Horse was essentially a love story between a boy and his horse. At the heart of the show were full-sized puppets that brought breathing, galloping and charging horses to life on stage.

Handspring Puppet Company has now re-teamed with Bristol Old Vic’s Artistic Director Tom Morris to present A Midsummer Night’s Dream, closing on Saturday at Santa Monica’s The Broad Stage. The production creates puppets from found-objects that come to life in Shakespeare’s magical world.

Adrian Kohler, Artistic Director of Handspring and designer of the dream puppets spoke with Stage Raw about his creations in the show.

ADRIAN KOHLER: The overall concept for the puppets designed for A Midsummer Night’s Dream was that every object has the right to life. Hippolyta is building a pair of votive figures to bless the pending marriage to Theseus about which she is feeling rather dubious. He beat her in battle after all… But other objects — the tools in her workshop, the boards in her walls — all start to manifest her unease.

STAGE RAW: How long did it take to realize this project — from early concept meetings to first opening night?

AK: [The show’s director] Tom and Basil [Handspring colleague Basil Jones] and myself all talked about it shortly after War Horse opened in 2007. It went in and out of focus for a good few years. Then we began talks in earnest about a year and a half before we began rehearsals. There were two intensive workshops with Vicki Mortimer, the [set] designer, and some actors, before the final design and build.

SR: Can you briefly describe the various kinds or styles of puppets that were created?

The smallest puppet is a bee made from a modified wind-up toy. The largest are the two votive figures, bits and pieces of which are used until they are finally fully assembled. There are some rod-puppet fairies that look like remnants from an old fairground. There are some umbrella-like jelly fish that swim about. A number of styles, really.

SR: Ground-breaking techniques?

Puck is made up of a pile of tools that have him sometimes a dog, sometimes a snail, sometimes an eagle and sometimes a man. Oberon has a large, articulated wooden hand that can delicately pick up the finest piece of cloth. Flying planks form and reform into enormous wings for Titania to wear.

SR: My understanding of the transformation of Bottom is that his – ahem – naked posterior features prominently when he is turned into an ass. Why so literal?

It’s a schoolboy humor moment that Puck is very proud of. It’s just his taste. It’s probably the first time the fairy joke has been taken so literally. It gives Titania great scope to fall into Oberon’s spiteful prank.

SR: Were you given specific directives or parameters from the Old Vic — to what extent were you given free reign, if at all?

The play was workshopped with Tom (Director of the Bristol Old Vic) himself, so the reign was as free as it could be.

SR: How did you decide which and how many of the characters would be represented as puppets?

The fairies are an obvious choice, so we made that one. Pyramus and Thisbe have become possible puppets too.

SR: Did you expect that American audiences would experience this production differently from any other audiences?

We are finding that American audiences are enjoying the play immensely. Might have something to do with the fact that it’s a very good play.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream  continues at Santa Monica’s The Broad Stage until April 19. www.thebroadstage.com

Gates McFadden (Photo by Bill Raden)

Atwater Village Development Project

Why Gates McFadden Runs a Small Theater Next to the Train Tracks

BY DEBORAH KLUGMAN

Gates McFadden is the artistic director of Ensemble Studio Theatre/L.A. In 2011 McFadden directed House of Gold by Gregory Moss, which was inspired by the JonBenét Ramsey tragedy and reflects on the phenomenon of child beauty pageants and its pernicious impact on unknowing and acquiescent children.

 McFadden is currently developing a play about Cuba by Vancouver-based Timothy Perez, one of her former students she met while teaching at Tisch School of the Arts. McFadden directed a workshop presentation of Perez’ play last week at her own theater.

 She also directed the company’s recent, highly acclaimed production of The Ugly One by German playwright Marius Von Mayenburg, (There are uncertain but hopeful plans for a future mounting). It’s a dark, funny, disturbing tale about a brilliant inventor who, midlife, learns that his boss refuses to let him represent his own invention at a convention, because he is regarded as ugly by everyone around him – something he never before realized. When he undergoes cosmetic surgery and acquires a stunningly handsome new face, he becomes universally admired – until others undergo the same procedure and he devolves into one among many.

 STAGE RAW: What first hit you about The Ugly One?

 GATES McFADDEN: What first hit me was the concept of trying to be so special. I think it was one of the last lines. “Stop trying to be so different.” It was an interesting thing because I [found myself thinking]: Oh, I want to be seen as special.  How do I do that?  Am I trying to be special by having fewer wrinkles than the next person, or because I’m trying to do this really interesting work?  Is it a mixture of a lot of things? . . . I feel that there is a huge amount of narcissism [in our culture]. I am certainly involved in it . . . Falling in love with [myself.] That’s why the play was very funny to me and very frightening, and viciously cruel.

It’s not vicious for the sake of being vicious. It’s like: This is how we hurt each other all the time and we’re not even aware of it.  We say things that deeply wound people.  We want them to change and be our image of who we want them to be.”

 What about your relationship as director to the audience?

I like the discovery of what the audience brings. I remember when I was doing Cloud Nine [Caryl Churchill’s play bifurcated into an act set in Victorian England, and another Act set in 1979 London] about and I was getting a great audience response and then someone said, can’t remember who: “No, no, it’s becoming too sentimental.  Pull back.”  And they were right – because I needed to let [the audience] respond, and by my responding too much I was telling them what to do and I do not like that.  I do not like indicating.  I do not like all that stuff.  You can get up on the stage and pick your nose and get a laugh.  It’s not hard.  Or you can do something and get people to cry.  It’s about what you are trying to say.  What is the event?  What’s going on here? What do we want the audience to take away?  And I like to set a fairly high standard of having people keep the experience in their mind, even if they hated the experience – to at least think about why they did. Because I’m going to be thinking: Why did they hate it?  Or what did they love about it?  That’s kind of why you do it.

People saw House of Gold, and found it such hard material . . .

This is Gregory Moss’ play about children and sexual abuse?

Right. No child was harmed because [the child] was played by an adult actor.  On the other hand there was all this intensity because people would project and imagine what was going on. And that’s one of the things that I was actually exploring with the audience: How voyeuristic are we as a public?  We don’t like [exploiting/abusing children] but then there’s a part of us that wants to see it. And some people use that [voyeurism] to bad effect.  With all the technology there is sometimes a loss of innocence.

 I remember that I was very taken with it but the person I went with was totally freaked out about it: “I don’t like this play. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why they are dealing with it.”

About three years ago, there was this “Honey Boo Boo” [pageant shows with kids] on TV. I couldn’t believe how many people were watching it, going “Oh yeah it’s horrible, it shouldn’t be happening”.  But no one was saying you can’t put that on TV. The attitude was, it’s fine if the parents want to do that.

When a kid is that age and a minor, of course they’re going to want to please their parents. It’s where this whole cycle starts that ends up with The Ugly One.  Is it about the talent or is it about all the accoutrements? If you’ve gotten to the Olympics you know it’s because of your skill.  But if you win a beauty pageant I’m not sure what that means.

 You don’t have to do anything for people to think you are beautiful. If you’re an athlete you have to prove something, or if you are a writer – but if you are considered beautiful all you have to do is stand there.

Right, except then what starts to happen? And this is why I thought The Ugly One was so great: What if you could make yourself to be that beautiful? What if it’s something like a commodity that everyone can buy?  And then it doesn’t become so special.  And then, who’s face is it?  If the surgeon makes it, is it yours? What if that face is everywhere else?  I think that’s funny and interesting, because you go on the Internet and you see how many products there are about how to become more beautiful.

But it’s more than that.  It’s how people see you.  If you’re told [you have] the most beautiful face, how people react to you will start to change you. How can we maintain our identity and be ourselves, and old, and not look like 16? How does it affect us if we think we’re ugly? How does it affect us if we have no idea that we’re ugly, which is the way the play starts. It’s not like [the lead character] has been living with this burden.  He has not noticed that even his own wife is not looking at him with both eyes.

 Would you say you are visual in your approach to your projects?

I use a lot of images.  I think in movement and rhythm.  I am definitely very visually oriented when I direct.  I am a big collector of old magazines and art books.  I love film, I love opera, I love all of the arts.  It comes from my background.

 Which is?

Very early I got to study with Jacques Lecoq.  From him I got the notion that as an actor you  have a responsibility to work with other artists.  You work with musicians.  You work with architects.  We had a whole thing about architecture with Lecoq. For example, what’s the relationship of the performer in that space?  What’s the relationship of the set in that space?  Is it an environment?  What’s the relationship between the spectator and the performer?[In the theater], anything can go wrong.  And in one performance [of The Ugly One], somebody passed out.  We didn’t know if it was serious or not.  We had to stop the performance.

 How long is the rehearsal process usually?

This one was very short and so it was intense.  It was hard on the actors.  I was quite a taskmaster.  We only had four weeks and then we were into tech, and tech was complicated. But the plus was, it was not a three-hour show. It felt like more sometimes because it’s so dense but actually it was only an hour and five minutes, so that’s a short process.

 What are some of the difficulties of your job as artistic director?

One frustrating thing in a non-profit theater when you are as small as we are is that you have these incredible artists and writers but there’s no money for anyone.  And so you can’t get people to commit to a rehearsal process the way I would like to do.  You can’t have those rehearsals of eight-hours for six-months because you’re a company and you’re developing it.  And I do feel the best work comes out of that particular process. The theater that I love the most comes from companies that have grants that allow them to work on something and redo it.  That would be my ideal. And from my short experience as an artistic director, I can’t do that. That’s been very frustrating for me.  I wish there was some way that I could have a magic wand and I could work on something, and then, when it’s ready, open it.

 What about casting? Do you cast from within the company?

Our productions are always at least 50% from the company, if not all.   We have another play coming up.  It’s a beautiful story written by Stephen Dierkes.  He is in our playwright’s unit. It’s a simple story, it’s beautiful.

 Are you directing it?

I’m not going to direct.  I’m going to give other people a chance.

 I know you have a play-reading series but do you also have a writers’ workshop where people give feedback.

Yes, we have that, and we have several playwrights who have their own playwrights’ group. Our own playwrights unit, headed up by Tom Baum, does meet and they do give each other feedback.

 What about marketing?

I’m certainly not an expert in that field. Sometimes you can have a gem that’s been done and nobody told anyone how brilliant it is and it’s one night only. You can just go to a reading and if it’s done well you can have a cathartic experience, depending on the subject matter.

Other projects in the works?

 There was a three-minute sci-fi writing contest –  short story — a page and a half of writing. How much can you tell in three minutes.  It’s to be done on the radio, and I’m going to direct some of our actors.  We just got them, the three winners. Apparently they have just hundreds of these from all over the country. You can get a lot in, in three minutes. My mind just kept going after the end line.

I love that.  Where I’m taken.  I mean, that’s why we have the arts.  I can be taken by a painting.  I can be taken by a good piece of pie.  The idea – where you are so engaged in something and it’s opening up this whole other experience.  And that’s really why you do it, isn’t it?

Sounds of Riddance:

Meg Foster, Sissy Boyd and Wes Walker, on the motions and emotions between words

BY BILL RADEN

Meg Foster may be best known for her haunting, almost supernaturally unsettling, milky blue eyes, a quality that has made her a natural fit for horror, science fiction and thrillers in film work that spans three decades and includes Sam Peckinpah’s The Osterman Weekend (1983) and John Carpenter’s Burroughsian alien-invasion classic, They Live (1988), and, more recently, Rob Zombie’s rock “n’ roll horror film, The Lords of Salem (2013).

Here in Los Angeles, the actress may be best remembered for her stage work at the old LATC and for playing Regan in Norwegian director Stein Winge’s darkly expressionistic King Lear.

With Riddance, the evening of hybrid performance art/theater that opened on Friday at Highland Park’s Moryork Gallery, Meg Foster returns to the stage, lured by the opportunity to work with its authors, the experimental playwright-performer Sissy Boyd and her frequent collaborator, playwright-director Wes Walker, who each contribute a one-act for the show – Boyd’s Movement For Two Voices, and Walker’s A Man Entire.

Stage Raw recently sat down with the three artists to talk about their collaboration.

Stage Raw: Meg, you’ve done stage work and, obviously, film. What qualities in Sissy’s work do you find so inviting?

Meg Foster: It’s extraordinary. It’s not like anything [else]. I’ve been given a gift. It’s very beautiful. . . and it’s haunting. I read it when Wes sent it to me. I did not read it out loud. I did not read it to anybody. And then, I think when I met you both at Sissy’s house, I just said, “You birthed this. This is life.” And Sissy said, “I did it one word at a time.” So thank you. And that’s what helps me remember.

Because to speak it — if one itty-bitty syllable is off, I might get two words away and go, “Where did it go? What did I miss?’ It’s a very different rhythm. It’s not like learning lines, it’s not like reciting a poem. Do you know? It’s very different.

Wes Walker: I was thinking of that. Like, what is it about this piece that’s not a poem? That [makes it] theater — or is it? And part of it just has to do with the dynamic. It’s the two people [Voice One and Voice Two], and it is about live speech — and witnessed live speech, through an audience joining and somehow finishing the relationship between the two. So to even further what Meg is saying, it’s not just that a person learning their lines has to remember everything in order to kind of be able to remember it, it’s that you also have to maintain a connection to the other person and then to the staged space that keeps it even more connected. It’s a real tightrope act.

Sissy Boyd: One thing for me was that first meeting, hearing Meg’s voice, I had never heard something so [exactly] match what I had heard in my head. I can’t even tell you how amazing that was. There were tears and this emotion and this silent sound echoing [in her reading]. I mean, I was just floored.

MF: Your words.

WW: I felt the same thing. That the first read-through of it, and then the second read-through of it, each one seemed to be almost immediately stage-worthy. Then it instantly struck me, the fear that, “Oh, I’ve got to be careful not to fuck this up!” That I’ve just got to be on guard not to, like, get in the way of this in any way. Just only help it.

MF: I remember one day you said — you sent me an email — you said, “We will start the descent.” Right? And I was, like, “Oookay.” You know? But [the piece] reminds me of a labyrinth. Because you have these two voices. And you enter a labyrinth, and the idea is to in some way exit. But the experience depends on where you turn. You can turn this corner, you can go straight. How you turn is where you’re going to go, and it changes the whole path. But you will never leave the labyrinth the same way you came in. And this is what this piece is about.

SR: Sissy, you were a dancer with Martha Graham. And you’ve said that dance and movement are present in your writing. Is that movement in the language or in the blocking of Movement For Two Voices?

WW: It’s totally in both — one of the voices will be representing movement only through things spoken in the moment, and the other body will be responding to that through movement on the stage.

MF: And time.

WW: Yeah. And time. When we’re talking about stillness and movement from stillness, so much of Sissy’s work — and the whole raison d’être of her getting into writing at all — was that she went through this major episode of Guillan-Barré syndrome and was paralyzed for months. She had only expressed herself as a dancer — really completely defined herself that way.

SB: I wasn’t interested in words at all. And then this kind of … I feel like it pushed me toward words. I didn’t even know it was happening, but I had to figure out something to do.

MF: It’s amazing when one is debilitated so profoundly — because you are a [dancer] and you did it as a child, and it became your life and your way to create — to go through that horror and not knowing. And what came from it was a gift. For me, the gift of your words.

SR: Can you describe the evening?

WW: My piece, which was always considered in tandem [with Sissy’s], is almost like a reaction to hers in that hers kind of represents the quintessence of female strength. Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but its mother-and-daughter thing and everything. And mine is a panicked reaction to that — what if that weren’t there? What if that were missing? What if we fucked up our ecology to a point where that can’t be there anymore?

SR: Wes, you started out in music, and just as dance and movement are present in Sissy’s language, music and rhythm and sound seem key to yours.

WW: And it’s kind of hard to talk about what that is, because it’s just a sense, right? For Sissy, when you watch Sissy move around a stage, there’s a sense — that you can’t really describe — that she has when she moves her skirt around. And that’s the same thing with the sound of a text or a play. You just know when it sounds wrong, and there are certain aspects to it — you kind of know what kind of sound an audience can hold onto.

SB: I always think of Wes as the pure poet. He’s the purest. There’s a purity, do you know what I mean? There’s an intelligence that Wes has that the poetry is equal to. Some people have one or the other, Wes has both. It’s phenomenal.

WW: The thing is — and I don’t know how inviting it sounds — but both these pieces, they do ask something from the audiences. We do try to include them in the realization of what these things are. So it’s hopefully not obscure to them, but there is an amount of help they can give us in completing the whole thing, right? And I think both pieces are honest about that. Because the way we approach these things are kind of open, and they allow for some unknowns, we ask that the audience joins us in resolving them as performance.

SR: You can’t attend passively.

WW: Like I’ve said to Sissy over and over, is that her work rewards attention; the more you give it, the more it will give you. But you have to pay attention — you have to listen in a way, which isn’t always easy. We try to stage it in a way that allows that and doesn’t distract too much.

Part of what I’m trying to do is be aware of what this gallery is, this wonderful [Joseph} Cornell box of a space. And so we’re trying to, you know, deal with that and kind of live next to that — these anachronistic things that are beautiful together and very chosen.

Riddance runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2p.m., March 21 through April 6. Tickets to all performances are $15. MorYork Gallery is located at 4959 York Blvd. in Los Angeles, California 90042. There is ample street parking. For reservations and information, call (323) 660-8998

Polish Art Warriors Ride in on a Rare SoCal Storm

One Night in Santa Ana

BY GUY ZIMMERMAN 

Art warriors come in all shapes and sizes. One of my favorites was in the area last month: Joanna Klass, direct from Warsaw, Poland, where she runs WarsawBauhaus with her partner, the artist Wojtek Szaszor. Invited to attend an open mic happening-exchange and roundtable discussion Joanna and Wojtek were holding at a vacant space in the Santora Arts Building in Santa Ana, I drove south through the rain on a Saturday night last month into the heart of Orange County. By 8 p.m., a group of us had straggled out of the weather into the bare exhibition space on Broadway, which was selected for the event by the artist Allen Moon of Santa Ana Sites. Entering the gallery, we were greeted by footage and Taiji Ito’s arresting score from Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), by the Russian-born experimental film-maker and choreographer Maya Deren (created in 1943 in collaboration with her husband Alexander Hammid), which was projected huge on the wall, and by an enamel pot of steaming borscht – enough for a company of Cossacks – set out nearby on a folding chair.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), score by Taiji Ito

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBUhbecZDY

As soon as a quorum assembled, Joanna and Wojtek had us move our chairs into an oval in the front portion of the gallery space, joining a diverse group of artists, arts administrators and academics rolling in from the North (Pasadena, Hollywood, and West LA) and from the South (Soka University of Aliso Viejo)  — along with celebrity outsiders such as Reno,  the comedienne from New York City.

We began to talk about what is important when it comes to art-making in Southern California — in a pragmatic-materialistic culture like America’s that was founded on the idea that we can find answers to all life’s questions, artists are drawn to questions that have no easy answers. Artists, as often as not, appear as the worm in the apple, the fly in the ointment – at best a regrettable necessity whom it makes no sense to celebrate, much less waste public money on.

Among other topics and conversational vectors, the exchange heated up around how the complaints and problems of artists measure up against the material needs of hungry people. Is art relevant to vulnerable populations, or does the need for expression and connection exist alongside the need for bread and water? Are these varied needs simultaneous and complementary, or hierarchical?

The painter Arie Galles and his wife Sara Nuss-Galles grew up in war-torn Europe, and found purpose in creating art when they were refugees in Russia; Sally Fairman works with inner city kids, helping them to use artistic expression to stay out of prison and the soul-killing disaster of the American “justice” system. Debate on this point flowed back and forth before some consensus began to emerge: expressivity remains a vital force, as crucial to the poor as to the well-heeled.

Poet, writer and music historian Maja Trochimczyk read a beautiful poem from a recent volume of her work. Comedian Reno, or “Citizen Reno,” as Joanna describes her, arrived with some welcome voltage, bringing the conversation back again to the issue of topicality, and how potent forms of artistic expression can sometimes be found in what seems to be pure entertainment. Wojtek Szaszor, meanwhile, drifted around the periphery of the room, performing minor acts of Dadaist sorcery involving an immense, inflated blowfish together with an array of ripe oranges.

The larger questions are not whether the arts are relevant, or to whom they matter. There’s no evidence that the numbers of people creating art is in any way diminishing. But when people of all colors and stripes create it, as they’re obviously inclined to, how many people care enough about viewing it? That’s the diminishment on these shores that’s been reported by the National Endowment of the Arts. Has narcissism taken us to a land beyond where we partake of art made by other people?

In a different era, we would have been drinking and smoking, but on this evening we weren’t drinking – we had to drive – and nobody smokes anymore. Nevertheless, as we began to go our separate ways back into the rain, a poem by Czeslaw Milosz, “An Appeal,” kept running through my mind, and I quote a few lines here, out of Robert Haas’ translation:

            From a landscape of cranes and canals,
            Of tangled railway tracks and winter fog,
            In the smoke of black tobacco, I make my way
            Toward you and I ask you a question.
            Tell me, for once at least laying
            Caution aside, and fear and guarded speech,
            Tell me, as you would in the middle of the night
            When we face only night, the ticking of a watch,
            The whistle of an express train, tell me
            Whether you really think that this world
            Is your home? That your internal planet
            That revolves, red-hot, propelled by the current
            Of your warm blood, is really in harmony
            With what surrounds you? Probably you know very well
            The bitter protest, every day, every hour,
            The scream that wells up, stifled by a smile,
            The feeling of a prisoner who touches a wall
            And knows that beyond it valleys spread,
            Oaks stand in summer splendor, a jay flies
            And a kingfisher changes a river to a marvel.

God bless the Poles, and let more of their magic descend upon Southern California – we need it as badly as we need the rain.

Guy Zimmerman is a playwright and director

Photo by Pauline Adamek

You Take the Highbrow

Pollock at the Getty

BY PAULINE ADAMEK

American Artist Jackson Pollock’s large-scale masterpiece, the abstract impressionist work Mural, has been newly restored and is currently on view at The Getty Center through June 1, 2014.

The legend behind its creation and painstaking restoration imbues this striking painting with a rich backstory.In 1943, Pollock was a promising New York artist who had come to the attention of Peggy Guggenheim (whose father was a casualty of the RMS Titanic). A wealthy socialite and a bohemian, an international jetsetter and art dealer, Guggenheim hobnobbed with the most famous artists of her day. Her art collection and legacy of patronage remain one of the greatest gifts to this country. When the dogma (that the arts should be self-supporting or aren’t worthy of being) rears its serpent’s head, one need only look to the patronage system through the centuries, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Queen Elizabeth I, King Louis XIV and Peggy Guggenheim, who supported the likes of Michaelangelo, Shakespeare, Moliere and Pollock. It was patrons who allowed their art to breathe for subsequent generations.

In July 1943, Guggenheim offered a gallery contract to Pollock, a commission to create a work, roughly eight feet tall by 20 feet long, to be displayed in entry to her new Manhattan townhouse. Though originally commissioned by Guggenheim as a mural, surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp advised Guggenheim to have Pollock paint it on canvas rather than on the wall, in case she eventually moved.

She did relocate to Venice, Italy, shortly after the end of World War II, but the painting remained in the States, enjoying an itinerant and somewhat forgotten life until it found a home at the University of Iowa. It was likely rolled and stored and unrolled at least five times as it moved from Pollock’s studio, to Guggenheim’s entrance hall, to Vogue Studios (for photography), to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, to Yale University, and finally, in 1951, to the University of Iowa Museum of Art, to whom Guggenheim eventually bequeathed it.

Photo by Pauline Adamek

Mural predates Pollock’s later iconic style of pouring and splashing paint on a horizontal canvas, known as his “action painting” method. Mural was created the old-fashioned way, with the application of brush to upright canvas. Evidence of Pollock’s emerging style can be seen in his paint flicks, yet the drips run down towards the floor—proof that the canvas was vertical during its execution. Indeed, Pollock removed a wall in his own townhouse in order to create the work, albeit at close quarters.

Guggenheim’s contract was for one year and included the commission of smaller works. Pollock was given very little by way of instruction — simply the princely sum of $150.00 per month for a year in exchange for his promise to deliver and install the first work in time for her annual New Year’s Eve party, approximately six months later.

Many myths swirl around the dramatic artwork, including rumors that Pollock laid its visual foundations in a 36-hour frenzy of inspiration. After Guggenheim moved to Italy, she loaned Mural to the Museum of Modern Art for a large exhibition that included works by Picasso. Displayed in this exciting contemporary company, Pollock’s reputation was cemented.

In July 2012, the painting was transported to the Getty Center for an in-depth study and conservation treatment. The Getty is currently displaying Mural in one room until June 1, 2014. In an adjacent room, there are exhibits detailing the painting’s restoration, including some fascinating sleuth work (seen in a video that charts the analytical experiments) as the Getty’s restoration team strove to understand which paints Pollock may have used. Brimming with vivid swirls and energy, the monumental work represents a transitional moment in Pollock’s career, as he moved toward an experimental application of paints of all types.

Additional information is available at www.getty.edu

And I’ll Take the Lowbrow

Blériot on Melrose

BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

Blériot at Work, Courtesy of Blériot

Stage Raw was in London’s Shoreditch district last week when it ran across muralist Blériot, at work for a commissioned piece for A.C. Camargo’s LIGA DO ROSA campaign for Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Turns out the Leeds-born artist was recently in L.A., where he left his mark – his ‘Dia De Los Muertos’ mural on Melrose Avenue’s Fame Yard.

Courtesy of Blériot

CAPTION: Blériot on Melrose

Blériot (his name honoring the French aviator, Louis Blériot who, in 1909, became the first pilot to fly across the English Channel) was invited to L.A. by artist Shepard Fairey to work on projects and designs with OBEY, founded in 2001 on the inspiration provided by Fairey’s counter-cultural artworks – call it a skateboard/punk aesthetic. (From OBEY Clothing’s website: “Through designers Mike Ternosky and Erin Wignall, Shepard works to create designs that represent his influences, ideals and philosophy.”) Fairey’s work, and consequently OBEY’s clothing items, satirize conformity by looking at American images through a Soviet, authoritarian lens.

Of course, this begs the question of whether a counter-culture clothing campaign is actually part of pop culture or counter culture, and where lies the divide between the two? For example, how revolutionary is a poster for sale in a theater lobby or a T-shirt for Les Misérables? That’s an open question, not a rhetorical one.

Blériot didn’t want his face photographed, but had no objection to Stage Raw capturing his London mural for our readers.   

Fame Yard is located next door to Sportie LA at 7753 Melrose Ave.