First-time playwright Amir Abdullah's play "Pray to Ball" is receiving its premiere at the Skylight Theatre. Deborah Klugman speaks with Abdullah about the play's intersections of basketball, friendship and Islam.
The Australian Theater Company -- the first Aussie stage troupe in the U.S. -- launches in L.A. after a successful Kickstarter campaign with its production of "Holding the Man" at the Matrix. Stage Raw's own Aussie delegate, Pauline Adamek, spoke with co-founders Nick Hardcastle and Nate Jones at a bash hosted by the Australian consulate.
CHARLES DUNCOMBE has been resident playwright, designer and Producing Director at Santa Monica's City Garage for years, infusing his plays and adaptations with political satire and commentary that, by his own admission, have no place in the American theater. STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS speaks with this "mildest-mannered flame-thrower in Los Angeles" about his latest work at City Garage, "Bulgakov-Moliere"
A collaborative exhibit of posters focusing on gender inequity in the art world ["(en)Gendered (in)Equity"] has been extended to May 9 at ForYouArt Gallery in the Fairfax District. PAULINE ADAMEK looks at why and how it was created, and speaks to artist Carolyn Campbell about her contribution to the project.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" -- featuring the puppets of South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company, closes on Saturday. Pauline Adamek quizzed Artistic Director/puppet-designer Adrian Kohler on how he works his magic.
BY DEBORAH KLUGMAN "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." -- Gates McFadden, artistic director of Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA
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).
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.
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.
BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS 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.