Our Town

"Dan Berkowitz was a force of nature. There's really no other way to describe him, and I'm not even sure that does him justice. When I was asked to write about Dan, with whom I co-chaired the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) for 15 years, honestly, I was overwhelmed. How do you even start to describe someone who did so much for so many?" -- Jonathan Dorf

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"Like Rome to Carthage, Equity’s new Agreement will sow the ground with salt as to render it infertile ever after. Without those talents, the aesthetic glory that is our local theater scene will wither as if in time-lapse photography virtually overnight. This conflict was conceived, generated, and has been unremittingly conducted in bad faith, and no amount of persuasion, goodwill or parsing of the opposition’s deliberate and dishonest arguments or contorting contentions is going to alter the outcome." -- BY MYRON MEISEL

"The clock is ticking! Beginning December 14th, 2016, despite the Los Angeles community’s urging and a lawsuit served on Actors’ Equity Association by Equity members and producers, Equity will impose new rules and regulations which will change theatre in Los Angeles forever. This change will take away most of the opportunities for Equity actors to work in intimate theatre in Los Angeles and destroy Los Angeles Intimate theatre as we know it." -- PRO99 and the "Ed Asner, et al v. AEA" PLAINTIFFS

'Movement and text is in equal parts. I mean we’re talking and moving pretty much the whole time. In terms of why people are excited, I mean, if we just say, “Okay. Why are people excited about making work and seeing work where there isn’t seating and a stage?” If we just take it as that. I think the answers are kind of exciting. I guess what I think first of all is that this is the screen age, and we are, I think, losing a bit of what it is to be human people with skin and muscles and sweat and tears and blood — the experience of having touch and proximity, really like an intimate experience among strangers with just human interchange: eye contact, touch, whispering, breath, and to be so close to a lot of heightened emotion and heightened physicality, really close. I feel like maybe in the digital age, there is a craving for that. I hope.' -- By Bill Raden

"In a sense, Lauren’s production is merely the most recent — and the most public —artistic reverberation stemming from a fundamental shakeup to UCLA TFT’s approach to stage training that occurred three years ago. According to Araiza, the school decided to break with the old paradigm of the Americanized version of Stanislavskian naturalism — the so-called 'Method' —that was pioneered by director Konstantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre at the beginning of the 20th century and that continues to dominate university theater departments in the US." -- by VANESSA CATE

"'Do you believe in God?' asked Goldman. Alyokhina paused, carefully forming the perfect response. 'I think that Church in Russia already has nothing in common with Christianity,' she reflected". -- by VANESSA CATE

"'They say theater never dies. But that’s not true, it really does die,' Morris warned. 'Our theater audiences are aging Caucasians, and they’re dying.' Morris reaffirmed the importance of cultivating diversity on L.A. stages to acknowledge and reflect a more diverse audience, as well as being proactive in bringing in new generations." -- By VANESSA CATE