"The Alliance urges interested parties to weigh in by posting comments to the IRS on the PAA’s Action Alert page. The responses need to be filed by Wednesday, so there isn’t much time." -- by PAUL BIRCHALL
'Petrakova’s manifesto undeniably boasts an “artist” sensibility, and steadfastly favors loyalty to a particular theater company over branding oneself as an individual performer. Her other ideas include curtailing the conventional roles of director, producer, and writer, along with transforming the concept of place. “We don't need traditional theatre space to create theatre, and spend thousands of dollars maintaining one, padding the pockets of greedy landlords. We need space to train, to meet, to work. When the good piece of theatre is born, it will find the place to be shown. I will watch it on the streets, on the roofs, in the abandoned houses, and pay for it.”' -- by PAUL BIRCHALL
Although the note goes on to assure us that the people who make up Theatre Banshee will continue to create, it is not as clear where this will happen. I also can’t say this is the first time that a well respected theater company has been forced to move because a neighborhood is becoming gentrified due, in great part, to the existence of the very theater company that now can’t afford the rent. -- BY PAUL BIRCHALL
It’s been a week of hauntingly familiar trauma in the news. All of us must feel great compassion for the people of Paris following the appalling attacks that claimed 129 lives. That the targets were mostly entertainment and leisure activities — a rock concert, a Cambodian restaurant, a shopping mall, a football stadium — underscores that the attacks were deliberate aggressions against core Western values and freedoms. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL
However, one thing I am assured of is that Stage Raw will continue its venerable tradition of almost two years. Morris says he’s withdrawing from the day-to-day operations of the website – assigning, editing, posting, etc – and will delegate those roles to staff, and will guide the more general direction of Stage Raw from afar. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL
But that is not really what the Committee for the Jubilee is about. According to its announcement on the Howlround website, the idea is simply to obtain pledges from theater companies around the country that during the 2020-21 theatrical season, they will produce only works by “women, people of color, artists of various physical and cognitive abilities, and LBGTQA artists.” All other writers might as well take the year off, apparently. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL
For our local theater scene, the huge event of the week was the release late Saturday evening of the legal brief filed with the US District Court by the Pro99-Seat Union Plaintiffs against their own Union, Actor’s Equity Association.
However, to his credit, Solomon certainly never lied about himself or the Pro-99 issue: He mostly said, and quite reasonably really, that he would need to study the issue a lot more before coming down on one side or another – and, that, at least, isn’t a flat out fib to win votes. And, frankly, any one of these folks who is actually willing to reach out to the voters in LA and listen to the issues here is vastly preferable to the armchair pontificators across the rest of the country, who have no sense of the scene here. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL
Discussing this in a symposium is like holding a conference on how to rebuild a country that’s in the middle of an ongoing war: It is almost impossible to reinvent before the war is over. Perhaps we will see where this all falls out when we’re on the other side of all this upheaval. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL