Terrorism and Theater in Southern California

If we’re motivated by fear rather than a more stoic determination, what then becomes the quality of our lives? If we employ the very tactics used by terrorists, when those very tactics assail the values we hold dear, then what becomes the quality of our lives? --BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

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This Week’s Roundup: A Note from Sean Branney, SLM on Theater and Our Community, Olya Petrakova on Stagecraft, and Daniel Henning on a Meeting With Alec Guinness

'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

Continue ReadingThis Week’s Roundup: A Note from Sean Branney, SLM on Theater and Our Community, Olya Petrakova on Stagecraft, and Daniel Henning on a Meeting With Alec Guinness

Paul Birchall’s Got it Covered: Bye Bye Banshee & Stage Raw ‘Visualizes the Invisible’

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

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Straight White Men; Outside Mullingar

The perquisites of privilege are so inescapably fulsome and intrinsically unfair, and so inadequately copped to, that it may just be impossible for such men to behave well enough in a world that favors us so reflexively to the detriment of the validity and opportunity of everyone else. Lee milks the hapless absurdity of this existential quandary both for derisive laughs and a scintilla of poignant pathos. — BY MYRON MEISEL

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