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Paul Birchall’s Got It Covered  

This Week’s Roundup: Grand Opening of the New Sacred Fools Complex; West Hollywood Backs the Fringe; Censoring a Production in Miami Affects Us All

Partying with The Fools

Patrick Duffy. his wife Carlyn and L.A. councilman Mitch O’Farrell at Sacred Fools’ grand opening celebration (photo by Paul Birchall)

Times are tough, but who doesn’t like to take a break and go to a party?  Particularly when the party turns out to be the gala opening celebration for the new Sacred Fools Complex.  

You know me, I’ll go to the opening of a clam shell, but this was a particularly delightful party.  Yes, there were tasty chicken satays, and piles of scrumptious cakes, and a hosted bar serving delicious opening night plonk.  There was also a mix of celebrities and public officials, and even a journalist or two as well.  The atmosphere was heady with optimism — and the lovely, renovated theater complex all but glittered.

Thanks to patrons Patrick Duffy and his wife Carlyn, not only has Sacred Fools swooped in to save the site from the wrecking ball (or perhaps from becoming a tire store), they have also made space available for a virtual logarithmic increase in programming in the area. 

As the preshow crowd mingled in the former Elephant Space, now wonderfully redesigned (and, most importantly, cleaned!), I chatted with Sacred Fools Board President Bruno Oliver, who gave me a quick rundown of the new names of the separate stages.

What was formerly known as the Lillian Theatre is now called the Mainstage.  The company’s next show, A Gulag Mouse, will open in the black box stage that used to be the Asylum; for now, it will be referred to as the Sacred Fools 2nd Stage. The Elephant will become the Black Box, and there will be one more venue, called the Studio. 

The space that old-timers (well, perhaps not so old, since there were shows there during the Hollywood Fringe about a year ago) remember as the Asylum Lab is being shuttered as a performance space, at least for the near future.  No one is saying why. I saw several perfectly good plays at the Lab back in the day, although I admit there were often more cockroaches in the audience than people {which may have something to do with it being taken out of service). Oliver notes that the company is reserving the right to rename the theaters something more idiosyncratic later on, but these transitional ones will do for the short term as we head into Hollywood Fringe Season.

Ushering the entire first night audience into the newly restored Mainstage where the performance of Padraic Duffy’s Past Time was slated to take place, Oliver continued his official welcome.  “It’s been only 63 days since we closed our last show at the old Sacred Fool space on Heliotrope,” noted Oliver.  “And yet, here we are:  In this radically reconfigured space, there is a new electrical system!  The bathrooms have been totally redone!  The paint job is… incredibly new…” 

And then, to the folks in the audience who had perhaps worked in the old Elephant before, Oliver joked, “The dressing rooms, um, have not been touched.  At all.”  

To thunderous applause, Oliver went on to say that, after Gulag Mouse closes, the Sacred Fools theaters will be available for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. He concluded by thanking the “incomparable” generosity of company benefactors Patrick and Carlyn Duffy for the wonderful opportunity, and graciously honored the previous management of the complex, “for creating theater out of the heart of L.A.”   

Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell delivered a proclamation honoring the event, his comments crackling with a most non-bureaucratic idealism.  “I’m here to make sure theater expands and prospers and grows.  Because where there’s theater, there is vibrancy, and where there is vibrancy there’s a great city,” he stated.  “We have plans to do more.  Soon people will be able to come to Theater Row and spend the whole evening:  Good civic life is all about this and art is going to anchor all of that.” 

Me, I’m just looking forward to seeing some great shows in this newly revitalized neighborhood!

Fringe Partners with One City One Pride.

“Queen of Crayola” Rubella Spreads at 2015’s One City One Pride arts festival (photo courtesy of WeHo Arts & Cultural Affairs Commission)

Speaking of the Hollywood Fringe, I was intrigued to receive an e-mail from the Hollywood Fringe organizers about a fascinating new partnership they’re embarking on with the City of West Hollywood’s One City One Pride Festival.   

If you are planning to produce a play with a LGBT theme — and if you book at least one of your performances at a West Hollywood Fringe venue like the Actors Company or Macha Theatre — you are eligible for a waiver of the Hollywood Fringe fee, a savings of $250.  Additionally, you have the option of staging your play in a non-traditional venue — for example, a bar or club or any of the abandoned pop-ups on Melrose Ave might be good candidates. To take advantage of the waiver, you need only use a WeHo venue for one performance; other performances can be held elsewhere. You do have to pay your fee up front, but it’s refunded if you’re a participant in this program.

At the very least, this opportunity will insure that the festival includes some extraordinary gay, lesbian, and transgender-themed productions. It also opens the door for producers to come up with imaginative staging options.  Almost any WeHo restaurant or storefront might count as a local venue — or, provided one gets a permit, shows could even be staged in the street.

I love how the City of West Hollywood has crafted a partnership with the Fringe, and I only wish that other groups would also step forward to do likewise.   Imagine if other entities with bucks promoted diversity by bankrolling fringe productions for other underrepresented groups. If West Hollywood can do it, why can’t other organizations and municipalities? 

Censorship in Miami

Playwright Julia Pascal (photo courtesy of the playwright)

I wanted to say a little something about this story from Howard Sherman’s blog about the cancellation of British playwright Julia Pascal’s drama, Crossing Jerusalem, at the Cultural Arts Theatre at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami.  I first heard about this story from my esteemed colleague Myron Meisel, who is as wise as the sages. 

Pascal is an internationally reputable author and director and the first woman director at the National Theatre of Great Britain. This production of Crossing Jerusalem, was closed down midway through its run.

It’s a thorny story to wade into, and it certainly isn’t a local story — but any story in which productions seem to have been shut down on ideological grounds is worth attention. 

According to Sherman and his sources, Pascal’s drama centers on a Jewish Israeli couple’s night out at a restaurant run by an Arab Christian and staffed with a pair of Muslim Palestinians.  Copies of the play are difficult to locate in Los Angeles, but by the sound of I the work is an attempt to frame a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian question.  I have a feeling it was an attempt at impartiality, or at least an effort to show different sides of the issue, a la David Hare’s Via Delarosa.

In a statement released through her production company, Pascal claims, “The debate and self-criticism in modern Israeli theatre is far fiercer than anything in my text. In Crossing Jerusalem, I have written complex Jews who express several generations’ lives and experiences. The play also reveals women’s lives as multi-layered. I am the only British Jewish woman playwright writing roles that reflect the diversity of Jewish experience and of Jewish women’s experience.” 

And, in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle (quoted in Sherman’s blog), Pascal notes, “Because of who is allowed to write about Israel and who is commissioned to write about Israel, you only get the simplistic Israel-bad/Palestinian-good points of view through the plays we have seen. I feel it’s my duty to show all sides. Whether that’s comfortable or not is another question.”

By contrast, Gary Bomzer, chairman of the Jewish Community Center who produced the play, commented, “We have heard the voices of many in our community advocating passionately to put an end to the show because they feel the message is inappropriate and troublesome. Please know that our intentions in presenting Crossing Jerusalem are good ones, and yet we realize that we have unintentionally caused pain to many in the audience; for this we are sincerely sorry.”

What we see here is clear evidence of what happens when producers knuckle under to pressure — in this case, not from outside but from their own subscription base.  No one forced the Miami company to produce the play in the first place. But cancelling it, for whatever reason, sends a clear message that debate and conversation on the topic are not welcomed.  It would have been better to have kept doing the show, even if it was offensive to some.