Twenty-one years ago, the following names graced the inaugural Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF), South Coast Repertory’s foray into the mostly uncharted (at least on the Left Coast) waters of new plays: Richard Greenberg, Anthony Clarvoe, Cusi Cram, John Glore, Jessica Hagedorn, Howard Korder, Chris Van Groningen, Karen Zacarias. Okay, okay, that was supposed to be […]
Theater
SanTana Art Walk Finally Gets Some Theater
Bob Tully is a well-paid, well-traveled middle-aged white man living in Orange County. Definitely the kind of authority qualified to mansplain about abortion, #metoo and police shootings of black people, right? But though Tully, who has launched an innovative theater company called Playhouse, which will stage its second production Saturday amid the Santa Ana Art […]
Amy Freed’s Shrew! Reshuffles the Bard for South Coast Repertory
If awards were given to program notes, then the odds on South Coast Repertory’s Shrew! would be even money. Among the insightful reads is SCR dramaturg John Glore’s two-page treatment of the history of Shakespeare’s popular but problematic The Taming of the Shrew and Amy Freed’s process in writing her new, imaginative, reshuffling. None of […]
Going to Tennessee Without a Net
Last year, an august publication devoted to truth, justice and cold beer at a reasonable price awarded the coveted honor of best theatrical production to a show that lasted one night: Awkward Party, a longform improv piece that illustrated the incredible storytelling potential of throwing a cast on stage, giving them loosely defined characters in […]
The Mormons are Coming! (Again…)
As a young girl, Kayla Pecchioni never dreamed she’d be one of the main leads for a national touring production of the ridiculously popular and successful musical The Book of Mormon (How popular? By one account, in 2013, its various productions around the country, and world, were raking in $20 million a month). Pecchioni wanted to be a […]
Though Bumpy at Times, Cambodian Rock Band Is an Exhilarating Ride
Part play, part rock concert, part eccentric comedy set against the backdrop of the Cambodian genocide, Lauren Yee’s new play, Cambodian Rock Band, is many things stuffed into one undeniably entertaining package—stuffed being the operative term. Commissioned by South Coast Repertory (SCR), it’s now receiving its world-premiere production, and the play’s relative newness shows. While […]
Crimes of the Heart Is a Southern Gothic With Legs, But It Lags
Beth Henley won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981 for Crimes of the Heart. What made it surprising wasn’t so much that the play wasn’t great (it was one of the more competent ones amid a meager lot of plays during a period of commercial transition in mainstream American theater), but her gender. She […]
Our Man In Malta on His Semi-Annual Theatrical Pilgrimage
Every two and a half years over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to go to Malta and direct a play. After more than 25 years in the business, I rarely direct locally because most local theaters don’t pay; they’re too busy chasing audiences to do anything adventurous, so there isn’t much opportunity to […]
The Most Important Play You’ll Ever See Is at Cal State Long Beach
The most important play you will ever see is currently in production at Cal State Long Beach (CSULB). Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic, but after experiencing Dreamers: Aquí y Allá, a living piece of theater ripped from the proverbial headlines that directly addresses the uneasy, uncertain status of nearly a million people living in the […]
Chance Theater’s Violet Exposes America’s Cultural Fault Lines via a Mid-1960s Road Trip
An actor playing a character saddled with a physical impairment is no easy feat, Daniel Day-Lewis be damned. For every one that transforms the limitation into a second skin, there are many who use it like a prop. Rather than incorporating it into the character, it becomes the character, rendering the performance more gimmicky than […]
The Hendrix Project Delivers an Experience at Off Center Fest
Up-ending expectations of how storytelling should unfold onstage is one of the fascinating ways the spirit of the 1960s is infused into The Hendrix Project. Conceived and directed by the creatively fierce Roger Guenveur Smith with students at Cal Arts, the show has the audience watching spectators at Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys […]
The Gods of Found VHS Footage Created a Show Called The Great Satan
What do most of us think of when we hear the name Satan? A guy in a red suit and pitchfork might come to mind. However, Satan means different things to different people, especially the masterminds behind Everything is Terrible, a loose collective of producers known for making hilarious VHS video collages out of bizarre […]
