Opening the Curtain

"An Undivided Heart," a co-production of Circle X and the Echo Theatre Company is a big play. With 10 characters and almost as many subplots, playwright Yusuf Toropov is juggling a lot of ideas.

Watching the Wooster Group's latest piece at REDCAT "A PINK CHAIR (In Place of a Fake Antique)," had me thinking about a quote from Shakespeare and a dumb joke.

If you go see Sarah Jones' one woman show "Sell/Buy/Date" at the Geffen Playhouse, I'll bet you that someone in the seats near whispers during the show "wow, she's good." It's that kind of performance: one designed to elicit appreciation for its technique and virtuosity.

As Kristy Edmunds articulates so eloquently in both her words and her programming, that changes what I get to carry as a human being.

It took me three hours to fall in love with Taylor Mac's "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music." Before I can even begin to explain what's so extraordinary about the show, or why 3 hours makes up barely act one, I have to orient you to the it of it.

I want you to imagine the Venn diagram where high art intersects with fart jokes. That sweet spot, if you want to call it that, is the where Sacred Fools latest show "The Art Couple" lives. 

Maybe it was pure coincidence. Or maybe it was the dramaturgy of the universe ...but on my drive to Pasadena to see "A Streetcar Named Desire" a particular phrase from a KCRW interview struck me. 

There's a lot of this ‘witnessing’ happening in the theater right now.  Our political climate has theater makers anxious to do something, say something, to protest in some way. The challenge is–when you're preaching to the choir, what do you say?

Theatre Movement Bazaar's "The Grail Project" is probably 15 minutes too long, the quest itself is a little bit of a cop out, and the end doesn't really land. So let's do this in reverse.

Elliott, a nineteen year-old combat vet back home between tours of duty in Iraq, is finally going to confront his dad. Ever since he came home nursing a purple heart leg injury, he's been trying to get his dad to open up. Elliott needs to know if his dad's time in Vietnam was anything like the horror he just experienced in Iraq. But something is missing....