Opening the Curtain

There's no question that in America, we undervalue the arts.

Why would a union fight its own members?

The drama in LA theater happening off-stage that's swirling around the stage actors' union and what's called the 99-seat Plan and it's untimely, but seemingly unavoidable, demise. And, if you listen to the majority of the LA theater community, the demise of small theater itself.

Anthony Byrnes reviews Four Larks latest "junkyard opera," The Temptation of St. Antony.

Los Angeles theater has to it a bit of feast or famine. Right now there are two shows downtown that are visual feasts with challenging narratives that you shouldn't miss.

In many ways California Tempest is Cornerstone at their best and most ambitious.

The challenge with "Disconnection" is its dramatic engine is built around story rather than action. The characters are included as a means of getting the details out. Trouble is if you've followed any of the writing about Scientology - and who hasn't in LA - it's going to feel like old news.

In one sense, there isn't much there in the Wooster Group's "Early Shaker Spirituals." But there isn't much there in the same way there isn't much to a Shaker chest of drawers.

Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man begins with a historical fact: there were Jews in the South during the Civil War. What would it be like if those Jews owned slaves and those slaves became observant Jews?

Viral, at the Bootleg Theater, is one of those plays that in order to talk about it you have to dismantle some of its dramatic engine - or more simply - spoiler alert.