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Friday, July 15, 2005

Richie still a creep

The season for the Kirk Douglas theater has been announced:

all wear bowlers by Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Based on a Short Story by Gabriel García Márquez Adapted by Nilo Cruz
Permanent Collection by Thomas Gibbons
The Stones by Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou
“Solomania!” A Repertory Festival of Solo Performance Artists featuring Jerry Quickley in Live From the Front, Dan Guerrero in ¡Gaytino!, Adriana Sevan in Taking Flight, Roger Guenveur Smith in The Watts Towers Project
“Pyrenees” by David Greig

It it at least much more diverse than the Taper and Ahmanson seasons, but it remains more than half by white authors and performers, and the majority of the people of color are involved in the solo performance festival (Quicky and Smith are African-American, Guerrero and Sevan are Latino). Ironically, at least three of these pieces were presented at the Douglas last season as part of the now defunct New Works Festival and received some funding from the disbanded Blacksmyths Lab and the Latino Theater Initiative.

Also note that THERE IS ONLY 1 WOMAN ON THIS BILL! (although all wear bowlers is directed by Aleksandra Wolska who I believe got her PhD from Stanford and used to direct this Stanford Summer Theater program that I'm currently working on). I'm especially dubious about Richie's complete and utter failure to include female playwrights in his entire season.

In the LA Times article about the new season, Ritchie sounds like a total slimeball. He's still living in New York and claims he can choose plays that appeal to and represent LA? Creepy.

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