tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117593702024-03-07T16:25:23.383-08:00Violet VixenThe demented ramblings of a queer girl in the City of Angels. Queer, feminist theater reviews and whatever other issues related to theater, performance art, film, literature, and culture happen to strike my fancy.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.comBlogger385125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-58443174105751865602012-01-20T23:31:00.000-08:002012-01-21T00:28:46.243-08:00Good, Solid Theater<a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=15946">A Raisin in the Sun</a> by Lorraine Hansberry. Dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0711118/">Phylicia Rashad</a>. <a href="http://www.ebonyrep.org/index.html">The Ebony Repertory Theatre</a> at <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/theatres/douglas/">The Kirk Douglas Theatre</a>. 1/20/12.<br /><br />This is really an excellent production of an excellent classic play. Everyone involved should be congratulated. The story of the Younger family fighting for opportunities to climb out of working poverty feels relevant and contemporary and political, despite the fact that it's a fairly traditional performance of a play that's 50 years old.<br /><br />The most notable thing about this play is how real all of the characters feel. Even though Walter Lee's wounded masculinity dominates and terrorizes a houseful of strong, hard-working women, he often appears as the sympathetic center of the play in a way that feels human and realistic. This play makes strong political arguments while providing emotional insight into a range of characters. Their struggle is both high-stakes and absolutely ordinary. All of this is delivered powerfully by strong, sensitive actors in a really good-looking production. It's a fabulous ensemble of talented performers working with great material.<br /><br />It's always nice to see CTG doing work that isn't by and about middle-aged, middle-class white men. <i>A Raisin in the Sun</i> is a breath of fresh air; I really must congratulate them for doing this partnership with Ebony Rep and for producing this and <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=15491">Fela</a> and <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=15947">Clybourne Park</a> all at the same time. I'm actually seeing new, non-white faces in the audience in addition to the excellent talent onstage.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-50702639439343217442011-09-03T13:13:00.000-07:002011-09-03T13:51:34.097-07:00Not about Sisters<a href="http://companyofangels.org/?p=187"><i>Sun Sisters</i></a> by Vasanti Saxena. <a href="http://companyofangels.org/">Company of Angels</a> at The Alexandria Hotel. 9/2/11.
<br />
<br />It's been years since I've seen something at <a href="http://companyofangels.org/">Company of Angels</a>. They're one of those companies I trust to do solid, interesting new work that I never quite get myself there to see. I am so glad I made it out there last night! I knew <i>Sun Sisters</i> had some kind of queer content, but I had somehow failed to get the message of how interesting and relevant and personal it would feel to me. I went expecting an Asian-American family drama, which it was, but not the intensely personal story of lesbian and queer identities across time that it turned out to be. Even writing about it, I'm totally ambivalent because the thing I want to tell my own friends and community about the play and why it is relevant to them may or may not spoil a dramatic revelation that is central to the plot. I suppose since it closes tonight, I don't have to worry to much about ruining it, but if you have a chance to see it, you should, especially my lesbian, queer, and trans friends.
<br />
<br />So instead of describing the plot, I will tell you that the performances are truly excellent. This is a play in which all of the main characters are Asian-American women, and the actors show their skills brilliantly. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0946579/">Momo Yashima</a> as mother and <a href="http://andrealwin.com/">Andrea Lwin</a> as daughter had a beautifully contentious, loving but painful relationship that felt so familiar to me from some of my interactions with my mother, and from my mom's interactions with her mother.
<br />
<br />The play takes place now (or maybe the '90s), but also in flashbacks to the 1960s. It explores the mother's hidden past and a lost love played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2965320/">Jully Lee</a>. I want to go into all the details of gender identity and queer politics that this performance and this story evokes, but perhaps I shouldn't. Suffice it to say, while I would have cast a more butch actor, Lee played it quite sensitively and convincingly. While the queer politics may not be perfect, they feel personal and real in a way that is still unusual in many plays I see. And I loved seeing the overlapping communities within the audience respond to different parts of the story. There were those laughing with recognition at the 1000 Year Egg joke, and those laughing with recognition at the queer jokes. And, to me at least, they both felt lovely and authentic.
<br />
<br />So where does the "Sun Sisters" come in if it's not a play about sisters, you ask? Well, it's a reference to a folk tale and multiple possible interpretations of what the story teaches us. I would have liked to see a little more made of this tale, visually, in the production. It's a lovely lens through which to view the show, but maybe it should have been told or alluded to early in the performance as a framing device. Instead, there's an architecture lecture that opens the show and recurs throughout that is quite important but not exactly a compelling hook.
<br />
<br />Anyway, if you're looking for a good queer Asian-American play, I highly recommend this one. I'm definitely interested in seeing what Vasanti Saxena does next. If you have a chance to see this production tonight, you should go, but otherwise, I'd like to see this particular play have more of a life. And I'll have to be more vigilant about keeping Company of Angels on my radar.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-61463155730728589742011-06-24T12:14:00.001-07:002011-06-24T13:15:14.419-07:00A Surprisingly Good Musical about Group Therapy<a href="http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/452">Group: A Musical</a>. <a href="http://www.latensemble.com/2009/Home.html">Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble</a>. <a href="http://www.stellaadler-la.com/">Stella Adler Theatre</a>. 6/23/11.<br /><br />I must admit, I wasn't too excited about going to a new musical about group therapy. In fact, the only reason I went was because friends of mine had met the playwright, <a href="http://adamemperorsouthard.com/">Adam Emperor Southard</a>, at <a href="http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/">Hollywood Fringe</a> events and thought he was a cool guy. My skepticism, however, was clearly and dramatically proven wrong. The musical wasn't perfect, really, and it's not a concept I inherently like at all, but I was laughing in the beginning and crying by the end, so I seem to have bought in completely despite myself.<br /><br />There's something so sweet and honest about this little musical, with its dark humor and modest setting, that I couldn't help but appreciate it. It has some rough moments, particularly in the beginning, and particularly with the coming out storyline, which hit closest to home for me and therefore felt the most awkward when the reactions or emotions (or the rhymes) didn't ring quite true to my own experience. There's a little bit of a tendency toward reductive pop psychology, but honestly much less than I would have expected. Mostly, the concept of group therapy is a plausible and compelling backdrop for people to talk about their problems and forge difficult friendships and as such, it really works.<br /><br />The LA Theatre Ensemble actors, who worked on a run of this show in January and returned to remount it for the Fringe Festival, all gave excellent, heartfelt performances dealing with some rough emotional subjects without feeling heavy at all. Their singing wasn't always spectacular, but there were some beautiful notes and moments that made up for the bits that were a little off. I really need to go see more LATE stuff. They clearly do good work.<br /><br />Overall, you should absolutely go see this musical at its last two fringe performances this weekend. And I really hope this show has legs to get more productions, maybe a bit more workshopping and refining. This is the sort of musical that could be done anywhere, as it takes place in one small room, but needs and showcases some exceptional acting and singing talent (and 3 extremely skilled onstage musicians). It's a very good small-scale, raw, personal musical that could be perfect for small theaters and second stage spaces all over.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-11959213500530014622011-06-22T09:41:00.000-07:002011-06-22T10:10:59.811-07:00More than CompanyLast night I went to a screening in a movie theater of <a href="http://nyphil.org/concertsTicks/companyonscreen.cfm">Stephen Sondheim's <i>Company</i></a> performed by the New York Philharmonic and starring Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby. Somehow, this production was a revelation in a way that I haven't experienced with previous versions. The production itself was magnificent, with its lush orchestral sounds, star-studded cast and spectacular precision, but it was more than that. The performances were tight and nuanced and thoughtful in ways that made me think about and feel the meaning of the play in ways I hadn't before. <br /><br />Perhaps it's where I am in my life now that shifted the meaning of the show for me. Being over thirty and having friends who are married and having children, and more importantly having long conversations over many beers with friends evaluating and agonizing over desires to or not to get married and have children, certainly made me think differently and more personally about the relationships and life choices depicted in the musical. But I think there were details of this production and the truly skilled acting of Neil Patrick Harris in particular that made me rethink the show as well. I have always loved and appreciated <i>Company</i>, but this time I felt it and it felt true and right and honest and scary in ways that it never has before.<br /><br />The show was completely sexy (mmm... Neil Patrick Harris and Christina Hendricks in bed together) and completely cynical (although Elaine Stritch still beats Patti LuPone in my mind for sheer joyous drunken cynicism) and yet managed to communicate a deeper, more reflective meditation on marriage than I have ever felt. My own personal philosophies about building a community of friendships rather than focusing on the individual or couple was both reflected and challenged as I watched the performances onscreen, and the beloved friend who had been meditating, Bobby-like, on marriage realized that his own individual agonies were more common, perhaps universal, than he thought. Part of me smiled ironically when I watched "Side by Side by Side" and reflected on it as a depiction of a bunch of heterosexual married couples who relied on the unappreciated and unreciprocated labor of the queer person excluded from the institution of marriage (Harris, not Bobby) to keep the institution of marriage going. Though I could have used more of "Being Alive" at the end, with Harris's heartbreaking high notes, the end of the play is beautiful and bittersweet in a way that reconciles my own personal cynicism about marriage with possibilities of Bobby's personal transformation and leaves me happy and hopeful. It's an unbelieveably lovely, detailed, tight production filled with consummate professional performers. I highly recommend it and I will be rushing to buy it if and when it comes to DVD.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-54873391967471546522011-06-20T00:57:00.000-07:002011-06-20T02:18:50.370-07:00See This Fringe Show: Headscarf and the Angry Bitch<a href="http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/389"><i>Headscarf and the Angry Bitch</i></a> by <a href="http://www.zehrafazal.com/">Zehra Fazal</a>. <a href="http://www.theatreasylum-la.com/">Theatre Asylum</a>. <a href="http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/">Hollywood Fringe Festival</a>. 6/19/11.<br /><br />Zehra Fazal's one woman show about growing up and coming out as a Pakistani-American Muslim is a witty romp through family, sex and post-9-11 politics. Under the guise of a community-outreach lecture series on Muslim American culture, Fazal's combination of monologue and music were refreshing with just the right amount of sharp-tongued personal detail. The show was more friendly and approachable than stridently political and mostly demonstrated Fazal's excellent performance skills. I highly recommend you see this show. <br /><br />Headscarf is performing next Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Get there; it truly deserves a loud, adoring audience!Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-70376844245522067052011-05-28T02:21:00.000-07:002011-05-28T03:27:46.785-07:00Seriously Wacky Clowning<a href=http://www.sacredfools.org/misc/spotlight/><i>Four Clowns</i></a>. <a href="http://www.sacredfools.org/">Sacred Fools Theater</a>. Los Angeles. 5/27/11.<br /><br />Whenever a friend says to me, "Hey, want to see a show?," my default response is "Sure! Why not?" Tonight, like many other nights, that resulted in a late night trip to <a href="http://www.sacredfools.org/">Sacred Fools</a>.<br /><br />I didn't really love <i>Four Clowns</i>, but I was impressed by the hard work and zany skills of four very talented performers. The show really blossomed when the actors were off script, either improvising with audience suggestions or just clowning around between scenes.<br /><br />The piece revolves around the 4 types of clowns, the angry clown, the nervous clown, the mischievous clown, and the sad clown, so I was expecting a demonstration of these different comedic archetypes. However, what <i>Four Clowns</i> really does is provide each of these clowns with a backstory and follows them through 4 stages of life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood/work, and death). At first, I pretty much hated this pop psychology approach to clowning and was more offended than amused by the depictions of childhood abuse and neglect. As it moved past childhood, though, the play grew on me, and grew increasingly humorous. When the clowns hit their stride, I really did find myself laughing, and really, what else do I want from clowns?<br /><br />From a gender and sexuality perspective, this isn't exactly the best play ever. Alexis Jones as the Sad Clown was the only woman in the cast, and as such she portrayed some pretty terrible mothers in addition to her own abject state as victim of emotional abuse. However, she absolutely held her own in the physicality of the clowning and had some really great moments of dancing and movement that I loved. Similarly, Amir Levi as the Nervous Clown started out portraying some gay cliches (and a truly awful abusive mother), but moved beyond them to depict a sweet and then heartbreaking first date with Angry Clown Raymond Lee.<br /><br />The best moments of the play were absolutely the moments without words and the moments when the clowns were freest to improvise. The use of nonsense and gobbledygook to replace dialogue created truly wonderful moments. When two clowns playing teenage bullies carried on an entire conversation using only words "dude" and "bro," I was absolutely delighted by the creativity and expressiveness of their dialogue. This is one of the few shows I can honestly say the less dialogue the better; the mumbles and silences showcased the physicality and creativity that are absolutely the strengths of this show. <br /><br />While I didn't love this piece, I absolutely respect it. If you're interested in some seriously dark, sometimes offensive explorations of what clowning can communicate, this is totally the show for you. And during the Fringe Festival, the same actors will be doing something titled <a href=http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/359><i>Four Clowns: Romeo and Juliet</i></a>, which I think just might be awesome. Since for me the script was the difficult point of this production, I think I just might love them when they're using Shakespeare's plot instead.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVoO236PihkTpGusQJ3hAoK3_s_6-0lx76U5cxQ9yWNPKpHVhHcjORlH6fZ74khZreaiWnyBxiO5QdjoILFVn7myKQM9S3eQK8ik6iZLFQunoLqObS5NT3-A_cHAD7oXVyTfkwLQ/s1600/4clowns_logo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 98px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVoO236PihkTpGusQJ3hAoK3_s_6-0lx76U5cxQ9yWNPKpHVhHcjORlH6fZ74khZreaiWnyBxiO5QdjoILFVn7myKQM9S3eQK8ik6iZLFQunoLqObS5NT3-A_cHAD7oXVyTfkwLQ/s200/4clowns_logo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5611711458922884594" /></a>Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-65736984090342422802010-11-02T14:03:00.000-07:002010-11-02T14:43:45.066-07:00Lesbian Comedy MarathonThis weekend! (and the following two weekends Nov. 5-21)! Fabulous lesbian stand-up comedy/performance art. Local Los Angeles chicana lesbiana performance artist Adelina Anthony is presenting her whole <a href="http://www.adelinaanthony.com/comedy/comedy.htm">Hocicona</a> trilogy in sequence and I for one am super excited to be seeing all three pieces. In fact, I'm a little worried for my face, because when I have come from Anthony's shows in the past, the muscles in my face have been sore from laughing so much. I'm not sure I can take the 3 days in a row workout, but I'll be there to try.<br /><br />I've seen the first of Anthony's pieces, <a href="http://www.adelinaanthony.com/comedy/angryxicana_page/angryxicana.htm">"La Angry Xicana"</a>, several times already, so I can attest that it's delightful and hilarious. In it, Anthony discusses politics, Hollywood, and whatever else is on her mind or makes her angry. Every time I see it, it feels fresh and new.<br /><br />In <a href="http://www.adelinaanthony.com/comedy/la_sad_girl_page/la_sad_girl.html">"La Sad Girl,"</a> which I have seen in early workshops but not in a finalized form, Anthony dons kinky goth-ish clothing and discusses break-ups, BDSM, and other subjects of a personal (fictional) nature. The refrain "Que Sad!" echos throughout the piece, but only becomes funnier each time.<br /><br />The third piece, <a href="http://www.adelinaanthony.com/comedy/la_chismosa/la_chismosa.html">"La Chismosa,"</a> I have only seen in excerpts. Anthony adopts the persona of a knocked-up gossip to discuss politics and popular culture, using live facebook posts to share chisme about her audience. Last time I saw parts of it, it had some very serious professors rolling in the aisles.<br /><br />What is a 'hocicona,' you ask? Well a moment of googling seems to suggest that it means "snout" or "long-nosed" when associated with various animals (ie the longnosed stingray is called the raya hocicona and the snouted chinchbug is the chinche hocicona), but associated with humans, the word most commonly means "big-mouthed" or "foul-mouthed." <a href="http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/10/adelina-anthony-interview-with-hocicona.html">This interview with Anthony defines it</a> as "a shameless, big-mouthed backtalker." Indeed, Anthony is wonderfully shameless in her comedy and she definitely gets the last word.<br /><br />I can personally attest that all 3 pieces are on their own hilarious and brilliantly critical. I can't wait to see them all together. So brush up on your Spanglish and prepare some of your sexiest outfits, because Anthony's audiences are pretty darn hot. Just don't walk in late or leave your cell phone on, because Anthony is known to ridicule mercilessly any audience member that catches her attention. Don't say I didn't warn you!Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-56877521286601702312010-04-16T12:56:00.000-07:002010-04-16T14:14:23.925-07:00In The Political Wake<a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=11166">The Wake</a>. <a href="http://www.lisakron.com/">Lisa Kron</a>. dir. <a href="http://americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/leigh_silverman">Leigh Silverman</a>. <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/theatres/douglas/">Kirk Douglas Theater</a>. 4/15/10.<br /><br />Lisa Kron's new play, <i>The Wake</i> might be a truly great play. I don't think it's quite there yet. I wasn't completely seduced. But I'm totally interested in a second date.<br /><br /><i>The Wake</i> is a soaring attempt to map the political on the personal, to discuss the politics of the last ten years from a point of view that is both embraces and indicts American liberalism and exactly the people Kron expects to find in her theater audiences. I don't completely buy it, but there are some absolutely stunning, true, painful moments along the way.<br /><br />The story focuses (too much, if you ask me) on Ellen, played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1690593/">Heidi Schreck</a>, who was both the center point and the weak point in the play (probably through no fault of the actor's, who handled a ton of complicated dialogue with aplomb, if not charm). I just spent way too much of the play hating how utterly solipsistic she was. I think her privileged self-centeredness is an important point, but that it needs to be revealed more slowly; her astounding lack of awareness of anyone around her should only be completely understood in Act II, and before then she needs to show some redeeming qualities rather than just an egomaniacal tendency to lecture. As an audience member who believed immediately that Ellen was intended to be a representative of the play's audience, I wanted at least some sense of the good to entice me into accepting Kron's more difficult assessments.<br /><br />Where the play really sings is in the group scenes. The ensemble of this play is truly excellent, and when all the characters get talking, they all have such great depth and humanity and differentiation to their interactions that I don't know how anyone could help but fall in love with them. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0960863/">Carson Elrod</a> as Ellen's partner, Danny, and <a href="http://andreafrankle.com/Andrea_Frankle/Home.html">Andrea Frankle</a> as his lesbian sister, Kayla were absolutely delightful, real, wonderful characters and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_O%27Connell_%28actress%29">Dierdre O'Connell</a> as Judy as an older, acerbic, out-of-place houseguest and worldly foreign aid worker brightened the play up considerably and counteracted Ellen delightfully. I would have loved them to be more clearly developed in relationship to the play's political allegory. Why can't they all be developed as equal representations of failures and blind spots in the American character?<br /><br />Where the play falls apart for me is in the burden it places on Ellen and the parallels it makes between the personal and the political for her. She spends far too much time talking directly to the audience, explaining revelations that should be made in conversations between characters. If I were in charge, I would eliminate all of these monologues except maybe the very first and trim all of Ellen's text. She's supposed to be talky, but I think that can be communicated more clearly and efficiently than it is. Some of these rants are smart, but none of them are entirely necessary. The play spends way too much time telling us that Ellen is smart and complicated when far too often what we see of her is one-note and simplistic, though verbose. I can accept intellectually that that is the point, but I find it profoundly unpleasant to have to sit through it. I would take away some of that, but spend a little more time working up the relationships between the political current events timeline and the personal events in the play. I liked very much in the end how Ellen in conversation with Judy jumped back and forth between relationships and politics, and I would have liked to see more hints of that during the rest of the play. The politics were generally represented by news clips and projections, which were very good, but didn't always work as well as I wanted them to as representations of the personal relationships. Perhaps they needed to be juxtaposed more closely, but I didn't always see which parallels the play wanted me to make. This is especially true in discussing the projection of American politics in the long term, which was actually smart and yet didn't clearly map to the personal/political allegory of the characters. Basically, it felt like Ellen was too static of a character and didn't really grow or change even in what should have been powerful revelations about herself and her belief. That may be true about us as a country, but it's pretty difficult for telling a story.<br /><br />While it isn't by any means a perfect play and I definitely feel that it needs some cuts, <i>The Wake</i> is an unqualified success in that I left the theater thinking and talking about the play, and the politics. It reflects beautifully, if pessimistically, on where we are now, although the answers about what to do about it are disturbingly absent. I'm excited to hear about how it will grow and change at <a href="http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/0910/3659.asp">Berkeley Rep</a> and <a href="http://publictheater.org/content/view/217">the Public Theater</a>. I'm so glad I got to see it first, and I hope that CTG will offer more exciting new plays (especially those by women!) like this.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-25235891549493109602010-04-14T11:55:00.000-07:002010-04-14T13:02:30.239-07:00Not-So-Noir New Musical<a href="http://www.geffenplayhouse.com/nightmarealley">Nightmare Alley</a>. <a href="http://geffenplayhouse.com/index.php/1">The Geffen Playhouse</a>. 4/12/10.<br /><br />I feel guilty reviewing the shows I see at the Geffen, since I ended up with tickets for the first preview (hey, it's all I can afford) and at that stage, the productions often show signs of being not quite ready for prime time with flubbed lines and occasional acting failures. The cast of <i>Nightmare Alley</i>, however, seemed well-prepared and professional and deserves nothing but applause for their performances. The worst side-effect of the preview that I noticed was that the actors were over-mic'd so that their powerful voices were loud enough to be cringe-worthy from where I was in the back of the balcony. This show was excellently cast with talented performers who had lovely voices and handled the music beautifully. In fact, I loved the cast and most of the music. <a href="http://www.larrycedar.com/">Larry Cedar</a> was especially charming as Pete, the surprisingly spry drunken old carny who haunts the main character (Stan, played forcefully by <a href="http://www.jamesbarbour.com/">James Barbour</a>).<br /><br />While the performances were great and the music enjoyable, the plot of the show decidedly needs work. The musical departs significantly from the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNightmare-Alley-Fox-Film-Noir%2Fdp%2FB0007ZEO8C%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Ddvd%26qid%3D1271272865%26sr%3D8-2&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">1947 Tyrone Power film</a>, but I haven't read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNightmare-Alley-Review-Books-Classics%2Fdp%2F1590173481%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1271272934%26sr%3D8-1&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">the book</a>, so perhaps it remains true to that plot. Unfortunately, several of the plot points don't work particularly well as they stand in the musical at the moment. That gritty, dark nightmare sensibility is desperately missing in a show that otherwise has a lot of potential. <br /><br />I like the choice to emphasize the carnival as being in the 1930s dust bowl and the sense of desperation and poverty barely contrasted with the hustle and artifice of a dingy sideshow provide a lot of evocative opportunity, of which the production fails to take full advantage. The carnival needs to be established early on (preferably with a strong opening production number, which this show lacked) as a combination of nightmare and promise. As an audience member, I need to feel the desperation and cynicism and fascination of the carnival as a "Nightmare Alley." Instead, the show opens with Zeena the fortune-teller (played by Mary Gordon Murray) moralizing about fate and choosing your path in a way that seems to shut down rather than compel the audience's engagement and imagination.<br /><br />There was also an odd sense of referencing the Wizard of Oz, with Cedar as very Ray Bolger-esque, Glendening first appearing in the funnel hat of the the tin man, and Michael McCarty having some of the vaudeville spirit of the Bert Lahr's cowardly lion, but I thought these references did a disservice to the show, because the last thing we need from our leading man, who should be charming and ambitious and manipulative, is an association with the wide-eyed innocence of Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale. Stan should be at home in the carnival from the first, not as disoriented as Dorothy arriving in Oz, and while the moment of recognition of the allusions was fun, it took me out of the spirit of the show.<br /><br />The show makes several similar unfortunate choices that imply the need for a bit of a re-write, but this is a musical that I want to fix, not dismiss. It has a lot of potential, but it doesn't yet capture the grittiness and desperation that it needs to make it work. Go see it for the music by Jonathan Brielle and some really strong performances, particularly by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2262265/">Sarah Glendening</a> as the spirited ingenue and Cedar in several roles. Cedar's duet with Mary Gordon Murray, "I Get By," was my favorite number in the show by far. I was also happy to run across <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1821026/">Melody Butiu</a>, a local actress who I've seen in many excellent performances, as one of four severely underutilized chorusgirls/backup singers who need a more compelling role in the show. While I'm not an expert, their costumes suggested 1940s pinup rather than 1930s carnival worker to me and I would have rather seen them more clearly integrated into the scenes in which they performed. With a stronger opening and some plot and character revisions, this could be a really fun, dark musical, but it's not quite there yet.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-91413830001233428892010-04-07T14:59:00.000-07:002010-04-07T15:17:11.258-07:00On My RadarIt's been forever since I've done this, but here are some events the internet should know more about:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=11166">The Wake</a>, by <a href="http://www.lisakron.com/">Lisa Kron</a>: Lisa Kron, one of the 5 Lesbian Brothers, though perhaps more famous for her Tony-nominated play, The Well, is back with a new work about politics, elections, and a burgeoning lesbian relationship. That's all I really know, except all the news and reviews are excellent. It's at the Kirk Douglas through April 18 and I MUST GO. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.circlextheatre.org/current_show.html">Circle X</a> is currently doing <a href="http://www.sheilacallaghan.com/index.html">Sheila Callaghan</a>'s Lascivious Something at <a href="http://www.fordtheatres.org/">Inside the Ford</a>. It's set in Greece in the Reagan '80s and I'm totally curious. The title is wonderfully decadent. Plus, support woman playwrights!<br /><br />Exploring Metaculture with Devil Bunny<br />Thursday, April 8, 2010<br />6:00 pm - 10:00 pm, Dodd Hall - Room 147<br /><br />Join <a href ="http://www.devilbunny.org/">Devil Bunny in Bondage</a>, AKA Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, for an evening of performance, writing and video works, featuring a diverse cast of characters such as extraterrestrial, feminist heroes, cinematic gorillas in pink-ray, ethnotopic inverted minstrels, and supernatural mestizas that exist along various points of the time-space-culture continuum. The evening will end with an artist talk and Q & A. <br /><br />And if I were in San Francisco:<br /><br />PERFORMING in S.F.<br />3 NIGHTS ONLY!! <br />APRIL 23rd-25th<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.theintersection.org/">intersection for the arts</a><br /> <br /><a href="http://www.adelinaanthony.com/">Adelina Anthony</a> writes: I'm excited to be one of the performers in "La Semilla Caminante/The Traveling Seed: A Multimedia Performance Work." It is a journey where indigenous myth resurfaces through contemporary story-telling. It is a story of travel, crossing river and ocean, and coming home to where we started. Created by ground-breaking artist activists Celia Hererra-Rodriguez, Cherríe Moraga & Alleluia Panis. (Tix $5-$15)Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-40610236857894145972010-03-19T14:06:00.000-07:002010-03-19T15:45:11.079-07:00Where's the Justice?<a href="http://www.latw.org/live/detail.aspx?title=RFK:%20The%20Journey%20to%20Justice">RFK: Journey to Justice</a>. <a href="http://www.latw.org/index.aspx">LA Theatre Works</a>. 3/18/10.<br /><br />First and foremost, let me say that I'm generally in favor of L.A. Theater Works, The Play's the Thing on NPR, the commissioning of new plays, and even historical docudrama as a genre. However, <i>RFK: The Journey to Justice</i>, is a pretty terrible example of all of these things. The actors were fine, in fact, many of them were excellent voice talent, but, the play itself was problematic at best.<br /><br />First of all, I honestly believe that in this day and age, it is decidedly unacceptable and uninteresting to write a play that features 8 men in suits and one woman playing mostly wives and secretaries. I don't care if this is a play about a famous man. Surely he met and had interesting and historically relevant interactions with women at some point between 1958 and 1968. If we don't consistently, repeatedly, vocally tell the world that this is absurd, apparently the world will keep commissioning and producing plays that perpetuate the myth that women only exist as a footnote to history.<br /><br />OK, after the feminist rant, let's talk about the play itself. It's a weird play. It supposedly depicts Bobby Kennedy's slow realization of the importance of civil rights and his growing political conscience at a time when the world was changing. This could be a fascinating subject, but in this particular context, it really wasn't. Part of this was because the play was a docudrama and thus kept itself mostly to events that were on the historical record, which meant that there were many excerpts from speeches and even the off the record private conversations felt like speeches. Nothing in the play felt intimate or personal at all. The arc of the play didn't even really build properly to give weight to RFK's commitment to civil rights as the turning point of the play. It depicted a slow process of being forced to action by political circumstances that more undermined than celebrated RFK's civil rights record, and then all of a sudden in Act II, it seemed like he really cared. In telling RFK's story, the play didn't really show anything that couldn't be seen on a timeline. <br /><br />But worst of all for me, the play was spectacularly infuriating, depressing, and perhaps even cynical. Because of the way the story was framed, the whole show was a march toward three assassinations. You knew they were coming from the very beginning, because you know your history, so you get the feeling that the whole play and by extension the civil rights movement is kind of futile and hopeless, both because of how much racism and poverty and injustice there still is in the world and because the play perpetuates an idea that history (or hope, or change) is the story of the great works of great men, all of whom are brutally murdered. <br /><br />I don't know how anyone can watch this play and not think about how low the percentage of enrollment of African-American students is at universities (2% at UCLA in 2006, though up a bit since then), or how the combination of economic downturn and budget shortfalls are decimating services to the poor, or the current healthcare fight. I know perfectly well that most of the audience wasn't sitting there like I was listening to all the play's rhetoric about equality and justice and being furious that no one is standing up and saying the same things about LGBT rights. On a day when <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/dan-choi-handcuffs-himsel_n_504439.html">Lt. Dan Choi chained himself to the white house fence</a> because HE IS BEING FIRED FOR BEING GAY, it was hard to watch a play about a white guy's valuable if occasionally paternalistic and politically motivated interest in civil rights without feeling both furious and cynical about the possibility of anyone paying attention to the current civil rights struggles. Usually, I would give a play the benefit of the doubt in relation to current events, but this particular play made very clear that it was NOT about gay rights. There were a couple of mean-spirited J. Edgar Hoover gay jokes and a lot of emphasis on the equal rights of MEN that basically built connections between the characters and with the audience through the celebration of heterosexual masculinity. Yes, of course, this is a representation of a different time and different attitudes, but the past is always filtered through the present and in this particular version, the patriarchal masculinity and homophobia are being perpetuated rather than critiqued. Historical docudrama should be an opportunity to revisit and reevaluate history through the lens of drama and distance; this production didn't provide the drama, or the reevaluation that this story need and deserves.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-51221635682231948402010-02-14T18:04:00.000-08:002010-02-14T23:46:44.407-08:00Curiouser and Queerer<a href="http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/91795">Project Wonderland</a>. <a href="http://www.bootlegtheater.com/"> Bootleg Theater</a>. 2/14/10.<br /><br />Bootleg Theater's <i>Project Wonderland</i> is a wild and wonderful live version of Lewis Carroll's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAdventures-Wonderland-Through-Looking-Glass-Classics%2Fdp%2F0141439769%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1266199735%26sr%3D1-4&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</a> complete with excellent puppetry and delightfully strange musical numbers. <br /><br />The production tells the <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> story as you know it, but also includes a depiction of Charles Dodgson (whose pen name was Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell as a framing story. <a href="http://www.lonhaber.com/">Lon Haber</a> plays Dodgson, but also steps into the role of Alice when she crosses into Wonderland (when Dodgson goes into an opium-induced dream), so that this production allows the modern assumption of Dodgson's attraction to Alice but also offers a more poignant (and less creepy) possibility of Dodgson identifying with Alice and wanting to be her rather than be with her. Haber makes a surprisingly engaging Alice leading a truly fabulous ensemble cast, including a chorus of five other Alices that sadly disappeared into other roles after a few scenes.<br /><br />Everyone in the show gave skilled performances, but I was particularly impressed with <a href="http://www.matthewpatrickdavis.com">Matthew Patrick Davis</a> as the Mad Hatter among other roles. In addition to being a giant (6'8" according to his website) with excellent physical comedy skills, he's also adorable and managed to be astonishingly earnest even in clown makeup when he had a brief appearance as Duckworth, a friend of Dodgson's. He's prone to mugging and thereby looking almost exactly like a young <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000120/">Jim Carey</a>, which I enjoy less than some of the other things he does, but he's definitely one to watch and I will gladly follow any future theater endeavors. The mad tea party scene went on a little long, but watching Davis cavort in crazy striped pants and a top hat helped prevent boredom even when the scene dragged.<br /><br />I also very much enjoyed Jessica Hanna as the White Rabbit (with an excellent signing voice) and <a href="http://www.voxhumanaproductions.org/members/index.php?member=Zuniga_Jabez">Jabez Zuniga</a> as the Queen of Hearts (and as the March Hare, but the Queen of Hearts was way more fabulous). The entire ensemble did a highly entertaining job with music by <a href="http://indiring.com/">Indira Stefanianna</a> (and a few classic rock standards) and dance numbers choreographed by <a href="http://orpheancircus.com/about/roht.shtml">Ken Roht</a> (the mad genius behind the 99-cent store extravaganzas that usually inhabit the evidence room/bootleg around Christmas). <br /><br />A huge amount of credit must go to director Robert A. Prior who also adapted the show. It makes me wonder why Prior and his Fabulous Monsters Performance Group isn't on my radar. I definitely want to see and know about whatever Prior does in the future; I was seriously intrigued. It was a clever production, subtly suggesting issues of queer (gay and/or transgender) identity and identification, but also emphasizing how we raise and educate children and indoctrinate them into adult social forms. This production gave the distinct impression that the grown-up world of schools and tea parties and croquet and court rooms is the source of all nonsense, and that the process of growing up is memorizing absurd words and social forms that never come out quite right. I thought that this was a brilliant combination of themes and that the production emphasized this element of Carroll's book quite well, especially in the caterpillar (played by <a href="http://www.theatre40.org/members/bonnabel-michael.html">Michael Bonnabel</a>) scene with its poetry recitation and discussion of transformation. <br /><br />Most of all, though, the stand-out aspects of this production were the costumes by Teresa Shea and the puppets by <a href="http://www.lynnjeffries.com/index.html">Lynn Jeffries</a>. Infinitely inventive, this show was a visual delight. Jeffries' shadow puppets were particularly clever and astonishing. They did an excellent job visualizing the crazy wonderland world of this production, from giant and miniature Alices to dancing starfish and lobsters. The Queen of Hearts' sequined cone bra totally stole the show. <br /><br />Overall, it's a fun show though it does run a little long (1 hr 45 min with no intermission), and maybe one or two scenes were longer than they needed to be. It's a good homage to both Carroll's book and the film versions I recall fondly from my childhood. I'm sorry I went to the last performance, so recommending it doesn't achieve much, but I really did enjoy the show with all its visual spectacle. It inspired me to think differently about a familiar story, and that in itself is an impressive achievement.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-78305003685030380872010-02-12T14:16:00.001-08:002010-02-12T14:18:56.645-08:00Really cool event!This shows just how nerdy I am, but I think this is a totally awesome sounding event and I seriously wish I were in the Bay Area to enjoy it. If you know anyone up there, please tell them about this. How cool is it that David Henry Hwang is going back to his alma mater to stage the play that started it all and to celebrate the student theater group he founded?!?<br /><br />Please join the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club<br />in welcoming...<br /><br />David Henry Hwang '79<br />Hope Nakamura '82<br />Nancy Takahashi Hatamiya '81<br />and<br />Lisa Pan '81<br /><br />...back to campus for<br /><br />the Asian American Theater Project's<br />30th anniversary re-staging of<br />David Henry Hwang's Obie Award-winning Play:<br /><br />FOB<br /><br />The play that started it all, "FOB" was written by David Henry Hwang while<br />he was an undergraduate at Stanford. He and his friends founded the Asian<br />American Theater Project in order to produce the play for the first time<br />at Stanford's Asian American theme dorm in 1979. Hwang's career-launching<br />play would go on to premier Off-Broadway and win an Obie Award.<br /><br /><br />Showtimes<br /> Thursday, 2/18 @ 7pm ($5)<br />Friday, 2/19 @ 7pm ($5)<br /> * Saturday, 2/20 @ 3pm ($10) *<br /><br />at the Nitery Theater in Old Union<br /><br /><br />Special Events Following Saturday Show<br />featuring playwright David Henry Hwang '79 and original cast and crew<br />members Hope Nakamura '82, Nancy Takahashi Hatamiya '81, and Lisa Pan '81<br /><br />FOB Alumni Panel @ 5pm, Nitery Theater<br />Immediately follows Saturday show, included in ticket price.<br /><br />FOB Reception @ 6 pm, A3C Ballroom<br />FREE. Refreshments provided.<br /><br /><br />Reserve Your Play Tickets Now<br />visit bit.ly/fob2010<br /><br />SAPAAC members, contact Cynthia Liao '09<br />(cynliao@stanford.edu) for discount<br /><br /><br />David Henry Hwang is the author of M. Butterfly and Yellowface among many<br />others. He was born in Los Angeles, California and graduated from Stanford<br />University as well as Yale School of Drama. Hwang was twenty-one and had<br />just graduated from Stanford when his first play, FOB, was accepted for<br />production in at the National Playwrights Conference. The very next year,<br />FOB won an Obie Award as the best new play of the season. Hwang holds<br />honorary degrees from Columbia College in Chicago and The American<br />Conservatory Theatre. He lives in New York City with his wife, actress<br />Kathryn Layng, and their children, Noah David and Eva Veanne.<br />This is the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club (SAPAAC) e-mail<br />list, hosted by the Stanford Alumni Association.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-2604299221512399162010-02-11T02:05:00.000-08:002010-02-11T03:50:48.326-08:00Military Intelligence and Sex Wars<a href="http://www.thewoostergroup.org/twg/twg.php?north-atlantic">North Atlantic</a>. <a href="http://thewoostergroup.org/">The Wooster Group</a>. <a href="http://www.redcat.org/">The REDCAT</a>. 2/10/10.<br /><br /><i>North Atlantic</i> is a Wooster Group deconstruction of military and gender politics, set more or less during the Cold War. <I>South Pacific</i> it ain't. It offers a wonderfully disturbing, problematic exploration of sex as war and sex in war, exploiting and exploding mid-century gender roles and the conventions of war movies. This piece differs from the Wooster Group productions I have seen in the past because it isn't an explicit deconstruction of one or two significant texts, but rather a critical response to an entire genre (or three).<br /><br />First and foremost, <i>North Atlantic</i> is a piece about military culture and the military in popular culture. The action takes place on an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic (although you wouldn't necessarily know that unless you read it in the program) and begins with a wonderfully gruff young officer (Roscoe Chizzum, I believe was his character name) spouting military intelligence cliches at two enlisted men. His rapid-fire delivery of utter nonsense was one of many high points of the production for me. <br /><br />The production comes into focus when Wooster Group veteran Kate Valk appears as Ann Pussey, serving as madam for a team of secretaries. The women offer a series of bawdy sexual comments about competing in an upcoming wet uniform contest as they fiddle manically with reel-to-reel tape and rotary phones, separated from the downstage playing area of the men by a long table on a raked platform stretching upstage at a steep angle. Although all of the women were excellent, I found Maura Tierney with her shaved head and short shorts particularly compelling and I wish the character had explored that shockingly butch first impression more. Seriously. I would love to see a Maura Tierney play butch for real. *Swoon*<br /><br />Lurking behind the explicit sexuality depicted in the play lies the threat of homosexuality. Implicitly, <i>North Atlantic</i> suggests that extreme performances of heterosexual voraciousness are necessary in the military to disprove the threat of queerness. When an outside officer, Ned Ludd, arrives on the carrier, Captain Roscoe first challenges his heterosexuality and later dismisses him as an 'egghead,' suggesting a critique of the military's homophobia and anti-intellectualism as intertwined. The constant low-level threat of homosexuality culminated in a dance scene at an after-hours social event in which three couples danced awkwardly together, with the heterosexual couple in the center, two men dancing together on one side and two women on the other. This scene created a beautiful tableau of the possibilities and impossibilities of romance and intimacy within military culture.<br /><br />Occasional song-and-dance numbers livened and lightened up the production, providing another layer of interpretation by linking the military setting with cowboy images of Americana. At a few points in the show, the action stopped while everyone broke out into slightly skewed versions of familiar songs such as "Yankee Doodle" and "I Ride an Old Paint." Though I believe these songs have existed since the show's beginnings in 1983/4, they felt particularly pertinent in evoking the George W. Bush's cowboy militarism of the most recent wars. These songs speak to the central images of how the U.S. views itself and represents itself as a military powerhouse that valorizes individuality and independence even when they are destructive or impossible. In the stark technology of the stage/battleship, these songs offer a nostalgic depiction of rural romanticism and longing for a Wyoming that seems impossibly distant, while being corrupted by the raunchy worldliness of the plays characters (particularly the women).<br /><br />The play also deals with issues of interrogation and torture in a comical but disturbing way. Overall, <i>North Atlantic</i> explores and exaggerates the cliches of military culture and how the military is represented to civilian audiences in a strange, disturbing, thoughtful way. Like all Wooster Group productions, there are more questions than answers, but sometimes that in itself can be compelling and productive if the questions are asked in the right way. I have criticized the Wooster Group in the past for depicting problematic political and cultural images (most notably blackface in <i>Route 1 & 9</i>) without clear critical commentary. In this piece, while their position wasn't necessarily unambiguous, it at least gives me a hook on which to hang my own critical hat, suggesting satirical commentary on a culture of sexism and sexual exploitation within the military and criticism of the popular reconfiguration of rigid gender roles and sexual opportunism into film narratives of romance. These aren't necessarily the Wooster Group's or director Elizabeth LeCompte's positions, but they are the ideas that the performance inspired me to think about, and I think for this production, that is critical interpretation enough.<br /><br />NOTE: Please excuse the fact that I haven't linked actor names to the roles. The program only offers the list of ensemble members, so all I know is that the cast includes Ari Fliakos, Frances McDormand, Scott Shepherd, Kate Valk, and special guest artists Steve Cuiffo, Koosil-ja Hwang, Paul Lazar, Zachary Oberzan, Jenny Seastone-Stern and Maura Tierney and they were all absolutely excellent in a demanding ensemble performance. If I can find more information, I will try to amend the text at a later date to reflect proper actor and character names.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-63649160279399131322010-01-29T04:22:00.000-08:002010-01-29T05:02:26.466-08:00Zinn MourningI'm not big on mourning or obituaries, particularly for public figures, but the death of <a href="http://www.howardzinn.org/default/index.php">Howard Zinn</a> has made me reflective. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29zinn.html">New York Times obituary</a> is a solid if uninspired discussion of his life and career (and now I really want to read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FThree-Plays-Political-Theater-Howard%2Fdp%2F0807073261%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1264768420%26sr%3D1-1&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">those plays</a> he wrote!), but <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPeoples-History-United-States-Present%2Fdp%2F0060838655%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1264768561%26sr%3D1-1&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">A People's History of the United States</a> had a formative impact on the person and the scholar I am today. <br /><br />I was fortunate enough, in the conservative suburb in which I was raised, to be taught entirely by socialist history teachers in high school. In the summer between my junior and senior years, everyone in my class was required to read one real, scholarly history book. From long list of possibilities, I chose (on the teacher's recommendation) <i>A People's History of the United States</i>. This book taught me, at a very impressionable age, that scholarship can be entertaining and engaging, that history can (and always does) have a perspective and an opinion, and to question the power structures that shape the world. This, perhaps more than anything else I read in high school, prepared me for college and academia and has stayed with me. I've carried this book with me every place I've lived, and seeing a copy on a bookshelf has helped me identify many a kindred spirit.<br /><br />Zinn's ideas and opinions, and more than that the strength of his convictions, is inspiring to me. Reading obituaries has been even more inspirational, because it reminds me at a period in which I have no purchase, no power, and no real existence in academia that more is possible and that this tiny world isn't all that important compared to the global and ideological struggles in which we are engaged. Zinn's work takes me back to my own core beliefs, but also inspires me to question and think critically about everything. All I can really say is: Thank you, Howard Zinn. I hope his works continue to be read well into the future.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-56132405287610783642010-01-22T12:20:00.000-08:002010-01-22T13:05:32.658-08:00Tiki Space CocktailsHere are the best tiki party-meets-outer-space themed cocktail recipes that I've found. So many obscure ingredients! If you know any more, I'd love some suggestions.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Astronaut</span><br /><br />8-10 ice cubes, cracked<br />1/2 measure white rum<br />1/2 measure vodka<br />1/2 measure fresh lemon juice<br />1 dash passion fruit juice<br />lemon wedge, to decorate<br /><br />Put half of the cracked ice into a cocktail shaker and add the rum, vodka and juices. Shake until a frost forms. Strain it into an old-fashioned glass filled with the remaining ice. Decorate with a lemon wedge.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Blue Moon</span><br /><br />Ice<br />2 ounces dry gin, such as Tanqueray<br />½ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice<br />½ ounce creme de violette<br /><br />Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full with ice. Add the gin, lemon juice and creme de violette. Shake vigorously and strain into a cocktail (martini) glass.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Blue Hawaiian</span><br /><br />1 oz Light Rum<br />1 oz Blue Curacao<br />1 part Crème de Coconut<br />2 parts Pineapple Juice<br />1 Cup Ice<br /><br />Combine ingredients in a blender or mix well and enjoy on the rocks. Garnish with a cherry and pineapple. Don’t forget the paper umbrella!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Jet Fuel</span><br /><br /> 2 oz Whiskey<br /> 3/4 oz Dry Sack Sherry<br /> 2 dashes Bitters<br /> Squeeze orange slice into glass<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Space Monkey</span><br /><br />1 part milk<br />4 parts rum<br />4 parts banana liquor<br />ice<br /><br />Mix well<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lost In Space Martini</span><br /><br />2 oz citrus vodka<br />1 oz triple sec<br />1 oz Tang® orange drink<br />Rim a cocktail glass with powdered Tang®. Shake ingredients in an ice filled shaker and strain into glass.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Rocket Fuel</span><br /><br />3/4 oz 151-proof rum<br />1/2 oz vodka<br />1/2 oz blue curacao<br /><br />Pour ingredients, in order listed, into a shot glass or rocks glass. Serve.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Fuzzy Astronaut</span><br /><br />1 1/2 oz vodka<br />3/4 oz peach schnapps<br />Tang® orange drink to balance<br /><br />Build over ice in a Collins glass. Stir, sip and enjoy the shuttle launch!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tiki Girl</span><br /><br />1 1/2 oz rum<br />1 oz amaretto<br />Orange Juice<br />Pineapple juice<br />splash grenadine<br /><br />Pour all ingredients except grenadine into a large glass filled with ice. Shake well and drizzle in grenadine.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Barbarella</span><br /><br />2 oz Cointreau<br />1 oz Sambuca<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Blade Runner</span><br /><br />3 parts Apricot Brandy<br />5 parts Bourbon<br />1 part Grenadine<br />2 parts Lemon Juice<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Darth Vader</span><br /><br />½ oz. vodka<br />½ oz. gin<br />½ oz. tequila<br />½ oz. rum<br />½ oz. triple sec<br />½ oz. Jaegermeister<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pineapple Mai Tai</span><br /><br />4 ounce orange juice<br />4 ounce pineapple juice<br />1 ounce lime juice<br />1 ounce dark rum<br />1 ounce light rum<br />1 ounce triple sec<br />1/2 ounce grenadine<br /><br />Mix all ingredients, shake with ice, and strain into a glass. Garnish with a cherry and a pineapple wedge.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ambrosia (a la Battlestar Galactica)</span><br /><br />6 oz Midori <br />4 oz Blue Curacao<br />2 oz lime juice<br /><br />Mix over ice.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pan Galatic Gargle Blaster</span><br /><br />1/2 ounce Vodka<br />1/2 ounce Triple Sec<br />1/2 ounce Yukon Jack liqueur<br />1/2 ounce Peach Schnapps<br />1/2 ounce Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey<br />1/2 ounce fresh lime juice<br />1/2 ounce cranberry juice<br />Fill with lemon-lime soda<br /><br />Build in an ice-filled Collins glass, filling it with the soda. Stir with a long straw. Garnish with an orange if desired.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-88664037084348365932009-09-19T11:20:00.000-07:002009-09-19T12:27:07.862-07:00Culture Clash and Aristophanes, an Irreverent Mix<a href="http://www.getty.edu/visit/events/peace.html">Peace</a>. <a href="http://cultureclash.com/">Culture Clash</a>. <a href="http://www.getty.edu/">The Getty Villa</a>. 9/18/09.<br /><br />In <i>Peace</i> at the Getty Villa, some of the greats of Southern California theater come together to create a ridiculous romp through ancient comedy and contemporary commentary. The show features <a href="http://cultureclash.com/">Culture Clash</a>, the irreverent Chicano/Latino sketch comedy-meets-performance art-meets-teatro theater troupe with their brilliant combination of site-specific localism and global commentary wrapped up in dick jokes. In this production, they are joined by the equally fabulous <a href="http://www.johnfleck.net/">John Fleck</a> (of Star Trek: Enterprise and the NEA 4, and a delightful local gay actor/performance artist) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0384032/">Amy Hill</a> (most recognizable as Margaret Cho's grandmother on All American Girl, and incredibly multi-talented in her own right). This amazing cast is brought together by <a href="http://www.osfashland.org/about/people/bio.aspx?id=203">Bill Rauch</a>, who recently left us bereft here in SoCal to become the Artistic Director of the <a href="http://www.osfashland.org/Index.aspx">Oregon Shakespeare Festival</a>. He is joined by the mad genius <a href="http://orpheancircus.com/about/roht.shtml">Ken Roht</a> as choreographer and playwright and dramaturg John Glore as co-adapter of the play. And then, of course, there's Aristophanes, who is perhaps a perfect match for Culture Clash in the combination of fast-paced absurd romp, incredibly current social and political criticism, and dirty jokes. <br /><br /><i>Peace</i> is a strange play, but its wackiness can be wonderful. The puppetry and costumes are fabulous and the actors themselves are hilarious, high-spirited professionals that make the show a delight. There are moments when the show doesn't work. Some of the jokes fall flat or go on too long and some of the choices don't make a lot of sense, but overall this contemporary-meets-classic story of a hippy pot farmer (Fleck as Trygaeus, aka Ty-Dye), a cranky Malibu housewife meets showtune-singing chorus leader (Hill), and three Guatemalan gardeners/Salvedoreño sh*t-slaves/Greek Gods (Culture Clash, of course) who set out to save the goddess Peace who has been imprisoned by War makes for a delightfully fun evening of theatrical magic. The political message (essentially 'make love, not war') is in no way heavy-handed or clichéd, and despite being thousands of years old, the play feels like a fresh and contemporary take on an old theme. Personally, I was shocked and delighted by the heavy-handed phallus humor and particularly John Fleck's fabulous tribute song to masturbation that became a chorus "dance" number. Overall, I highly recommend this show to anyone who can see it (an who can handle the adult content). I was absolutely gleeful throughout.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-43699693903727287842009-08-30T19:57:00.000-07:002009-08-30T21:10:55.643-07:00Hitchcock goes Slapstick<a href="http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/the-season/plays/the-39-steps">The 39 Steps</a>. La Jolla Playhouse. 8/30/09.<br /><br /><i>The 39 Steps</i> is a delightful comic romp through the plot of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026029/">a Hitchcock thriller</a>. It's an infinitely entertaining example of suburb comic timing and high quality clowning. I found the play incredibly enjoyable and I highly recommend it. The production exhibited wonderful theatricality in its execution of a whole film's worth of characters, scenes, and stunts with a minimalist set and a cast of four. Ted Deasy playing the male lead ran and leapt and chased and sweated across the stage for the length of the play without much of a break besides intermission and did it all with an air of self-possessed English charm. Eric Hissom and Scott Parkinson played every other male character (and some of the women). Their physical comedy, including quick swapping between character and carrying on conversations with themselves kept the play running at a breakneck pace and continually surprised and delighted me. I laughed through the whole show and enjoyed every minute of it.<br /><br />What <i>The 39 Steps</i> isn't, however, is a theater version of Hitchcock. What got lost in all of the postmodern self-referential slapstick was the thrill of the thriller. Even though the production recreated every scene in the film, the idea of a spy thriller got lost entirely. So I left the play wondering if it mattered? This play is wonderful, but why is it <i>The 39 Steps</i>? Would it be receiving as much attention if it were just a spoof of the spy thriller genre? Why tie it to Hitchcock? What does it have to say about our relationship to film history? I don't have any answers, just questions, but I really did enjoy the play and I do highly recommend it.<br /><br /><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/mark-taper-forum-season-announcement.html">CTG just announced</a> that the touring production of <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=11286">The 39 Steps</a> will come to the <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/theatres/ahmanson/">Ahmanson</a> next spring and will be included in the Taper season. It's a solid, fun show and I expect anyone who sees it will enjoy it, but I'm not necessarily in a hurry to see it again.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-2351789674785822902009-08-16T12:04:00.000-07:002009-08-16T14:49:44.995-07:00Season TicketsI just bought season tickets to the <a href="http://www.geffenplayhouse.com/">Geffen Playhouse</a>. The funny thing about this is that I was thinking about getting tickets for the <a href=http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/content.aspx?id=1062"">Kirk Douglas season</a> since they (for once) managed to program two plays by women, and I will definitely have to see "<a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=11166">A New Play By Lisa Kron</a>." I let myself be talked into tickets to the Geffen instead because I knew I wanted to see <a href="http://geffenplayhouse.com/index.php/180">Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas</a> with some friends (it sounds delightfully silly) and <a href="http://geffenplayhouse.com/index.php/183">Nightmare Alley</a> could be fabulous, or at least intellectually interesting as a film adaptation. So I allowed myself to be convinced that even though I think <a href="http://geffenplayhouse.com/index.php/182">Female of the Species</a> might be horribly anti-feminist, it's probably worth seeing to find out, or to see what <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000906/">Annette Bening</a> does with the wacky feminist role. The funny thing is, I've seen several truly awful, boring plays at both the Geffen and the Douglas, and yet I keep letting myself be lured back. I very much like having season tickets, but I wish I could be more proud of the theaters to which I'm subscribing. I should be supporting a season of risky, feminist or queer, not entirely narrative work, not grasping at straws whenever one of the major companies manages to program one or two plays by women. I'd love to get season tickets to the <a href="http://www.uclalive.org/calendar.asp?Genre_ID=1">UCLA Live International Theater Festival</a>, but the prices are nowhere near affordable for me. I might consider picking up a subscription to the <a href="http://www.bostoncourt.com/">Boston Court</a> when they announce their new season (I probably would have liked their current season). Even though I usually scoff at the Geffen, or the Taper, or the Douglas, I find myself the eternal optimist when a new season is announced. I wish I could subscribe to everything. I love having theater on my calendar, knowing that I have to go because I've already bought the tickets, and challenging myself to see things that I might not have picked if I were buying single tickets. So, what would you subscribe to if you could? What do you recommend for me?Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-81151552291408465492009-08-13T09:49:00.000-07:002009-08-13T10:05:35.396-07:00CTG and Experimental Theater<a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/ctg-receives-1-million-grant-for-experimental-productions.html">The LA Times reports today</a> that <a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/">CTG</a> just received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop "experimental" theater by LA-based artists. I wonder if this is at least partially an expansion of the "<a href="http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=11170">Douglas Plus</a>" program that was so poorly executed at the last minute last year. <br /><br />They claim they intend to devote the grant to LA-based artists, and yet the only project they're ready to discuss is bringing in <a href="http://www.maddogexperimental.org/who.htm">Phil Soltanoff from mad dog experimental theatre company</a> to work with LA actors. While I think it would be great to have more experimental NY artists coming out to LA to do their work or show it, I definitely don't think CTG has the creative vision for this, and once again they're giving lip service to local artists while really fetishizing New York and pretending toward diversity while really only supporting (usually straight, white) men.<br /><br />While this grant could be an amazing opportunity to see and develop exciting new work, I fear that it will only be another poor excuse to produce work by the same old people, but now with fewer words and more flashy projections and "technology." I would much rather have actually seen the production of Heddatron that they promised and cancelled this year than have this vague promise of new work in the future.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-41195996651800853112009-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:002009-08-11T16:08:06.235-07:00Outdoor Shakespeare<i>Twelfth Night</i>. <a href="http://www.classicaltheatrelab.org/ctl_new_index.htm">Classical Theatre Lab</a>. <a href="http://www.weho.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/detail/navid/10/cid/2423/">Kings Road Park, West Hollywood</a>. 8/9/09.<br /><br />Summer wouldn't be complete without some good, old-fashioned outdoor Shakespeare. While New Yorkers could see a <a href="http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/theater/reviews/26night.html">star-studded Twelfth Night</a> <a href="http://www.publictheater.org/content/view/126/219/">in Central Park</a> earlier this season, we here in West Hollywood have our own modest version of the same play. It's a solid production with good spirit and a few really strong performances.<br /><br />Most notably, the production maintained quite good pacing, managing to keep my attention without feeling rushed and always making sense out of the language. The actors were combatting airplanes and street noise, and occasional bits of dialogue were lost entirely, and yet I didn't ever feel as if I'd missed anything.<br /><br />Particularly notable in this production were the comic characters, led by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0046101/">Will Badgett</a> as Feste and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0560270/">Michael Matthys</a> as Sir Toby Belch. They were a lot of fun onstage and made more sense out of the comic bits than I generally experience, and I found myself wishing for more songs.<br /><br />While this production was far from perfect, it's a good, fun outdoor Shakespeare performance, and not bad for the free show down the street from my house. Director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001734/">Armin Shimerman</a> did a good job forging a solid, faithful production of a fun play in a lovely outdoor setting.<br /><br />My favorite <i>Twelfth Night</i> is still the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171854/">1998 Lincoln Center/PBS</a> version I saw in high school starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000166/">Helen Hunt</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001718/">Kyra Sedgwick</a> (I really wish this were available on DVD!), but this was a nice pleasant afternoon of theater.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-45110580841904279962009-08-10T20:10:00.000-07:002009-08-10T20:15:01.520-07:00HousekeepingI just began restoring the links that vanished when I changed the design of this blog many months ago, so please take a look at the side column and let me know what's missing. If you read or link to me and would like to be listed, or if you have any recommendations for blogs I should be reading or linking (particularly those at any intersection of theater, academics, Los Angeles, and gender), I would be quite grateful for any suggestions.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-36292236691069908052009-08-10T15:45:00.000-07:002009-08-10T18:50:41.209-07:00Crushable Women<a href="http://www.julieandjulia.com/">Julie and Julia</a>. <a href="http://www.thegrovela.com/">The Grove</a>. 8/10/09.<br /><br />I saw <a href="http://www.julieandjulia.com/">Julie and Julia</a> last night, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but this post is really just as much inspired by <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-28/fantasy-girl-crushes/">this Daily Beast article</a> and <a href="http://jezebel.com/5325464/whos-your-girl-crush">the Jezebel response to it</a> that I just happened upon. Mostly, I want to point out that these articles are appropriating terms of romance to describe professional relationships and envy, which are strange usages of terms like "lust" and "crush." Female-female relationships can slip between homosexuality and homosociality, but it seems to me that both of these articles de-eroticize the "girl crush" in really unfortunate ways. For me at least, there is a difference between the women I admire because I want to be like them and the women I admire and might want to sleep with, even if that difference might occasionally be slippery, too. Both of these articles make me wonder if and where attraction might be in the relationships and whether the use of terms like "crush" might have something to say about the paucity of models for female friendship and mentorship.<br /><br />Which brings me to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/">Julie and Julia</a>. I'm only talking about the film here, not <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FJulie-Julia-Year-Cooking-Dangerously%2Fdp%2F031604251X%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1249948149%26sr%3D8-1&tag=violetvixen-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">the book</a> or <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/">the blog</a>, and certainly not <a href="http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/">the person</a>, but one thing that I found particularly striking about the film was its portrayal of female relationships. At one point (and this isn't an exact quote), Julie asks, 'aren't you supposed to like your friends'? Julie's relationships in the film with other people, particularly other women, were distant, strained, impoverished. There were those three condescending women she had lunch with, whose relationship was never even explained. I guess they were supposed to be friends, but they didn't seem to even like each other.<br /><br />In contrast, there was Julie's relationship with Julia Child, which bordered on the obsessive. Was this a "girl crush?" Probably not in the way <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/doree-shafrir/">Doree Shafrir</a> describes it and probably not in a romantic way, and yet the relationship in Julie's head was the only well-defined female-female relationship in Julie's part of the movie. She had some dinner guests, a mother in the form of answering machine voice, and a woman she occasionally high-fived across cubicle walls. There were occasional scenes with friend to whom she vented, but there wasn't much a sense of friendship or support. Julia had female collaborators, a pen-pal, a sister, even a female nemesis of sorts and all of those characters felt much more rich than any of the women in Julie's life.<br /><br />This might be a reflection of contemporary life, in which we've lost a sense of the possibilities of female friendships that aren't superficial, obligatory, or competitive, or it might just be a part of the failure of the film to develop the character of Julie Powell with the depth and complexity and vibrancy that Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child had, both of which I believe are problems.<br /><br />Let me be clear that I really did enjoy the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/">Julie and Julia</a>, but I also felt that it suffered from a generation gap. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0010736/"> Amy Adams</a>' Powell seems as so much less interesting than Julia Child, but that is at least partially because I don't think writer/director <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/">Nora Ephron</a> really understood (or liked) the character. Powell is given long, boring scenes about what a blog is and how to start one that may be necessary if your intended audience is over sixty, but that seem incredibly simplistic and alienating to an audience of Julie's contemporaries. I find <a href="http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-ca-julia26-2009jul26,0,1375094.story?page=1">this LA Times article</a> particularly illuminating in its discussion toward the end of the article about how Ephron had trouble "creating tension within Powell's narrative"; that failure is apparent onscreen in the difficulty I had liking or identifying with the character. I feel that there must be a way to have made Julie's quirkiness and affectations endearing, but the film portrayed her as self-centered and helpless instead. Again, I wonder if this is a reflection on the images and possibilities for contemporary women, or just a slight misstep. Any thoughts or insight would be welcome.<br /><br />Either way, I very much recommend the film, but with the caveat that the portrayals of Julie Powell or contemporary female relationships are not why I recommend it. Go for the food, the cooking, and Meryl as Julia. Go for the fact that it's a movie about women, for once. I definitely enjoyed the film, and left the theater discussing dessert recipes with friends, and that in itself is a wonderful thing. Perhaps, even if this isn't a film that portrays non-competitive contemporary female relationships, it can be a film that helps build some.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-16328255193469416222009-07-13T12:30:00.000-07:002009-07-13T13:44:05.516-07:00Chico's Chica's<a href="http://www.chicosangels.com/">Chico's Angels</a> 2: <a href="http://www.goldstar.com/events/los-angeles-ca/chicos-angels-2-love-boat-chicas.html">Love Boat Chicas</a>. <a href="http://www.cavernclubtheater.com/">The Cavern Club Celebrity Theater</a>. 7/12/09.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicosangels.com/">Chico's Angels</a> is probably the best show you'll ever see in the basement of a Mexican Restaurant, and the current installment, <a href="http://www.chicosangels.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=65">Love Boat Chicas</a> exceeds my previous experiences with the show so much that I was blown away! There were more songs, more dances, more lesbianism, and the plot even made more sense! This was by far the best Angels yet! This Charlie's Angels meets the Loveboat crossover episode has all the '70s nostalgia you could possibly desire and all the campy drag and sexual innuendo you can stand.<br /><br />Even better, this episode seems to have finally mastered the balance in campiness in combining drag queens and bio-girls. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1973333/">Cher Ferreyra</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1146983/">Nora Miller</a> really brought the bio-girl camp and managed to gve the drag queens a run for their money rather than feeling like they were in a different show. It brought the whole production together in an explosion of fabulousness. <br /><br />Of course, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1235443/">Oscar Quintero</a> as the scene-stealing Kay Sedia is always the star of the show and didn't disappoint as a Charo impersonator in this episode, but the subplots with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2524485/">Danny Casillas</a>' portrayal of Frieda Lay's budding lesbian experimentation and the forbidden love between <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1308885/">Ray Garcia</a> as Chita Parol and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0665620/">Alejandro Patino</a> as Bossman were excellent enhancements to the plot and played extremely well. Overall, this was the strongest Chico's Angels I've seen so far and I highly recommend it. <br /><br />If you can't make it to the theater to see the show (extended through August 2!), they're starting <a href="http://www.chicosangels.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=53">a web series</a>, so be sure to check it out on <a href="http://www.chicosangels.com/index.php">their website</a>!Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11759370.post-71619914319726537792009-07-11T00:30:00.000-07:002009-07-11T01:15:31.015-07:00It Came from Chicago<a href="http://www.hannahfree.com/">Hannah Free</a>. <a href="http://www.outfest.org/">Outfest</a>. 7/10/2009.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.outfest.org/fest2009/">Outfest 2009</a> has begun. On the spur of the moment, I joined a friend at a this evening at a screening of <a href="http://www.outfest.org/fest2009/">Hannah Free</a>, a film about an older butch lesbian dealing with aging and recalling the love of her life. It was a lovely film with beautiful cinematography by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1008443/">Gretchen Warthen</a> and the performances, particularly by Sharon Gless (the mother from <i>Queer as Folk</i> and <i>Burn Notice</i>. She makes a great lesbian.<br /><br />There were some really refreshing things about this film, particularly that there were actual images of butch women and also older lesbians, both of which are rarely seen in mainstream films. The performances were truly excellent. Sharon Gless was, of course, fabulous, but so was the rest of the cast. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3177954/">Jacqui Jackson</a> was charming and adorable as a young woman who adopts Hannah as a lesbian elder and <a href="http://www.luc.edu/dfpa/facultystaff/StricklandK.shtml">Kelli Strickland</a> as the baby butch version Hannah was seriously crush-worthy.<br /><br />I'm really glad I saw this partially because it emerged from the Chicago theater scene. It was written by <a href="http://www.victorygardens.org/content/node/194">Claudia Allen</a>, who is a lesbian playwright in Chicago at the <a href="http://www.victorygardens.org/content/">Victory Gardens Theater</a>. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know anything about her work prior to this (although I think I did see someone give a paper about her play <i>Xena Lives!</i>), so I'm really glad that this brought this work to my attention.<br /><br />The film wasn't perfect; there were some cringe-worthy moments of awkwardness, particularly some really unnatural-sounding exposition at the beginning of the film. Some of the folks I was with complained that it felt a little stagey at points, although either I didn't notice or I'm interpreting the same moments as unnatural awkwardness that they consider theatrical. Overall, the film was just sweet and refreshing. It was also a bit of a tearjerker; I was crying from about 10 or 15 minutes into the film, but there were so many beautiful, funny, honest scenes between the ones that made me cry that I found the whole thing charming and really enjoyable rather than sappy.<br /><br />Overall, Outfest is off to a great start for me.Violet Vixenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14558684142279615771noreply@blogger.com0