Lost Evidence

The Evidence Room is gone.

LAist has a rather poignant report on the appropriateness of their final production, The Cherry Orchard, as mourning for their lost space. Rob Kent, LA's much-missed theater reviewer, has an insightful blog review and a report for the LA Times on the evidence room closing.

This closing is truly a loss for the LA theater community. I'm quite sad that I failed to attend their last production, however wary of Chekov I happen to be. I, like many others, hope that Artistic Director Bart DeLorenzo will continue his exciting work elsewhere.

LAist returns to the world of theater reviews

LAist, my preferred of our two major local blogs, has been severely lacking in its theater coverage recently. After a month an a half of silence, it returned at the end of June with a review of The Evidence Room's closing production, The Cherry Orchard. This week, it has a review of Rock and Roll Heaven at Theatre 68 (which I'd never heard of before). This review, however, is by someone named Lizy, who doesn't appear in the LAist staff lineup and who says

"I had high expectations going into this show as I assumed that professional theater in LA would be of a similar caliber to professional theater in New York- which is where I have had the majority of my theater-viewing experience. Perhaps that is why my surprise at the amateurish quality of the production was so intense."

This quote really rubs me the wrong way because it is extremely generalized and poorly informed. First of all, why allow this person to be a theater reviewer if she's never seen a show in LA before? Second, why should this brand-new theater be the benchmark of professional theater in LA? And what does she mean by 'professional,' anyway? This show seems to be a vanity piece performed at a theater-for-hire, which is a very different approach to theater than, say, the Actor's Gang or another local theater ensemble that does original, professional work. This "Lizy" needs to learn a bit about how the LA theater scene works and see a few more shows before she goes around comparing the city unfavorably to New York. LAist, in a town with some amazing small theater options, needs to get their act together in actual coverage of the LA theater scene, preferably coverage by someone who knows what they're talking about.

Alien Abduction and Sexual Abuse, or, Sometimes Disturbing is Good

Mysterious Skin. Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, Santa Ana, CA. 6/24/06.

Mysterious Skin is a play by Prince Gomolvilas, based on a novel by Scott Heim, which has also been turned into a movie. For a fairly explicit recounting of the film complete with screencaps, check out fourfour's review. In each case, the Mysterious Skin is about a young man who believes he was abducted by aliens when he was a child and a gay hustler with a troubled sexual history.

Not knowing the novel, I can only discuss my responses to the play as an independent work rather than as an intertext with other interpretations. And this production, directed by Dave Barton, was brutal, but sometimes brutal is a good thing. The production was sexually explicit, but sensitive to the issues being portrayed; it really dealt with sexual abuse in a complex and interesting manner rather than merely being a story of atrocities or ruined lives. The story is strange and emotionally charged, but quite powerful.

The cast of Rude Guerilla's Mysterious Skin were consistently strong in their interpretations of some very tough roles. Tim Zimmer as the nerdy Brian does an excellent job portraying the horrors of self-deception and subsequent self-discovery, although Brian's nerdiness and especially his oversized glasses seemed out-of-place on such an adorable boy. Keith Bennett as gay hustler Neil with a fetish for daddy figures was wonderfully rough and troubled. Michelle Trachtenberg, who is, ironically, not that Michelle Tractenberg (who played the role of Wendy in the film), was an exellent best friend/faghag, though I would have liked to see more of her character. All she did was whine at Neil for his dangerous behavior. The weirdest character in the play was Avalyn, played by Kerry Perdue. A woman who believes she was abducted by aliens, she paralelled Wendy's role as friend and confidant for Brian, including a sexual encounter that seems to come out of nowhere. Her character was strange and confusing, but that itself might be a sign of its honesty. Rick Kopps played all of the johns and father figures throughout the play, and in doing so he was incredibly memorable in his creepiness.

Overall, the production was just on the palatable side of horrifying, and Heim and Gomolvilas do an excellent job of addressing complex and terrible issues in a compelling way, that leaves you both disturbed and thinking. I'm sad that I didn't manage to write up this play in time to recommend it, but I will tell you that I'll be seeing whatever else Gomovilas has to offer, and that the production made me want to read the novel to see how the story is developed in that context as well.

Pirates - ARGH!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 7/8/06.

I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, though I had several concerns about both its structure and politics. Above all, however, it was a lot of fun; it was very campy and Johnny Depp was truly hilarious. So, overall, I really enjoyed myself. However, here are my comments and concerns.

First of all, it was a middle movie in a trilogy and it felt like the middle movie of a trilogy; NOTHING was resolved in the end. The bad guy wasn't vanquished; no conclusion of any sort happened. It left loose ends open in a way that was rather frustrating and unsatisfying. Which may make the third movie really great, but as an individual film it leaves something to be desired.

The most disturbing issue of the film was an incident toward the beginning in which Depp was stranded on an island of cannibals. These were apparently supposed to be Carib Indians, though they felt more Polynesian or African than Caribbean (although that's a completely uninformed opinion). These native people were portrayed as cannibals and savages in a way that was completely unnecessary and inappropriate in this day and age. I kept waiting for the whole incident to become some sort of misunderstanding, but no, it really was totally offensive. Bitch. PhD. has a great post on the movie that deals with some of the issues and the facts.

The thing I loved about the movie was the emergence of the East India Trading Company as the real bad guy on top of the crazy supernatural monsters. Unlike the first film, with the super cool zombie skeleton pirates, this movie felt like it was reaching really far to create a story and a bad guy. It drew in several really different nautical myths and then didn't play up the mythology behind it. Davy Jones, who in most nautical lore is not a person but a symbol of death, was personified and given a backstory. The Kraken, which is originally from Icelandic and Norse literature, and seems to basically be a giant squid or octopus, but somehow was controlled by Davy Jones in this film. The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship that can never put into port, could be really creepy and powerful all on its own, and I would have liked it to be less connected to the Davy Jones figure as its capitan. I find the historical issues of the films even more compelling than the action-packed plot. It's fascinating to connect the plots and locations to the actual history of the Caribbean region and to pirate lore and history. Dead Man's Chest did a good job suggesting some of this history and geography, at least enough to make me want more. With all this fad for pirates, you'd think you'd see more contemporary pirate films to fill in some realism or even historical accuracy.

Johnny Depp ruled this movie, as it should be. The Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley relationship got completely sidelined, tenuously reintroduced in the end with some possible tension that would have been nice to see developed more strongly throughout the film. I kind of like that their relationship was treated as an established fact that didn't need to be troubled and repeated throughout the film, but it feels like copping out to ignore it the whole time and then introduce tension at the end. I loved the parallels between Davy Jones' story of 'loving a woman as wild as the sea' and Orlando Bloom's relationship with Keira Knightly as an untamed woman who is a pirate at heart. I would have loved to see that more developed in this film, instead of put off for the next movie.

My favorite moment of the film was Keira Knightly dressing as a boy and serving as a sailor on a ship, which I would have loved to see them do more of. I wish they had actually chopped off her hair and making her even more of a pirate herself. There were creepy moments when she tries to use her femininity to her advantage, and I'd rather see her compete with the boys on her own term. I very much enjoyed seeing her try to faint and being ignored by the men than when she tries to manipulate them with her sexuality. She makes a great tough, independent woman and I don't think they should undercut that.

I'm also conflicted by Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma, a witch/voodoo priestess character. Harris did a great job and she's really beautiful, but the character was a exoticized in a slightly creepy way, and seemed more of a plot device than a character. I hope she gets more character development in the third film, which I'm beginning to think of as a second act to this film. I'm kind of disappointed that they made that choice because it didn't have to be that way, but I have high expectations for the next film.

I could talk about this movie for quite a while, but overall I thought it was fun but not great. A pretty good summer action movie with great special effects, but it was too long for its failures of plot.

Sympathy for the Devil

The Devil Wears Prada. 7/6/06.

I feel a little bad about reviewing this movie without having read the book (although there's a delightful excerpt here). In fact, I rather suspect that Meryl Streep has ruined the book for me. Because, you see, she was so completely fabulous in the movie, that I couldn't help but love her, or at least admire and sympathize with her. She was at times so bitchy and crazy that I had to laugh out loud, but she was also just a strong, kick-ass female character who knew what she wanted and she got it.

So here's my (clearly highly professional) review: I loved this movie. It was a movie about the professional relationship between two intelligent, hard-working women, which is something I'd personally like to see more of. Granted, there are some feminist issues (ie the women can't seem to both focus on their jobs and keep their boyfriends, but even that seems just as much a failure on the part of the men to live up to these high-powered women if you ask me), but in general, the film depicts two women deciding what they want out of their lives and careers and going for it. While Anne Hathaway did a great job as the hapless Andy Sachs, and she looked beautiful in an Audrey Hepburn inspired look at the end of the movie, I want to see her move on to bigger and better roles. This was not exactly the part I want her to play. This film was constructed in many ways to chastize and debase her before she can 'find herself' and grow up, and I can't wait to see her kicking ass on her own.

Anyway, I adore chick lit and chick flicks as a guitly pleasure, and this was an excellent example of the genre; both of the women seem fairly real and sympathetic and they learn to appreciate each other's strengths and goals. Even better, it wasn't all about some sappy emphasis on the girl getting the man. The boyfriend seemed more like a side plot than a real tension, through Adrian Grenier was a wonderfully rumpled contrast to Streep's sleekness. I love the fact that although Andy Sachs austensibly had to choose between her job and her personal life (symbolized by a boyfriend), the personal life seemed mostly like an uninteresting side plot (her friends were barely characters at all and fairly dull as well) and in the end, while everything seems happy, her job and her boy may still be mutually exclusive.

Though it was set in the fashion industry, making Andy's size six figure a running joke and her weight loss an unexamined victory, the film did a good job of balancing the portrayal of a harsh business with some implied analysis of why it was both important and problematic (ok, it might have been nice to see a little more of this - I wasn't convinced that the fashion industry shouldn't still be considered frivolous or the butt of jokes). The film may have taken shortcuts in moving the plot along in order to include more jokes, but in the end, I found it well-done, funny, and quite satisfying. It provided both the lush visuals of fashion and style and the cool reality of Streep as the infamous Miranda Priestly. Only she wasn't much of a devil.

Return to the Internets

As you may have guessed from my deluge of posts, I have been mostly cut off from free time and internet access for the past week and a half, so I have spent much of today catching up on my reading and blog posts. Below, some of the things I've read lately and enjoyed:

What Is Performance Studies, or, What the Hell Does Frank Do for a Living? by Frank Leon Roberts is a simple explanation of the field of Performance Studies, and his particular corner of it, intended for the lay-person rather than an academic audience.

A particularly good episode of Dinosaur Comics.

My favorite surly media nerd, Annalee Newitz, criticizes John Updike for the nostalgic backwardness of his NY Times essay against internet publishing and ebooks. Plus, as a bonus feature, she appears on Cranky Geeks attacking things whose value I completely fail to understand, like Blu-Ray players.

Rocketboom Scandal! Amanda Congdon is no longer with Rocketboom. (Valleywag post via Prophecyboy)

Becoming an Internet Whore

Considering that Amazon.com already gets significant amounts of my paycheck and that I talk about books and plays on this site fairly frequently and often link to them on Amazon, I've decided to officially sell out and post ads in the sidebar. If you have enraged responses to this, let me know and I'll reconsider, but as far as I can tell it doesn't hurt anyone and it seems to be worth a try.

The Passion of the Superman

Superman Returns. 7/1/06.

Superman Returns isn't a bad movie, but it could have been better. It was a decent summer action flick, but not a great one. It was too long. The special effects were beautiful, but not always necessary. From what I hear, this is a fairly faithful sequel to Christopher Reeve's Superman movies from the late '70s and early '80s. What I was hoping for was a Superman for a new generation. After what Bryan Singer did with X-Men and X2, I was expecting an intelligent recreation of the old story. I was expecting Singer to reinvent Superman for a new generation and to tell me why I should care. I was expecting a sensitive portrayal of the subtext of Superman as queer, as an outsider, and as a savior. Instead, this film was about as heavy-handed with the Jesus iconography as you could get. The gay subtext was reduced to a harmless Jimmy Olsen with a crush on Clark Kent, while Superman's relationship with Lois Lane was unnuanced and practically untroubled throughout the movie (OK, she had an ostensible common-law husband, but all he really did was follow her around being a pilot when convenient). Superman himself was too perfect, not necessarily in looks because that's too be expected, but in character and emotion. There was very little character arc for anyone in the film, as a matter of fact. And things blew up, but only bad people died onscreen.

In fact, the only really great thing about the whole film was Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. He makes a fabulous villian - a little campy, a little impractical, and a truly excellent actor with a real understanding of what it means to be playing a comic book character. Luthor was a sensitive genius with brains to counter Routh's Man of Steel brawn. And yes, he planned to drown millions of people, but all he really seemed to want is a little beachfront property. Plus, he appreciates the value of (alien) libraries. Is this really such a bad guy? Much more loveable than SuperJesus if you ask me.

Wedding Update

I just wanted to say that despite my theoretical qualms, despite the fact that the bride took the husband's last name, despite maid of honor making a toast that essentially said "now that you're married, start having kids," despite its general affirmation of marriage as an institution, my friends' wedding was a wonderful experience and I feel very lucky to have been a part of it. In general, it was a lovely wedding free from religious compulsion or too much sappy dwelling on love. It focused on the couple and forging a community of friends surrounding them.

As a performance, the wedding ceremony, while it did rather compel people into witnessing and voicing their affirmation rather than 'forever holding their peace,' was an extremely positive experience focused on the audience as much as the couple. Bride and groom both wrote their own speeches before the vows, which were wonderful. The bride's speech was so well done that not only did it make me cry, it made the groom try to kiss her too soon, causing a moment of pause and hilarity! The best moment, however, was the band playing at the ceremony. Three friends of the bride and groom (one of whom I believe had never met the other two before the wedding rehearsal) got together and played a song written by one of them. It was full of very idiosyncratic references to the couple's history and the community of friends and family that knows and loves them, and it was so amazingly special and perfect. Personally, I want a copy of the song to remember the event.

Not only was the wedding a lovely event, the reception was a pretty good dance party. I saw many old friends and acquaintances and talked to people I had never much expected to see again, and although reunions are not usually my scene, this one was well-filtered enough to be quite pleseant. I very much enjoyed meeting some of the couple's friends that I didn't know already who seem like very cool people even though it was occasionally awkward trying to start converstions with them. Plus, there was a little slow dancing and a lot of booty shakin', making for a fun time for all. It was rather fun, really.

My intellectual objections to marriage notwithstanding, this particular wedding was done rather sensitively, for which I was quite grateful, and more than that, these people are so important to me that whatever my objections, I'm so glad I was a part of this demonstration of their love. I'm glad they're sharing their lives with each other and I'm even more glad that their lives have intersected with mine in so many ways.

Queer Witnessing

I'm at a wedding this weekend. It's a wonderful wedding of two friends who are a great couple. I very much believe in this particular couple and in their future success in marriage. I believe that they are well-suited to each other and each sufficiently independent that they will continue to be individuals and that their marriage will be even stronger than the sum of its parts. I believe that they won't meld into a single entity or lose their connections to their unmarried friends. This is the best marriage I can imagine, and I am truly happy that this event is occuring. It's a beautiful event and I'm proud to be a part of it, and I honestly believe that only the best possible future is in store for the bride and groom together. I have never been less ambivalent about the couple whose wedding I am attending.

And yet, I am conflicted about witnessing this wedding, or any wedding. Because, you see, I'm not sure I believe in marriage. I'm fairly convinced by feminist critiques of marriage as a patriarchal institution that merely reaffirms the power of the state, based on traditions of bartering brides to cement the wealth and power of fathers and husbands. I'm somewhat seduced by radical queer critiques of monogamy that challenge the possibility of remaining faithful to one partner for the rest of your life. At best, I see marriage as a romantic, beautifully optimistic promise of unchanging love and sometimes I wonder if I may someday feel compelled toward the institution of marriage myself. But at the moment, I remain critical of the valorization of the (heterosexual) couple over those who are outside the institution of marriage, and especially over those who are excluded from it.

My friends who are getting married are doing their best to recognize that marriage is very much an unequal institution at the moment, and they are even gesturing in their ceremony toward those for whom official marriage is an impossiblity. The ceremony will include a reading from Goodridge vs. Dept. of Public Health in Massachusetts, affirming that

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.

While the gesture of including this text and its political context in their ceremony is beautiful and so inclusive, the language itself is inherently conservative, affirming the state's involvement in the personal and social relations between two individuals and the state's right to priviledge couples over individuals. Why should the government offer tax breaks and other incentives to heterosexuals who choose to get married and exclude from those favors those of us who are queer or single or nonmanogamous?

At this particular moment, when asked to witness a wedding whose participants I truly love and value while I question the institutions they are reaffirming, I am reminded of the introduction from Eve Sedgwick and Andrew Parker's book, Performativity and Performance, in which they question "the dynamic of compusory witness that the marriage ceremony evokes" (10).

It is the constitution of a community of witness that makes the marriage' the silence of witness (we don't speak now, we forever hold our peace) that permits it; the bare, negative, potent but undiscretionary speech act of our physical presence -- maybe even especially the presence of those people whom the instituion of marriage defines itself by excluding--that ratifies and recruits the legitimacy of its privilege (Parker and Sedgwick 10)

I am very much a part of this community of witnesses, being asked to affirm the value not only of this couple, but of the community of friends and family constituted around them and even more of the institution of marriage into which they are entering. While it is only the last that is difficult for me, it is still strange to be asked to silently affirm by my presence an instution which I question and from which I am excluded. Would I want my friends to abstain from marriage until it were an equal instituion? Would the equality of marriage to all sexes and genders diffuse my political objections? Would I ever get married if given the opportunity? Am I even in favor of gay marriage? These are questions to which I don't really have the answers. But at this moment of witnessing, in which I celebrate two friends for whom I have the utmost respect and great faith in their success as a couple in marriage, I find that I must once again ask myself these questions, if just to keep the dialogue open in my own mind. So I will attend, and cheer and cry and celebrate in honor of two individuals that I love, while maintaining my skepticism and reservations about this long-ingrained practice of state codification of their union.

Joss Whedon for Equality Now

Here is a YouTube video of the speech that Joss Whedon gave at an event for Equality Now. He's brilliant and brief and he really, truly understands why feminism is an issue for straight men (via Feministing).

Villians are fun

This is great! You can vote for your favorite literary villian and the options are such a wonderful combination of goofy and evil and contemporary and classic characters that I want to vote for about 6 of them. I'd totally vote for Zaphod Beeblebrox, but he's so lovable that it's hard to consider him evil. I encourage everyone to vote because it's suprisingly fun.

A Glimpse into Heterosexual Dating

Internet Dating: The Musical. art/works theatre. 6/22/05.

Internet Dating: The Musical is an adorable world premiere musical about, obviously, the vagaries of internet dating. It's fun; a good, solid musical that had my affection from "You're Cute (...but you don't know how to spell)" sung by the delightfully energetic Reggie de Leon. Some of the songs in this show (most notably "Google You" sung by Suzan Solomon as a protective mom) are truly brilliant and hilarious, and well-suited to both the plot and theme of the show. One of the major high points of the play was the fact that every actor had at least one strong musical number that highlighted their talent and gave depth to each of their characters.

I apparently attended on an off night, a Thursday with a small audience when a new actor was joining the cast, replacing the actor who played Mr. Flexible. The understudy, Anthony Mannix, was playing the role of Eduardo, and the lead, Ali Spuck was sick and the role was played by Ali Pomerantz, who normally plays her best friend. According to reports (some reviews available on the press page), Spuck is a little darker and more sarcastic than Pomerantz, but I found Pomerantz wonderfully cute and quirky. She doesn't look like the typical musical theater lead, but did look like the kind of everywoman you might find in an office, and I think that worked in her favor. Female understudy Dianna Wyenn substituted as one of the lead's best friends, but she was dramatically outperformed by the spunky Sandy Shimoda as the other friend.

The highlights of the show were Jennifer Norkin, who was hilarious and extremely flexible in her various ensemble roles and her wacky number as an internet virus, and the musical number "Bi-Coastal Bisexual" which had me laughing out loud even though it was performed rather awkwardly by the obviously quite heterosexual Anthony Mannix and Trip Hope.

In fact, the whole musical was overwhelmingly heterosexual, in both cast and content, and while I've experienced my fair share of queer internet dating, seeing it from a heterosexual perspective is a bit different. The biphobia inherent in making the villian the only major queer character in the show makes me a bit uncomfortable. In fact, the whole thing would benefit from a gay best friend or other fun queer character. The gender dynamic of internet dating makes everything a bit more complicated in terms of norms and expectations, though the show does a good job of demonstrating that main character learns how to make the first move instead of hiding behind the idea that girls have to wait for guys to ask them out. I also like the fact that you didn't know which guy the girl would fall for (Was it Trip Hope, who was a little too conventionally attractive for his role as the dorky but adorable scientist or was it Kyle Nudo as a slightly rumpled coworker?) It wasn't until the beginning of the second act when the number "I Never Understood Why You Were Single" acts as the traditional musical theater love song that we even have a clue who Jenny was meant to be with.

My only other major complaint about the show was that it was supposedly set in Los Angeles, but it didn't feel particularly LA (except for one mention of a screenplay). It had a very non-descript locational feel, and I would have liked a better sense of setting. The set, however, designed by Mia Torres, was wonderfully fun and practical. With a screen-shaped false proscenium and a scrim screen upstage through which potential internet dates emerged, the set was cute and functional and very fun. The stage itself sometimes seemed too small for a musical with such great energy and big heart and a fairly large cast of ten. Director Annie Oelschlager did a good job of making use of a small space, but this show feels as if it needs a bigger space and a bigger run. The choregraphy, by Brian Paul Mendoza, was a little dubious at times, with some very cheesy musical theater moves, but in general the overall staging was fun and servicable.

Overall, though, I would totally recommend this show. The writer/composer/lyricist, Ron Weiner, has a lot of talent with musical comedy and the entire cast deserves hearty congratulations for their energy. It was a super-fun little show, and I hope it has a life beyond its closing date on July 15.

Creepy Censorship of Trans Performer

Turner Schofield, my favorite queer performance artist that I know personally, recently had a run-in with some pretty icky censorship at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. The details are reported here at Homofactus Press and in the Charlotte Observer.

While I suppose it's a good step that the Charlotte Observer attempts to use male pronouns for Turner and generally posits him as male, their real emphasis seems to be on the "former girl" part of the headline rather than his masculinity (and note the use of the word "girl" instead of "female" or "woman"). And I like that the ostensible emphasis is on the conundrum of whether a transguy with his shirt off falls under the nudity standards for men or women, which is I suppose a valid question IF there were an explicit and consistent written policy for the venue communicated at the time of booking as opposed to

"there are no written guidelines. ... We have standards we have followed over the years."

Administrator Kim Rentz does come off as pretty transphobic with quotes like:

"A man who has always been a man is different, I think," Rentz said. "That's my own personal take on it"

and

Asked what audiences might have found offensive had Schofield exposed his torso on stage, Rentz said, "I try not to draw a (mental) picture"

(all quotes from the Charlotte Observer).

I've seen Turner perform, and all I have to say is that any *partial* nudity there may be is in NO WAY offensive. It is important, and political, and perhaps challenging, but it is not sensationalistic. I do want to emphasize that this is ONLY Turner taking his shirt off - it's not like he's trying to remove his pants, though I've seen some pretty good full nudity performances recently, too. I wonder if the people making this offensive decision had seen/read Turner's work before the incidence of censorship, then would they perhaps have come to a different conclusion? Is it perhaps the very failure to "draw a mental picture" of the performance that makes it seem much more offensive than it is? Either way, this last-minute cancellation is profoundly close-minded and therefore unconscionable.

Smash the Cartoon Heterosexual Paradigm

Comeau, Joey. Lockpick Pornography. Halifax and Vancouver: Loose Teeth Press, 2005.

I read this a few weeks ago now, and though my summary is brief and much-delayed, I wanted to share with the world or anyone out there reading how much I enjoyed this book. It was recommended to me by ProphecyBoy, as many good things are, and I'm so glad that he brought it into my life. It's the kind of book I can imagine going back and reading again, soon and often.

This is a queer puck sex and violence kind of novel in which four young queers team up to wreak havoc on the forces of heterosexuality, normality, and stablility. There's breaking and entering, blood, and general antisocial behavior as the main character thoughtfully addresses how sex and gender circulate in his life.

"I used to seal form heterosexuals for political reasons. Anything owned by a straight white yuppie is bought with oppression. The hetero-normative ownership paragidm is a tyrant belief system that deserves to be undermined on every front, from political protest to petty theievery.

Now I'm a little more honest about it. I can admit that I steal from straight people because I just don't like them"(9-10)

The whole thing is inspiring, dealing with political and social issues in a visceral, human way. The main character even confronts his own deep-seated hypocrisy in professing the constructedness and mutability of gender while struggling to recognize the masculinity of Alex, a young female-born genderqueer character attempting to identify as a gay man.

My favorite character, of course, is Michelle, rumored to be inspired by Michelle Tea. Her character does read like the young, rebellious, violent main character of Valencia. Each of the characters is sparingly but precisely depicted, defined by action and rebellion. I have some issues with the end of the story, but it does seem like a reasonable ending that's fairly true to the characters if not as idealistic as I would like.

This novel began with 7 chapters published online, and you can still read them at www.lockpickbook.net, but the volume itself is so slim and delightful that I strongly recommend that anyone interested order it immediately - the three extra chapters are worth the money and the wait, and they very much left me clamouring for more.

A Bland Evening at the Theater

Stages. Hudson Mainstage Theatre. 6/9/06.

Stages had its moments, but they were few and far between. While I admire what they're trying to do, Rosalind Productions' committment to producting plays "in which the female characters are as vital, complex and influential as the male characters" aren't served by this play that needs a few more rounds of editing to make the dialogue feel less stiff and the conclusion feel more natural. The whole thing reeks of a vanity project by Abigail Rose Solomon, who not only wrote the play but also took the leading role, which was a huge mistake. She was too old for the part - it was clearly an autobiographical piece about her 10 years ago or so and she looked much older than Ryan Michelle Bathe, the actress playing her best friend. Bathe was truly stunning and the best thing about this otherwise middling-to-poor play. The worst thing about the play was the costumes, which were completely, ridiculously out of character and unflattering, and completely inappropriate for San Francisco in the 1990s. They were vaguely appropriate for Los Angeles now, but still a lawyer wearing a halter top and summer skirt to the office is rather dubious. Anyway, the costumes were so bad they were distracting. The play itself was OK but not great for the first act. There were cute moments, including a seduction scene of actors rehearsing a love scene from As You Like It, which is the stuff of fantasies for the juvenile Shakespeare-lover. The second act, however, came out of nowhere. Everything that happened seemed unmotivated and awkward, and problems that barely seemed like problems got resolved in huge dramatic ways while things that seemed like major issues were swept under the rug. Overall, the whole thing was dissatisfying. With major rewrites and a new lead actor, it could be a good play, but it was by no means there yet.

Impressive

Woah, dudes. The Ditty Bops are riding across the country on BIKES. They're doing a concert tour without the bus. And they're blogging it. I love that the two entries I've read so far seem to mainly report on what they've eaten. These gals totally rock.

Queer LA Represent

Apparently, almost no one except Phranc (don't they look great together!) showed up for Alison Bechdel's book signing at Book Soup last night. Shame! This is just further demonstration of the immense difficulty of finding lesbians in LA. You have one more chance. She's signing at A Different Light Books in West Hollywood tonight (Friday) at 7:30.

And afterward, you can amble down the street for the first Guerilla Gay Bar for a revolutionary queer take-over of Barney's Beanery. Super bonus points if anyone manages to bring Alison Bechdel! Come on out tonight!

"I'm Happy Because I'm Stupid"

The Boy Least Likely To. The Roxy. 6/3/06.

Thanks to the combined effort and musical awareness of Phil and ProphecyBoy, I found myself at a show in one of the famous rock clubs on the Sunset Strip, The Roxy, last night listening to several bands of which I knew nothing, and the result was a truly delightful evening.

The Boy Least Likely To*, the headline band of the show, is a band from the UK with happy sounds and ecclectic instrumentation, and I'm quite glad to have been introduced to them. They have an extemely fun stage presence which includes a lot of clapping and good-natured jokes and insults between band members, so the live show was quite entertaining even though I had only heard a couple of their songs before I attended the show. Their songs sound poppy and summery, but the lyrics are quite dark and cynical, which I adore. My favorite song by far is "Monsters," which is about childhood friends getting married and having children. It's truly wonderful. The title of this post is from "Be Gentle With Me" which says "I just want to sparkle for a moment/Before I just fizzle out and die." This adorable band makes me totally happy, but not in a sappy way; the disillusionment and tang of bitterness only makes it better.

The Bicycles* were a brilliant choice for an opening band for The Boy Least Likely To; they were also fairly happy-sounding but mature, and their music was a good complement to The Boy Least Likely To without being too similar. They also really seemed to be having fun onstage. They had me hooked from the moment they took the stage; they began with a few beautiful notes as a demonstration of their vocal skills before bringing in rock instrumentation. This band consists of an extremely unusual group of people, which makes them a fascinating combination onstage. They're from Toronto and they're melange of styles and ethnicities. The two main singers, who appear to be called "Meatball" and "Doctor Ew" have lovely high voices and some real vocal talent. Meatball especially has fabulous rock star hair. Personally, I was totally in love with "Danatater," the girl playing the drums. It's not nearly often enough that you get to see a girl rocking out on a drum set, and she did it quite well. And after the show she had adorably nerdy glasses on - I totally have a new crush.

Their music was totally fun, and I highly recommend that you check it out, except that it seems shockingly unavailable other than the 4 songs you can hear on MySpace. Their album, The Good, The Bad, and the Cuddly is apparently quite new and is not on iTunes. You can purchase it for download it at Zunior.com, but I'm a little nervous about doing so because my computer keeps warning me that their security certificate is invalid. Clearly, I should have bought the CD at the show, but I failed to do so. Making the whole thing even more dubious, the band's website isn't functioning, which, according to this blog post* might be because they've failed to pay their webhosting bill. Someone needs to help these kids with marketing immediately, because all their touring isn't going to do them much good, no matter how fabulous they are, if people can't easily buy their music anywhere.

The first band of the evening, Trainwreck Riders were some scruffy boys from San Fransisco, and they were also fairly enjoyable, but not nearly as memorable. I couldn't hear a word they said because the instrumentation drowned out the vocals, which perofoundly irritated me. Their music was an interestingly tough sort of country rock - there were song titles like "Ol' Timey Feeling" and occasional bouncy country rhythms, but they also seemed very rock 'n' roll to me and they looked more like whiney rocker boys, complete with fabulous glasses on the lead singer. I'd give them another chance if given the opporunity to see them again, but they paled in comparison to the two bands that followed them.


*MySpace

WeHo's changing culture

The LA Times recently published this article on West Hollywood and "the soul of Boys Town." The whole thing is framed very awkwardly and is mostly a discussion of The HERE Lounge, which was mostly known (to me anyway) for its Girls' Night on Thursdays. HERE recently experienced a demographic shift as it started getting rented out for private parties, most of which were VERY, VERY heterosexual. The patrons were generally nonwhite, with macho guys and skanky girls in skimpy clothing and, most irratating to me, HUGE SUVs and HUMMERS. It was a very different group of people from those at The Abbey next door, and thus caused concern for some. The LA Times article mentions that "Thanks to pressure from the city and law enforcement and to the increasing tension he feels from the gay community, Rogers said May 19 that, as of that evening, Here Lounge is back to being '100% gay.'" While that's a bit creepy, I must admit I'm glad to hear it.

Interestingly enough, the article doesn't mention Barney's Beanery at all, which was the first site of tension between liberal, queer-friendly West Hollywood and the macho rock star/Sunset Strip crowd and continues to be a hang-out for heterosexual frat-boy types. Similarly, there's no discussion of the closing of Don't Panic, a store that sold gay themed novelty T-shirts and accessories (mostly for tourists), which was replaced with an American Apparel store. I think the real problem is that rents keep rising and cool, queer-friendly people and establishments can't afford to move into West Hollywood any longer, which really is unfortunate, because it means the neighborhood is losing its cool, liberal character in favor of generic commercialization.

A Somewhat Divided Trans-Unity

Trans-Unity Pride. LA Gay & Lesbian Center. 6/2/06.

My first complaint about Trans-Unity was the fact that there was virtually no available information online for this event, and what was out there both conflicted and seemed to have no connection to the reality of the event. The FTM Alliance page says one thing, while the LA Gay and Lesbian Center's flyer is not easy to find and offers very little information whatsoever. In reality, the Queen of California Pageant started sometime after 8:30pm, which seems to be a good hour and a half to two-and-a-half hours after its publicized start time. The tragic result of this delay was that the second show of the evening, the Living Legends show, began around 10pm while the Queen of California Pageant was still occuring, forcing audience memebers to choose one event or the other, and effectively dividing the transmen from the transwomen or one generation from another.

First of all, congratulations to Miss Nikki, who won the Queen of California Pageant. Her costumes were magnificent and her stage presence was quite compelling.

I was there for the Living Legends Show, however, which was a produced as a Transgiving Express event. Both the performers and the audience were relatively young and most were FTM or genderqueer identified. Dan* acted as MC and also did most of the organizing, I believe. He did a great job and is completely adorable as MC, but I'd love to see him rock the mic and take charge a bit more. A little more info about some of the performers, some of the other Trans-Unity events, etc., would have been nice.

The Living Legends show was a tribute to some past performances of gender, beginning with the fabulous Stephan Pennington singing and playing banjo to some great Elvis songs. His rendition of "Love Me Tender" made me wish there were more girls there to scream and swoon. Truly a heartbreaker. And Phil, his fabulous backup guitarist, rocks in his silent, steady way.

Next came Dan and Bryan performing songs of the Indigo Girls, which was fabulous in its nod to the affinities between lesbian and trans culture and even more wonderful in Bryan's heartfelt rendition of "Get out the Map" dedicated to his boyfriend. I would have liked to hear Bryan singing alone (with guitar backup or an instrumental track) rather than with the CD because he has a lovely voice which deserves to be heard on its own. I also would have liked their set to have culminated with an audience sing-along of "Closer to Fine" rather than beginning with it; the audience was too shy to sing along when they really should have milked the audience participation. I loved this act, however; their spirit was great and their act was sweet. Seeing transboys perform the Indigo Girls totally made my day, and I think these guys could work it if they wanted to. I'd love to see this again at Transgiving or elsewhere soon.

kale* performed as Roy Orbison, complete with a truly amazing wig and a delightful stage persona. He really worked his three songs, ending with Candyman. This kid has a great stage presence and seemed to be having a lot of fun up there.

The zeatles* closed out the show. They claim to be the first genderqueer Beatles tribute band, and I think it would be hard to argue against them, though a seemingly-now-defunct Beatles cover band from New Zealand seems to have used the name first. Anyway, they're very fun performers and they totally got the audience up and dancing, which matters a lot. They played a couple of Beatles songs or songs the Beatles had covered, and one original song as well, though the vocals were hard to hear so I don't have much to say about their original work. I would have loved to hear them tackle more of the Beatles more familiar repetoire. Mostly they were a cute, energetic group of people who seemed to be having a lot of fun onstage, and that alone could get them pretty far.

So despite the organizational disaster that one has come to expect and these events and the questionable policy of having the boys and the girls performing at separate events in the same night, I'd say the show was a pretty strong success. It was fun and community-building and a little wacky. I'd say the next goal is to get transwomen and transmen performing tributes to their respective legends together.

*NB: These links for performers link to myspace pages, as these performers generally lack full webpages and without a program, last names, or much identifying information, this is the best I could do in terms of finding their online presence. I apologize for this, and if anyone would like the link changed or removed they're welcome to contact me.

Transgiving: The Sex Show

Transgiving. Plummer Park, West Hollywood. 5/27/06.

This show, and my description of it, are sexually explicit and not for those under 18.

Transgiving's SEX Show was a fun, naughty tribute to queer sex and sexuality, beginning with a parade of strap-ons and sex toys from Babeland. They were followed by some lovely ladies from Glamour Boutique modeling some fabulous corsets, lingerie, and bondage. While something about the tempo and the audience energy for the two fashion shows was a little awkward, all of the models did a fabulous job working the runway and their products.

Helen Wong performed a fascinating piece about working in porn, complete with some hilarious audience members whose enthusiasm during a simulated orgy and squirt-gun cum shots totally made the show.

The special guest perfomers for the evening brought Trans as Fuck, a 'porn cabaret' from San Francisco, down to LA for one night only. Storm Florez, Annie Danger, and Seeley Quest performed some extremely intimate, extremely sexual pieces. Florez began his performance on a spiritual note, in which he began by praying and ended by masturbating with a dildo. Not to be outdone, Annie Danger gave a fun, funny demonstration for the low-budget trans and genderqueer youth that included sticking several carrots in her ass. Florez then performed three wonderful, intimate songs with guitar while two assistants performed an intricate temporary piercing on his back. Seeley Quest ended the evening with a compelling monologue about being a sex worker that involved three costume/identity changes in which hir fabulous self was adorably queer throughout. Sie ended the night with a fabulously hot spanking of a willing audience member.

It was a fun, steamy show and a wonderful end to ryka aoki de la cruz's tenure as curator for transgiving. It seems like a bad sign that she didn't introduce her successors in the role, but I hope that they will continue her passion and dedication in combining local talent and more well-known transgender and genderqueer performers from all over the US.

Latino Drag Charlie's Angels

Chico's Angels Cavern Club Theater. 5/26/06.

The Cavern Club continues to mystify me. It would be an awesome queer theater in the basement of a Mexican restaurant, except that the twohttp://www.cavernclubtheater.com/CHICO.html shows I've seen have had surprisingly straight casts and audiences. Chico's Angels Episode 3: Chicas in Chains was an odd combination of fabulously campy drag and a slightly off back-up cast who lacked a camp sensibility.

The Angels, led by the truly magnificent Kaye Sedia, were the stars of the show and any moments they were offstage seriously lagged. Kaye was hilarious, and the rest of the Angels were pretty fun as well. The hilight of the show by far was Kaye's rendition of "Hopelessly Deported from You" to the tune of "Hopelessly Devoted to You." That alone made my day.

The most painful moment of the show was the women-in-prison scenes, which completely failed as representations of sapphic films. The fairly normative female cast, who should have been either men in drag or recognizably butch lesbians, failed completely to treat gender or sexuality in an interesting or entertaining way.

Overall, the show was entertaining enough for me to recommend it, though I have serious reservations, because I think it could have been done better and I feel that it was significantly overpriced for what it was. In the end, I did laugh throughout the show, and that may be enough to to earn it a positive review, though it was by no means brilliant.

Pulp Fiction

Slate Magazine is doing Pulp Fiction Week! Yay! I enjoyed Terry Castle's article on Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, even though it's mostly a summary and tribute to a novel I know and love. I like Terry Castle, author of The Apparitional Lesbian, and I like The Price of Salt, so it's a pretty good combination. I especially want to find some good scholarship on Pulp Fiction, to help with my upcoming diss chapter on film noir. While Slate's articles aren't scholarly, they are fun and I'm glad to see some literate attention to the genre.

It's not Bring It On

Stick It. 5/19/06.

I was honestly excited to see Stick It; I wasn't expecting great cinema, but a fun gymnastics movie written and directed by Jessica Bendinger, the creator of Bring it On, sounded delightful last weekend. Unfortunately, I left the theater groaning "What were they thinking?" although I did so in amused high spirits. I actually managed, despite the fact that the film had giant flaws, to thoroughly enjoy myself at Stick It; though I wouldn't say it was a good movie by any definition of the term, I did leave the theater laughing heartily.

First of all, the highlight of the movie for me was the main character, played by Missy Peregrym. Like Eliza Dushku in Bring it On, her adorably alienated and vaguely butch character is enough to keep my interest throughout the movie. It's not often that you see a cute, tough girl who doesn't completely sell out in favor of pink and prom dresses. If only there had been even the slightest hint of sexual tension between her and one of the other gymnasts, I would have been a much bigger fan of this movie.

So, if you don't know, Stick It is the story of female gymnast Haley Graham (Peregrym), a champion-quality gymnast forced to return to the sport she abandoned as a far-fetched way to avoid a sentence for juvenile hall. After much bitterness, and thanks to creepy, patronizing (well, he was supposed to be fatherly) coach Burt Vickerman (played by Jeff Bridges), she regains her mastery of the sport and then leads a revolt at the championship meet to recapture the joy of gymnatics.

What made the movie a fiasco when we saw it may have been the fault of an inattentive and incompetant projectionist rather than the film itself. In my version of Stick It, the boom mic was the star of the show. He was in almost every scene, often causing other actors to duck out of the way to give him space to perform. He had a range of appearances and styles, but he always upstaged and outperformed the actors. The image was so badly framed that not only was the microphone in every scene, but the gymnastic routines were all truncated, completely marring the running gag of girls falling down because when they fell, they fell off the screen. Panoramic and overhead shots intended to showcase gymnastic skills Busby Berkeley-style were off-center and frequently half missing. I'm not sure proper framing would have made the moment in which gymnasts proliferate as if they were a kaleidoscope any less ridiculous, but it might have allowed me to concentrate on the complete insanity of the multiplying gymnasts rather than the stupidity of the director, editor, cameraperson, and/or projectionist who allowed such a thing to happen.

In my opinion, parts of this movie are appallingly bad. It is frequently trite and too unjustifiably proud of its own cleverness. But I had a wonderful time watching it nevertheless, and if you approach it with a sense of humor and low expectations, you might really enjoy Stick It.

Here are reviews by Dave White, who liked it, and Scott Tobias from The Onion AV Club, who did not. Judge for yourself.

Transgiving Weekend

This weekend's Transgiving is the last to be curated by the event's long-time guiding spirit, ryka aoki de la cruz. de la cruz's work has made Transgiving an amazing event combining truly impressive professional performers with local artists to create an event that combines community-building with artistic prowess. I truly hope that those taking over for her manage to maintain the spirit and professionalism of the event. I don't know much about most of the perfomers at this weekend's event, but I believe I may have seen an enticing snippet of work by storm florez before. I'm also intrigued by the sex theme of this transgiving - this could be hot.

From their press release:


Trans/Giving's May showcase celebrates sex with a
hot and steamy spring show!
The sex-abration takes place on May 27th from 6:00-9:30 at Fiesta
Hall, Plummer Park, 1200 N. Vista St. West Hollywood, CA 90046.

We have a fabulous array of performers for this special show,
including Helen Wong and Trans As Fuck with Storm Florez, Annie
Danger, and Seeley Quest. We will have two steamy fashion shows from
Babeland and Glamour Boutique and enjoy hot visual art by Dan Dumont,
Mea Starr, Faith and Eva Sweeney.

This show is 18 and up and will include explicit sexual content.

This is the last show that Trans/Giving's founder and director Ryka
Aoki will be curating. She has worked so hard to give Trans/Giving the
respect and popularity it has now. We are very sad to see her go but
we know she will accomplish many other groundbreaking things.

Suggested donation is $5-20, with no
one turned away for lack of funds.

Now in its 3rd year, Trans/Giving is Los Angeles' pioneering
trans/genderqueer/intersex get-together, art show and performance
series.

Tangled Rose Vines

Tea, Michelle. Rose of No Man's Land. San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage, 2006.

This book was terribly beautiful. I fell in love with the cover, with its retro styling and two shades of pink, even though the character depicted seems to me a little too sylish to be either of the characters in the book. Of course, I was already in love with Michelle Tea, so I knew I wanted the book long before it came out, and I defied my own policy of avioding hardbacks by purchasing this one at the first opportunity.

Rose of No Man's Land is the story of Trisha, a disaffected young teenager, condensed mostly into one day in early summer, followed by a night of adventures with Rose, her wild new friend. The two share a dangerous evening, demonstrating the scary possibilities for two girls on their own.

I must commend Tea for the intensity of her writing - these girls felt like real, not always likeable, vibrant and complex characters. And their adventures carried the sense of risk, peril, and fear of real life with consequences rather than novelistic mishaps. These girls were dirty, spunky, and a little bit dangerous, both completely independent and youthfully foolish and as a result, everything that happened to them felt dreadfully honest to me, capturing some of the excitement and fear of my own youthful misadventures, however tame they might have been in comparison.

I finished Rose of No Man's Land in a haze - I would have read it through for two days straight until I finished it if I could have, and I almost did. I wanted to share my reactions with the world immediately, but I was also numbed to silence - it didn't feel over to me; I wasn't ready to let the characters go. I needed time to think about them, and thus I was slow to post my response, but I did love this book.

Part of my reaction was questioning who the audience of this book was. With its fourteen-year-old protagonists, it seems to be a young adult book, but it was also so bitter, so cynical, so adult in both content and spirit, that I had to wonder if perhaps it was more appropriate for adults who can appreciate its brilliance. But I also wonder if it isn't good for girls to have characters with the hard, glittery personalities of Trisha and Rose with which to identify. Better, perhaps, than all the stories telling you to conform and be beautiful in such conventional ways. These characters are misfits, with lives that aren't easy, and that in itself is amazing. While I might give children Dangerous Angels or Boy Meets Boy before Rose of No Man's Land (although I'm aware that there's a solid classist critique to that reaction that I'd be delighted to spell out if anyone wants to discuss it), I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who might appreciate a fascinating, complex, emotionally realistic coming-of-age adventure.

Perfect Title

Miller, Tim. 1001 Beds. Highways Performance Space. 5/12/06.

When people hear the title of Tim Miller's new performance piece,
1001 Beds, those who know Miller or his work generally respond "how appropriate" with a chuckle. Miller's known for telling many stories of sex and love as a gay man in his performances, and 1001 Beds is no exception. It's a wonderful piece telling the story of some of the 1001 or so beds Miller has slept in or will sleep in over the course of his life as a travelling performance artist. It's a story combining sex and opera in a tale of coming of age as a gay man, a loving account of Miller's relationship with his partner, and a triumphant vision of revolutionary queer sex and politics. The show demonstrate's Miller's delightful charisma and amazing command of an audience as he runs around an almost empty stage in gym shorts, and conjures visions of entire political movements. This performance, exactly what one wants and expects from Tim Miller, demonstrates his prodigious performing and storytelling skills in a wonderfully human tale. I highly recommend that you see it this weekend if you have the opportunity.

Here's an interview in LA City Beat to help convince you or tell you a bit more about Miller.

Karen Finley: More than Just Reading

Finley, Karen. George and Martha. Hammer Museum. Los Angeles, CA. 4/30/06.

Karen Finley kicks ass. She's an amazing author, artist, and perfomer, and it was a pleasure to see her in person. She perfomed what was supposedly a reading from her new novel, George and Martha, but this was much more than just a reading. She took the text and put it on screen so that we could see her illustrations as she read, and we could also read along with her. Which meant that we could tell when she inserted the repetition characteristic of her solo performance. Rather than merely reading the text, she performed excerpts as spoken word pieces, modulating her voice dramatically for character and emphasis. It was beautiful and quite effective.

George and Martha is a novel that originated as a performance and it's about a fictional 30-year affair between George W. Bush and Martha Stewart. She talked about the mythical and psychological resonances of these two characters, talking about war and loss and relationships between parents and children. It seems like a fascinating, edgy, challenging book and I can't wait to read it.

I was impressed with Finley as an author and a performer, so it suprised me to hear that she had such a disasterous panel at the LA Times Festival of Books the day before, as Susie Bright relates on her blog. Apparently, brilliant, challenging writers Bright, Finley, and Dennis Cooper were placed on a panel with Late, Late Night Host Craig Ferguson, who turned out to be a jerk who tried to hijack the panel. From all reports, Finley kicked ass there too. Pretty awesome.

Avante-garde but Accessible

Wilson, Robert, dir. The Black Rider. The Ahmanson Theatre. Los Angeles, CA. 4/28/06.

I really enjoyed The Black Rider, which was a "musical fable" based on a German folk tale with libretto by William S. Burroughs, music by Tom Waits, and direction and design by Robert Wilson. This is a fascinating combination of three very interesting and actually fairly distinct sensibilities. The resulting production was not exactly an opera, but more than a traditional piece of theater, and certainly not what one would expect from musical theater. It was what one would expect from Robert Wilson, famous for theatrical experiences such as Einstein on the Beach except relatively short (under 3 hours with 1 intermission) and honestly rather weirdly pleasant.

The feeling of the show was dark, but playful; it was very German, and it makes perfect sense that two of the leads (Matt McGrath as Wilhelm and Vance Avery as Pegleg) had both played the Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway. The leads (McGrath, Avery, and Mary Margaret O'Hara as Kathchen) were extremely skilled and did an excellent job at expressing Wilson's movement and Waits' music. I especially enjoyed McGrath in Wilhelm's dance at the crossroads, a beautiful moment in Act II.

The interesting thing about this show is that Act I and Act II were profoundly different, especially in pacing. Act I was relatively narrative and mostly clear, with songs frequently advancing the plot and a story progressing in a recognizable manner. Act II was more expressive, with much less happening in terms of action and more in visual spectacle and feeling. It was like one slowed down extended moment emphasizing the climax of the piece. The pacing for Act II seemed deliberately much slower, and more like what I expected from Robert Wilson. Looking back, I find the contrast between the two acts fascinating and delightful, an excellent choice for this strange piece of theater.

My overall opinion of this is that it has the advantages of Robert Wilson's work with a minimalization of the drawbacks; it's avante-garde and visually stunning but less maddeningly slow than some of his other work. It has a clear plot and sense of action, but it uses actors' bodies and visual spectacle as important instruments of the storytelling. If Robert Wilson, German Expressionism, or Avante-garde are ideas that appeal to you, I would recommend this piece. I certainly wouldn't take my mother, but I would take all my goth or hipster friends. It's an important theatrical experience, and while it's not for everyone, it is fascinating and well-done.

You might also be interested in the LA Times review, which I found quite informative.

UPDATE: Metroblogging LA also has a review up from someone who is less of a theater nerd, which some people might find useful in deciding whether or not to see this piece.

Lesbian Booksignings!

Two fun and exciting upcoming lesbian booksignings at Book Soup:

Thursday, May 25th, 7pm
Sarah Schulman presents and signs Empathy
The award-winning author of After Delores writes a novel that probes the
questions of sexual identity, self-renewal, and transformation. An office
temp's journey of self-discovery culminates when she meets another woman. (Arsenal Pulp)

Thursday, June 8th, 7pm
Alison Bechdel presents and signs Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel takes its place alongside the
unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs
and Mary Karr. It"s a father-daughter tale pitch-perfectly illustrated
with Bechdel"s sweetly gothic drawings and like Marjane Satrapi's
Persepolis, a story exhilaratingly suited to the graphic memoir form.
(Houghton Mifflin)

Reasons to wish I were in NY

Besides the fact that many of my friends seem to be moving there:

Vaginal Davis is performing and hosting a Bricktops Manhattan as part of the Where Art and Life Collide series of events. How great does this sound:

Saturday, April 29, 7pm
Bricktops Club will take the streets of downtown Manhattan in full costume, parading as speakeasy characters of 1920s in broad daylight. At 7pm Failed Dwarfstar's Beatrice Glow and Bricktopschildren will be throwing a welcome party for Bricktops hostess Vaginal Cream Davis in the Soho boutique, Burrow. Come costumed...or else ready to be transformed, do the Charleston to live music, and sip some Bootlegged goodies!
FREE
Burrow, 31 Crosby St., between Grand and Broome

Thursday, May 4, 10:00 PM
Vaginal Davis will host a one night only revival of this 1920’s themed showstopper extravaganza of old-timey glamour as “Bricktops Takes Manhattan,” with salons, shacks and speakeasy installations built by Future Art Stars from the NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions in collaboration with Obie and Bessie award winning set designer Michael Casselli. Produced by Earl Dax Presents, with performances by the DJ Billy Miller of Straight to Hell, John Blue, Jennifer Miller, Julie Atlas Muz, and Surprise Guests.
Siberia, 356 West 40th Street, $10

I'd also love to see Lisa Kron(formerly of the Five Lesbian Brothers)'s The Well before it closes. I hear (via Playgoer) that it's not doing well at filling a Broadway-size house and thus affordable tickets can be obtained. Which is sad, but also reason that those who can should go see it.

Church Lady Drag

Go To Church. The Cavern Club Theater. 4/16/06.

I was pretty excited to be spending Easter going to what I believed was a church-themed drag show in the basement of a Mexican restaurant with some of the people I've come to consider almost family. It felt queer and appropriate and subversive and wonderful. It was also a great warm-up for our upcoming Backyard Drag show whose theme was to be "High Church."

Sadly, "Go To Church" didn't live up to the appropriateness of the situation. It was more performance art than drag, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind; the real disappointment was that after the first number, it rather lost its theme. It included several numbers and skits that had very little to do with church, including an interesting but inexplicable rendition of "Paper Roses" and an actually pretty funny talk show piece called "Two Jans and a Janet" featuring Selene Luna and the only cross-dressing of the night by Robbie D. The two of them made a great pair, but this closing bit went on a little too long. For the most part, the show felt like one big inside joke and some of the bits were funny but several of them seemed as if they were just filling up time. As this was their first of a series of performances, it felt a bit under-reheased and thrown together. Their next performance will feature drag queen Jackie Beat who I've heard is excellent and thus the show might get better, but personally I was disappointed. I rather suspect each of the performers has done and could do better work. I would have been happy if they had just managed to keep it all church-themed.

The Al Pacino Show

Oscar Wilde's Salome. The Wadsworth Theatre. Brentwood, CA. 4/20/06.

It seems that when this production was in New York, it was publicized as Oscar Wilde's Salome: The Reading. Somehow, the subtitle was dropped in LA publicity and thus I was suprised to see music stands and folding chairs on stage at the Wadsworth. I'm not sure minimalism does credit to Wilde's opulent poetry in Salome (the text of which is available here if you're interested), though the reading does place emphasis on the language and the acting. With nothing else to look at on stage, Al Pacino as Herod and Jessica Chastain as Salome embraced the challenge of commanding the audience's full attention and bringing life to to an extremely lush script almost entirely though personal charisma.

In this particular version, Al Pacino as Herod very clearly stole the show. His spectacular portrayal of a proud and dissolute king kept the audience engaged through long speeches in which all he did was list possessions or boast of his power. He is very clearly a masterful actor who made this role his own, and I feel fortunate to have witnessed his skill in person.

Jessica Chastain in many ways had a much more challenging job in interpreting the role of Salome, and though she was beautiful and compelling in the role, there were moments when the reading style of the performance held her back. To be denied the horror of seeing her kiss Jokanaan's lifeless head made the end of the play strange and abrupt, making her seem more childish and less passionate. Similarly, relying entirely on text instead of connection or touch between the actors made her passion for Jokanaan and her rejection by him seem awkward and superficial. The stilted lack of interaction between the actors did, however, throw into relief the moment in which Salome danced. She stepped out of the reading style and took possesion of the stage and the audience's gaze in a dance that quickly passed from a fairly traditional-seeming (not that I'm an expert) belly dance to a bare-breasted modern frenzy. The dance and certainly her body were compelling, though I think that as the centerpiece of the show, it should have lasted a little longer and transitioned more slowly from sexy to insane.

Overall, it was an interesting but odd production that showcased good acting, but perhaps did not do justice to the spirit of Wilde's text.

My Lukewarm Reaction to the Ahmanson's New Season

CTG announced their lineup for next season. The LA Times reports it here. As the Times indicates, it's rather deficient on new and exciting work. The shows are mostly Broadway imports, including Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf complete with stars Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin and Doubt starring Cherry Jones. I'm a little ambivalent about the whole thing. It's nice, and very convenient, to have some of the most exciting things from Broadway come to LA mostly intact, but it's not exactly inspiring to just be the second or third stop for shows that have already played in New York and London. As our largest and most expensive local theater, I'd like to see the Ahmanson do some new and exciting work, but it matters much more to me what they schedule for the Taper and the Kirk Douglas. I haven't attended either of those smaller theaters this season, mostly because I was so disappointed in Michael Ritchie's decimation of Gordan Davidson's tradition of developing new work, often by queers and people of color, in favor of programming "classics" such as The Cherry Orchard or relying on the names of famous playwrights (David Mamet) and actors (Alfred Molina, Laurence Fishburne) to sell the shows.

In terms of the Ahmanson's season, it actually looks rather inticing, if not really inspiring. The season consists of two classics (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Twelve Angry Men), two of last year's biggest new works from Broadway (Doubt and Light in the Piazza), a new (if not terribly original-sounding) musical (Berry Gordy's Aint No Mountain High Enough), and Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands, which I really do want to see. Though it would be nice to see the Ahmanson do more that's original and exciting, this is a solid season to which I would at least consider subscribing. At least there aren't any holes in the season this time. The whole thing is very commercial, clearly designed to appeal (almost exclusively) to middle-class, middle-aged white people who pay attention to what's on Broadway but don't travel there, and who can affort to go to the Ahmanson. There's absolutely nothing reflective of or particularly relevant to LA or its population, but these are mildly intereting shows that I would rather like to see.

On the Margins

Violet Blue posted today that Patrick Califia recently suffered from a heart attack. A friend reports that he is recovering, but facing terrible medical bills without insurance.

An article by Califia was one of the first things I read in grad school, and I have been extremely grateful for all of his work that I have discovered since. Public Sex is one of my favorite books, a brilliant combination of scholarship and passion in clear, intelligent essays. His erotica manages to push my buttons perfectly, no matter the gender, sexuality, or species of its subjects. I would gladly encourage you to rush out and buy any or all of his books, depending on your taste (tell me if you want a review or recommendation).

But more importantly, this is a reminder that many of my favorite writers and performers are working without a net. There are no health insurance providers and often no retirement accounts, savings or middle-class families to fall back on for performance artists, freelance writers, and sex radicals. Peggy Shaw references her uninsured status in Menopausal Gentleman, and Susie Bright asks for donations so that she can afford to give some of her writing time away for free on her blog. These people provide work of great value in this world, and in doing so are uncared for by our system. Califia deserves whatever people can give him to help ease his pain and provide for his ongoing medical care. Califia's LiveJournal page and his website provide information on how to donate via PayPal or postal mail. Please, do what you can to support him and other other writers and performers working on the margins of regular employment, steady paychecks, and health insurance. Do it so that hopefully they can worry less about money and instead spend their time experiencing life and writing about it, sharing with us as much of their work as possible.

Theater at its Best

Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. The Geffen Playhouse. 3/12/06.

I'm not actually a huge Arthur Miller fan. I understand why he's important and I respect his skill as a writer, but I've never really loved his work. I've read Death of a Salesman and The Crucible a million times each, and I saw The Ride Down Mt. Morgan on Broadway, but in general, I wouldn't exactly rush out to see an Arthur Miller play. I'm more likely to write it off as heavy-handed American Realism, obsessed with fathers and sons and the suffering of the straight, white, middle-class American male. While all these assumptions aren't entirely false, they fail to encompass my experience this evening.

All My Sons at the Geffen was extemely well-crafted in every aspect of the production, and as such it was a truly wonderful experience at the theater. It actually energized me, making me want to see more theater, and left me a bit stunned at the skill of playwright, director, cast, and everyone else involved. A significant portion of what made this play so great for me had a lot to do with a fabulous cast, headed by Len Cariou (Sweeney Todd on Broadway), Laurie Metcalf (original member of the Steppenwolf and most famous as the sister from Rosanne), and Neil Patrick Harris (Rent, Assassins, and of course Doogie Howser). Harris blew me away; his character was the conscience of the play and he appeared from his entrance as both a good, decent guy and a reasonably complex character so that his morality was believable. This man is a truly skilled actor, and I should remember to see anything else in which he performs whenever I have the chance. Len Cariou as the flawed patriarch did an excellent job at seeming lovable even as his morally corrupt actions were exposed. In this, only the second performance, he seemed to be grasping for lines at several points especially in the first act, but he made this stumbling sound more like character-appropriate senility than the mistake that I assume it was. Laurie Metcalf as the mother gave a compelling and nuanced performance that kept the play from being carried away entirely by fathers and sons. Amy Sloan rounded out the main characters of the play with compelling strength and practicality and held her own among these luminaries.

When I say that this play was well-crafted, I mean that everything seems to have been done with skill, passion, committment and energy. Not only the acting, which was fabulous from leads Harris, Metcalf and Cariou to little Sterling Beaumon as the neighbor kid, but even the sets (by Robert Blackman) and the costumes (by David Mickelsen) were extremely well-done with excellent attention to detail. The high-waisted '50s pants caught my attention, as did the full facades of neighboring houses that extended the realism into the wings. Excellent pacing drove to a rapid conclusion that left me a little shocked, but greatful for not having been dragged slowly through Miller's moralizing. Artistic Director Randall Arney deserves credit at the helm of an outstanding production. I highly recommend it, as both classic and timely, but mostly as excellent theater.

Drag for the whole family

Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance. Ahmanson Theater. 4/6/06.

Dame Edna is the giga-star (that much more than a mega-star) drag persona of Barry Humphries. She's a hilarous comedian with fabulously glittery costumes, and I laughed outrageously throughout the show. The performance was well-written, well-paced (it was nearly 3 hours long, but the time flew by!), and funny thoughout. Dame Edna performed songs and dances and fabulous audience interaction, which is not easy in a venue as large as the Ahmanson. It was quite nice to be in the back and thus know that we were safe from being called on by the Dame herself. It's a wonderful show and anyone who goes is sure to laugh until they hurt. I was especially impressed by the full costume change for the curtain call and the animatronic flowers, both of which were hilarious. So go to the show; you'll love it, I'm sure.

I couldn't help thinking throughout the show, however, that this was drag for straight people. It was safe, middle-class, all white, and not very political. Edna performed couples counseling, choosing a nice married couple out of the audience to drag on stage and embarrass. Humphries' bio carefully mentions his wife and children. It's all of the fun and camp and sequins of a drag show without those pesky homosexuals. While extremely queer and fabulous performers like Lypsinka are performing to half-full houses in tiny venues and Vaginal Davis is semi-homeless when she's here in LA, I felt a little guilty that my money was going to support Dame Edna. I felt as if I should instead spend my time and money at The Cavern Club Theater and Backyard Drag supporting local queer performers. And where are the fabulous, famous drag kings, btw?

Film Noir Festival!

This week and next (April 7-16), the Egyptian and the Aero Theaters will be conducting the 8th Annual Festival of Film Noir. They will be showing some famous noir films such as The Damned Don't Cry and some obscure and newly restored films such as Angel's Flight. They especially focus on films set and shot in LA. Some personal highlights include:

The Damned Don't Cry (1950), Saturday, April 8, starring Joan Crawford.

Ruby Gentry (1952), Saturday, April 8, directed by King Vidor. With Charlton Heston and Karl Malden. Tagline: "The story of Ruby Gentry, who wrecked a whole town - man by man...sin by sin."

Beyond the Forest (1949), Saturday, April 8, directed by King Vidor, starring Bette Davis.

Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Sunday, April 9, starring Marilyn Monroe and Anne Bancroft.

No Man of Her Own (1950), Saturday, April 15, starring Barbara Stanwyck.

Most of the showings are double features, so you get a whole evening of double-crosses, murder, and femmes fatales. The full calendar is here. So, anyone want to go to a movie (or two) with me? This might very well be my plan for Saturday night.

Children's Musical Round-up

Dr. Dolittle. Orange County Performing Arts Center. 3/23/06.
and
Honk! Laguna Playhouse. 3/31/06.

These are two familiar stories made into musicals best suited for children, but fun nonetheless. Dr. Dolittle is most memorable for Tommy Tune's performance; he's an extremely skilled entertainer and he carries a musical with a tenuous plot and little else to speak for it. At over 60, Tune's tap-dancing is wonderfully skillful; I would gladly have clamored for more and more. The sets and costumes were also well done (by Kenneth Foy and Ann Hould-Ward respectively) and extremely fun and colorful. Talented twelve-year-old tap-dancer Aaron Burr (yes, really) as Chee-Chee the Monkey also had a delightful tap dancing scene and a charismatic, playful performance throughout the show. Dee Hoty as the leading lady in the show did an admirable job in a role that wasn't thoroughly fleshed-out. The main problem with the show, however, was that its plot was rather tenuous, better for children with short attention spans and little care for continuity, than adults that may want to think about the show even a little.

Honk! had slightly more substance but not a great deal. It's the story of the Ugly Duckling, adapted into a children's musical, including several roles for children. The Laguna Playhouse used it as an opportunity to showcase the students in their conservatory program as chicks, ducklings, and froglets (including some pretty impressive dancing) while hiring adults to take the major roles. This show was also cute and has a little more substance to keep the parents interested. The sets by Wally Huntoon created an adorable larger-than-life watercolor farm. My major complaint here was the costumes, which looked quite low-budget including a few too many sweatpants and tennis shoes for my taste. In the costumer's defense, there were an awful lot of characters to outfit in this production with what was, I'm sure, a tiny budget, and certainly some costumes were better than others. I just don't think sweats are ever really the right choice, and especially with the goslings I had a lot of trouble figuring out what animal the characters were supposed to be.

Both of these productions were light and fun and good for children, but I wouldn't rush out as an adult to either of them. Do bring your kids, though; teach them the magic of theater while they're young and start a tradition of theatrical attendance now.