A Decent Play Showcases a Beautiful Venue

Hippolytos. The Getty Villa. 9/6/06.


The moon rose over the trees as the lights dimmed on the gorgeous new Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa. The Getty's production of Euripides' Hippolytos showcased a beautiful new venue with a dramatic classical play. The Fleischman Theater is a beautiful outdoor theater in the classical stlye, but with all the modern theatrical equipment including lighting and projections, and as such it makes a lovely venue to view classical drama. The Getty has dedicated the space to producing one classical play in traditional style each summer, of which Hippolytus is the first, plus staging readings of more experimental versions of Greek plays during the year.

The production used a new translation of Hippolytos by poet Anne Carson, and as a result the show was more vibrant and less misogynist than Hippolytus tends to be. I was initially dubious of the skinny blonde Phaidra pining away in her bed, but Linda Purl is a true professional who performed the role with strength, passion, and nobility. This Phaidra was the victim of Hippolytos' youthful arrogance and Aphrodite's vengence, not the manipulative and lustful siren that she can occasionally appear to be. She was very much the star of the show. In addition to Phaidra as a strong female, Blake Lindsley gave a very compelling performance as Artemis. Her deep voice and striking demeanor made her fascinating as the virgin goddess in her speech at the end of the play.

Stephen Sachs' direction moved quickly with striking visual images and a great deal of movement. While it suffered from inconsistency, the play did an excellent job of filling and showcasing its striking venue.

Many aspects of Hippolytus were suprisingly inconsistent. The movement of some of the actors, especially the female chorus (Erin Bennett, Melody Butiu, Elizabeth Tobias, Shannon Warne, and Jules Wilcox) were beautiful and fluid, while the male chorus (Stuart Ambrose, Michael Dalager, Josh Gordon, Noel Orput, and Sterling Sulieman) was generally stiff and rigid, without much to do, until Hippolytus' dramatic death scene choreographed by Tamica Washington-Miller. I would have liked them to have a more dramatic and memorable dance upon their first entrance, when they go to pray following the hunt. If the stiffness of the male choreography was intentional and gender-specific, I have to question the choice.

The costumes, designed by Ann Closs-Farley, were also weirdly inconsistent. Though the saturated colors were an excellent choice in making the stage visually interesting and the relationships clear, some of the design />''''''';choices were profoundly odd. The female chorus wore fairly traditional-looking layers of red-orange robes, while the male chorus wore inexplicable teal kilts with facial makeup that made them look like extras from Braveheart. Phaidra And Artemis wore beautiful silk dresses that were vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s, that, while lovely, didn't really fit in with the rest of the production. That said, I did absolutely love these dresses, and I liked that Phaidra's deep purple gown looked simultaneously like a nightgown and formalwear. Worst, however, was Aphrodite, who wore what amounted to a diaper.

Paul Moore as Hippolytos did an excellent job of combining youthful arrogance with well-meaning earnestness. In many ways he is the object of a fight between two goddesses and a queen, rather than a subject of his own, but Moore managed to be somewhat likable and forgivable despite his pride. In contrast, Morlan Higgins as Theseus was stiff and hard to understand. He also looked vaguely Scottish, which was odd.

My major complaint about this play, however, lies in the racial dynamics. Though the chorus was wonderfully multi-racial, all of the leads were white, with the excpetion of Fran Bennett as Phaidra's Nurse. While Bennett gave an excellent performance, she was placed in what amounted to a mammy role. While it may have been more-or-less historically accurate for a wealthy Greek family to have an African Nurse (see Black Athena for more info on the relationship between the Greeks and Africa), it seems like a poor choice for this to be one instance in which they chose historical accuracy when they deviated from it in many others. Sarah Ripard, as the other non-white actress in a prominent role, was in a weird orientalizing role as the vindictive Aprhodite. Her diaper-like costume was nowhere near attractive, making her seem like a cross between a comic book villian and a Hindu goddess. The casting choices for these two characters, though the actors who played them were powerful and talented, gave the show disturbing racial politics.

Overall, the show was visually compelling and an excellent showcase for the new venue, and it demonstrated a wonderfully dramatic translation of a classical play, but some of the specific details of this particular production were dubious. It's a lovely beginning for a welcome venture into classical theater by the Getty, and I look forward to seeing what they do next, but I'm not sure the show stands well on its own.

Hypothetical

If you were organizing a short (1 hour) lecture on queers and film, what would you be sure to cover? If you could only pick two films, what would they be?

Love for Brother and City

Water and Power. Culture Clash. Mark Taper Forum. 9/5/06.

Water and Power poses a problem for me. It's not the same problem that seemed to be posed for Charles McNulty in LA Times Review, which seemed to be a problem with the fact that Culture Clash expected its audiences to intimately know the ins and outs of Los Angeles politics, which is a lot to ask. McNulty says

The bombardment of topical local references, a Culture Clash specialty and a source of easy guffaws, distracts from the narrative flow. From a hot-off-the-press Mel Gibson crack to jabs at elected officials (from Gloria Molina to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger) to jokes about convoluted bus routes, Scientology and the narrow aisles of Trader Joe's, the work keeps elbow-nudging its audience with Angeleno hominess.

At times, the politics seem as insular as a county board meeting. It's not simply that the play is intended for an L.A. audience steeped in municipal mayhem. The background of the Garcia brothers' conflicted public consciousness is never adequately fleshed out.

Gilbert makes fun of his own struggle ("No, I've been a Chicano since 1998 — well, I stopped in '95, and after recovery I started again"). But the resonance for the brothers of the Spanish song "De Colores" or the example of Miguel Contreras is assumed rather than fully addressed. You're either on board or you aren't — a sign that the writing hasn't created a self-contained world.

Personally, I would argue that this show never had any intention of creating a self-contained world, and actively works against that. Most of the information you need to understand the local references is provided in the program, so personally I didn't find the fast-paced local references at all disorienting; it seemed rather educational, to me. Culture Clash is joining in a political discussion through a fictionalized narrative, but the external narrative of LA history and politics is just as central to the play.

What bothers me is that all the reviews focus on the play being about LA and its politics, which of course it is, but ignore the fact that it's really a play about masculinity. It's the story of two brothers, played by Richard Montoya and Herbert Siguenza, and the kind of men their father raised them to be. It's play about power, power wielded through physical violence and power wielded through back room deal-making. It's a play about male friendship and brotherhood, and as such it completely excludes women. The only female even mentioned in the play is Gloria Molina. In many ways I loved the show and what it's trying to do, but I must ask why it has to do so completely without women? Is the struggle for Chicano and Latino power and community in Los Angeles completely devoid of female participants? Of course not. So why must they represent it as only a story of men and masculinity?

The men in Water and Power are arrayed in a hierarchy of masculinity inversely proportional to their political power, with the queer, white, effeminate fat cat the Fixer (played by Dakin Matthews) weilding his power like a comic supervillian, demasculinizing Richard Montoya's Gilbert Garcia (aka Water), the young Chicano politican, by forcing him to give up his dreams. While political power compromises Gilbert's masculinity, his brother Gabriel (Power) is a cop who can beat his brother up and who takes the law into his own hands. While Water is debased in political dealings, Power has all the guns.

The play itself is a departure from Culture Clash's tradtional style, which tends to be less narrative and more comedic. As such, I feel that it's an extremely well-crafted step toward a more mainstream style (which may or may not be a good thing). Director Lisa Peterson, as the one woman involved in this project (not couting set designer Rachel Hauck who crafted a beautiful, spare, evokative set), worked with Montoya, Siguenza, and Ric Salinas (the third member of Culture Clash, who offered a fascinating portrayal of NorteSur, a wheelchair-bound Cholo poet, friend and assistant to Power) did an excellent job of crafting this into a mostly sensitve representation of LA politics and Chicano brotherhood. Overall, the show was quite powerful, though it had moments of being overly-invested in its poesia. I felt that the play was weakest when it stepped out of the action and offered reflection and interpretation, escpecially in monologues at the beginning and end of the play.

While Water and Power is the story of LA in all its seediness and corruption, with Water and Power as the twin forces that keep it running, it's also a story of men and Chicano masculinity. It's well-done, powerful, and quite entertaining, but isn't it long past time to stop pretending that women don't exist?

Noir

I love this LA Times article on the noir stylings of Hollywoodland and The Black Dahlia, even though it doesn't say much about noir that isn't common knowledge. I totally need to see these films.

Links and books

I've been working on doing (or at least averaging) a post every day. But I'm behind on some work, so even though I have a show to review (Shear Madness) and a couple of books I've read to post about (The Devil Wears Prada, Wicked, Necklace of Kisses, Tithe - all of which I've read a while ago now), I'm going to send you elsewhere at the moment.

Kate Bornstein has a blog. I bought Hello, Cruel World after reading this fabulous interview on Susie Bright's blog. I'll review it as soon as I finish Neuromancer and some homework.

Here's a brief early review of S. Bear Bergman's Butch is a Noun. I pre-ordered this book and I can't wait until it arrives. In the meantime, here's a moment of delight from Bear's livejournal that made me swoon.

Full Disclosure

My most recent review, for Because They Have No Words, was the first review I've written (including the one published one) for which I've been officially asked to attend and review the show. I was absolutely delighted to get the invitation, and to receive not only a reviewer's comp ticket but also a press pack. It's not a play to which I would have automatically been drawn, but I very much appreciated it and was glad I went.

Though it was only one show that I was asked to review, and my blog readership isn't so powerful that others are queuing up for my attention, this is something that I didn't even imagine when I started this blog mostly to keep track of the shows I saw. It makes me want to enter into a larger conversation. I may not be anything like a professional reviewer, but I think I write about theater at least as well as the theater reviews they post on LAist, which tend to be few and far between. It makes me wonder if there's a way to be a little more public about this blog, wonder if it will grow somehow as I review more shows, wonder who's reading, wonder what I should be doing about it if anything. Are there other LA theater blogs out there that I don't know about? Other queer and/or feminist theater blogs? If so, I'd love to find them.

Though my current career path doesn't exactly lead to being a professional reviewer, in many ways it would be my dream job to attend plays and write about them for a living (or read books and write about them for a living). Just the thought of receiving comp tickets to the theater or review copies of books makes me nearly ecstatic. Of course, I'm not sure how well my queer, feminist perspective and my tendency toward wacky performance art would mesh with a real reviewing gig, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Animal Tales

Because They Have No Words. Weirdsmobile Productions. The Lounge Theatre. 9/3/06.



Tim Maddock wrote Because They Have No Words as well as playing its main character. He went to New Orleans three weeks after Hurricane Katrina to volunteer in animal rescue, and he has crafted those experiences into an earnest and poignant play. That, in iself, is the major accomplishment of this play; this is the first theatrical response to Hurricae Katrina that I've seen (though I know there have been some, especially in more closely affected areas). Stories from Katrina are good stories to tell, and this play feels vey much like Maddock's exploration of those events and a way of coping with the intense experience of witnessing the aftermath of the hurricane.

It's a production full of honesty and humor, emphasized by a talented cast. Tisha Terrasini Banker, Rufus Bonds, Jr., Lanai Chapman, LeShay Tomlinson, and Colin Walker each play multiple roles across race and gender (and occasionally across sexuality or species) and do so mostly without relying on stereotypes or charicatures (although one moment of imitating an Asian person running a yard sale was a bit awkward to me).

Interspersed with the story of his trip to New Orleans after Katrina, Maddock related an earlier trip to the same city, making it the site of his coming out story. Colin Walker in the dual roles of a gay waiter who picks up the young Maddock and as Maddock's present-day boyfriend creates a sensitive contextualization of Maddock's sexuality that adds depth to the play. This story framed the trip to New Orleans really well

At over two and a half hours, Because They Have No Words could still use some editing. It relied strongly on narration rather than dialogue so that at times it felt more like stoytelling than theater, but parts of the storytelling were so well-crafted that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Especially in the first act, Maddock, with co-writer Lotti Louise Pharriss and director Emilie Beck, balanced difficult and tragic moments with upbeat humor so that I was on the brink of tears several times thoughout the play, but immediately drawn back into the story with a laugh. Other moments were not quite so successful; I was especially disturbed by the fact that I was more moved and touched by the play's stories about animals that I was by Maddock's discussion of his mother's death. I actually think that the moment when Maddock confronts his mother's death by vising her grave near the end of the play should be cut, though that's a rather harsh thing to say. The major drawback of the play was its tendency toward moralizing; It really wanted to do all the interpretation for you and put words into everyone's mouths. I felt that the ending was a bit awkward, but it was a heartfelt play and I applaud those that made it happen, now, a year after the event.

By telling the stories of animals and animal-rescue volunteers after Hurricane Katrina, Because They Have No Words is also telling the story of the people affected by Katrina. It tells of those left behind and ignored by the govenment or by other people, it tells of people separated from pets who were members of their family, it tells of volunteer workers who thought they were doing the right thing, even when they weren't. All of these are stories that need to be told and retold, so that hopefully this never happens again.

I think they took "Dirty" too literally

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Orange County Performing Arts Center. 8/31/06.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was fun and funny, and I believe a great deal of the audience with whom I saw it loved it. It has it's strong points, and I certainly didn't hate it, but it wasn't for me. What bothered me throughout the show were profoundly weird class politics. The play, based on the movie with Steve Martin, is the story of two con men in the French Riviera. Tom Hewitt plays Lawrence Jameson, a high class con artist who cheats women out of only the diamonds they can afford to lose, while offering them in exchange dreams of romance on the Riviera. Norbert Leo Butz, reprising the role he originated on Broadway, for which he won a Tony, plays an upstart young American con man with no class and no self-restraint.

My complaint is that this show has the emminently talented (and well-accoladed) Butz playing a slightly-less-lovable Jack Black character. If they had toned down the vulger and ratcheted up his charm, this could have been an awesome musical. At the few points where his singing talents shine through, Butz could be a show-stopper, but I fell that this show fails to give him a chance. As it is, it trades on the basest humor to the complete exclusion of probability or sensitivity.

The other significant flaw in this show is its failure to properly build the relationship between the two con men. The best song in the show, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" comes at the very end, and its the only song they really sing alone together; this song reminds me of "Two Lost Souls" from Damn Yankees, which I liked, but I think it should have come earlier in the play. Unlike "Wicked," or even "The Producers," where the friendship is a major issue throughout the play, these two men failed to sing to establish their friendship, and if they're not going to sing about it, what's the point putting it in a musical?

There were some other structural flaws in this play, primarily that the opening song didn't set an appropriate mood. It might have worked with a super-famous lead in the role, but someone less well-known, such as Tom Hewitt, needs to earn the audience's attention. The show didn't really seem to start until Butz sang "Great Big Stuff" well into the first act.

While the show itself has serious flaws (personally I'm kind of sad that it was such a success, since I think they really need to go back and rework it and it might actually be a good new musical), the touring cast is superb. Several of the cast members from the Broadway production are performing with the tour at the moment, so I was fortunate enough to see people comfortable and familiar with their roles. Though it took some time for him to earn my respect, I loved Tom Hewitt, and he did a great job with a couple of fun and challenging patter songs. Drew McVety as the overly-accented French policemen in league with the con men was hilarous, and had an excellent and highly entertaining with Hollis Resnik as a gullible divorcee from Omaha. I also wish they had a more memorable, more fun song together. Jenifer Foote as Jolene Oakes, an heiress from Oklahoma, led a fabulous high-spirited spoof of a hoe-down number. Laura Marie Duncan gave a solid performane in the somewhat muddled role of Christine Colgate.

Looking Out at the World

OK, not exactly globally, but at least the larger U.S. theater world. And there are some wacky shenanigans going on, indeed! The NY-based theater blogosphere (and I would be THRILLED if someone could point out some good theater blogosphere that isn't straight white men!) is all in a huff about some wacky things.

First of all, and understandably exciting, is Mother Courage and Her Children produced by the Public Theater at Shakespeare in the Park. It stars Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline (who was actually a last-minute replacement), was directed by George C. Wolfe, and the script was adapted by Tony Kushner with music by Jeanine Tesori. It's easy to see how Brecht could get lost in all that star power. The reviews are very mixed, but some of the big ones are mostly negative. One of the first reviews on the scene was the LA Times's very own Charles McNulty. Michael Feingold at the Villiage Voice may be the review everyone cares about most. Rob Kendt at The Wicked Stage, who used to be an LA reviewer, loved it. Here's his positive review, and here's his round-up of all the other reviews out there.

OK, I had to post that because Mother Courage is the big news right now, but in other, much more wacky news, American Idol comes to Broadway with an NBC reality TV show to cast the leads in a production of Grease. This is based on a current BBC TV show called "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria," casting the role of Maria for a production of The Sound of Music. Andrew Lloyd Webber is somehow involved. This concept sounds atrocious, but I might just watch it anyway, since Grease is retro-Fifties and thus dissertation-related.

In further news, there is some uproar about theater critics in Chicago and Philadelphia right now. I had a long round-up of each of the events, but then my browser quit and I lost them, so I'll just point you to LAist, which has a basic overview and which is where I first heard about all this (I've been lagging on reading the major theater blogs). For more info about the Chicago incident, check out Angry White Guy, The Steppenwolf Blog, and the Dramatists Guild. For the Philadelphia situation, read this summary in Philadelphia Magazine. We Love Toby!, the blog that decidedly does not love critic Toby Zinman, is here.

Now, for my two cents, referring to Toby Zinman in Philadelphia, a lot of this sounds suspiciously like a bunch of middle-class white guys getting all huffy because they've been rebuked by an uppity woman. I wonder if the response would be the same if she were a male reviewer? I haven't read enough of Zinman's reviews to really know whether she's inappropriately personal or vindictive, or if she's just an outspoken and opinionated critic with high standards. I do, however, know that she's highly qualified and writes for Variety, American Theater, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. That's a pretty good resume. For reference, she loved Mother Courage. My general, not necessarily qualified opinion, is that it's fine for people to disagree with Zinman's reviews, and I heartily encourage them to, as they plan to do, establish a blog where people can post their own theater reviews, confirming or rebutting Zinman as they see fit, but I'm very glad that her newspaper is standing behind Zinman. In general, I think this uproar and public debate about the role and responsiblities of critics is quite valuable, and anything that makes the conversation around theater more vibrant and heated is probably a good thing.

Raising the Curtains

Curtains. Ahmanson Theater. 8/13/06.

Yes, I have already reviewed this show. I attended it for a second time, well after opening night and with my parents. My parents totally loved it, which I expected, and I continue to predict that it will do quite well on Broadway when it gets there, hopefully with much of this talented cast.

I was originally intending to do a close analysis of the differences between the preview and the show after opening, but I think that can be summarized pretty quickly. They streamlined the first act quite a bit, and gave us a decent finale instead of just a reprise of the love song (thank goodness). Overall, the show felt much faster.

Anyway, mostly I just wanted to point to Charles McNulty's LA Times Review, with which I mostly agree. I think his line, however, "Jill Paice, in a performance that hasn't quite gelled," isn't quite adequate. I, too, found Jill Paice, or possibly the role of Niki Harris, the weakest part of an otherwise entertaining show. I've been trying to figure out what about the role or the performance failed for me.

I think that the problem is actually a mix between the role as written and the choice of actress, although I don't question Jill Paice's talent. I blame the pairing of a bland, goody-two-shoes ingenue with someone as understated and fabulous as David Hyde Pierce for Harris/Paice's lack of success. He needs to be paired with someone more vibrant who can balance him more effectively, and Paice might even have been that person with a more sassy haircut and a bit more style and fierceness in the character. The character needs to be so compelling that everyone falls in love with her, and while Paice is lovely, she blends into the background against a cast so full of huge characters. Similarly, Pierce's persona plays on failures of masculinity, fequently demasculinizing him for comic effect. That doesn't work when his partner can't pick up the slack because she's the innocent, feminine one. She needs to be stronger, and not necessarily tough or masculine, but at least independent. It's a slight misstep in an overall super-fun musical, but I think it would be worth some editing.

Other things that I failed to say in my last post include the fact that Debra Monk was fabulous as a tough Broadway producer and that, as my companion at the preview pointed out, the chorusboys should act more gay. It's a rather important plot point that all of the men in the chorus are sleeping with each other, but it doesn't play out except in that one gag. They should be at least flirty with each other throughout the play. Other than that, I think in general there are many fabulous characters in the play and I would like to see more of many of them. Overall, it's a far from perfect show, but a fun one that I expect audiences to love.

Performance Art Can Be Dangerous

"Mapo Corpo." Beall Center for Art and Technology. UCI. 8/24/06.


I was definitly challenged by this piece, and I'm not sure what to say about it. It was a strong performance, interestingly organized. And Peña and his collaborators definitely had something to say. If the benchmarks for performance art include having something to say, communicating it effectively, and doing so in an attention-getting manner, then this work very much succeded. Its message is important and its mode is powerful.

This piece was part of the "TechnoSpheres: Contemporary Work in Art and Technology" conference at UCI. "Mapo Corpo" by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his La Pocha Nostra performance group with video remixing by Rene Garcia. The focal piece of the show, however, was Violeta Luna, who is a beautiful and powerful perfomer who did brave and frightening things with and to her body.

But that's where my qualms about this performance begin. Luna's powerful use of her body, especially in the first part of the piece, brought a true sense of danger to the piece; I was genuinely concerned that she was going to do something to hurt herself. Despite the strength and immediacy of Luna's performance, Guillermo Gómez-Peña is the artist who receives the major attention for the work. He talks, while Luna is silent (though part of that may have to do with the fact that Luna speaks Spanish rather than English). His name is the one people recognize. And because he basically delivers a speech through the second half of the performance, taking attention away from Luna's body while also giving the performance meaning and shaping viewer's ideas, providing a textural frame to view Luna's performance which may or may not represent that text, he becomes the most powerful aspect of the performance, even though it was her work that I found the most challenging and the most compelling.

The piece itself dealt with issues of the body (Luna's body), covered and uncovered, powerful, threatened and in pain, but most of all colonized. The text emphasized many of the same themes as much of Peña's work, including a political stance against war and colonization, professing resistance to hegemony through performance, and the awareness of the commonalities between all oppressed groups: non-white, immigrant, disabled, female, and queer among others. These are things that need to be said. They need to be said repeatedly. And Peña says them, for which I applaud him. But I wish Luna's work, and the video pieces mixed by Rene Garcia had more of a chance to speak for themselves. I worry that the force of Peña's performance of himself as performance artist overshadowed them. And to me, Luna's body, not Peña's text, were the most dangerous and different pieces of this performance.

To Buy or not to Buy

I'm sorely tempted to purchase Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. It's erotic graphic novel about Wendy from Peter Pan, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and it's managed to spark my imagination so that I'm quite interested. This Susie Bright interview very much made me want to read the book.

But, it's quite expensive, and I'm quite broke. I could totally picture indulging in purchasing it after I finally get a paycheck again, but that may not happen until Nov. The price, however, is discounted on amazon right now because it's a pre-order, so I'm worried that it will go up to something closer to the full purchase price when the book finally drops, presumably tomorrow.

What's a girl to do? If I wait a year or two, will there be a paperback? (Somehow I doubt it.) I welcome advice on this one.

UPDATE: The Salon Review is well-written and nicely analytical. I'm glad that the review focuses clearly on the quality of the illustrations as much as the story, and I totally believe that its eroticism is intriguing for its moral and intellectual issues even if it doesn't happen to get you off. Personally, I think that it looks like a beautiful, well-made book and that Moore can be a fascinating and provokative storyteller. The illustrations look fabulous and I generally enjoy a well-done retelling or rethinking of a classic story, which this appears to be.

TV is very straight this year

The Washington Post has an article on how few new TV shows with queer characters there are this season. It's rather discouraging, although I think it would have been nice if they had told us which ones there are, so here's the GLAAD breakdown. Not very promising, really.

I'm still sad that the pilot of Him and Us,the show with Anthony Stewart Head as a gay rockstar and Kim Cattrall as his manager, loosely based on the life of Elton John didn't get picked up. I was totally excited to watch that show.

Highways Workshop

Highways is hosting a free performance workshop with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his multidisciplinary arts organization, La Pocha Nostra entitled:

"What Can Performance Do for Human Rights, and Human Rights Do for Performance?"

Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 11-12 1-8pm

There's an application, which is due by Sept. 1. Please pass this information on to anyone who might be interested, and email me and I'll forward you the application.

Violet

Violet
Originally uploaded by neschen738.

On YA Lit

There's an excellent discussion of young adult literature over at bookshelves of doom. Ok, there's always a great discussion of young adult literature at bookshelves of doom, but this particular one is in response to a newspaper article on Grown-ups turning to teen books. I find the list of young adult literature that adults will enjoy fascinating. Here, in no particular order, are some of the children's and young adult books I've read and enjoyed since passing out of the target age range of young adult literature:

Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers, Diggers, and Wings by Terry Pratchett
Coraline by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
Summerland by Michael Chabon
The His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (but I don't recommend any of the other Ender books at all and I'm generally opposed to Card's personal politics).
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Now, I know that many of the books above may be closer to children's than young adult and some are rather old and many are sci-fi, so they might not make everyone's list of good YA literature for adults, but I thought I'd share some of the things I like. I also think it's important to note that while "Young Adult" may be a relatively new category of fiction, books that crossed between child and adult audiences, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres, have a strong tradition.

I also totally want to read:

King Dork by Frank Portman
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Tithe by Holly Black
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Highways turns 17

Highways' 17th Birthday. Highways Performance Space. 8/19/06.

For Highways' 17th Birthday, performance artists Luis Alfaro and Holly Hughes performed as a benefit to raise money for Highways' future.

First of all, I'd like to take a moment to offer a reflection on Highways on the occasion of its birthday. I believe it's the space at which I've seen the most shows since I moved to LA. With every new season, there are at least one or two shows that I feel that I must see, and a few more that I wish I could see, time and money permitting. Curated group shows have introduced me to several wonderful new performers and I value to no end the opportunities I've had to see amazing established artists like Tim Miller. I'm very grateful for the work Highways has done to foster performance in LA. While, as an underemployed grad student worried about where my next rent check is coming from, I was unable to offer a donation, I highly encourage anyone who can to become a Highways member.

Now for the performances. First of all, despite their lack of websites, which I find highly irritating, both Luis Alfaro and Holly Hughes are amazing and well-established performance artists. They both have excellent control of their voices and narrative and can mesmerize an audience with a simple story.

Luis Alfaro performed a piece entitled "The Night Minnie Riperton Saved My Life," which I believe consisted of excerpts from some of his previous works. I'd never seen Alfaro perform, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Alfaro's performance persona was sweet and engaging, with a suprisingly high voice wonderfully appropriate for communicating the stories from his childhood and teenage years that were featured in this piece. Somehow he managed both wide-eyed innocence and sounding worldly and tough at the same time. I felt like Alfaro was everyone's favorite gay uncle, with fabulous stories to tell and a really approachable mein. He has fabulous storytelling skills, and every scenario he set up was clear and compellling, to the point that the audience gasped in horror along with characters in the story at the appropriate moments. The most disturbing and impressive piece of his performance was one in which he related his first experience having sex with a woman, describing the bachelor party atmosphere and astounding the audience by taking shots of tequila at relevant moments of the story. He took MANY shots of tequila, so many that personally I was concerned for him, but he managed to keep going and tell the story, and it was obvious how the shots were not merely a stunt, but relevant to the emotional impact of his performance and a reflection of the youth and culture he was portraying.

Personally, I was there mostly to see Holly Hughes. I have wanted to see her perform ever since I stumbled across someone else's copy of this book in college. I was mesmerized by the provokative title and the naked lesbian on the cover, and I was soon drawn inside and fell in love with the wacky, campy plays that I've always wanted to see performed. Hughes did not disappoint, though she performed mostly without props or costumes. She performed excerpts from a new work, "Dog and Pony Show," which somehow made dog training interesting and sexy and a clever metaphor for life rather than the everyday reality of a middle-aged lesbian. Hughes began the piece discussing coming and it was slowly revealed that she was talking about her dog rather than her girlfriend. Somehow, that revelation wasn't as big of a laugh line or a turning point as it should have been in this performance, but throughout the piece the discussion of the 'come' command maintained it's two meanings in an interesting and insightful manner. Hughes also performed excerpts of her piece "Preaching to the Perverted," which I think needs to be published somewhere ASAP. I'd love to teach it to my students - it's a beautiful and hilarious exploration of the NEA 4 situation and their trip to the Supreme Court, which she describes in terms of site-specific performance art. It's an important piece. I saw her do the whole thing here in LA a few years ago, and I think everyone should be given a chance to read it. I was glad to see parts of it again, but when she does the whole thing with props and costumes and everything, it's even better. Overall, Hughes was just as funny and clever and fun to watch as I expected her to be, and I wish I had more opportunities to see her perform. Highways or someone really should bring her (and more of the fabulous queer performance art luminaries from out of town) out to perform more.

The fascinating thing about this event was that there were several members of audience who were as famous (at least in queer performance art circles) as the performers. I was completely starstruck to see Tim Miller and John Fleck, LA's half of the NEA 4, and both fabulous performance artists in their own rights. I even got to talk to them! *swoon* Phranc, phabulous lesbian pholksinger and artist (who once dated Holly Hughes) was in the audience. UCLA Professor Lucy Burns was there, as were several members of the Highways board. After the show, there was a fabulous cake from Cake Divas. Overall, the event was truly amazing. The opportunity to see Hughes and Alfaro is rare enough that I feel very fortunate that I was able to attend.

Corporate Zombies

Newitz, Annalee. Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006.

If y'all haven't noticed, Annalee Newitz is one of my favorite internet commentators, both because I enjoy the topics she chooses and because she seems like a super-cool person. Plus, I love that she survived the academia madness and walked away to become a freelance writer. My first exposure to her was reading selections from this book in a grad class and I moved on to become a regular reader of her AlterNet column. So when Pretend We're Dead, a book based on her dissertation, was released, I knew I had to read it right away.

My first reaction to the book is that it's fabulously readable for academic nonfiction. I honestly read it straight through in about two days and I sort of felt like this. While it's incredibly intelligent with fabulous readings of many movies from the familiar to the obscure, the book is not nearly as obtuse as most books based on dissertations. Pretend We're Dead can really appeal to the non-academic reader who just loves monster movies or media studies and would appreciate a brilliant new reading of several of them.

While the premise that monster stories (this book analyzes both novels and movies) reveal a lot about the culture that produces them is hardly revolutionary, Newitz's analysis is clear and convincing in discussing the ways in which certain genres address the anxieties generated by capitalism. She does indeed have a point that a lot of the academic film criticism in general, not to mention that focused on monster genres (horror, sci-fi, trillers, true crime, etc), deals more with psychoanalysis and feminism than economics or other forms of social commentary that may be relevant to interpretation of the films. The real strength of this book is the concise, coherent readings of books and films that Newitz performs. Up until the fourth chapter, on robots, almost none of the objects of Newitz's analysis were texts I had read or seen, and yet I was fascinated and convinced by her argument partially because I got such a clear sense of the plots and major ideas, and yet she never belabored her analysis with excessive plot description. She similarly deals elegantly with dense and complicated critical theory, citing Marx, Lukács, Marcuse, Huyssen, and Horkeimer in a way that doesn't bog the book down for the general reader.

I was particularly intrigued by the chapter on mad scientists ("Mad Doctors: Professional Middle-Class Jobs Make You Lose Your Mind"), which argues that intellectual labor alienates the doctor or scientist (or any academic) from their own brain as the site of production. This was the second chapter, and I felt the book only grew more compelling as it progressed. I honestly wished that the final chaper, "Mass Media: Monsters of the Culture Industry," were a book of its own, and I would love to see Newitz continue writing on that particular topic. In fact, the whole book left me wanting more. I may not have agreed with everything Newitz said, and if I were approaching the same topic I certainly would have done it differently, but in general my major complaint is that I wanted the book to go even further and deeper. I honestly wanted to continue the conversation after I had finished the book, and I wish I had friends who had read the book with whom I could discuss my thoughts more thoroughly. It's an extremely compelling book, and I recommend it to anyone even mildly interested in media and pop culture studies.

Lesbians and Terrorists and Oz, Oh My!

Wicked. Orange County Performing Arts Center. 8/10/06.

My thoughts on Wicked are extremely influenced by a lecture given by Professor Stacy Wolf on the structure of this musical. I highly recommend that you hear or read her thoughts on this subject if given the chance. She discusses the ways in which the Galinda/Elphaba relationship is established in the musical in a careful imitation of the traditional romantic dyad of a ‘classical’ musical such a Rodgers and Hammerstein show (Wolf used Oklahoma as an example). In Wicked, the two women, clearly the main characters, share several duets and their relationship develops over the course of the play from “unadulterated loathing” which is also “exhilirating” to a close friendship. They are also positioned on a butch/femme spectrum of sorts with Galinda being blond and pink and frilly while Elphaba wears simple black clothing, demonstrates failures of femininity, and takes the lower notes in their duets. In addition, Idina Menzel, who originated the role of Elphaba, is most famous for playing another lesbian character, Maureen in Rent. It’s not hard to read their relationship as lesbian, and can be quite rewarding to do so. This interpretation alone was enough to make me appreciate the show, even though it is unfortunately subtextual.

So that was the interpretaion of the play with which I entered the theater, and it played out quite well. But I was delighted to discover several other important issues raised clearly and concisely in the form of a Broadway musical, which one doesn’t necessarily expect to be at all political or relevant these days. Wicked raised issues of terrorism and political demagoguery, Victorian morality threatened by unrestrained female sexuality, and conflicts between technology and language. It approached these issues in complex ways that made them visible enough to allow people to really think about them while not sacrificing plot and entertainment in order to make its points. While I believe that there is no limit to people's capacity to ignore intelligent political commentary in the guise of entertainment, this show had a lot to say. This is one musical that is refreshingly intelligent and deep, while being entertaining enough to have sell-out crowds. I’m profoundly impressed.

The cast for Wicked was also quite strong for a touring cast years after the show opened. Kendra Kassebaum covered the range from cute and ditzy to menacingly manipulative required for Glinda quite proficiently while Julia Murney's Elphaba commanded the show throughout. Personally, I was profoundly impressed by Sebastian Arcelus as Fiyero, a role that would in most plays would have been the male lead but in this one was very much a secondary role. Arcelus delivered his major song, "Dancing through Life" with commanding power and grace. I was also impressed with Jonathan Ritter, the understudy who went in for the role of Boq on the night I saw the show; he did a memorable job in a fairly strange role, and without the announcement I would have had no idea he was the undestudy.

The creative team that contributed to this show was quite impressive as well. While I've never been much of a fan of Stephen Schartz (though I have a nostalgic affection for Pippin), the music for this show was appropriate, fun, and memorable and Joe Mantello's direction probably had a lot to do with how entertaining and relevant the production was. Winnie Holzman, the book writer who adapted Gregory Maguire's novel into this musical, did so very liberally, but I will post thougths on that soon. Overall, this musical was profoundly enjoyable, while communicating many layers of meaning and I very much appreciated its complexity, which is rare on Broadway these days.

Another tough choice this weekend

Ah, this is one of the things that makes my life so difficult. This Saturday is Transgiving, which is always a fun event put on by great people. Sadly, I can't go because it's also Highways Anniversary show with performances by Holly Hughes and Luis Alfaro, which I can't miss (although I do wish it were less expensive, *sigh*). If anyone goes to Transgiving, I'd love a report.

Also this weekend, the LA Gay and Lesbian Center is presenting a wide variety of queer music performances in a festival called Homosaic 2006. Performers include Jill Sobule, Shitting Glitter, and JenRO.

Bravo to Bravo

This is just a quick note to inagurate the finally functional cable internet at my parents' house and to share how much I've been enjoying watching Bravo this summer season. Project Runway is excellent, plus it has been enhanced by all sorts of fun bonuses. Their website is packed with fabulous extras that make me more of a fan of Runway than I was before. Tim's Take blog and podcast give little behind-the-scenes details and some fascinating perspectives on the designers and the process of making the show. Then, there are also all sorts of fun fan blogs and other recaps not related to Bravo. Personally, I read fourfour and Television Without Pity (which has finally managed a single-show RSS feed!) for recaps on occasion.

But, the suprising thing is that I completely adore another Bravo show, Workout, which hardly seems like it would be my style. When I first heard about it, I assumed that it was crossing Blowout (a miserable, obnoxious show that I watched for 15 minutes and couldn't stand) with exercise, which is not exactly my idea of a good time. But, Jackie, the trainer/gym owner who is the main subject of the show, is a lesbian. That in itself was enough reason for me to watch an episode and check it out. To my delight, I discovered that this show is the most thorough and accurate depiction of a lesbian relationship I've yet seen on TV. The show is at least half dyke drama, complete with whiny jealous girlfriend and disapproving mother. The realities of this woman's life and relationships are portrayed reasonably sensitively, though there may be a little bit of blowing things out of proportion to create drama. The strength of this show is its focus on the real life job and passions of a real person rather than the manufactured drama of throwing a bunch of people together in a room, plus its frank and reasonably unsensationalistic approach to its main character's lesbianism.

Internetless

I've been staying with my parents this week and trying to get them connected to the internet. First of all, it's amazing how cut off from everything I am when I'm deprived of easy internet access in my home. It's actually suprisingly anxiety-producing after a few days. Second, my parents decided that they would prefer to get high-speed access through their cable company. It has been quite a hassle to make this happen. Though the cable company sent us a modem in a timely manner, everything else about getting the service started has been a terrible hassle. They seem to be completely incapable of activating our service properly, and everything has gone wrong, including technicians failing to complete the necessary paperwork properly and several customer service representatives and technical support people telling me drastically different things. This is especially frustrating because I'm pretty certain I've done everything right on my end. I've tried everything possible to avoid spending an extra $100 for an installation service call. I seem to remember that we had some trouble self-installing our own cable internet service at our apartment in LA - is this a problem other people have had? Does the self-installation usually work as easily as it should?

New Work Russian Roulette

NOW Festival Program 3. REDCAT. 8/4/06.

The third installment of the REDCAT NOW Festival rather effectively demonstrated that new work can be a great or a terrible experience.

The first piece, "Civil War Reinactment" by Matt Wardell, was a delightful little piece with wind-up music boxes and plastic cups. It was clever and entertaining, and it got its point across succinctly.

The second piece, however, was miserable. "Orpheus Crawling" by Juli Crockett was a reimagining of the Orpheus myth in dance and music, but it seemed to miss the point of the traditional Orpheus myth and failed to recreate it in a meaningful way. For some reason, Orpheus was dressed like Indiana Jones and one of the characters, the Furies, don't even appear in the traditional Orpheus myth. The piece failed to communicate ideas about art or the world in any coherent or visually interesting way.

In contrast, John Fleck's "Johnnie's Got a Gun" was both intelligent and entertaining. It was a meditation on patriotism and patriarchy through personal stories about an abusive and alcoholic father (George). The whole thing was hilarious and Fleck did a wonderful job navigating the emotions of the piece from whimsical to poingnant. I loved the whole thing very much, and I would gladly have watched it again, if that hadn't required sitting through "Orpheus Crawling" again.

Rodeo

I spent a good part of this afternoon at the Los Angeles Gay Rodeo. We watched the barrel races and bits of a couple other events, altough a driving mishap meant that I missed the Drag Races, which I hear were pretty spectacular and hilarious. And does anyone know what Goat Dressing is, because that sounds awesome. The rodeo was really rather entertaining, and girls in boots and cowboy hats are hot. The country dancing tent was super fun to watch, and I'm half tempted to go to Oil Can Harry's and learn to line dance. The whole thing was a lovely way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon.

I'm on vacation at the moment (quick road trip to SF), so no major posts, but here are some great things to read and think about.

"Blogging IS a feminist issue": Susie Bright writes some thoughts in response to the BlogHer conference. There needs to be more conversation about the intersection of gender and technology and biases in technology fields.

"Lipstick and Power": In anticipation of Femme 2006 (which commentors seem to think I should attend, but it's hard to commit to driving all the way back to SF not much more than a week after I leave and I do have a dissertation to write), jackadandy posts some thoughts on femme and identity. I owe this some more thought once I'm back home.

Quite possibly the most boring play I have ever seen

Pyrenees. The Kirk Douglas Theatre. 7/27/06.

There's something ironic about a play about purification in the snow performed in the middle of LA in a heat wave. Unfortunately, that was probably the most interesting thing about David Greig's play, Pyrenees. To me, this play in which the main character (played by Tom Irwin) awakes in a mountain pass with amnesia seemed to be the self-indulgent fantasy of a straight, middle-aged white man. Begining with what could have been a tantalizing mystery of his identity, the play devolved into a flirtation with a beautiful young civil servant sento to help him (played by Tessa Thompson). For the almost the entire first half of the play, these two chatted at a maddeningly slow pace. The highlight of the play was the arrival of Frances Conroy, a superb actress who also managed to pick up the pace of the play and provide a small amout of interest and dramatic tension. Unfortunately, she wasn't in the production nearly enough to hold my interest.

The audience of this play consisted mainly of people with white hair, and perhaps they got more out of this deliberate production than I did. Its meditation on the responsibility and regret that come with aging might strike a chord with some, but overall I found it a pretentious attempt at existentialism that was more vapid than provokative and thus almost unendurably dull. It was a bad sign that director Neel Keller was quoted in the program essay (by fascinating formerly-local theater critic Rob Kendt) as saying "David's plays have a shot in America because, at the end of the day, they're more emotional than political." Ugh.

I did, however, love the set designed by Mark Wendland. Its beautiful three tiers were sadly under utilized, but they created a sense of the limbo in which the play took place.

Curtains. Ahmanson Theatre. 7/25/06.

First of all, this was the first preview of Curtains, two weeks before its official opening night, reviews, etc. That said, I thought it was a wonderfully fun show with superb actors that will do quite well on Broadway. It's "a new backstage murder mystery musical comedy" written by Kander and Ebb and Rupert Holmes, and while it isn't as dark and wonderful as Chicago or Cabaret, it is a good, solid musical comedy.

One of the best things about this show was the cast, including but not limited to David Hyde Pierce. I absolutely loved Karen Ziemba as lyricist Georgia Hendricks. It was so nice to see a female lead who wasn't an ingenue and I was profoundly disappointed when she had a much smaller role in the second act. The other actor who stole the show was Edward Hibbert as the flamboyant director of the play within the play. These two amazing, experienced Broadway actors really made the show for me. Jill Paice as Niki Harris, the ingenue and David Hyde Pierce's love interest, was the least interesting lead in the cast. She's pretty and talented, but fairly bland; she can't hold a candle to her costars.

Curtains is a murder mystery on the set of a pre-Broadway musical, Robbin' Hood, which opens it up for several fun songs about show business and some good solid spoofing of Oklahoma and Annie Get Your Gun. Rob Ashford's choreography was quite reminiscent of recent Broadway revivals of these two shows in a brilliant sort of way. I would have liked the commentary on other Broadway shows to be a little bit sharper, but in general the whole production was a good-natured celebration of Broadway theater, done by people who know and love it.

My favorite song was "The Woman's Dead," which I thought was hilarious and brilliant. Overall, there are a few structural problems with the show that might get worked out during previews. The songs within Robbin' Hood were fairly bland but fun. I wasn't hooked by the first production number - I thought the show started off slowly, but hooked me in the second number with "What Kind of Man?," a "Fugue for Tinhorns" style number about theater critics. Similarly, The curtain call should be bigger and more fun and give the audience more of an opportunity to stand and clap. Ending with a reprise of the love song seems a mistake to me. Overall, I thought this show was totally fun and I laughed out loud frequently. I can't wait to see how it develops.

Performances Worth Travelling For

I received some notices about events next weekend that I'd love to go to, so I figured I should pass them on to those of you who may be able to attend.

Next weekend is San Diego Pride, and Lipstick Conspiracy, a super-fabulous band of transwomen from SF, will be performing at 6pm-ish on Saturday the 29th.

Also, over the next couple of weeks there will be a bunch of cool new performances at UCSB. If I have time, I'd love to see the Luis Alfaro Solo Piece on Wednesday. "La Fe in the Desert," a collaboration between Jessica Hagedorn and Campo Santo, will probably also be awesome.

There's also a rumor that Kael T. Block will be exhibiting pieces from his xx boys series at Akbar in Silverlake starting on July 31st. I really want to see this exhibit if it's happening.

NOW it begins

The NOW Festival: Program 1. REDCAT. 7/22/06.

The NOW festival of New Works by local LA performance artists is off to a promising start. The first week of the festival featured Kristina Wong doing a piece about the insanity of trying to get mental help, New York transplants The Outsiders doing a dance piece titled "IV," and Michael Sakamoto and Amy Knoles performing a butoh-inspired piece entitled "Sacred Cows." All three works together created a balanced program of adventurous pieces that deserve attention.

Kristina Wong's piece was an excerpt from a full-length performance still in development called "Wong Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest." She'll be performing different excerpts on July 29th at the Ford Ampitheater's Summer Playreading Series. The full length piece will premiere at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley in December, so it is very much a work in progress. As such, it felt like a segment of a larger work, which it was, but in general it was very funny and totally well done. Wong had some hilarious moments depicting the ridiculous difficulty in getting mental help as an uninsured performance artist (a job that should probably come with psychiatric help). The pace of the piece felt a little off - Wong went too quickly into the serious drama of the piece and could have used a little more comic buildup and milking the hilarity of the situation before she hit the serious moment, but the whole thing was totally fun and funny and I can't wait to see how the full show turns out. Leilani Chan directed the piece and I suspect she did a great job providing a second set of eyes and a good theatrical sense for Wong's work. This was the piece I went to REDCAT to see, and I'm quite glad I did.

The Outsiders, Stacy Dawson Stearns and Tim Cummings, performed a fascinating dance piece that may have been a bit over my head. The people I talked to who know something about dance loved this piece and thought it was hilarious. It began with a very funny vocal performance of "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot" with lyrics by Leonard Cohen and music by Buffy Sainte-Marie. This, along with some of the movements, set the tone of the piece as absurd rather than serious. The vocal section and the section that followed it in which Stearns and Cummings danced in silver bodysuits kind of like space aliens were clearly comic and quite entertaining. It was fascinating to me to think about what made these particular movements so funny, because they totally were and I have no idea why. My complaint is that the group wanted to be "walking a line between the hilarious and the profound," and I don't think the attempt to be profound contributed to the piece at all. The later sections of the piece tried to transition from comic to absurd to serious, and the serious sections didn't seem to fit in at all. They lacked the self-awareness that makes it comfortable to laugh at these pieces. Stearns and Cummings, however, are extremely talented performers whose movement skills complemented their wacky style. The performance included videos by Jonathon Stearns, of which a black and white piece reminiscent of German Expressionism that paralleled the movements of the performers at points was my favorite. The three backup dancers (Adam Haas Hunter, Matthew Bailey, and Leilani Drakeford), CalArts students who seemed to be in the piece mostly to cover the main performers' costume changes, were the most mystifying portion of the perfomance. One of them (or possibly all of them together) seemed to represent a unicorn, so I assume they embodied cliches about fantasy and magic, but they were in the show too much and inconsistently in my opinion. In general, this piece felt much longer than the other segments of the show. I was confused and a little disturbed by the sud

The third new work in the program, "Sacred Cow," was danced and choreographed by Michael Sakamoto with music by Amy Knoles. Knoles was totally cute and fascinating to watch perform, and I'm rarely excited by musicians. Sakamoto moved beautifully and had an amazing combination of facial movements and gestures to communicate moods and ideas subtly. Unfortunately, I had a coughing fit in the middle of this piece and had to step out, so I feel as if I can't talk about the overall structure of the piece, but I did really like what I saw of it. I didn't have much sense of the piece as attacking sacred cows at all. It seemed to me a combination of butoh and Charlie Chaplin, which is fascinating and fun. The LA Times review of the NOW festival gives some sense of the piece, at least to the exclusion of talking about Wong's piece at all.

Announcements

It's been a while since I've done announcements, and these are some random ones, but here are a couple of events I would be going to if I had infinite travel time and money:

The Fresh Fruit Festival in New York (OK, this announcement's a bit late, since the event started on July 10). It's a festival of mostly emerging queer artists and a lot of the performances sound pretty fun, but especially Outsider Dance: Want by Sean Dorsey, who is super-cool. He runs Fresh Meat Productions which puts on a festival of trans performance in San Francisco, and as a dancer he is extremely entertaining and powerful. In the works I've seen, Dorsey combines interesting dance with an engaging personal narrative to make for some fascinating storytelling through movement, music, and voiceover. I highly recommend seeing his work. He's performing on July 22 in New York.

The NOW (New Original Works) Festival at REDCAT. July 20-August 5 in LA. Three weeks of new performances that are bound to be a little bit wacky and weird. I'm definitely going to Program One to see Kristina Wong, who friends have recommended to me many times and who I've only seen so far perform a wacky little piece in a bar. I also hope to see Program 3 because I think John Fleck is an awesome performer and I'd love to see him doing his original work. The people I know who know things about dance say that Program 2 should also be an awesome show because Victoria Marks is super cool. I'm glad that REDCAT is supporting local artists in developing new work.

Femme 2006, August 11-13 in San Francisco. I have some doubts and misgivings about how I fit into this conference, so I didn't apply to present. I'm a little ambivalent about my academic commitment to femmeness, even though I quite enjoy my personal queer femininity. This doesn't appear to be a particularly academic conference, anyway, but the few academic panels there are could be pretty awesome, including one with Gayatri Gopinath whose book is pretty brilliant and who is an excellent speaker. BUT, the reason I'm now thinking about going, even though I had already decided that the conference was a little too touchy-feely and non-academic for me, is the Saturday Night Performance Cabaret. The lineup is fantastic, with several super-fabulous femme burlesque groups, including the Miracle Whips who are LA-based and quite fun. Another LA performer, Darrah de Jour who I've met at local events, will be doing some spoken word. She's as friendly as she is beautiful and I've been wanting to see her perform since I met her. And not all the perfomers are femme. The Transformers are, from all I've heard, a super-fun Bay Area drag/trans performance group who I'd love to see. The conference itself also features its fair share of queer luminaries, including Amber Hollibaugh, Jewelle Gomez, and Del La Grace Volcano taking photos.

I'm not sure I know anyone out there in Colombus, Ohio, but they are presenting the Columbus National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival on Sept. 7-16. The lineup is pretty intriguing (Puppet-queers?), but I would be most interested in seeing S. Bear Bergman's new piece. I can also personally vouch for ryka aoki de la cruz's work as beautiful, thoughtful, and intense.

SoCo a GOGO. Friday, Sept. 22 in Atlanta. Performances by fabulous transmen including, Turner Schofield, who I love and recommend at all possible opportunities, and The Athens Boys Choir, who seem totally cute and I really want to see perform one of these days. Also, Turner is looking for a DJ to donate hir services for that evening, so if you happen to know any DJs who like queer folks and will be in Atlanta in late September, please get in touch with him ASAP.

Trying to make a comedy into a tragedy

Love's Labor's Lost. The Actor's Gang. 7/16/06.

Love's Labor's Lost is fairly strange for a Shakespeare comedy. It ends not with a wedding but a death and the promise of a wedding. There are fairly lengthy scenes of verbal jousting that can be dense and esoteric to a modern audience. And it has a play within a play scene that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the play. The Actor's Gang dealt with some of these issues, but also made some strange choices that didn't necessarily add to the comprehensibility of the play. They played up the bittersweetness of the ending and tried to emphasize the tragedy within the comedy, which left me feeling unsatisfied. The play itself has a fun premise, though it develops a bit oddly - the King of Navarre and three of his men swear to renounce women for 3 years to focus on their studies. As a grad student, I can certainly identify.

The high point of the show was the truly excellent performance of Brian Kimmet as Berowne. He was clear, expressive and delightfully clever. His monologue in which the men swear to renounce the company of women for three years and he argues for women and food as subjects worth studying was a hilarious introduction to the plot. All of the King's court, as a matter of fact, performed well, including Matt Huffman as the King of Navarre, who was working an almost Brad Pitt-esque jawline and a deep, authoritative voice.

In contrast, the low point of the show was the women who played opposite the King's court. Nancy Stone as the Princess, while an extremely skilled actress, was poorly matched with Huffman and in general seemed reserved and humorless, which takes a lot of the comedy out of this comedy. My biggest complaint was the costumes that the women wore, which were entirely sheer so that the women's underwear was visible throughout the show. While I can come up with a couple of slightly esoteric explanations for this decision (my favorite being that the whole production was seeing the world through the eyes of the men, and since they were sex-deprived and sex-obsessed, they were constantly looking at the women's panties), I honestly think it is a poor choice and completely misogynist to have the women walking around in their underwear throughout the show while their male counterparts wore business suits. From the moment they appeared and throughout the play I had absolutely no interest in any member of the female court. Though Sabra Williams as Rosaline did a great job with clarity and expression, and had the sassy power to be a super-fun character, the production seemed to undercut her in ways that prevented her from being a true match with Berowne. Even though she wasn't nearly as harsh, she seemed like a failed prototype for Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing.

Similarly, the play within the play scene near the end of the show seemed like a not-as-successful version of the mechanicals play in A Midummer Night's Dream, but I believe that a lot of the humor was stripped out of it in this production by placing the horrible performance and its snarky commentators in the background with a foreground of actors preparing and the pathos of their hurt when mocked. Playing against the comedy in this scene makes it, and its inturruption by the Princess's father's death, a really disappointing ending to a play that began so promisingly.

This production had some fabulous moments, particularly the dance that opens the second half when everyone inexplicably dresses up as Russians. In fact, that scene was absolutely hilarious and made me happy with the production. But there were so many elements of the show that were misogynist or muddled that it's hard for me to recommend the play. It was especially irritating that there were several moments in which the language directly contradicted the action of the play (ie when Berowne asks about 'the girl in the cap' when no one was wearing a cap, when the King asks Berowne why he's leaving so quickly when he made no attempt to leave, or when one of the women talks about her lover being young and bare-faced when the actor is wearing a prominent fake mustache). If you're going to leave those lines in the play, you need to abide by them in the design and action or it doesn't make sense and distracts people from listening to the words at all. It was a serviceable, but by no means brilliant, interpretation of this problematic comedy. The Actor's Gang's commedia style doesn't work when it fights with the play's script instead of enhancing it, though there were some very funny moments and some stand-out performances. Toni Torres was a truly bewitching Jaquenetta, and Pierre Adeli as Costard was so earnest and funny that I wanted him to end up with the girl. Angela Berliner did a wonderful job as Moth, the witty servant, though stage business frequently undercut her lines and her unmasking herself as female at the end made no sense.

Overall, I have to question director Simon Abkarian's committment to the text of this play. The LA Times has an interesting article on who he is and his background, which sounds promising, but I don't think that it ultimately worked out. I do encourage people to go and decide for themselves, though, because while this production was problematic, it gave me a lot to think about and conceivably other people could like it a lot more than I did. And I am glad I saw the show, even though I didn't love it.

Shiny Penny

Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! REDCAT. 7/14/06.

Penny Arcade, the performance persona of Susana Ventura appeared in Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! this week as a part of Outfest, an event that has been scandalously neglected in this blog.

Penny Arcade developed Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! in response to the NEA censorship and other events of the early '90s. Though I'm sure it has evolved over time, the piece has been performed sporadically since 1990 (although this was the first time it was performed in LA). As a result, the show feels a little bit dated at times, but it has moments of brilliance.

The first thing you see at Bitch!Dyke!... is the dancers. Seven performers opened the show by dancing for the whole time that the audience was being seated and then some. This was a beautiful, fairly diverse group of people who each moved in their own ways, performing something between pole dancing, gogo dancing, and just dancing for themselves for the joy of it. The big suprise was that one of the dancers was the truly stunning Kevin Aviance, only a month after he was severely beaten outside a gay bar. His contribution to this show was incredibly powerful, demonstrating unbelievable strength and generosity. All of these dancers worked hard throughout the show and did an excellent job. I would have liked to see them more integrated into Arcade's main performance.

Other than interludes of the dancers, the show was mostly a solo performance/monologue by Penny Arcade, and some of it was brilliant and some of it was rather redundant, but I think that what she had to say was important and very much worth hearing. She moved backwards through the epithets in the performance's title, starting with "whore" and implying that performance art is sex work. "Faghag" was by far my favorite section of the show, with some incredibly accurate observations about the women who are close to gay men and the ways they relate to each other. This section also alluded to Penny Arcade's history with some VERY FABULOUS gay men. That, of course, is the story I would have liked to hear. Arcade only briefly talked about that moment in the Village with Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Charles Ludlum, and all the rest. There must be some great stories to tell and I would have loved to hear them.

What Arcade did instead was march through gay (male) culture and style from Stonewall to the present day. She condemned current gay people for being so normative, for not accepting drag queens, for being too "straight." The whole thing was a bit of a rant, but in a way she has a point; while this isn't something new, it does bear repeating. She was arguing for acceptance within queer communities rather than policing borders based on identity, which does tend to be a problem. Her most memorable line was "I'm so queer I'm not even gay" which incorporates a lot of meaning into a few words, though it is also problematic. The most affecting section of the performance was her discussion of AIDS and a very moving account of watching her friends get sick and die. She ended this section with the whole audience dancing to "I Will Survive," which was totally fun, but a really odd break in the middle of the show - it was strange to sit down and be an audience again after discoing.

After the break, Arcade performed the "controversial" section on censorship that included video of Jack Smith performing part of Lenny Bruce's piece on censorship, which was a really cool thing to get to see. She played with perception, making the audience sit in the dark and listen to her compared with seeing her naked and listening to her and how each functioned as a method of performance.

The whole show was a bit of a lecture, but it had some truly wonderful moments and I would definately want to see Penny Arcade perform again. She has some of the style and spirit and the memories of a generation of queer performance artists who need to be remembered, discussed, and recreated. Their spirits should be conjured whenever possible, and Penny Arcade clearly learned from the best. She reminds me of Sarah Schulman - didactic and a little angry, but for good reason and with a lot to say.

If you can get to the REDCAT tonight, go!

Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! REDCAT. 7/14/06.

Penny Arcade is fascinating, if somewhat problematic. I'll offer a full post later, but go tonight if you can. There will be performances by Kevin Aviance, Kristina Wong, and John Fleck, who are all super cool.

CTG Watch

The Center Theatre Group has announced its new season for all three theaters.

On the up side, not ALL of the shows are by straight white men this year. But it's also not exactly the land of inclusive and risk-taking theater, either. All but one of the Ahmanson Theatre shows, which were announced a while ago, are major Broadway hits of the past year or two with major stars in them. I'm actually kind of interested in seeing these shows, even though I'm annoyed by their lack of innovation, so I can't be too critical.

The Mark Taper Forum, however, is the season with which I am most disappointed. It's the space in which I'd like to see exciting new productions and the space in which Gordon Davidson's legacy of socially aware, revolutionary productions is strongest. Doubt at the Ahmanson as part of the Taper Season is just a cop out. 13, a musical "performed by all-teen actors plus a hot teen band" sounds like a bunch of old men trying to seem young and hip. Distracted, which is at least a world premiere and by a woman, so I should like it, sounds kind of boring and unsatisfying. I am curious about YellowFace, since I do rather like David Henry Hwang and I'm glad to see him getting productions.

While I'm not thrilled about the Kirk Douglas season, it could be good. Dogeaters could be exciting, even though it's just a transfer of a production from Playwrights Arena, a local theater company who can't even seem to manage to geth their website to work. The Kirk Douglas season at least has some significant diversity (although a major lack of queer representation). I'm rather concerned about A Waitress in Yellowstone; I'm not a huge David Mamet fan at all, and I really suspect his abilities as a musical writer.

Overall, this season is much more diverse than last season, which reeked patriarchy with a hint of tokenism. I'm glad to see a bit of improvement, but I'm still not excited about their shows, and they don't seem to be including any queer subject matter at all.