Delightful Deaf West Production of Pippin

Pippin. The Mark Taper Forum. 2/24/09.

Deaf West Theatre and CTG have produced a truly magical production of Pippin. An extraordinary cast and a thorough reworking of Stephen Schwartz's 1972 musical make this show captivating and refreshing. They streamlined the show's book, cut some songs, did the whole thing in sign language, and made me fall in love with this musical all over again.

Most striking in this production were the actors playing Pippin: Michael Arden (singing) and Tyrone Giordano (signing). By doubling the character, these two actors made Pippin into a much more compelling character than he often appears. For the first time, I didn't find Pippin vapid and self-centered as a character, and I wasn't bored during his long, solipsistic solos. Arden's voice was strikingly beautiful and incredibly expressive while Giordano's signing and acting allowed the character to emote with his body at the same time. Usually, Pippin is the least interesting thing about Pippin, and in this production, that wasn't the case. The decision to bifurcate the character was a stroke of genius, and while I'm not entirely convinced by the decision to have the two versions of Pippin interact at the climax of the play, watching the two Pippins enlivened the whole production.

The revised book, including the added song "Back Home Again" solved many of the problems with Pippin's pacing. They did the whole thing straight through without an intermission, which is the way it should be (otherwise Act II drags - a lot). Unfortunately, this means they cut "Extraordinary," which is a fairly important song to express Pippin's character, and which is echoed frequently in the show's book. I think they'd be better off keeping at least one verse of the song to help develop Pippin's character.

Visually, director Jeff Calhoun's production emphasizes magic, literally, rather than the spectacular theatricality that generally frames the show. Instead of actor/dancers, the the Leading Player (played by Ty Taylor) is costumed as a magician with some of the players as magicians' assistants. While the production does its best to emphasize this idea of magic through recurring stage tricks, shortchanging the theatricality undermines the sense of the ensemble as a theater company and the sense of group bonding and character that Pippin usually has. The players are usually a lot more compelling than Pippin, and that certainly isn't the case here. The ensemble, like the Leading Player, are less seductively threatening than usual in this production. Although Taylor's performance was fine and his voice strong and sexy, I just didn't find myself compelled to watch him. This may have been because the staging placed him front and center while my seat was off to the side of the 3/4 round thrust stage. Because this show was originally a Fosse show, replacing the dancing with signing makes for a few disappointments. Without the dancing, "Magic to Do" and "War is a Science" are a lot less fun than they could be, although "On the Right Track" had just the right mix of choreography and sign language to be a joy to watch.

My major concern with the production was that the emphasis on magic casts the female players as magicians' assistants. Pippin is already not a very feminist show (although the show-stopping star turn for Pippin's earthy grandmother, played in this production by Harriet Harris, is always fabulous); reducing the female ensemble from a group of sexy Fosse dancers to four girls who flourish a lot with their hands is extremely disappointing. This LA Times blog article emphasizes how the production replaces dancing with hands, and that first moment in which hands emerge from the stage is indeed a pure moment of theatrical magic, but I think the production overuses this gimmick at the expense of fragmenting the women's bodies, reducing them to just hands and arms rather than whole people. The girls were fine, but I felt like they were just there to make 'ta-da' gestures and fill out the orgy scene. Similarly, the much-needed trimming of the second act reduces the role of Catherine (played by Melissa van der Schyff). Portraying and costuming her as a country-western star was an extremely clever decision that showcased van der Schyff's voice well, but the role as ordinary housewife and love interest is still only moderately developed and serves as a marker to frame Pippin's story. From a feminist perspective, the women in this play almost might as well not be there, and this production exacerbated rather than ameliorated their irrelevance.

Despite some minor complaints, however, I give this show a hearty recommendation. I thoroughly loved the performance and I'm delighted by Deaf West's innovative theatricality.

Shameless Promotion: Fringes-Margins-Borders LGBT show at Highways

OK, I'm going to post the press release, but I want you to know that I personally stand behind this show and proudly, vociferously encourage you to attend. It's a great collection of artists, and I have seen performances by Scott Turner Schofield, Sean Dorsey, and Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa (aka Devil Bunny in Bondage); they are charismatic, intelligent performers who will make this show truly fantastic. If you don't believe me, Schofield and Otálvaro-Hormillosa have great video clips on their websites.

They're even offering tickets at a “pay what you can price” if you make reservations by Friday, February 27 by calling the reservation line – 310-315-1459 and saying “pay what you can.” So hurry and reserve your tickets now before they sell out!

Highways Performance Space Presents
Fringes-Margins-Borders, a Radical New Works Performance Project Designed to Initiate Community Across Artificially and Socially Constructed Identity Divides
Friday and Saturday, March 6 + 7, 2009 at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
Highways Performance Space
at the 18th Street Arts Center
1651 18th Street; Santa Monica, CA 90404

Highways Performance Space Presents the Los Angeles leg of a four-city tour of Fringes-Margins-Borders, an exchange of Queer Artists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. The show will feature LA artists Deadlee, Ian MacKinnon, Saleem, Scott Turner Schofield and San Francisco Artists: Stephanie Cooper, Sean Dorsey Dance, and Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa. Fringes-Margins-Borders is a multidisciplinary performance project of new works drawn from personal narratives designed to initiate community across artificially and socially constructed identity divides. For the tour, Highways is partnering with San Francisco’s Queer Cultural Center and San Diego’s Sushi Performance and Visual Art.

L.A. Artists:
Deadlee is a wordsmith, actor, activist, and entrepreneur. Deadlee quickly earned a position as a key player in music's latest underground movement, gay rap/hip hop. His involvement in the first ever regional tour of GLBT hip hop artists sparked mentions in the press from the New York Daily News, Rolling Stone, Wired Magazine, XXL Magazine, The Advocate, L.A. Weekly, Philadelphia Gay News, Urb, Instinct, and Variety. He was interviewed not once but twice by CNN regarding homophobia and hip hop and the launch of the HomoRevolution Tour 2007. He was also one of the 18 gay hip hop artists featured in the landmark documentary film on gays in hip hop called Pick up the Mic which was picked up by the LOGO network after making the festival circuit. He has performed in several movies including Vengeance and Dead Men Walking, and just completed his first starring role as “Lazy” in the just released film Hoochie Mamma Drama.

Ian MacKinnon is a gay centered performance artist and curator of queer theater events in Los Angeles. He was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Best Off Off Broadway Performance" for his piece, SPANKED! at the New York International Fringe Festival, which he also toured to The New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. MacKinnon appeared in the premier episode of the TV show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and in the short film, "Heart: A Karaoke Fantasia" (Outfest). MacKinnon's musical performance collective The Discount Cruise to Hell was named "#1 Best Indescribable Artist in LA" in Frontiers magazine and "Most Outrageous" at UCLA's 2006 Carnival at The Fowler Museum.

Saleem is an award wining Middle Eastern performance artist, best known for his GLAAD award wining play Salam Shalom A Tale Of Passion, a love story between an Arab man and a Jewish man based on his own biography, the work is being developed as a film. As a dancer, he has developed his own dancing style, which incorporates Middle Eastern dance, gypsy movements, flamenco, and jazz. This mélange produces what he terms “free style belly dancing.” Also equipped with a masters in business administration from Colorado State University, he manages and runs his own events promotion company "club La Zeez " which promotes world music and Mediterranean beats.

Scott Turner Schofield is a man who was a woman, a lesbian turned straight guy who is often called a fag. Since 2001, Schofield's three major works, Underground Transit, Debutante Balls, and Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps - as well as readings from his book, Two Truths and a Lie - have entertained feminists and fratboys, season subscribers and people who “don't like theater” in big cities and small towns across the US. His performance work spreads empathy and education about gender identity and sexual orientation with shows that are as hilarious as they are touching, thought provoking, and beautifully performed. Almost entirely grassroots supported and the recipient of major mainstream honors, Schofield's is a simple complexity: one that must be engaged to be fully understood.

San Francisco Artists:
Sean Dorsey is an award-winning San Francisco-based choreographer and dancer. Recognized as the nation’s first out transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has blazed a new trail for transgender and queer bodies and stories onstage. Dorsey has been awarded two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance. He was recently named Best Dance/Performance Company by the SF Weekly, and has also been named one of the Top Ten in Bay Area dance by both the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Bay Area Reporter. BalletTanz, Europe’s leading dance magazine, named Dorsey one of the international dance scene’s most promising choreographers. Dorsey is the subject of a recent PBS ‘Spark’ episode. Dorsey is also founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first organization that creates and presents year-round transgender arts programs. Fresh Meat’s programs include the outrageously popular Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance, Sean Dorsey Dance, visual arts exhibitions and co-presenting the annual Tranny Fest film festival.

The consummate candy-fag, Thisway/Thatway (aka Stephanie Cooper) is an intermedia performance artist who enjoys the messy collision of glitter and theory. They launched into performance with the finest of Washington, DC's drag king and burlesque scene before wandering to the Bay area. The child of Black-Panamanian immigrants, their work explores the perils and possibilities of interstitial spaces through voice, video, and movement. Thisway/Thatway has performed with the National Queer Arts Festival, SF Fringe Festival, Climate Theater, Counterpulse, Voice Factory, Garage Artspace, Femme Conference, Toronto Pride, Great Big,and International Drag King Extravaganza. Thisway/Thatway is currently preparing Laye(red), a show commissioned through the Queer Cultural Center set to debut in the 2009 NQAF. When not on stage, they can be seen as "smarty-pants student" at Mills College pursuing a bachelor's degree in Ethnic Studies. Cooper will continue in the Performance Studies doctoral program at UC Davis this fall.

Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, also known as the Devil Bunny in Bondage, is a San Francisco based interdisciplinary performance artist, video artist, cultural activist, curator and percussionist of Filipino and Colombian descent. She is originally from Miami, Florida and received her B.A. from Brown University where she created an independent concentration entitled "Hybridity and Performance." She has worked with non-profit arts organizations and HIV prevention service agencies such as the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida, New Langton Arts, Galería de la Raza, the Queer Cultural Center, Asian American Theater Company and the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center. She has worked on various artistic collaborations under the mentorship and direction of performing artists such as Pearl Ubungen, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Elia Arce and Afia Walking Tree. Her work in performance, video and writing has been presented nationally and internationally. She has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2000-2001), the San Francisco Art Commission Cultural Equity Grants Program, the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize and the Zellerbach Family Fund.

Highways Performance Space presents the Los Angeles dates of the tour Friday + Saturday, March 6 + 7 at 8:30pm and Sunday, March 8 at 3:00pm.

“I find that in our LGBTQ community we tend to isolate from the other,” Highways’ artistic director Leo Garcia says. “We find comfort in being with those who are like us. Fringes-Margins-Borders is a new kind of Highways’ performing arts program designed to initiate a creative community-building public dialogue. It’s our ongoing effort to promote understanding and mutual respect across artificially and socially constructed identity divides. The production’s artistic goal is to express and reflect California’s new multicultural social paradigm by commissioning 8 individual artists to create coherent, intelligent and insightful narratives rooted in their observations, complaints, experiences and discoveries. We’re touring four cities with this project, San Francisco, L.A., Claremont and San Diego. We couldn’t do it without the support of the Irvine Foundation and the National Performance Network.”

Fringes-Margins-Borders reflects the contradictory opinions and values generated by California’s profound demographic changes of the past forty years. The artists attempt to capture this complex moment in California’s history, when the state’s social fabric and its cultural landscape are being transformed into something entirely different than they were before the Millennium. Because people of color comprise the majority of California’s population and because the state’s LGBT residents are equally distributed across all demographic groups, the art being created on what were formerly regarded as California’s “margins” is now moving to center stage.

Highways Performance Space is in its 20th year as Southern California’s boldest center for new performance, promoting the development of contemporary, socially involved artists and art forms from diverse local, national and international communities. Artistic Director Leo Garcia continues to affirm Highways mission of developing and presenting innovative performance. For more information, photos or interviews, please contact Leo Garcia, Artistic Director @ 310-453-1755.

The project is sponsored in part by the James Irvine Foundation and is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project.

Reviews: Bad Scifi Night

So every week or two, a handful of musicologists and I get together and watch old scifi movies. Most of them are truly awful. They are generally chosen with no criteria whatsoever, although a scandalous title or provocative cover art tend to attract our attention. I tend to gravitate toward movies from the '50s or ones with female characters, one of my friends prefers movies set in space. Barbarella and Teenagers from Outer Space have been our favorite choices so far. I can't promise reviews of all our viewings, since I am frequently not paying full critical attention while watching, and many of these films defy all attempts at comprehension, but I thought I would share my experiences when I can.

She Wolves of the Wasteland (1988). aka Phoenix Rising: The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which all of the men are dead. A tribe of evil bounty hunters ruled by a creepy Reverend Mother pursue a pair of leggy blondes, one of whom happens to be illicitly impregnated with stolen sperm that will produce a male child. The bounty hunters are delightfully dyke-y in their fashion choices (that's how you know they're bad), while our renegade heroes wear bikini tops and loincloths while they fight to preserve the heterosexual family. The main point of this film is its scenes of girl-on-girl fighting and topless waterfall frolicking. There is a tragic lack of lesbian relationships considering a world without men, but if you're into post-apocalyptic sexploitation films and girls with guns, this one's for you!

Assignment: Outer Space (1960) aka Space Men. In this film, Rik Van Nutter plays Ray Peterson, a self-centered reporter who is assigned to report on a space station mission, immediately clashes with the station captain and finds himself entangled in a disaster that threatens to destroy the earth. Although there are several bases and colonies on other planets, apparently the destruction of Earth implies the end of civilization and thus several people must risk their lives to save the planet. The convolutions the plot takes to get the characters into high-risk situations make no sense whatsoever and for some reason everything is much slower than it should be. There is exactly one African-American in the movie who is kindly, wise, and self-sacrificing and one woman for whom the men risk their lives. This film was a little too slow for me and the special effects were absurdly low-budget and hard to follow. Why in the world couldn't they set fire to the models to show the ships being destroyed? At one point we took to counting how many times the same shot of the spaceship taking off was used. This is not a particularly good movie, and the hilarious terribleness of the special effects is diminished by the plodding pacing.

So those are my responses for this week's scifi selections. I'll take recommendations if there's anything out there you'd like to suggest for reviewing, but all final screening decisions are reached by consensus. As usual, my reviews will tend to come from a queer/feminist perspective, so if you don't want to hear how this movie could be made better by more female characters or explicit homoeroticism, look elsewhere for your recommendations.

Another Season at the Ahmanson

CTG announced the new season at the Ahmanson, and I don't even really have the energy to complain about it. It's boring, but fine. Nothing new, nothing interesting, just transfers of shows that got a lot of attention on Broadway: Spamalot, August: Osage County, Mary Poppins, South Pacific, and, as a "bonus" not included with the season, An Evening with Patty LuPone and Mandy Patinkin. If the tickets are cheap enough, I might actually consider seeing some of these shows (South Pacific is dissertation related), but they feel like giving up. The Ahmanson is telling us they have no interest in producing new work or programming interesting, quirky, or offbeat productions, they have no interest in making L.A. anything but a second or third stop for Broadway shows before they go on full national tours. Fine. I think the Ritchie quote in the Times summarizes it perfectly: "What's not to love?" Ritchie said. "You look at that season and there isn't anyone who doesn't say: 'I want to see those five shows.'" Even he isn't arguing that these are good choices or a good season; they're just the things people have heard about. He sounds like a slightly more eloquent George W. Bush - self-satisfied and unintelligent.

Saying that, my real point is, what's up with this season programming? They're announcing the Ahmanson season now and it begins in June, but I just this week subscribed to the current season at the Taper that starts now and goes through next October. WTF? Couldn't they at least be consistent across one organization about when the year starts and stops? Plus, as an academic, I really wish they could either follow the the academic year - it's really hard for me to commit to shows for next October.

Depression and Theater Economics

Minksy's. Ahmanson Theatre. 2/11/09.

First and foremost, Minsky's is a fun show. I laughed out loud, really. It's cute, entertaining fare and I wouldn't hesitate to take my parents. It may not be as good as Kiss Me Kate or Guys and Dolls, but wants to be a cross between the two in the tradition of the backstage musical with a genuine love for the theater and a happy little romance plot. Everyone who I've talked to has good things to say about it. It's intended to follow Curtains and The Drowsy Chaperone in transferring to Broadway and it will probably do just fine there.

However, I can't say that means I'm an unequivocal fan. The show had some charming moments, and the closing number, "Nothing Lasts Forever," was truly delightful, but much of the show was rough going, especially at the beginning. The first two numbers, both "rehearsal" scenes at Minsky's Burlesque Palace, did a terrible job at establishing the characters or making me feel sympathetic toward our leading man. It really took far too long for either of the leads to interest me at all. By the end I was fan, and Christopher Fitzgerald did an excellent job as Billy Minsky, but he needed much better character development earlier in the show. In fact, most of the characters could use more development early on - just because they're recognizable types doesn't mean I'll care about them. Overall, the show was deliberately filled with tired jokes and routines, hoping that the comfort of the familiar will make the old feel new again.

As a theater historian, I find the show's representation of burlesque fascinating but problematic. Rather than being either entertaining or provocative, Minsky's starts out just stripping the girls almost naked and starting from there. From everything I know about burlesque, it may not be classy, but the point is at least partially the humor and the tease, not just the fact that the girls aren't wearing very much. While I liked the clever humor of "Keep it Clean" in which the girls spend most of the number just barely covering themselves with towels as they bathe, several of the other "burlesque" numbers seem to miss the point of burlesque altogether. The show plays fast and loose with both the source material and the historical background in order to create a setting that feels more contemporary, but the attempt to be relevant feels heavy-handed and personally, I think both the historical facts and the film version seem more interesting.

Minsky's is trying to be all-too-contemporary in its discussion of the economic downturn (read: Great Depression) and culture wars, but it seems to be doing so without quite enough self-awareness to feel contemporary. The message seems to be that some good, old-fashioned entertainment is the solution to all economic problems, as evidenced by the number "You Gotta Get Up When You're Down," but the show doesn't really establish that the Depression is really the problem. They keep mentioning it, but it would be nice to see the economic hardship actually performed (perhaps in an opening musical number?). Instead, the show starts with rehearsal and then psychiatrists, which, while hilarious, seem like a luxury in times of economic hardship. The message of the show, as evidenced in the title of the NY Times review: What's the Cure for those Depression Blues? Hoofing in Your Scanties. The idea that theater is part of the cure for economic and psychological depression is a good one, though not at all well developed in Minsky's - the show just served to remind me of my underemployed status and how I should go to cheaper theater than the Broadway-bound show (even though I didn't pay for the ticket). I just kept feeling that I would have more fun and excitement and less guilt if I saw smaller, cheaper theater. I don't think that's really the message the Ahmanson wants so send right now.

In fact, the whole thing made me want to go to some actual burlesque, which isn't as dead as the musical wants me to think.

Good News/Bad News

Last week, The LA Times reported that CTG is planning a series of minimally staged new works at the Kirk Douglas Theater. Any return to supporting new work is a good thing, but this is a far cry from the commitment to diversity and emerging artists that CTG used to offer. It's a good thing that they're willing to program things that might not entice an audience through the subscription model, but I want to note that the shows they announced sound like more of the same boys' club that Ritchie programs at the Douglas and the Taper. Here's the lineup:

--"Darwin," March 14 only, 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.

--Mike Daisey's "How Theater Failed America," directed by Jean-Michele Gregory. March 18-21, 8 p.m.

--Workshop performance of Daisey's newest work, "The Last Cargo Cult," March 22, 3 p.m.

--World premiere of "The Projectionist," by L.A. playwright Michael Sargent, directed by Bart DeLorenzo, March 26-28, 8 p.m.; April 2-3, 8 p.m.; April 4, 7:30 and 9 p.m.

--Staged public workshops of the hip-hop musical "Venice," by Matt Sax and Eric Rosen ("Clay"), April 15-18, 8 p.m.

First of all, note that ALL of the shows are by men. In fact, as a far as I can tell from the descriptions, all of the shows are by and/or about straight and/or white men. If that's not more of the same, I don't know what is. Is it really that hard to program even one show by a woman? One of the shows is by L.A. artists, which is good and I highly approve of the choice of Bart DeLorenzo as a director, but otherwise, it seems to me that this programming isn't particularly different from the rest of Richie's programming.

These shows are clearly trying too hard to be "young" and "edgy" and trying to appeal to a young audience. But really, Richie seems overly enamored with the gimmicky aspects of hip-hop theater, and Darwin's "electroluminescent dinosaur." They're not even really particularly cheap, even through they're promoting lower ticket prices as appealing to younger crowds. The $20 ticket price is the same discount price they're offering on their expanded HotTix program for all CTG shows. If you were actually interested in seeing all of these works, it would be $100, which isn't exactly affordable for a young audience. They might succeed in some one-off new attendees who already happen to be fans of these particular artists or have heard of but not seen their work, but this doesn't seem like it will manage to really build a new audience for CTG programming or even for the artists they're supporting.

Thanks to Frank's Wild Lunch for pointing me to the article.

Returning to Old Habits

I won't say I'm back, because that sounds a little like overpromising when I haven't updated this blog in half a year, but if anyone is listening or stumbling across, I apologize for my silence. It has accompanied a difficult period in which I finished my dissertation and found myself both overworked and underemployed. Adjunct teaching and applying for jobs doesn't lend itself to stimulating blog discourse, unfortunately, and I admit that I've probably been pretty depressed. I also hadn't been attending much theater, which was the point of this thing after all. So I've poked around under the hood to give the place a new look, and an updated list of links to things which actually exist (yay!) and hopefully I will have a more exciting life worthy of report and analysis.

I am also returning to old habits, many of which have been sorely neglected in the past year or so. I'm having friends over regularly for communal TV-viewing (Battlestar Galactica, Gossip Girl, Top Chef, and Big Love are the current favorites) and getting together with friends for Bad Sci-Fi film viewings, which are fabulous. After much soul searching, I renewed my subscription to the Mark Taper Forum even though I feel like their programing is still too white, middle-class, and heterosexual. Having the season ticket gets me to go out and see theater that I wouldn't necessarily choose for myself, and that's probably a good thing, even if I'm terribly nostalgic for the days when Gordon Davidson programed theater worth caring about; I still really hate Michael Ritchie's taste. I've also started opening up my RSS reader again, so I'm getting caught up on friends' blogs, local events, and the voices that have been absent from my life for the past year or so. I'm doing some research on local history here in Los Angeles and working on revising a dissertation chapter into an article, and hopefully those projects will help inspire new ideas to share with the world. So, maybe I'm back to blogging as well. It's a good time for new starts.

Adventures in Retro LA

I had the most amazing weekend exploring the fabulousness of Los Angeles history. Almost by coincidence, I found myself visiting some of the sites of the city's popular history, places the exemplify the layers of the urban past in all their commercial glory and whimsical exuberance.

It began on Friday with a trip to Disneyland in the rain. Because of the rain there were almost no lines, so we explored all of the rides I usually don't bother with, including several of the attractions that date back to opening day: The Jungle Cruise, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Scary Adventures, the Storybook Land Canal Boats, and Peter Pan's Flight. We even went into the Main Street Cinema and watched "Plane Crazy" and "Steamboat Willie." I went with people who know Disneyworld and see Disneyland as a quaint cousin of the larger park, but for me it represents both childhood memories and the embodiment of the local myth of Southern California as a place of wild dreams and playful innovation.

On Saturday, I had tickets with a friend to "Something to Crow About" at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in celebration of Baker's 85th birthday. I knew it was shameful that I had lived in L.A. for so long without attending the Marionette Theater, and this was a delightful opportunity to learn about it. There was short film about the history of Baker's work, which is amazing, and then Baker and host Charles Phoenix (Who is fabulous! His voice and his suits make me swoon!) presented a short slideshow of Baker's personal history as puppeteer to the studios and the stars. Following an intermission featuring free wine and/or fruit punch, the puppeteers of Baker's studio presented "Something to Crow About," a marionette show originally performed in 1959. The performance combined the classic humor of a mid-century vaudeville or variety act with a surprising liveliness that skillful puppeteers gave to the marionettes (and one of the puppeteers was totally a cute girl with a pixie haircut, yay!). The show culminated in Baker himself manipulating a marionette of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson demonstrating tap steps. It was very impressive! The whole evening was truly a delight.

Before the show, we ate dinner at Clifton's Cafeteria, where the food was ok, but the decor was fabulous. The interior is decorated as a woodland wonderland, complete with waterfall and strange stuffed animals (and wandering Mariachi singer - isn't that what you expect in the forest?). This location has been serving Los Angeles since 1935!

We finished our evening at Tiki Ti, the last of the great LA tiki bars, founded in 1961. We enjoyed potent rum-based cocktails at the very crowded (and mysteriously populated predominently by straight men) bar, amusing ourselves with the video menu's descriptions and taglines for all the drinks (all of which are hilarious, and many of which I hope to try at some point).

I know that people from back east and other countries scoff at a city where a bar founded in the 1960s is considered an icon of urban history, but each of the locations I visited this weekend is a tribute to the magic and artifice of local culture in the booming mid-century. I have visited the missions, ranchos and pueblos of earlier California history, but there's something about L.A. that evokes elaborate architecture of 20th century modernism. It is in many ways a city of the 1950s and visiting the shrines to mid-century Southern California culture feels like finding the soul of the city to me. I am absolutely delighted by my weekend of local exploration, and I think the retro-fabulousness of these locations, while evoking kitsch and nostalgia, also feels appropriate for this city of the Golden West.

Marriage Day

Gay marriage has never been a top priority to me. In addition to the fact that I'm perpetually single, I also happen to believe that the LGBT community should be working to assure that men and women are treated equally under the law regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, or perceived gender identity. Marriage could then follow logically, but never seemed to me a necessary first step. But today, I must admit, I'm very proud to be queer in California and to feel that for the first time, the State Supreme Court declared me equal under the law and realized that this was an issue of equal protection and nothing less. That is a beautiful thing.

Even more beautiful are the lives that changed today. I've been reading stories and looking at pictures and I can't help but cry to see all of the gay and lesbian couples, with their parents and siblings and children watching, who have cemented their relationships with the full sanction of the state today. The images in the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle are truly inspiring.

I must say, I wish I saw more women in tuxes, or any men in dresses. At least in these two major media outlets, the images are mostly of good looking matched couples in suits or white wedding dresses. I do love these guys' outfits. The relatively palatable imagery is a deliberate campaign to avoid providing fodder for the hatred of the other side, as reported here in the LA Times. Of course, this just makes the conventional imagery even more odious to me. I'd much rather see people also getting married in plaid jackets or punk rock gear or leather and drag queens in bridal gown glory and everything else that makes the queer community beautiful and diverse and distinct. In the months between now and November (and hopefully long after) I hope people will get the chance to have all the beautiful, outrageous, queer weddings that they want. And for now, matching suits or bridal gowns are pretty beautiful, too.

Oh, and in closing, one of the many things that made me cry today was this lovely blog post by (heterosexual) sci-fi writer John Scalzi, who happens to share his anniversary with this historic day. This is truly how to be a friend and ally.

Time to Play

Finding myself with some free time for the first time in a very long time, I'm feeling a strange compulsion to play games. Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a gamer. I don't play many video games (although I do have a Nintendo DS), computer games, or board games, but many of my closest friends do all of these things. I have friends who are huge fans of Settlers of Catan. When Bioshock and Portal came out, I heard everything about them even though I've never played either. I even have friends who play a regular D&D game, but I'm not one of them. I've lost many friends to World of Warcraft. I'm a big fan of Apples to Apples at parties, but in general I am at best a casual gamer who will occasionally play a game of Babble or other solitary games.

However, gaming has come up in my life a lot recently. Not just because my brilliant best friend studies and designs games, although that doesn't hurt. He'll be running around New York as part of the Come Out and Play festival this weekend. I also, completely randomly, found myself playing dice with friends outside of a coffeehouse yesterday.

Finding myself craving some gaming recently, I downloaded the new Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One. I found the whole thing highly amusing, though overpriced for its length. The situations are hilarious and I found the aesthetic entertaining. The turn-based action was a bit annoying, but overall the game itself was fun and made me laugh. I enjoyed it quite a bit, except that it was over too quickly. I will probably play the next episode, but I hope it's cheaper.

I've said for a year and a half that once I finished my dissertation I could get a Wii, and now that I've filed, I'm hoping that my parents will give it to me as a graduation gift, but considering that there still aren't any on store shelves, I'm not particularly optimistic that my parents will come through.

In other gaming news, I watched Jane McGonigal's talk, "Saving the World Through Game Design" from the 2008 New Yorker Conference on their website. It's a fairly familiar but quite interesting and simple explanation of what's going on in gaming and how it helps us see and deal with our lives differently. Prophboy sent me this link about how GTA IV changes the way players experience New York City. And at GigaOm, Nabeel Hyatt of Conduit Labs tries to define social gaming by distinguishing between synchronous and asynchronus games.

None of these things, however, has satisfied my craving for gaming. So I ask the internet, what games should I be playing? What am I missing out on? Should I try to organize a game night with my friends to play board and card games? Invest in a console? Try to convince my Wii and XBox-owning friends to invite me over to play? Or just read some more gaming news and theory?

Stealing the Spotlight

Spotlight Stealerz. Highways Performance Space. 5/31/08.

D'Lo, Adelina Anthony, and Alison M. De La Cruz teamed up for this hilarious show at Highways, and while each (well, I can attest to D'Lo and Adelina) are amazing solo performers, they also make a wonderful team. The evening was a collection of sketches and skits, and while some scenes missed the mark or were overly serious for an evening of comedy, altogether they put on a great show.

I was amazed by each artist's work developing characters; they ranged from butch to femme to male to female to young to old to skunk and each character was clearly established through costume and mannerism as well as script. Each artist was brave in exploring both their own established identity positions and crossing the boundaries to perform outside their own identities. While Adelina as a 20-year-old boy was impressive, D'Lo in drag as a femme bank cashier was truly astonishing both because of how well it was done and how unexpected it was.

The throughline of the piece, which I found quite compelling, featured De La Cruz as a baby butch (recently converted from femme) exploring butch identity through conversation with an elderly butch/femme couple in a nursing home. Several of the other characters fit into this storyline, though that only became clear in retrospect. The establishment of this plot was extremely cleverly arranged, but I would have liked to see even more of these characters, and perhaps have seen them established earlier. I would have loved to see what the butch character (Frankie) was like as a femme (rather than being told several times) and what Frankie was like on dates. Perhaps we even could have seen the elderly couple when they were young. Several of the issues discussed between these three characters were fascinating and could have been fleshed out more, but this is only a minor consideration.

Overall, the evening was hilarious and showcased some very talented artists who have great chemistry together. I hope I get to see these three work together again soon. In the meantime, I've marked my calendar to see D'Lo in Ramble-Ations: A One D'Lo Show at Highways June 27-28.

How do you choose internet talent?

Another super geeky post. At least it's not ranting about the failures of MLA citation formats. Because I could go on for quite a while about that right now.

So there's this video podcast called Mahalo Daily. It used to be hosted by Veronica Belmont, and she was fabulous. She was so fabulous, that I watched even though the vast majority of the episodes were about things I didn't care about. They do 5 minute daily segments about businesses and events and activities, mostly based here in LA, and while I was totally amused when she visited a cupcake shop or flew a plane, they weren't things I would normally have chosen to watch if they didn't involve such an interesting, smart, cool host. The best episodes were when her geekier side came out, like when she visited the Star Trek set. But Veronica left to host Tekzilla instead. I think it's super awesome that she wanted a geekier, more tech-heavy show, but what will Mahalo be without her?

I would have automatically stopped watching, since the subject doesn't particularly interest me, except for the fact that the one already announced cohost is Lon Harris. He's smart and funny and I know this from personal experience because I went to high school with him (he was a couple of years ahead of me, but still, I feel like if someone I know and more or less liked is doing something cool, I should watch it).

Now, they are trying to replace Veronica, and the way they are doing that I find fascinating. They chose Lon from inside their ranks - he was apparently already working at Mahalo, they asked him to do a couple of episodes while Veronica was still there, he did them well, so he gets more airtime. This makes sense. But they don't want Lon to host alone. They may want more variety, or it may be because they think a pretty girl will drive more internet traffic, or they may just be trying to recreate the fabulousness that is Veronica's on camera personality. So they're doing a reality-TV-style competition to choose Lon's cohost.

They're down to 6 finalists, and you should totally watch their videos and vote here.

There are some great choices and I'm sure any of them would be excellent hosts. Lon does a great rundown of each contestant's strengths on his blog. And for another female voice (besides mine, not Lon's), TheFemGeek offers her opinions.

Personally, I think both Sarah and Leah had a great blend of professionalism and quirky/geeky feel. Personally, I voted for Leah, but Sarah really has the tech cred. Her blog is @w00d's nerdtainment, which is fabulously geeky.

Andrea is really cute, but doesn't strike me as geeky as I'd like her to be. I felt like she was flirting more than hosting.

Part of me really would like to see Kristina win because of her fabulous hair and the geekiness of choosing a sound guy for her interview, but something felt awkward about her segment. She has the least experience, and it's possible that with a little practice she could be great.

Michelle has an edge of toughness that I really like (plus actual web design experience!), but in the end she didn't stand out for me.

Nadine looked great, but I don't think I learned anything or cared much about her segment. I may not be the right audience for cage fighting. She's very natural on camera, though.

So that's my opinion on the contestants, but I also want to weigh in on the overall format of this selection process. The reality TV parody bits are great, but I really want to know more about the contestants. I need to know their geek street cred. I want to know how smart they really are, not just whether they look good on camera. I want to get more of a sense of them as people. I want to see them interact with Lon more.

Especially in the first round, it felt like the judges were selecting contestants entirely based on looks and I'm really not OK with that. And why couldn't they have a female judge? I seriously hated the judges. I understand why looks are a factor (although I'm not saying that's ok), but please, ask them some questions about themselves and consider some qualifications other than looking pretty.

The best demonstations of contestants' personalities are the post-audition interviews, but one of the finalists doesn't have one, one doesn't have sound, and one of them is much longer and with Lon whereas the other three are shorter and with a different guy, so it's not exactly a balanced representation.

So, what I've learned from this process is that on the internet, men have all the power and are probably the target audience as well. And men can succeed based on talent and skill and a great sense of humor, but women have to have looks in addition to skills (though humor isn't as essential). Life lessons in a microcosm.

I'm a sucker for booklists

From Thinking By Writing:

The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - hard to carry around, but hopefully once the diss is done!
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - I actually dropped a college class because I couldn't handle The Canturbury Tales at 8am
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - I definitely read this in high school, but I can't quite remember whether or not it was required. It wasn't in an English class.
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

According to this list, I haven't read anything pre-20th century that wasn't written by Jane Austen, which is a little worrisome. Clearly, I'm a sci-fi fan, and yet there are some major sci-fi books on this list that I haven't managed to read. Cryptonomicon, Doctor Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Anansi Boys are all on my bookshelf taunting me.

How I Geek

I just joined Twitter. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but I did it in order to play the game prophboy is working on. This social networking/messaging site has been uberpopular for the last year in geeky/tech-savvy/silicon valley social circles. Which clearly does not include me.

I am not an early adopter. It takes a lot to convince me to let a new technology into my life. I seriously consider if there's a good reason why I absolutely need a new gadget or if it will just be a distraction. I always doubt that there's really any advantage to joining a particular social network. It is only when information that I can't get any other way seems useful, advantageous, or indispensible to my life that I turn to technology to augment my existence. Even then, I am reluctant to spend money on new devices (I'm a grad student, I'm broke!). My TiVo and my Nintendo DS are both hand-me-downs and I only got an iPod when I convinced my parents to give me one for Christmas this year.

Of course, once I finally accept a new technology, I love it and become easily addicted/dependent (less so with social networking software). I'm seriously in love with podcasts on my iPod. I've basically used the iPod to program my own radio station, which I play in the background when I'm driving or walking somewhere or waiting in lines or other times that would otherwise be mental downtime. I mostly listen to NPR and several tech podcasts (Buzz Out Loud from CNet is my favorite). I love the fact that I can be more intellectually engaged and listen to social and cultural commentary at times that would otherwise be wasted. My original assessment that this doesn't exactly change my life holds true, but I love and appreciate it nonetheless.

The fact that I have chosen to listen to several technology and scifi podcasts reflects my really strange relationship to technology. I don't have or even necessarily understand most of the technology discussed in some of these podcasts, but I like that I know little details of technology culture and I always want to learn more. I find myself reading and watching a lot of science fiction when I have the downtime to read for fun (rare these days as I frantically work on my dissertation). I'm fascinated by the intersection of technology and gender/identity theory and I frequently complain when tech commentators are all guys. I tend to listen mostly to the fabulous women out there talking about tech and I'd love to know more. I pay attention to Annalee Newitz, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and violet blue and I check in on Xeni Jardin when I can. I read most of what Charlie Anders posts on io9. Who else am I missing?

Part of me wishes I had tended more this way academically - I like talking to the people I know who study performance and technology, but only some of the work out there about it speaks to me. I think there tend to be people who know things about performance, people who know things about gender/sexuality, and people who know things about technology and they aren't really talking to each other very well.

So, basically, I have no geek street cred. I can't design or program anything and I'm not in any way obsessed with gadgets or code. I whine about the relative scarcity of women and feminism in geek culture, but I don't know enough to help remedy it. But there's something in me that leans that way and wants to follow the conversations about science and technology culture even if I'm not exactly a participant.

Sci Fi Theater

I've queried the lack of Science Fiction in theater before, but this Guardian blog post bemoaning the lack of SciFi theater was picked up by sci-fi blog io9, leading to two dramatically different conversations about the place of science fiction in theater.

The Guardian post inspired several theater fans to list some of their favorite and most notable science fiction theater pieces. The commenters are of course right that the term "robot" was actually coined in a theater piece and there are notable ways that theater does do science fiction. While there have been theatrical adaptations of several good scifi/fantasy books (The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials; I remember seeing a clunky performance of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles when I was in high school) You see science fiction done more often in small theaters and in small ways. Theater does well when it exploits campy and b-movie aspects of science fiction, such as Little Shop of Horrors or Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens or when it offers a visions of potential futures, such as Sarah Kane's Cleansed. Of course, there are other exceptions, like Heddatron, and I must say that the Siti Company's War of the Worlds is one of the most impressive things I have seen in a long time.

On io9, the sci-fi fans for the most part accept the premise that sci-fi and theater aren't necessarily suited for each other. Some commenters seem to think that theater itself is dated and not a viable medium for talking about the future. Some ponder the technical constraints of the live theatrical event. It's true that the aesthetics and relationship to technology are inherently different in theater than they are in film or books or comics. But that can be as productive and inspiring as it can be challenging, especially when done well. The suspension of disbelief in theater is different than in other media and the engagement of the imagination is done differently when you are confronted with live bodies in front of you. Theater can make use of those challenges, but we have a strong tradition of "realism" in the theater - of trying to talk about the way things are rather than what could or should happen. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it tends to lead to expressions other than those that would be classified as science fiction.

So, after reading these two different sets of responses to the relationship between theater and science fiction, I'm actually much more encouraged and enthusiastic about science fiction theater. There's some good stuff out there, and there's a lot of potential for more good science fiction theater. I'll just have to keep my eyes open and go to these shows when I have the opportunity. I'd love to see more cyberpunk and steampunk aesthetics onstage. So, have you seen any good science fiction theater? What scifi lends itself to the stage and what doesn't? Or if it doesn't work, why is that?

The future and the academy

This article is fascinating. Prophboy send me the link, and I'm intriegued and terrified. There are, of course, some inherent flaws to the article, but its argument about the possible impending doom of the entire educational system due to technology may or may not be accurate.

It's interesting to think about academia, which still feels quite often like a holdover from the 13th century actually being challenged and changing due to technology. I'm not talking about technology in the classroom (ie powerpoint), per se, but rather the ways technology changes the way people's minds work. I just finished TAing for a lecture class in which the Professor gave lectures, containing tons of names and dates and titles, from his head every day. The students were expected to take notes, and then had open-note quizzes and a closed-note final exam based on how well they recorded and recalled all of this data. There were papers, too, and as the TA I graded those based mostly on critical thinking and building an argument. But the fact that large portions of students' grades were determined entirely by how well they memorized facts is almost a foreign concept to me. This is the argument that prophboy, if not entirely Cringely, was making: that evaluating people based on their knowlege, as opposed to their ability to find and process knowledge, is more or less a thing of the past and is made completely outdated by the presence of the internet at our fingertips.

The other issue about this that Cringely raises is: what is the value of presence in educational process? If we follow Auslander, we don't necessarily believe in the unmediated performance. But do we believe that there's a value in sitting in a classroom and learning from a teacher? How is that different from an online course in which we're sitting in a chatroom learning from a teacher? Especially if the students in the classroom are texting or instant messaging instead of listening anyway? As I've been applying for jobs, there have been several (mostly community colleges) that have asked me about my experience teaching online courses. My standard response is that, while this isn't something I've done before, I'm sure I could do it, I'm generally proficient with computers, am familiar with educational software, etc. But honestly, I'm scared of the concept if not the technology. Sure, students can read instead of listening to a lecture or write blog post/comment responses instead of discussing in class, but isn't something of the experience of education lost in that process? And if so, what? Would I want to be a teacher in that kind of system?

And now, my major concern about the Cringely article is that it seems to think it's discussing the whole range of education from k-12 through MIT in one article and one concept, and that doesn't work at all. First of all, what you learn in kindergarten is how to talk to people and play with blocks as much as anything else - it's very tactile and I don't think technology will change that any time soon. Similarly with most of elementary school, being in the classroom and learning to socialize is a relevant (if often unpleasant) part of the education. And most of the things that are taught are basic skills (reading, spelling, arithmatic) that I think that people do need to learn, no matter what comes next. Also, it seems that in elementary school, teachers do have enough authority and a managable student-teacher ratio (although my mom is at 34:1 which seems fairly absurd) that they can prevent the students from texting in class or otherwise using technology as a distraction instead of a tool. They also use technology enough (typing, word processing, occasional computer games) that I think that it's not likely to get away from them.

When it comes to high school, this may be the crux of where things need to adapt and focus more on critical thinking and less on memorizing. The technology can be embraced more. But what technology? There was one teacher in my high school that notoriously insisted on everyone doing group powerpoint presentations. It forced them to confront and learn about the technology, but I'm not sure it made their presentations any better. Texting? How does one incorporate that into the classroom? Is there any way to accept that if you let your students use laptops in class, they will inherently use them to look at gossip sites on the internet and IM their friends rather than listening or participating? Is it possible for teachers to adapt to that?

What we do need to teach, and what seeems obvious to me but seems to elude my students, is how to do research on the internet beyond google and wikipedia. Someone needs to teach them that any online encyclopedia is not a valid academic source for a research paper. There are many great online resources that they can and should use, but they need to see that a private website from some guy is not the same kind of source as an academic journal. This kind of critical thinking in relation to technology should be inherent, but somehow it isn't, and it seems like high school might be the place to teach it. So perhaps they don't need to learn the data itself, but they do need to know where to find it, and how to evaluate it and its source once they have found it.

Personally, I think that the educational system is adaptive enough to integrate technology in productive ways, but there will always be battles about keeping some uses of technology out of the classroom (I heard someone the other day say that before IMing, there were always students reading books or doodling in the back of class, and that is, of course, perfectly true). The issues of presence and what is the value of a college education is a larger question, and one that will continue to haunt us, though I certainly hope it won't bring down the educational system as Cringely suggests it might.

Academia and the Suburbs

A week or two ago, I listened to Karen Tongson from USC give a presentation ("listening party") on music and the suburbs. Last night, I attended a talk in which Alan Hess discussed the architecture of suburban Southern California. As a child of the suburbs and a student of 1950s culture, I found both talks fascinating.

The suburbs, like the 1950s in which they flourished, seem to be traditionally discussed with a mixture of derision and nostalgia. When you think about the suburbs, you think about white, middle-class, nuclear families living uniform lives in straight little rows. Of course, the minute you begin to look critically, that image dissolves, but it generally persists in the myths we tell ourselves anyway. This is perhaps what makes the discussion of suburban culture, particularly Southern Californian suburban culture, interesting. Art and design are a fascinating set of discussions because they have been so invisible. One assumes there is no design in the suburbs, that the houses all look the same. While there is an element of truth to this, Hess effectively argued for the virtuosity and variety of those planning the surburbs and their ranch houses in Southern California in the '50s. The Googie coffee shops and Cliff May ranch houses were precisely designed to fit a lifestyle and a mindset that were new and exciting in the 1950s, and not so different than what a lot of people still wish for today.

Tongson's work on race in the suburbs is particularly interesting, because I know I grew up with the image of the suburbs as depicted in A Raisin in the Sun: all white with the whole neighborhood getting disrupted by (gasp!) black people moving in. By the time I grew up in the suburbs, Southern California was pretty racially diverse and I grew up with friends who were Chinese and Taiwanese (I knew the difference!) and Japanese and Korean and Filipino and Indian. Nearby suburbs had large Chicano, Latino, and Middle-Eastern populations. While I haven't done any historical research to back this up, I rather suspect that even in the 1950s, Southern California had a very racially diverse population, and while I'm sure there was a great deal of neighborhood segregation, I wonder if the suburbs were ever as lily-white as we like to imagine them.

Tongson's talk on music in the suburbs was primarily focused on the late '80s and early '90s. She talked a lot about pop music, but it's also easy to imagine pop, punk, grunge, and other movements as the response of disaffected teenagers to the confines of growing up somewhere "safe" with nothing to do and nowhere to go in the evenings. But what were the suburbs like musically in the 1950s? We imagine teenagers listening to Elvis and other early Rock 'n' Roll and forming bands to play at high school dances a la Back to the Future, but how much of this image of accurate and how much of it is created by nostalgia? I know that my dad growing up was listening to The Beach Boys and my mom was listening to Mitch Miller and her parents' music from the '40s and '30s much like I grew up on music from the 1950s and '60s.

My mind, of course, turns to the theater. I can know exactly what people were watching on TV and in the movie theaters in the 1950s in Southern California, but were they seeing live performance? Was there theater to see? They were presumably buying the cast albums of Broadway musicals and seeing the stars appear on the Ed Sullivan show and doing shows in high schools. Were there even theaters for live shows in LA in the '50s? I know that the LA Music Center opened in 1964 and Gordon Davidson began working at the Taper in 1967. What comes before that? The Shrine Auditorium opened in 1926. Did it ever host anything besides awards shows and USC basketball? The Pantages Theater was opened in 1930 and originally hosted Vaudeville acts and movie screenings, but didn't do live theater until 1977. Did people from the suburbs come into LA to see shows? Did mid-level Hollywood stars appear in stage shows in LA as they occasionally do today? What is the theater of the suburbs? Is it Death of a Salesman and Our Town? National tours of Broadway musicals? Community theater?

March Performance Art Madness

Looking at my schedule, there are all sorts of great performances and events coming up in March!

March 1 Transgiving. It's their annual Valentine-ish/Love show (ok, last year it was a sex show, but it rocked!) I have no idea who's performing, but it should be worth checking out. This one seems to involve friends/loved ones/allies performing - I hope it's good.

March 4 Karen Tongson will be hosting a Listening Party at LACE (curated by Josh Kun)

March 5 Holly Hughes performs a "Sapphic Sampler Platter" at the REDCAT

March 6: EASTSIDE STORIES: Queer Latino/a Art and Activism in East L.A..The Butchlalis, Luis Alfaro, and Hector Silva in conversation at USC. Sadly, I won't be able to make this one because I teach Thurs. 'til 6 and the event starts at 6:30.

March 8 and 9 Nao Bustamante will be one of the artists presenting at the REDCAT Open Studio

March 13 Adelina Anthony will be performing Mastering Sex and Tortillas at USC. I've seen this show or parts of it 3 times now, and yet I'm seriously considering going again.

March 15 Katastrophe and Jenna Riot as the Ice Cream Socialites performing in Long Beach.

Oh, and Sweeney Todd at the Ahmanson and Culture Clash's Culture Clash in AmeriCCa at South Coast Rep.

And I've marked my calendar for the butchlalis' The Barber of East LA April 11 and 12

Random discovery

You know what I learned today? Harry Dodge is surprisingly cute in person. Not that ze isn't great and charming in By Hook or By Crook, but ze is delightfully handsome in real life.

What's a girl to do?

What do you do when a friend writes to say that there's a fabulous queer femme performance artist you don't know about who wants to perform in LA?

It's so frustrating to me that after 4 years in LA, I have no way to make a performance happen when the opportunity arises. While I don't want to spend my life as an event planner (I can't handle the stress), I want to have the time and access to be able to point cool queer performance artists to cool queer venues to do their thing. I want there to be theaters (or bars, or coffee houses) that will open their doors on off hours or off days to random performance artists. And I just don't know who or where these things are. I don't know who to talk to to make a show happen.

It seems like it's been a while since I've been to a night of queer femme performance. Certainly LA must be due for such a thing. But the who and the when and the where are so hard to make happen. I know perfectly well that if I wait for someone else to organize the events I want to see, they'll never happen, but I'm far too far behind on my school work to take on anything else. Who out there is doing this kind of work? It's so frustrating that I can think of events and locations and organizations appropriate to this kind of thing in San Francisco, and yet in LA, I'm drawing a blank.