Konstantine Stanislavski Love art in yourself and not yourself in art.
Harold Clurman The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.
by Joel Elkins~
When a talented cast and thoroughly professional production team present an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, how can it miss? No, I’m really asking. The neophyte Nola Productions takes on the noble but perhaps quixotic task of staging Adrian Hall’s confusing and unfocused adaptation of All the King’s Men, now [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Mental Creatures, finishing up its world premiere at the Lounge Theatre this weekend, is a flawed but at times riveting portrayal of the most foundational and raw human emotions. Randy Brenner directed and Jay Jacobson wrote and stars in this one-man show exploring human experience through the life crises of three separate [...]
by Joel Elkins~
For a while during the late 70′s, the Broadway soundtrack of Hair was rarely far from my tape deck, and, to this day, the film version of the musical is one of the few movies I own (on VHS tape, of course). But I had never seen it on stage and was [...]
by Joel Elkins~
The Lyric Theatre concludes its current season with a newly revised version of Doug Haverty’s Aftershocks, directed by the theater’s Artistic Director JC Gifford. The story revolves around two middle-aged Cleveland housewives who, after decades of marital abuse and broken promises, finally ditch their alcoholic husbands and move to a trailer park [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Broadway musicals tend to be lavish, professionally produced and out of many people’s price range. Enjoying such an experience in LA will typically set back the average theatergoer $80 or more for seats in Row ZZ at the Ahmanson or Pantages. But once in a while, one can experience the same quality theater [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Electricidad is a surprisingly entertaining retelling of the Electra story set in the barrios of Los Angeles. It is part comedy, part tragedy and part Spanish-language immersion.
The action opens with Electricidad (Griselda Marquez) mourning the death her father, the king of the East Side Locos, lying [...]
by Joel Elkins~
I’m convinced that if WindChimes, the new play by playwright John Dubiel making its world premiere at the Company of Angels, were analyzed by a psychiatrist, it would be diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder. A cardiologist would find arrhythmia. A topographer would call it mountainous. The play is [...]
by Joel Elkins~
In an old episode of M*A*S*H, after hearing that a patient hailed from a small rural town in Ohio, Hawkeye Pierce proceeds to describe in detail the town’s main street, from the diner that serves the world’s greasiest french fries to the auto dealership that puts up banners whenever [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Oswald, now making its West Coast premiere at the Write Act Repertory Theater, dramatizes the interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald by Dallas Police Captain William Fritz during the chaotic 48 hours following the assassination of President Kennedy. LA playwright Dennis Richard has used publicly recorded statements (such as Oswald’s meeting with reporters) [...]
by Joel Elkins~
“Fasten your seatbelts—it’s gonna be a bumpy night!” Bette Davis’s classic line from All About Eve applies equally to – and provides the title of – Seatbelts Required, a new play by Kimberly Demmary, now playing at The Actors Workout Studio.
Seatbelts has three half-sisters gathering at their mother’s house (depicted in classical [...]
