RMT's Rant & Rave: Intro

Once a month every month, Rogue Machine Theatre puts on "Rant & Rave," - an event they describe as follows:

We take a group of vocal LA writers, give them a topic and a time limit. It's an evening of cathartic thinking by some of the most dangerous minds in the city.

One of the wonderful things about the selected performers is that not all of them are actors. They are professionals in all sorts of fields and bring different perspectives and approaches to the same topic. 

As the host, Ron Bottitta acts as the emcee, introducing the one-word topic to us through an array of well constructed, humorous metaphors and including his own, short personal approach to the topic. Then three or four performers take the stage, one at a time, then there's a short break, and then another three or four performers take their turn in making us laugh, cry, and reflect.

Last night, for instance, was a particularly great night over the following topic: Blood. It's wonderful to see how each performer took it in a different way, some talking about familial bonds (or lack thereof), others talking about gashing wounds, and most talking about both.

Because Rant & Rave is a difficult experience to describe, instead of reflecting on the different performances, I'd going to take it as a writing exercise and write about the one-word topic myself - because what better way to reflect than to make it my own?

My next post will be on last night's topic: Blood.

RMT's Three Views of the Same Object

This entry is going to break from norm and get personal.

Rogue Machine Theatre's Three Views of the Same Object was a cathartic experience that made me bawl. It's a harsh look at aging and how many relationships deteriorate as their bodies do. It's a realistic portrayal of the anger, the helplessness, and the hurt of old age.

Moreover, it's a reflection of what's currently happening to my family.

My grandmother has had cancer since 2007, and she's fought it every step of the way. She's won battles, reclaimed her hair, climbed the Great Wall of China - only to get it back and get ready for Round 2 ... and Round 3.

This will be the last round.

There are very few options available to her at this point, and the treatment she's currently undergoing is harsher than before. The treament is meant only to keep her alive as long as possible, as the cancer isn't going to go away. The chemo this time has made her sick and miserable and angry. It's also taking a toll on the entire family, especially my grandfather, as she is his world.

He sits stubbornly by her side, tending to her when she can't move, holding her hand in his. When she does walk, his hand never lets go of hers. And he's so worried for her that he's keeping her like a princess locked away in a tower, as if she were made of porcelain and could break upon touch.

I'm certain that when I lose her, I will lose them both - that is, if he doesn't go first. At 91, my grandfather is still fit and perfectly healthy, with all his wits about him, but he proclaimed a few months ago when the cancer got angry again that he wasn't going to make it past 92 - whether that was with or without his wife.

I dread visiting them now. Not because I'm scared of seeing her sick, but because the quality of the conversation has become so negative that I'm having difficulty retaining the happy memories of my grandmother. I have to coax her into talking about our travel adventures or our collective family memories to hear something positive.

Old age is ugly. Frustrating. Demanding.

The sickness has infiltrated everyone's lives. My mother lives in limbo, unable to forge a life of her own because she's constantly drawn back to take care of her parents. She's put her life - and her marriage - on hold, waiting in denial for the inevitable.

At one point in the play, one of the character remarks how envious she is of people with Alzheimer's. The already shocking statement becomes more powerful when you've actually experienced what Alzheimer's is. My great-grandmother had it. I remember the typical scene of my family members constantly asking her if she recognized us, if she knew who we were. But I also remember seeing dried up poop wiped in the window curtains, up and down the staircase. I would've never thought of dementia as a blessing.

But when you think about all the people you have loved and lost, all the things you can no longer do, the places you can no longer go ... well, then it starts to make some sense.

As my grandmother turns the page to her last chapter, I begin to assume the role I play in my family - the youthful sunshine that comes into their lives, lights up their days, and lets them live vicariously through my discoveries, my accomplishments, allowing them to forget for a moment how dark everything is now. I cannot break down before them, or else they will all fall like dominoes.

So if I can't cry in real life, I'll cry when I see Three Views again. And again.

Getty Villa's Helen

This has been the greatest disappointment of the year.

Harsh, I know, but true.

It's hard to leave expectations at the door, especially after seeing wonderful plays at the Getty Villa. Not only is the Villa my favorite place in Los Angeles, but I have also seen wonderful performances there: Agammemnon, Peace, Elektra, and The Trojan Women.

But Helen is an adaptation of Euripides' original that tries to do too much. In its overly ambitious effort to try to do too many things, it leaves excellent critiques and themes on the table.

One of the most wonderful notions of the play is how it imagines an "old" Helen, one who is still beautiful, but whose beauty has waned. This production depicts Helen as a Hollywood starlet, and there was so much potential with that: if your looks are all you have going for you, what happens when you lose them? How does that shape your identity?

This production, however, merely scratches the surface by having many characters make quips about how old she looks and having her do a ridiculous pose whenever someone realizes who she is. Very few of the quips are clever, namely the one where Menelaus mistakes her for Clytemnestra - a comical "blow" exploiting the tension between Helen and her sister, as Clytemnestra was not Zeus' daughter, according to the myth, and therefore "inferior" to Helen and her beauty. Then the joke gets old as the play continues.

There were moments for great political tension - and political tension is, after all, why Euripides was writing in the first place, sick of the Peloponnesian War. But instead of milking these moments for all their worth, the production seems to me more concerned with shoehorning in references to Hollywood moments and personas.



 

SCR's Absurd Person Singular

Well, that was funny.

It's nice to get a break from thought-provoking theatre ever so often and just have a laugh. That's what Scooter and I got to do with South Coast Repertory's Absurd Person Singular - a play in three acts, set in the 1970s.

The play is about three couples. Each act takes place during Christmas over a three-year period, during which we watch the socioeconomic rise and fall of the couples; as one declines, the other rises, and the power play that ensues results in hilarity.

Probably what is most captivating about the play is that each act takes place in the kitchen. We see the kitchens of all three couples, and the kitchen becomes a beautiful metaphor to represent the state of each couple. After all, the kitchen is the place your visitors are not supposed to see - the place where you can hide all the dirt while your living is spotless and sophisticated.

Using the kitchen as the setting is brilliant because the "action" is supposed to be happening outside, and being in the kitchen is like being backstage - complete with the chaos one might expect.

So is this going to be my favorite play of 2012? No. Not by a long shot. (My favorite will likely be Theatrum Elysium's Cymbeline.) But did I enjoy it? Yes, of course.

ITC's Ghost Writer

When you find yourself stranded in Union Station at around 2 a.m. on a Friday morning, after you've spent a significant number of hours waiting for a train in a seedy area of Long Beach, you ask yourself if the play you went down there to see was worth it.

And it was.

Paige White is crazy good. I can't believe the woman was able to peform for almost two hours whilst talking the whole time. There isn't a single moment in which she's not onstage, and she's constantly in dialogue with the other characters as part of her reminiscence or with the "inquisitor" character she's telling her story to.

She's amazing.

And for writing nerds like me, this was an excellent play that brings up many issues of intellectual property, mainly the biggest one: who does art belong to?

Throughout the play, we witness the progression of how Myra Babbage (White's character) begins her fifteen-year relationship with a writer. She starts off as a gifted typist with excellent grammar, punctuation and a high WPM score, but then we watch her put her foot down over a semicolon. Soon, she knows the manuscript better than the writer himself, and towards the end of their relationship, she predicts what he's going to say next and writes it - much to his surprise and amusement.

We watch this all unfold as a series of flashbacks and stories Babbage is recounting to a journalist who's been sent by the late writer's widow - a woman who was always jealous that Babbage could be of service to her husband in a way she could not. Because the plot unfolds through recollection, White is onstage the whole time, as she, of course, cannot remember moments she didn't participate in.

And why has the widow sent someone to interview Babbage? Because she's continued finishing the manuscript she and the writer were working on. Babbage claims that these are "his" words, that she sits down and waits for them to come. Some imagine she's seeing and talking to his ghost, and when she's asked if she's writing it, she describers herself as merely a typist.

It reminded me of the relationship between Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, and how some scholars now think that many of the work attributed to him was actually hers, but their styles became so similar that it is difficult to discern where one ends and one begins.  

Nicely done, International City Theatre!

Cymbeline

I recently watched a production of Shakespere's Cymbeline by Theatrum Elysium. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was the kind of production that only a young and enthusiastic theater group could put on. From the moment the play started we knew that it was going to be something else. There was no single stage because the staging took place all around a community center in La Crescenta. There was something so engaging about the changes in location and direction. The Narrator led us on a merry chase following the action and never getting too comfortable in our seats.
Without the luxury or restraint of an actual theater, Theatrum Elysium was freed to come up with a program that breaks the normal format.
In addition to the out-of-the-box staging, the play included elements of dance, singing, and swordplay that brought an intensity to the story that made it shine. Cymbeline is a long play and even when cut down to around 3 hours it can be difficult but with so much going on, the time just flew past. If I were to level any criticism, it would be at some of the scenes where characters accept things too readily or change their dearly held convictions so fast that you are forced out of your suspension of disbelief; but such is sometimes the struggle with Shakespere.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Theatrum Elysium's Cymbeline and am grateful that they are extending for four more performances so that I can go again!

Theatrum Elysium's Cymbeline

Not gonna lie: in all my Shakespeare studies, I never came across Cymbeline. In college, I took pretty much every Shakespeare course I could find, and in my "Comedies and Romances" class, the only romances we covered were The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. 

So when Scooter told me he'd bought season tickets for us for A Noise Within, and the first play there were putting on was Cymbeline, I got excited. How wonderful to discover a new Shakesy play! But I think you can imagine my shock when John discovered through Facebook that another theatre ensemble was putting on the same play - a month earlier! 

Massive props go out to Scooter here, as he insisted that we go see it. Given that I'd never ever read Cymbeline, I wasn't too sure we'd want to see it twice, so I had some reservations ... which I immediately hushed. Why would I deprive myself from this phenomenal compare-and-contrast opportunity? 

Theatrum Elysium's Cymbeline BLEW MY MIND. 

The talent was amazing. The dancing was unexpected and beautiful (which is a huge compliment, since I'm used to watching spectacular dancing on So You Think You Can Dance), paired perfectly with the right songs. The lighting was a feat of wonder, as it was spot on - a challenging task given that we moved from one space to the next as nightfall began to take over. The staging was remarkable, too, using the narrator as our shepherd, leading us through all of these outdoor spaces. 

I was an experience unlike any other.

So I'll be excited to see how A Noise Within chooses to present this story to us.