Tagged With Theatre
A 9/11
By 2001 I hadn’t had a television for several years, and like a lot of those people I mentioned the fact with frequency. I was living with a girl in L.A., and after we woke up on September 11 our only way to interface with the events on the east coast was via radio and an AOL dial-up connection. I’d taken a train directly underneath the World Trade Center every day for years in the 90s, and I still had many many friends in New York, but that didn’t matter. What I wanted was to see the atrocity.The radio...
TORNADO WEATHER
I’m annoyed that Colin Mitchell asked me to write for Bitter Lemons. Or, to be clearer, I’m annoyed that I’ve written so much on Facebook, and Twitter, and public forums, that Colin saw enough of it to think this was a good idea. I’m annoyed that my labor union brought that about.Now, I’m going to annoy you by telling you things about myself that you won’t give a sh*t about. I’m 51 years old. I’ve been acting since I was 15. I turned down a casting offer from a theater in Virginia so I could stay in coll...
What to See in Los Angeles Theater: Your Weekly LemonMeter Update
Just in time for hump day, LemonHeads, here is your Weekly LemonMeter update to help you make some informed choices as you plan your theater-going experience for the weekend. All of these are of course pulled directly from our ever-trusty LemonMeter. If you’d like to get your show into the mix be sure to create a show page and then send your...
Bitter Lemons Interviews Producer Matthew Quinn on Theatre Asylum, The Hollywood Fringe Festival and Hollywood Theatre Row
I had the pleasure of chatting with Matthew Quinn, Owner/Operator of Theatre Asylum and Producer of Combined Artform (“TA/CA”) regarding the current situation of the five venues on Santa Monica Blvd., home of his company and the Elephant Theatre. Both companies have since departed and we wanted to find out what was next for him, his company, his relationship with the Hollywood Fringe and his thoughts on the newly dedicated Hollywood Theatre Row.So Matt what’s up with t...
Critic Tweets and the Art of Giving it Away for Free
Just a heads up, folks. I know it’s a tough marketing world out there and we all certainly need to get our wares and wherefores out to the public in any way we can, but if you consider yourself a legitimate theater critic in this town, someone whose work we should take seriously, and you are putting “wow” and “go see this show” and “congratulations” in your 140 character tweets and then also offering a link for me to go read your review on your site, guess what’s going to happen?I’m not gonna...
Critique of the Week
Again, since we’ve brought in a new LemonMeter editor, the incomparable Jonathan “JT” Ross, I don’t have the opportunity to read as many reviews as a I used, but I have missed the smart, personal and sometimes off-the-rails offerings from EyeSpyLA’s M.R. “The Huntress” Hunter and I did manage to land on this particular one recently and thought I’d highlight it as this week’s COW.It’s an excellent offering, smart, personal and thorough, but most of all it’s curious. Without that cur...
New York Times Declares Deaf West's "Spring Awakening" a "New Sensation to Broadway"
Congrats all around and here’s hoping this review from Charles Isherwood is just the beginning of the mad respect this show deserves. As Chuck NYC puts it:But I hesitate to impose any new meanings on a work that doesn’t need them to move us, or to imply that this “Spring Awakening” would only appeal to th...
FALLING ACTION
A play advertising itself as emulating two filmmakers (Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie) raises questions about the value the creative team places on plays, as opposed to, let’s say, movies. It also makes one wonder whether these folks know that each medium has its own language and its own shorthand. When the marketing materials describe the team’s favorite entertainment elements as “tough-guy banter, cool suits, blood, and guns,” one is left to wonder how they feel about...
Sustainability
Saw this on the Big Cheap Wire and thought it might of interest to the LemonHeadNation.An article on Sustainability in the Arts was published on Big Cheap. You can read it here.But it’s Jay McAdams, Executive Director of 24th Street Theatre’s resp...
Wombat Man: The Cereal Murders
Playwright Chrisi Talyn Saje has co-opted the 1970s animated “Trix Are For Kids” TV commercial, elevating it into the central dramatic throughline of Wombat Man: The Cereal Murders, an imaginative if not always adroitly executed satire of the campy 1960s Adam West-starring Batman television series, essentially a spoof on a spoof. Saje’s super hero of choice is monumentally cluel...