What I liked
Commitment to story and characters
What I didn't like
IDK…Maybe a playbill?
It’s art. Improvement is relative.
My overall impression
With crosses to bear, FromTheStreetsToTheSet and Chola Vision give Guirgis’s
“THE LAST DAYS of JUDAS ISCARIOT” a bold, passionate opening.
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There are so many things to say about the play, as well as the outstanding, award-winning playwright, but I won’t attempt to add to the thousands upon thousands of words and superlatives that already and appropriately describe the work of Stephen Adly Guirgis, in particular the artistic epiphany that is The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.
I’ll speak instead of the overall intense, fearless, out-front production. I’ll try to tell the tale of what I saw as the intersection of Courage, Trust and Love that is the essence of the “FromTheStreetsToTheSet” Familia.
First, as an offering in this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, now at The Actor’s Company Theatre in West Hollywood, the work vividly did what it was supposed to do. While not excusing factual, albeit varying accounts of Judas’ well documented deceit, Guirgis, through a mock-trial, takes the audience on a re-imagined journey of the childhood and early years of Judas Iscariot that seemingly humanizes him and reveals a fictional view of his origins and decisions as one of Jesus’s original twelve disciples.
As a teacher, a student, and a friend, I’ve proudly had decades of exposure and interaction in the culture of this cast. To say that I was profoundly honored to be there merely scratches the surface of the funny, poignant, and oftentimes sobering evening.
My career in theatre has taken me many places around the globe, and many are the times I’ve stood in appreciation for “the work.” On this night, along with an attentive and enthusiastic sold-out house, I was energized as were we all, as we witnessed the genuinely raw, yet focused passion of this cast. That is not to say they were without actual talent. On the contrary. Under the direction of Blanca “Moon Chola” Espinoza, command of Guirgis’s text, and the clarity of the story was immediately apparent. Their entrances and exits gave existence to life off stage and beyond. “They believed it” and “I believed it.”
Were there challenges? Of course, there were. It’s live theater and it was opening night. However, to give unnecessary judgement to the few hiccups on the minimal, if not specifically presented courtroom set, would be to not pay proper and due respect to the tremendous effort made by all of them to hold character and correct on the fly.
I was reminded a few times, pre- and post-show that most were not actors. I respectfully suggest that those words needn’t be used again. All of them are worthy and I humbly extend to all a personal, well-deserved, Welcome
✊🏾🎭🥂✊🏼
Often times talent is relative. Right place, right time, right project, most artists will experience measures of success, but trust and dedication in a unified goal is without equal. Those moments when these actors, with a common unapologetic history, picked each other up, and kept the story moving felt ancestral and spoke to a bond that was formed long before scripts were present.
To see one of my former students, Berenice Molina Perez, doing so well in the family of artists and creatives, was near spiritual. Like others, at what was then The Children’s Club in Hollywood, (in particular Jose Miranda, the Calderon’s, and the Rivas’s) she had the potential to be anything, and she’s doing it… not in spite of El Barrio, but because of it.
She reminded me on this, her opening night, how she remembered “Mr. Russell walking around reading these papers out loud and how now it’s all come full circle.”
Who knew?
I say again and again, I was humbled to be there and grateful that she invited me. The whole night was reminiscent of my old school days Off-Broadway in New York as well as the early stages of creating StageWalkers here in Los Angeles. Those days when we all held hammers and paint brushes. Those nights when effort and teamwork were the stars, and ‘lights on’ and ‘curtain up’ was the reward.
I urge anyone who has time, to go and enjoy the various offerings in the Hollywood Fringe Festival, but also to see the @cholavision production and witness the table of true passion, and commendable commitment these men and women “FromTheStreetsToTheSet” have served.
- Russell Andrews
