by Cynthia Wands

The view from my house during the Hunter Moon last week; the moonlight was so bright it seemed like daylight.

The past few months have witnessed a lot of chaos, sorrow, beautiful music, wonderful theater to be seen, and a strange incident that could be a message from the other side of the veil.

October has always been my favorite month – the rituals of the harvest, the costumes of Halloween, the colors of the natural world saying good to this year. I wasn’t familiar with Día de Muertos until my friend Martha Contreras invited me to join her in an event at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery. This was more than twenty years ago and at the time it was a small, intimate gathering of people to create an altar, or ofrenda, to celebrate Día de Muertos. I knew nothing of this festival, and saw some amazing creations that honored and celebrated the lives of loved ones.

Click here for more information on the Forever Hollywood Cemetery Día de Muertos:

https://www.ladayofthedead.com/

My family did not gather for funerals, or memorials when I was a child, and I was in my twenties when I went to my first funeral. So the culture of Día de Muertos was new to me, and I learned over the years how much this awareness of death, has affected me. First of all, I realized how many people I loved have died. I didn’t realize that my life would be a witnessing of my past swallowed up by the disappearance of those I knew -and now with the awareness that my disappearance is also on the horizon. But the joy – the happiness at the these celebrations is what surprised me. I’ve only been to one Irish Wake – it seemed like an exercise in alcohol poisoning – with raucous singing and some storytelling. But it was more like a pub crawl than a cultural celebration.

But I found that the the 8 nights of Día de Muertos related to a fierce theatrical experience for me: a progression of characters and recognition of the facets of love and community. I now have these dates on my calendar:

The 8 nights of Día de Muertos

October 27 – Our beloved animals

October 28 – Those who left without saying goodbye

October 29 – Those the water took

October 30 – The forgotten and lonely souls

October 31 – The door opens

November 1 – Los angelitos, the little ones

November 2 – The grown ones who know the way home

November 3 – The farewell

I have many family and loved ones to celebrate over the next few days. Also, many cats.

This reminds me of my childhood Halloween costumes and the dress up parties, how l loved finding another character/costume to play that year. Another celebration of theater.

And here’s my strange story that occurred this October, and I’m just glad that I had a witness to the strangeness.

My dear sister Susan came to stay a few days with me, and spent some time clearing out the rest of the garage that held Eric’s artwork and his photography. (My beloved Eric passed away three years ago.) There were boxes of slides, artists proofs of earlier artwork, bags and bags of the last of his studio to be donated or thrown away. She did an incredible job, even helping to discard some of Eric’s “Demon Women” photography – that went along with his “Goddess” series artwork. The next morning I went into the garage to get something and clicked on the lights. It was wonderfully clean and oddly quiet. And then suddenly there was classical music playing in the garage. I was bewildered. Eric’s stereo system had been turned off for the last three years. After some fumbling around, I found the radio, and discovered it had been plugged in underneath the bookshelves. And the display showed that the current music selected was “October by Eric” “Whitacre 8:56am”. Apparently Eric Whitacre was the name of the composer I was now listening to. I just saw the words: October by Eric.

I went in to the house and asked Susan if she had plugged in the radio – she didn’t know there was a radio in the garage, not having heard it in the last three years. She came out to to investigate with me. We remarked that it might have been Eric’s spirit – perhaps weighing in on the “Demon Women” artwork, and we laughed. I unplugged the radio. I locked the door. Susan returned to New York. The garage was clean and quiet.

And then, yesterday. I once again, unlocked the door to the garage and this time I heard music as I came inside. I couldn’t believe it. We had unplugged the radio. And this time it was playing the last bit from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas. I clicked on the lights and inspected the radio – it was plugged in. I recorded a bit of the music as it was playing, and then sent it to Susan. She was as mystified as I was.

I hadn’t heard this music in – decades. Eric had worked at the the Walt Disney Animation Research Library for several years as a Digital Cleanup Artist. He often said it was his favorite job, and that he loved working with the people there. And I know that he loved the early “Fantasia” and “Bambi” movies, but I don’t remember that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was a favorite of his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFiWEjCedzY

But I listened to that piece of music playing in the garage ~ and I wondered why and how did it find its way to be heard that morning. And I thought of Eric. And the spirits in October.

by Ayesha Siddiqui

The early Puritans in America thought nature was to be tamed, its wildness mighty and disorderly. Then time passed. Thoughts progressed. Nature was meant to be harnessed and observed. Landscapes were painted. Later we tried to understand nature. How do we explain why flowers bloom? Then came spiritualism in nature and conservation. 

The prospect of taming something so greatly outside of our understanding seems silly now, yet humans still act as if their actions can forever control all of the ground on which they exist. But how can you harness something that always has a choice in accepting an invitation? Many of us have had a houseplant that refused to thrive even with the right light, temperature, and water. Many of us have refused to thrive even with the same.

Where I get into trouble is when I start to find myself more relevant than the fallen leaves, the dirt tracking in through my front door, the overripe grape sitting on the vine. When I think there are more valuable things to do with my time than taking a walk. When I forget to look outside and see what the birds are doing. As if what I am doing is more important than the fact that the finches have returned to find the honeysuckle in bloom, or that tiny lizards are sunbathing on a quiet sidewalk on an unusually warm day.

You can choose your relationship to the world outside around you. If you want to bow to it, if you want to live in the delusion that you can harness it. But despite all the beliefs humankind has held, I don’t know if anyone has ever gone into nature and felt like they didn’t have enough space. And space is where we create, where we can take a deep breath, and finally hear the thought that has been quietly there for weeks, waiting for you to stop distracting yourself long enough to listen.

When the well is dry, you could claw the walls. Or, you could go outside.

by Alison Minami

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a professionally staged reading of City in the Sky by Katherine Vondy as part of the MadLAB new play development reading series at Moving Arts Theater. This play is as much a historical imagining as it is one of place and the enduring cycles of material and figurative fire that burns the intimate lives of those who call Southern California home.

The play begins with the sibling duo, Rowan and Sage, hiking arduously up a trail on Echo Mountain in Altadena. Both fully grown adults, Sage is purposeful in dragging her younger brother up this particular trail—she wants to show him the remnants of the White City in the Sky. This “city”was once a true-life resort that was built atop Echo Mountain at the turn of the 20^th century. It was complete with a hotel, bowling alley, zoo, and observatory. In order to reach the resort, visitors would ride in a funicular, a cable rail system (Yes, I had to look that up!), that climbed up the steep mountainside. Sage, who has always been protective of her brother ever since the two lost their parents to a tragic car accident when he was a teenager, brings Rowan to the mountaintop in the hopes that she can pull him out of his deep depression. A self-described nerd and professional editor, Sage has discovered that their own great-great-grandfather, Jasper Turner, was one of the engineers who designed the funicular of the gleaming White City. As Sage attempts to share this fun fact of lineage, the audience is taken back to 1899 to see for themselves Jasper and his new wife, Florence, visiting the White City for the first time.

Newlyweds Florence and Jasper are in awe of the spectacular resort, named the White City for its gleaming white buildings against a backdrop of luminous night stars. Florence is full of hope for the future, while a more measured Jasper lives in the shadow of his father’s melancholy and ultimate suicide. When Florence reveals that she is pregnant, the news weighs heavily on Jasper as he ponders whether he and his future children will ever be able to escape the curse of depression.

The piece moves between dual timelines with Dr. Larkin, the real-life astronomer and curator of Echo Mountain observatory, lecturing at the podium directly through the fourth wall. His monologuing, much like that of a museum tour guide, serves as the interstitial muscle that frames and connects both timelines as well as allows for them to collapse when Sage and Rowan come face to face with their ancestral ghosts, Florence and Jasper. Katherine describes Dr. Larkin as “the node that connects us to magical ideas”. For me, Dr. Larkin is the poet that reveals both the beauty and mystery that underlies human fear and fragility. There is, after all, so much metaphor in the stars and their constellations. Within our reading of the night sky, there exists all kinds of mythology and a navigable map to literally point us in the right direction. Simultaneously, the stars represent so much of what is unknowable, unfathomable, or out of reach for the stargazers down below. In one instance, Dr. Larkin tells the audience about the constellation Lupus, which came to be known first as a Beast, then eventually a Wolf. The wolf becomes a motif throughout the play, a metaphor for the depression that continually chases Rowan and Jasper.

In this way, Katherine addresses mental illness from an epigenetic lens—I’m not sure why we even call it an illness as depression seem to me to be plaguing every person that I know in my orbit in some muted way along a grayscale that refuses to draw clean clinical lines between okay and not okay. But I digress. For many, Lupus, the wolf, is indeed always around the corner threatening to bite at one’s heels. At one point, after disclosing his own recent suicide attempt, Rowan describes a sense of kinship with the wolf. He confides to Jasper “sometimes, when it’s not around, I miss it. I don’t know who I’d be without the wolf” and Jasper replies, “But if it catches you, you will be nothing.” Rowan then quips “That’s the paradox, isn’t it?”

In another vivid scene, when all the characters have suspended their disbelief and allowed themselves to commune together in the dance hall of the White City’s hotel, rave like dance moves take over their bodies as modern-day trance melds with a Victorian string quartet. This scene exemplifies the active alchemy of two worlds and the mirrors that cycle through generations. Katherine shares that she is fond of dual timelines as a device because it offers the ability “to talk about the past in a way that also talks about the present.”  Rowan and Jasper both agree, through simultaneous incantation, not conversation, “As long as we dance, we keep the wolf at bay.” This is quite a juxtaposition–the dialectic of hope and despair embodied in a dance.

While Rowan and Jasper suffer from their mental illness, Sage and Florence bear the weight of responsibility in carrying them. They too suffer as women who stoically care for their male counterparts without the luxury of giving in to their own despair. It is ironic that women are so often cast as overly emotional or hysterical in media representations when in fact so many women in familial caretaker roles exhibit quiet strength and indomitable survival skills. In one conversation, Sage says self-referentially “Whatever tries to chase them, older sisters have to refuse to be hunted.” It hasn’t escaped me that even as I have written most of this post, I am only now speaking seriously of the importance of Sage and Florence as women characters in the piece. This is how women are unnoticed (in life and in plays), by doing exactly what they need to do, for the sake of whatever or whomever is centered. As a woman who has taken on a lot of family responsibility, Katherine is intentional in her portrayal of these women as unwavering in their will to help and nurture their family.

Finally, just as the depression cycles through generations, so too, do the natural calamities that devastate the land. While I would not characterize this as a climate play, the atmosphere of Southern California is its own kind of wolf. While the White City was ravaged by fire shortly after it was first built, at play’s end, Rowan and Sage find themselves in their Altadena home watching the Eaton fire. In this scene, after having read the full story of his great-great-grandfather, Rowan worries that his own reveals about the future to Jasper may have somehow upset or altered history. How could it? But also, how could it not? Isn’t that the biggest danger of time travel? Looking out the window at the hungry fire encroaching, the question mark that lingers is whether or not Rowan will choose the same path as Jasper.

This play came out of a nine month-long process that involved several rounds of cold reads with professional actors before culminating into the professionally staged reading. The Madlab new play development program is run by the Moving Arts Theatre Company in Atwater Village. It is a Los Angeles theater mainstay when it comes to supporting local playwrights in developing a play from pitch to a near production-ready manuscript. Katherine praises Moving Arts’ Program Director, Dana Schwartz, and Artistic Director, Darin Anthony, as “genuinely supportive.” She says, “Especially now when all the arts programs are stripping down programming for new work, it’s amazing that Madlab is continuing to do this intensive of process.”

But Katherine is no stranger to new play development, and she has built an arsenal of plays over the last decade through similar writers’ groups and playwriting communities. After going to USC film school and traversing the tenuous Hollywood screenwriter’s life, she returned to her theater roots. In 2015, she wrote her first play with none other than LAFPI’s Jennie Webb. Early recognition for her playwriting eventually led her to The Vagrancy, where she eventually became the moderator for their own new play development program. Of the organization, Katherine says, “I owe a huge amount of writing success to the Vagrancy; almost all the plays that I’ve written have been through working alongside the Vagrancy playwrights.” Now she mostly works with the Vagrancy as a dramaturg, which albeit not lucrative, is a role that she enjoys. She quips, “If your plays are your babies, then the plays that you dramaturg are your nieces and nephews.” Personally, I trust the dramaturgs who are writers themselves the most, and it is clear from this reading that Katherine is first and foremost a writer.

City in the Sky sent me straight to the internet to learn more about the history of Echo Mountain at the turn of the century. If relics of the past in our natural environment are not examined, it seems impossible to protect it from a dangerous future. I’d say that goes the same for examining the ghosts of our past. As Dr. Larkin says, “The universe is so vast, and we are so small. Would it not make more sense to point the telescope in the other direction?”

by Analyn Revilla

Today, September 25th of 2026 is the mid-Autumn Mooncake festival. I rushed to get to Wonder Bakery before it closed at 9 PM from South LA to DTLA Chinatown after a late mass.  When I got there the only employee left was mopping the floor under the tables.  I bought mooncakes of two varieties:  lotus seed with duck egg yolk and red bean paste with duck egg yolk.  It has been my tradition in the past three years to buy mooncakes here as it’s the only place open late that sells them.  The more famous Phoenix Bakery was a block away but closed at 6:00 PM.

My day started at 7:00 AM and sandwiched between the mooncake trip were the litany of constant caring for pets (a dog, four cats and five chickens), a hike at Kenneth Hahn, grocery shopping, teaching a Pilates Reformer class at 9:00 AM. Though I was fatigued and squeezed for time, I was determined to get my mooncakes today.  I asked myself “Why is this so important to you?”  It could wait till tomorrow or even another week to get the mooncakes.  

The short answer is I’m a traditional kind of person.  Practicing traditions has a deep meaning for me and I don’t know exactly what it is for the mid-Autumn Mooncake festival.  I am Filipino, and as a Catholic this isn’t even a regular practice.  But, I have picked up certain practices in my exposure to different cultures.  A couple of weeks ago was the Ethiopian New Year, and I went to see my friends in Little Ethiopia, and sent greetings to Ethiopian friends in far away places.   More recently was Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  I also acknowledged the solemnity of these events to friends who practice the rituals of the High Holy Days.   

All this had me wondering as to whether my choices and actions are based on belief, opinions or preferences. There is a spectrum of consequences to what I choose and do.  To begin with there are short-term and/or long-term consequences.  Also it could be serious or not-so-serious consequences; negative or positive in terms of how it all plays out.

This reminds me of the terrible, terrible time I had when deciding upon my specialty in Computer Science.  The options were:  Business Systems, Microcomputer Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Systems.  I chose Decision Systems with the hope I could learn to make decisions easily with some intelligence applied in the process.  It was a miserable and the wrong choice for me, because it was heavy on mathematics with a lot of linear programming.  But I got through it (and I bet with a lot of Divine intervention).

I noticed that I have made a lot of major choices that were life-changing based on a hunch, a deep knowing of what is right for me, because I trust I am being guided by a divine force.  I pray a lot.  I’ve learned to be cool, to trust this inner knowing, and to act with the long-term effect in mind.  I suppose I bias more towards making decisions that are based on belief rather than opinion, with the understanding that opinions can change when circumstances or evidence changes.  But it’s not often that all the facts are available at the moment when the decision has to be made.  Belief is deeper in the marrow of my being.

I bought my round-trip airfare ticket to fly back to Vancouver for Canadian Thanksgiving in mid-October.  Whenever a big outlay of money is involved then I give the decision making process serious consideration.  So many what-if’s come into play, even down to buying insurance for the flight, and whether to pay for extra leg-room or to pay for two check-in baggages.  The apps for these airline tickets always ask “Are you sure?” with the purpose of creating more anxiety on an already trepidation-laden transaction.  Yes, I’m sure! I want to scream at an inanimate screen that pretends to be human.  

I daresay that as I get closer to my “golden years”, I am practicing to be more self-aware of what’s driving my choices.  I consciously think of time as a precious commodity.  I don’t hesitate to hang up on telemarketers, especially the automated variety.  My radar goes up for situations when the players aren’t serious about the gravity of choices to be made. 

Tonight I can enjoy my mooncake with a cup of tea and gaze up at the moon, knowing I am ready.  I made the journey and I have arrived again.  As a Catholic, this is preparing me for the ritual of getting ready for the Advent season as candles are lit to bring the light into the world.

By Kitty Felde

Last month, I threw a birthday party for one of my characters.

In my latest Fina Mendoza mystery “Home of the Brave,” my young detective celebrates her 11th birthday. But her party gets hijacked by her matchmaking aunts, trying to fix up Fina’s congressman father with his former chief-of-staff. Fina barely gets to blow out the candles.

So I invited all the neighborhood kids and threw Fina the birthday party she should have had.

I posted about the party on my neighborhood Facebook group, trying to explain the odd concept of a party (no presents please!) for someone who wouldn’t be there in person. Would anyone come?

What happened surprised me. First, my 11-year-old neighbor knocked on my door. “I have some ideas,” she said and pulled out a handwritten list. Kids her age liked to win prizes, she said, so we’d need competitions. And a piñata. “We have to have a piñata,” she said. “And junk food. And I’ll help.”

Word spread. More kids volunteered. On Saturday, half a dozen young helpers dragged every chair they could find out to the front yard. “Adults like to sit,” said my young expert. Adults! Would grownups come to a fictitious 11-year-old’s party? Just in case, I added bottles of beer and cans of coffee drinks to a “grownup” ice chest.

People did come. More than two dozen neighbors of all ages came to celebrate Fina’s birthday.

Center stage was a table covered with my books. “Oh, I’ve read this one,” said one girl. “I’ve read them ALL!” bragged another. Two of the parents were librarians who were determined to take home the entire series. It was a subtle, not too pushy way to call attention to my work.

So if you’re looking for a creative way to celebrate your characters without the need for lights and costumes and a director, consider throwing them a party. Invite every director and artistic director you can (and encourage them to bring their kids/grandkids). If it’s a period or absurdist piece, suggest your guests come in costume. Include a short reading of your play as part of the celebration. Who knows? It may inspire a full production!

PS: The next day, one of my young helpers knocked on my door and told me, “That was the best party I ever went to!” I had to agree.


Kitty Felde writes The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels. She also writes a series of civics quiz books under the pen name of PJ Jaeger called “Are You Smarter Than Your Parents About…Civics?”

A free staged reading of her one-woman play (with a ghost) “ALICE: an evening with the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt” will be presented Monday, October 12th at Theater 40 at 7PM.

by Constance Jaquay

Since I left my hotel in Tokyo, I keep seeing the face of Jason Arday, where late into the night I’d watch the BBC conduct interview after interview; one person then the next giving their opinion on how and why we lost another human life.  

My body jerks, tightens; it clenches for it knows the unpredictable nature of isolation. 

I’ve heard the vocal vibrations of my shadow gently welcome death:

suicide dances on beat, familiar // an old friend who visits many on cold nights as the smell of gas lingers in the air.

On my knees I pray that every tortured soul finds peace in ways that rewire and heal their nervous system. 

On the train I look left and right only to find every face looking down into a phone, it reminds me of a cult //  so I close my eyes to remember Sarah in Vermont, fresh kale, homegrown blueberries, strawberries grown in generations old soil, our weekly trips into town for espresso and fresh fish.  

There was a time when people made eye contact and strangers were actually friends you ran into during your work week routes as each of you lived your individual lives. 

Now___we make way for corporations disguised as community organizations to profit off grief and heartbreak, as we witness them prey on the downfall of humans deemed deserving, turn their stories into top ten movies on Netflix as swiftly as falcons catching another bird in midair.

In our naivety, we dreamed shame and anger would morph themselves with time.  

As I dance and float through space, thankful fear has not taken hold of me. For I still believe scarcity brings abundance, yet | this leaves a feeling deep within the bones: cruelty quietly hides in a multitude of hellos. I’m reminded that fear is reactive, contagious; it breeds followers. 

You can’t teach resentment; it resembles fungus and grows__simmers; some carry it close as it lives beneath the surface of the eyes when one realizes that old age is nigh. 

Walking down Oakwood, I see raccoons as huge as pigs eating canned food my neighbors leave out for stray cats. Another dose of reality: we are in hard times & hunger sneaks up on you right when one feels full.  

Arriving home, I sit down on my Senfu stool, trying to stay focused. 

I admire my pretty stationary collection (beautiful things still matter) before I pen an old-fashioned, handwritten letter to Lady Paige, whom I met during a hot summer in a small fishing town over an aperitivo in Genoa. (The quiet actions still matter). 

Rooted. 

Finding Calm….I stand still | 

I trust my body. 

An unbiased guide to what lies within the hidden body.