Sure, I find wonder in a lot of different things every day (electricity, ballpoint pens, the dewey decimal system – to name a few), but I don’t often find myself truly genuinely confounded.
Which is why when I saw a play last week that left me baffled it was that much more unnerving.
It wasn’t the plot. I’m usually willing to roll with a weird plot. I’ve seen Blasted by Sarah Kane, so I can handle an unorthodox plot. It was the total and complete lack of agency that was held by the women on stage.
Call me demanding if you want, but when I see a play by a female playwright in particular I expect the female characters portrayed to be, well, characters. In this play, which I won’t name in this piece, the women felt like as thin and stale as the “dough” for a lunchables pizza.
The play, which had six women and two men, featured only three of the women as named characters (Why yes, I am obsessed with the Bechdel Test. How did you know?) The others were models used as set dressing and props. When I say this, I do not mean it in the way that people usually talk about beautiful women – primarily there for ocular enjoyment. I mean that this play featured women as cars, gumball machines, computers and coatracks in place of inanimate objects.
So back to my bafflement. I like this playwright (who is a woman). I saw one of her plays when I was in college and I thought that she was doing something awesome and new and so cool. She has women in her shows and they’re real people. I love that the main character in her newest show is fat. Narratives of fat women are so often erased or only used as a plot device that creates a dilemma for an attractive male character. The last play I interacted with that featured a fat female lead was Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig which I have too many issues with to even begin to touch on here. But it must be said that I was disappointed in this writer. I felt that to take a cast with three times as many women as men ( a real unconventionality in this 5M, 1F world of plays we’re living in) and to use most of the women as literal set dressing was perplexing.
I absolutely know that she is a smart woman and was probably making a commentary on the very issue I mentioned earlier – beautiful women being used solely as eyecandy.
But isn’t it a more powerful statement to just have female characters that have something to say? And should all the onus be on us, the female playwrights? I think that it’s time we hold everyone more accountable for the way we write women for the stage. We can’t hide behind the excuses “he’s a man, he just doesn’t know how to write women well” or “she’s making a statement on the treatment of women by society.” Didn’t Shakespeare and Ibsen, men, write intelligent and complex female characters? And didn’t Audre Lorde tell us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house?
I don’t think we – playwrights, producers, actors, directors, and other theatre makers – can comment on the patriarchy by simply portraying it anymore. I think it’s time we comment on the injustices we see in society – sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia – by showing a world without them, by showing a world that makes us perplexed enough to ask “Why isn’t real life like that?”
Follow Korama on twitter at @koramadrama for more musings about the patriarchy and life in general.
In 2013, writer/performer Chris Farah’s show Fancy: The Southern Gothic Camp Parable debuted in the Hollywood Fringe Festival, winning a “Virgin” Award and “Best of Fringe Extension.” The good news is that Farah’s latest iteration of Fancy is back this year, opening in the 2014 Hollywood Fringe on June 8th at 3 Clubs as Fancy: Secrets from my Bootydoir. Since meeting Farah last year, I’ve seen her on television a lot, and as a fan, wanted to ask her some questions about her process, how she writes/performs comedy, and what it means to be a Fringe Femme. Luckily for me, she had time to respond. By the way, Farah is guest-tweeting for LA FPI starting the week of June 8, 2014.
Q: What is your background and how did you become interested in comedy?
A: How do I even begin this question? Haha, I was born in the valley and raised in Orange County. I always liked to sing and grew up being obsessed with musical theatre, everything from Guys and Dolls, to Godspell, to Cabaret to Rent (especially in high school). We moved around a lot, so I started to cultivate being funny or embracing my innate ridiculousness to be popular in new environments.
In high school, I started taking theatre classes at South Coast Repertory and found a teacher there, Laurie Woolery, who was such a strong, inspirational female mentor to me that when I got into college I had the audacity to major in Theatre (I had promised my dad I was going to go into Journalism and Communications). I went to Loyola Marymount University, and got cast as a freshman in the play Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr (directed by Diane Benedict, another strong female mentor and my favorite teacher in college) as the retired prostitute aunt, Maggie May, who smoked like a chimney and limped around the stage due to her varicose veins. Still to this day, my favorite role and production of my life. The play is haunting, and dark, and beautiful, and cemented in me the reality that theatre was my life. I dreamed of graduation and going to get my MFA at NYU but alas, my dad, albeit supportive, wasn’t into paying thousands for more theatre education and when I quite easily got a commercial agent I decided to stay in LA.
I took improv classes at the Groundlings and then started taking long form improv and sketch classes at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre right when it opened in LA (I had wandered into the now defunct Tamarind theatre space and into the UCB opening party where I was seduced with all the people dancing, drinking and generally being full of debauchery inside a theatre, it felt VERY Dionysian). Long form improv felt like true stripped down, bare bones theatre, no director, no writer, just theater artists jumping from the backwall to create a full and succinct piece. I started doing shows there, lots of “dirty” or blue comedy, sketch shows, character bits in shows, and genre-based improv like musical theatre or Tennessee Williams, and then writing my own short musicals for a show at UCB called Quick & Funny Musicals. Through writing I really got to hone in on my comedic voice which, of course, ultimately helped me as a performer, and that voice was camp comedy. I had done a musical improv show at the Celebration Theater where I met Kurt Koehler and Efrain Schunior. Kurt would later facilitate me doing shows at the Cavern Club at the basement of Casita del Campo, the best camp and drag theatre in the town! Efrain would go on to write and let me star in his improv telenovela saga Stallions de Amor. When I started writing my one lady show Fancy, Kurt ended up being my director and Efrain my producer. And that’s where we are now!
FANCY at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival
Q: How did you develop your show Fancy and how is it different this year than last?
A: I took a class on writing a one person show at the Writer’s Pad that was taught by Julie Brister, another UCB improviser whose own one lady show Fat Parts I had seen and respected. I knew I wanted to create a piece of theatre but I didn’t want it to be a SNL audition (big characters, haphazardly strewn together), nor did I want to talk about my personal life or family, and I had seen Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel and didn’t think I was capable of that kind of character work, Godbless, so I literally had no idea what I was gonna do. Julie had asked to email her show ideas if we didn’t already have one and I, only in passing at the end of the email, mentioned Fancy. Fancy, an idea based on the fact that my mother used to sing me the song while playing the guitar and as I got older it had become my karaoke anthem. There was something about the storytelling in that song, Fancy’s strength, the melodrama and southern spirit, the fact my paternal grandmother was from a small Louisiana town, and finally the last verse where she gives it to the “hypocrites” that I connected with, and with Julie’s support wrote some monologues that would end up being in Fancy’s first show – Fancy! A Southern Gothic Camp Parable. Fancy first premiered at the Cavern Club and the next summer I brought it to the Hollywood Fringe ’13. I love performing her and was completely overwhelmed by the response people gave her. I can’t even express the delight and appreciation I have when people say they connect with her or love her. I want for her to have the accessibility of cult icons like Elvira or Dame Edna.
For this next show, Fancy: Secrets from my Bootydoir, I want to connect with the audience in a brand new interactive cabaret show which picks up with the Fancy we left you with at the end of the last show, strong, independent, fearless and free. She is going to share the things she has learned along the way but of course in her warm, sassy, and “innocent for a prostitute” way. Fancy is going to talk directly to the audience, answer questions, integrate social media, teach/preach, sing songs, maybe even improv a song, who knows. 🙂
Q: Where/when/how do you write? What are your inspirations? Who are your mentors? Do you mentor someone?
A: I write on my couch which is where I eat, watch TV, hang with friends, take afternoon naps, and do pretty much every other important thing in life on. I write only when necessary, so I have to “book myself” things to ultimately get me to write. I am naturally HORRIBLY LAZY, and have nightmarish self-discipline skills. I don’t have a mentor but my best friend Amy Rhodes is a writer (she has done a couple of one person shows and published plays and currently writes on Ellen) and she reads everything I write. I don’t mentor anyone for writing, but I have acted in the Young Storytellers Foundation’s Big Shows and would love to mentor school-aged kids soon. I pull inspiration from so many sources! Mae West, Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, Jennifer Saunders, Jill Davis, Tina Fey, Rebel Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, Lennon Parham, Morgan Murphy, Jackie Beat, RuPaul, & Elvira. I get inspired every time I see Angelyne riding around LA in that pink corvette, she’s like a living nomadic performance artist (though maybe I wish she did something besides sell t-shirts for 20 bucks out of her trunk, I own at least 3 shirts by the way).
Q: What do you think are the challenges and perks of being a woman in comedy in Los Angeles?
A: The challenge is if you don’t know about comic books, sports, video games or other things comedy guys like, it can be super frustrating to be in male-dominated scenarios. That frustration can weigh on your own self-esteem as a writer and performer, and if you aren’t able to take yourself out of the situation and know your intrinsic value, it can ultimately be super depressing. Surround yourself with people that understand and appreciate you and that also WORK. Cultivating a group of ambitious and hilarious females and homosexual males that have driven me to work has been the biggest blessing in my career. The perks are once you get to a level where you know what you do and you trust you do it well, there are unforetold opportunities to share your voice. Sometimes you have to make those opportunities but so many successful females are writing and producing their own work (again: Casey Wilson & June Diane Raphael, Jessica St. Claire & Lennon Parham, obs Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Chelsea Handler, Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham). I believe as female comedy writers, we all own a lil’ piece of each other successes (SPOILER ALERT: one of Fancy’s secrets), because it says there IS a market for female-centered comedies written by females who truly understand the feminine narrative in the modern world.
Q: What are some of your theories on comedy? (Its value, why we need it, how to do it, etc.)
A: Godbless, I think truth is always present in successful comedy. Maybe that’s why I enjoy camp, I can always wink at the audience with the “You know I’m wearing fake eyelashes and a drag wig, right? This is a show.” I also think that’s why comedy and heart plays so well together; it’s another way of showing the truth of characters or relationships being portrayed. I guess I subscribe to all the other rules of comedy: “yes and,” ” don’t ask questions,” “comedy in reversals,” “the unexpected,” “rules of three,” “funny is in the details,” and “using plosives,” but they don’t define my work. I don’t know HOW to do it per se; I think what I write is funny and I know it’s not for everyone but that at least SOME other people will think it’s funny too.
Q: Why do you like to perform in the Hollywood Fringe? And what does it feel like to be a part of it? What are your thoughts on being a Fringe Femme?
A: I love performing at HFF for so many reasons but here’s just a few:
a) because it’s my hometown and as a theatre artist, I’m gonna rep LA for life
b) it’s easy as I live here, and obs cheaper for that reason too
c) it gives me a place and sense of community
d) I love meeting new people and seeing new work
e) it has taught me to be a producer and for that alone I am eternally grateful
f) it helps give validation to Fancy whom I care so deeply for, and the insight on how to give her legs beyond her first show last year
g) forcing me to continue her shows (literally because I won the Virgin award, I couldn’t just not come back the next year) and wanting to make this next show better than the first.
It feels completely different this year than last! I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and this year people already know Fancy’s name! It feels like what i always thought going to a dream performing arts high school would feel like! Except I can stay out late. 🙂
Being a Fringe Femme is everything. The support I was granted by the LA FPI last year was immeasurable and helped shine a light on Fancy when no one knew her. For me, it validated me as a writer. I always knew when writing Fancy that I was going to give myself the subtle platform to express my views on feminism (as well as LGBTQ rights) and being a Fringe Femme and honestly reading Jennie Webb’s blog filled me with the pride that I had infused this crazy, ridiculous character with those values. We are women, and we do have to fight tooth and nail to bring ourselves from one stage in life to where we ultimately want to be. It’s hard, and there’s going to be adversaries and antagonists along the way, but if you know yourself and your power, no one can take it away from you.
Q: Any other upcoming projects to discuss?
A: I mean, what else do you want from me? Haha, joking. I have been blessed to get into talking head work on pop culture shows. I live for pop culture, reading gossip blogs are another favorite pastime to do on my couch. I am doing a lot of standup shows and am trying to get a monthly variety show happening in LA. Besides that, I’m producing a podcast and writing a pilot because, as I said, I rep LA. 🙂
Q: Are there links to any of your performances already online (TV, etc.) that we can include?
When I was getting ready to move back to Missouri last October, I remember crying to my Mom about how I was scared that this financially forced hiatus would be a huge backtrack in my struggling career as an actor/writer/filmmaker. My Mom tried to comfort me by telling me I could do community theatre. I scoffed and later laughed about the possibility to my professional theatre friends. I couldn’t imagine going back to small-town community theatre after working with people who’s whole lives were the theatre. I was being a through and through theatre snob.
Four months after moving back, I auditioned for play at a local community theatre. The show was Love, Loss, And What I Wore by Nora and Delia Ephron put on by the Springfield Contemporary Theatre – which is a terrific theatre that puts on satisfyingly well-rounded seasons and had just moved into its new home, one that would make many of LA’s 99 Seat Theaters jealous. I would say the day I found out I was cast in the show, my snob immediately began to shrink. After the first week of rehearsals, it was all but disappeared, and by opening weekend, I had fallen in love with the show and my cast and the whole experience. For one, because I got to be an actress again- JUST an actress. I wasn’t a producer/social media/photographer/videographer/editor/actress, I wasn’t expected to bring in a certain amount of audience, I wasn’t expected to do anything but be the best actress I could be and it was utterly liberating. I got to fall in love with the experience and challenge myself and experiment and PLAY. The play, if you are unfamiliar, is kind of a Vagina Monologue type of show, if you substitute vagina’s with clothes. It tells the stories of several women and the things they experienced in their lives. While I had a blast with my more comedic pieces and playing with accents, mannerisms and facial expressions; my favorite scene was the one I played closest to myself. The character’s name was even Amanda, my birth name, and she is talking about her wedding day. On the other side of the stage my cast mate, Adie, playing a butch lesbian, talks about her wedding. As the scene goes on, you start to realize they are talking about the same wedding and we turn to each other to say our vows and kiss. This scene performed in Los Angeles or New York City does not have the same type of impact it does performing it in the Bible belt for a white haired, post-church matinee. There were nights where the audience mostly awwwed with wet eyes as Adie’s Mother asks “Why did they have to do this?” and Amanda’s Mother answers “To honor their relationship.” There were also nights were you could feel disgust and eye averting, and those nights felt the most important.
This same theatre company is putting up The Normal Heart this season- 25 years after it was first produced here in 1989, where there were protests enough to get National Coverage and one of the actor’s houses was burnt down. It’s this kind of passion and bravery that has me excited about doing more theatre here- audiences here need it more than they do in Los Angeles and New York. To identify with characters in a play when you are stuck in a dark theatre and realize you are more like them than you could ever have known in the light of day, is one of the magical, transformative powers of theatre.
What’s more, my second theatre audition here was for Tent Theare’s 2014 Summer Season. Tent Theatre is a Summer Tradition held outside on the Missouri State University campus with seating capacity in the 300’s. They present two musicals and a comedy playing in repertory for six weeks with a specially selected company of students and guest artists. Notable Tent Theatre performers include John Goodman and Kathleen Turner. And I was cast in You Can’t Take It With You, which will be my first Equity Show! For the month of June, I’ll get to leave my cubicle prison and be a full-time, paid actor and I couldn’t be happier or more impatient for June to get here!
I would say the LA theatre snob in me has been rightly put in her place and while my finances are still struggling to recover from yet another punch in the gut tax season, at least one of my goals has come true- I’m falling in love with acting again.
I am not sure what kind of heavy artillery hit me but the bruises have left me sluggish, a little disoriented (darn freeway expansion, nothing looks the same, I never know where I am, blink and I’m lost) and then there is the constant checking of body parts after slamming toes and fingers in any place en route to anywhere not to mention being ticked off about always being caught off guard. I wish somebody had yelled “incoming”.
Every single thing I do to calm myself down, I have been unable to do lately. Being ticked off most of the time is really exhausting. I have got to find another sport that is active after basketball season is over. I promise yelling at games is a really good way to release stress. I am at the point where I want to wrap my ankles and start training for a marathon – that or find a gym so I can pump some iron. I am so on edge, my teeth hurt.
Why all the stress you ask?
Not able to keep writing past 3 am (what can I say, I like the night hours). I weary of having to shut down creative juices so I can go to bed, so I can beat the traffic in the morning (never happens), so I can think about building coordinators and personnel actions and what I am going to eat for lunch (it’s a really big chore) and why my paycheck never gives me a break. I long for change…, long for time to edit little lines of non-rhyming poetry.
I don’t like to rhyme.
Free verse is what I’d rather write. I get allergic rhyming right. I just adore the jagged view. Words without meter, forgive me it’s my park avenue…
I get notes about trying different forms of poetry – the Pantoum and the Villanelle, for instance. I’m trying. It’s not easy yet; it feels forced. I figure it’s a good exercise for where I really want to take my poetry. So, I have been seeking out the work of other poets. Recently, I was listening to Yusef Komunyakaa on the internet reading some of his poetry, afterwards someone asked him why he didn’t rhyme more often – he said you can only rhyme with rain so many times. (He may have used another word.) I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair which is why I can’t remember the exact word he used. Apparently that’s about 495 times you can rhyme with rain. I’d be throwing up rhymes all over the floor by 100; none of them worth salvaging for the page.
All I want to do, right this minute is write a totally awesome poem that I don’t have to wonder if it is mediocre or not.
Mediocre.
I loathe that word. Well, not the word but what it means.
Eventually, I want to write an epic poem, line upon line till “the end” so I guess I am training myself to take on another genre – hoping not to keep bruising so easily in the meantime. Hoping that if I can write enough poems in succession, I’ll get the same adrenaline rush I get off writing plays…
I have enjoyed our diverse group of voices. I have enjoyed the moments when after reading these ladies or watching a video or film, I break out into laughter or tears – those moments when I am found…. There is nothing like being in a funk and have someone write “Oink! Oink!” or having to leave my desk to shake myself after reading “When Playwrights Get Old” which came about after “Too old?” left me numb and very contemplative. When I look in the mirror, I see me and have to remind myself that the first set of students at the university where I work my day job have graduated and are in their thirties now. The few that have stayed on in employment shock me when I run into them yet when I look in the mirror I don’t see age — I see me. One wonders if after all the “Taking Stock” we do if a change is gonna come – ever – but we keep hoping and pushing and fighting for that “Stillness” that drives us.
How much more drive does it take for a woman to succeed than a man? Can it even be measured? Who cares? Trying to keep myself moving. No time to research how a man does it unless it helps me.
The goal is to be a working artist. By that I mean, you don’t have to have a day job to pay the rent, pay for submission fees, or afford you food while you write. Living in near poverty to be an artist should be against the law especially because that same art could end up being a national treasure; the following terms are not interchangeable: “Working Artist – Donating Artist – Surviving Artist“.
Zora Neale Hurston author of Their Eyes Were Watching God died in poverty; her work was rescued from a fire after her death (Florida had a habit of burning the belongings of the dead). Zora Neale Hurston’s life work is a national treasure…
There should be no limitations or rules on where or in what form a writer creates story as there are no rules to who can be “The Happiest Person in America” or one of the happiest people – let us do our art and we are there… Gender does not dictate what shared work will change the world in some way — “And The Female Play at the Tonys was…” and it should not dictate who has access to the stage, the screen or the bookshelf. Great stories all start the say way — with words and the “Voice…” of the writer. All are needed, each soprano, alto, tenor and bass… There should not have to be “The Bechdel Test for the Stage“; there should not have to be a Bechdel test at all – why can’t all stories worth telling be treated equal? Why can’t the journey be easier? Why can’t handling “Our Expectations, Our Fears” as artists be easier? Perhaps even this tug-of-war on gender parity fits into the “Everything Is A Creative Act” category; it is, after all, fodder.
I especially like what Pulitzer Prize Finalist playwright Lisa Kron said at the last Dramatists Guild Conference “Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future” about what she does when something rubs her the wrong way “I’m going to write a play about this” — The Veri**on Play is what resulted.
Just wondering, do you have any favorite LA FPI blog articles?
Bloggers Past and Present:
Jessica Abrams, Tiffany Antone, Erica Bennett, Nancy Beverly, Andie Bottrell, Robin Byrd, Kitty Felde, Diane Grant, Jen Huszcza, Sara Israel, Cindy Marie Jenkins, Sue May, Analyn Revilla, Cynthia Wands and special input by Laura Shamas and Jennie Webb.
I have a life coach. I realize this reduces the entire scope of my personality down to a few key points of demographic data, but there you have it. To say she’s wonderful and has changed my life is another blog post. I mention her because one of the ideas that she’s dragging me kicking and screaming into believing is that the more creativity you use, the more creativity you get. Basically nothing is a waste of time — that, as a creative person, it’s all creeks feeding into the same river.
This is a tough one for me. Somewhere along one of the tributaries of my past, I became indoctrinated with the idea that life is frequently a bitch and then you make time to create. And you better damned well be focused in that hour you’ve carved out with a surgeon’s knife because in the next one lurks a call that has to be returned or a bill that needs to be paid or a baby shower that needs to be attended. I also always believed that I must be choosy with the projects I invest time into, as if somehow I had a crystal ball and could look into the future and see a production or a script sale.
I’m by no means renouncing the laser-like focus it when it comes down to simply getting the work done. But what if everything — that annoying baby shower that takes up way too much of a Sunday, for instance — what if it’s all a part of the same creative organism? Or just the same life organism? What if it actually gives you more than it takes away?
I’m trying this on for size. And by that I mean, repeating the idea to myself a few times a day, as I’ve been instructed to do. It requires letting go of my ideas of where something will or won’t take me. To continue with the river metaphor: the goal may be to get to that great big ocean, but what about the new growth that springs up when a once-fallow area suddenly becomes irrigated? I realize I’m in way over my head in environmental science arena, but I think I’ve made my point.
If my own past serves as a lesson, I’m reminded daily of the job I took as a social science field interviewer–a job I knew nothing about– which, in short order, led to an amazing friendship and creative partnership, the aforementioned life coach and a web series called KNOCKING ON DOORS (based on said job) that is currently on YouTube. Recently I was in Indiana doing just that, knocking on doors, and in between my own private bitch sessions about the lack of decent food, I came up with ideas for more webisodes. Years ago, a studio job I held for three long, miserable years became fodder for a play set in — you guessed it — a movie studio.
But something tells me it’s not just about material to use in my writing. It’s looking past that and into the great beyond — life itself, and the weird and wonderful places it will you when you commit and give and then let go.
I’m working on it. Like I said, I have a really good coach.
Last Saturday I had one of the most amazing experiences a playwright could ask for. No, it didn’t involve megastars or a cash prize that could allow me to pay rent for the next two months without worry AND take a vacation. I had coffee with Kate Bergstrom, the director of the Santa Barbara “arm” of the 2014 Female Playwrights Onstage Project (of which my short play, “Happy Returns” is a part) and Emma Fassler, the actress reading the lead part in my play.
The enterprise — as it should be called — is the brainchild of our own Tiffany Antone, whose energy and passion I really wish they could bottle and sell. The project involves readings of short plays all over the country, plays chosen by a unique peer review process. Tiffany can describe it better than I can:
Little Black Dress INK invites you to Santa Barbara this weekend for an evening of new plays, yummy wine, and creative introductions! Experience our ONSTAGE Project at Left Coast Books this Saturday, April 12th at 7:00 p.m. Directed by superstar Kate Bergstrom, this event features seven new, short plays by Katherine James, Anne V. Grob, Christina Pages, Jessica Abrams, Inbal Kashtan, Sharon Goldner, and Katherine Bergstrom. This is the first of four semi-finalists festival readings occurring across the states this month, with a reading of our finalists going up in LA in May. Over 60 artists are coming together in 5 cities to bring 28 new plays to life – we SO hope you’ll be join us this weekend in Santa Barbara as we kick off the festival in style!
So there you have it. 60 female playwrights in five cities all over the country. Which means in Waco and Ithaca and Santa Barbara plays by women will be read, enjoyed and discussed.
I entered my play because I absolutely love the idea of the peer review process. I love reading the work of other women and having them read mine. We learn so much about each other — about who we are and what we’re writing about and, above all, why we’re writing from the process. I am honored to have been chosen.
So, as the fabulous Kate and the amazing Emma and I sat discussing my play and plays in general and work and life under the Los Angeles sun, I had to pinch myself. This is perfect, I thought. This is why we do it.
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival came of age last week, marking its 21st year. Given how hard it is to keep an arts nonprofit thriving, it would be remarkable enough that co-founder and president Adilah Barnes has presided over more than two decades of an annual presentation of solo works by women from LA, around the country and sometimes from around the world. The quality of Giving Voice–this year’s offering of performances from 20 artists at the Electric Lodge in Venice from March 28th-30th–was cause for celebration, too.
Yes, all women. Yes, all solo shows, often excerpted to fit the time, but nothing repetitive about this festival. Just to give some idea of the range and variety, audiences saw Cynthia Ling Lee’s “rapture/rupture” through which she engages postmodern dance with classical Indian dance; Kate Rubin’s multi-character comedy, “How I Died”; spoken word from The Lindz; Tia Matza’s aerialist performance; Mwanza Furaha’s jazz cabaret; social commentary via physical theatre in Dacyl Acevedo’s personal take on the economic crash, “Will Work For”; and more. Besides stylistic diversity, the festival is committed to racial and ethnic diversity onstage which carried over to the audience where, incidentally–please take note–there was age diversity as well.
On Saturday, putting Ciera Payton and Karen A. Clark on the same afternoon bill was an inspired pairing. Payton’s excerpt from her full-length show focused on her relationship with her incarcerated, crack addicted father. When “Ciera” transformed into her father, she didn’t just put a light blue denim prison shirt over her white tank top. Her voice, her posture, her face transformed as well. Their prison visit captured the complexity of emotion: the joy Ciera feels in her father’s embrace, the awkwardness, the anger, the pain and confusion.
Ciera Payton Photo by SCOTT MITCHELL copyright 2012
Here’s where I give a shoutout to the POPS club at Venice High School which offers a platform for creativity to kids with a parent in prison and where I think that onstage, Payton’s joyfilled and charismatic presence provides reassurance that the little girl from New Orleans grew up strong, beautiful, and able to laugh in spite of all the troubles she encountered.
Clark, compelling in her own way, proved you don’t have to go through a traumatic or dysfunctional upbringing to have an engaging story to tell. Combining family stories with song, she shared positive memories of family life, a “legacy of love.” Her warm and intimate performance style kept the audience invested in her parents’ happy and devoted 57-year marriage–in spite of which her mother, Ora Christine, kept eight bank accounts in her own name. Her counsel to her daughter, that women should always hold onto some money of their own, led Clark into her own memorable song styling of God Bless The Child.
Karen A. Clark
I felt lucky to have been introduced to their talents, glad they were scheduled alongside the performance that initially brought me to the Electric Lodge: Estela Garcia’s “Remedios Varo, La Alquimista” (in Spanish with projected English supertitles).
Many years ago, I walked into the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and was stopped in my tracks by a painting: Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista (Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst). The woman’s white hair rises, curved, like horns. Her eyes are deepset, haunted. Her face is partly covered, a mask hangs beneath her neck, and another mask or face dangles, about to be dropped, from one hand. I had never before heard of the artist, Remedios Varo.
Garcia’s performance not only filled in much of Varo’s life-story for me, but like the painting, took my breath.
Estela Garcia
In a brown, almost monastic robe, she portrayed a woman traumatized by Franco’s dictatorship, war, exile in France and then Mexico, and the submersion of self in her lover’s world. Varo struggles to find her place as an artist and as a woman haunted by “cosmic loneliness.” Garcia leaves the stage to return elaborately masked as the artist/alchemist. Slowly, ceremonially, she brings Varo’s dream imagery to life as she grinds up a star and feeds it to a reluctant crescent moon which she rocks like a baby until the full moon is revealed.
The magical process of creating art brings about theatrical magic. Words capture the artist’s contradictions: the uneasiness of being lonely and the excitement of being alone.
That uneasiness and that excitement–a woman alone on the stage–seem a fitting way to talk about the anxiety and joy at the creative root of the festival’s triumphant solo acts.
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Other performers this year were: Karen Bankhead, Sofia Maria Gonzalez, Ingrid Graham, Jennifer S. Jones, Jozanne Marie, Ansuya Nathan, Marlene Ondrea Nichols, Anita Noble, Sloan Robinson, Lisa Marie Rollins, and Tracy Silver.
You’re too late for 2014 but if this whets your appetite, don’t miss out again next year. The 22nd annual festival is already scheduled for March 26-29.
Artists wishing to perform in 2015 should check out the application requirements at www.lawtf.org/ The deadline for submission is August 31.
We will post highlights in the coming week or so. The room in Samuel French Theatre & Film Bookshop was packed, the plays were well written, entertaining, thought provoking, etc., etc., etc., the actors were talented and the audience was great!
Thanks to Little Black Dress INK, The Vagrancy Actors, Samuel French Theatre & Film Bookshop for partnering with LAFPI and to everyone who pitched in and participated. And, a very special thanks to our fearless, faithful, get-it-done leader — Jennie Webb!
