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This week, we’re sharing some fun stuff from LAFPI Instigator (and former blogger) Nancy Beverly! Check out below for her latest Substack Post. And play catch up and stay in the loop at substack.com/@hikernb

Climbing Mt. Olympus??

(Yeah, that looks a little steep, doesn’t it?)

Should I spend $200 to buy my theatre pal Marc’s Olympus OM-1 camera at the end of my sophomore year of college????

Here’s some back story from my childhood to explain why this was such a big decision:

When I was in the third grade, men in suits came to the front door. I thought they were insurance salesmen because back then, those type of guys came a knockin’ to sell policies. But THESE Men in Black took the car away. Oh. NOT insurance guys. I later learned the term Repo Men. As in repossession. Apparently Dad had fallen behind on the payments for our Thunderbird.

We went through a bunch of cars the next few months. Dad had a little red Corvair for a bit…

… not to be confused with a snazzy little red Corvette and no need to cue up Prince’s song.

Then Dad got into an accident where the Corvair was totaled. Great. The guy living next door to us was a mechanic so he loaned us an ancient gray clunker from the 1940s. Eventually we got a green 1951 Hudson that was the color of Dino the Dinosaur (of Sinclair gas stations fame) – and it was about the same size.

At first I was okay with Green Dino, it beat to hell and back driving around in that gray clunker. I showed my aunt (she was just six years older than me) that the back seat was so wide I could lay down across it without having to bend my knees. She rolled her eyes implying the Hudson wasn’t even remotely cool, since this was the mid-60s. Shame washed over me.

About this time of us going through cars left, right and sideways, I became fascinated with Mr. Potato Head. I’m not sure why. I already had some Legos and had started collecting Matchbox cars. Maybe it was the fun of creating a funny face, so I asked my mom if I could have a Mr. Potato Head.

She said no, we couldn’t afford it. Wanna know how much Mr. Potato Head cost in the mid-60s? Ninety-eight cents. I’m not kidding.

I begged and pleaded with my mom until she finally drove us down to Ayr-Way where she bought me one. In hindsight, I’ve often regretted pushing Mom so hard for that toy… but when you’re in early grade school, how else do you stand up for yourself?

I did have a small plastic bank back then (it looked like a vault)…

… where I put my tiny allowance when Mom could afford to give me a nickel or a dime (my job was to take out the trash and dry the dishes). But Dad stole money from the plastic vault one Saturday morning when he thought I was asleep so he could go buy coffee at the corner diner. I ratted him out to Mom and she chastised him big time. I don’t remember him paying me back.

So you can see why I was nervous and my mom was freaked out by me wanting to spend $200 on Marc’s Olympus OM-1 35 mm camera.

How could I even afford it, you ask? Well, I worked summers at Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis to save up for college, plus I did work-study jobs at the University of Evansville (set building, publicity, box office), and I got grants (BEOG – the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant) and scholarships. No loans, I did NOT want to end up in debt like my dad.

All of that added up to my bank account giving me the green light to buy Marc’s camera. Not to mention my intuition and instincts that were yelling, “GO FOR IT!” So, I bought it. And used it for close to 30 years. A truly fabulous investment.

(It says 28 millimeter but the film that fit inside was called 35 mm)

Now that I had this fancy schmancy camera, what was I going to take pictures of? Surely more than just water droplets on clover and raindrops on roses (as much as I loved Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music)…

Wait, hang on… I was in the Drama Dept. at U of E…

Yes, photo ops there started to call my name…

(An action shot of mine from The Boyfriend, a musical production at the University of Evansville)

Go Here to Read and Subscribe to Nancy’s Substack

By Alison Minami

When Inda Craig-Galván was a young child growing up on the Southside of Chicago in the early eighties, her mother, a trained beautician, started losing clientele with the rise of at-home hair kits. In need of steadier income, she took a job at a beauty care products store owned by a Korean immigrant. The owner, unable to pronounce her name, renamed her Julie, which had always felt wrong to Craig-Galván. But as she got older, she realized that in many ways the two had had a mutually beneficial arrangement—for example, her mother was able to bring her daughter to work and the owner was able to pay her in cash. This unlikely pairing of two people at the margins is the inspiration for Craig-Galván’s new play “The Great Jheri Curl Debate,” which is having its World Premiere at the East West Players of Los Angeles.

Ryun Yu as Mr. Kim and Julanne Chidi Hill as Veralynn. Photo by Steven Lam.

In the play, Veralynn takes a job at Mr. Kim’s beauty supply store. The scenario and setting may be seeded from real life, but the story that unfolds is fully Craig-Galvan’s imaginative exploration of two people of color who are both trying to survive while negotiating shared space. Craig-Galván wanted to write an intersectional play bringing two communities uncommonly represented together that wasn’t about war or marriage, but rather about “dealing with each other, finding common ground, misunderstanding each other, and overstepping each other.” As a Black woman and an Asian immigrant with a heavy accent, Veralynn and Mr. Kim must come face-to-face with the racial stereotypes and cultural barriers between them. In so doing, they take the difficult but brave steps to bridge their divide and acknowledge their humanity.

A hallmark of Craig-Galván’s playwriting is an element of magical realism, and this play does not disappoint. While Veralynn works at the store, the beauty poster advertisements come to life, haunting and prodding her as she tries to build connection with Mr. Kim.

In her own words, Craig-Galván is “obsessed with using storytelling in a super theatrical way,” in “exploring someone’s inner mind—their thoughts and their skewed vision of life.” The posters are a window for both Veralynn and Mr. Kim as we discover how much they’ve sacrificed in the way of their own artistry just to live in America. Thematic to the play is the question, as Craig-Galván posits, “How do we continue to find and make art where we are made to feel unwelcome?” It’s a fitting question for anyone trying to make meaning out of their creative lives whilst struggling with the economic pressures of American capitalism.

Bringing together all the elements of this play took considerable creative collaboration. Under the dramaturgy of Playwright Alice Tuan, the play was developed in the East West Players’ new play development Playwrights Group. Director Scarlett Kim, also the Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, brought her background in theater and video and technology to the project, as well her own Korean immigrant perspective, which was integral to the fleshing out of Mr. Kim. Because of the extended developmental support, the play had the great fortune of actor input by lead actors Julanne Chidi Hill and Ryun Yu.

For Kim, the play was an ideal project where her many skills and sensibilities could converge. She describes the play as depicting “how two characters move beyond prescriptions of what society tells them”, and one that refuses to fall into a right-or-wrong, black-or-white binary or be told through a white male gaze. One of Kim’s driving values as an artist and director is what she describes as unclassifiable spaces, a “central framework for life and art.” In many ways, she says this play is “the story of unclassifiability in both content and form.” The integration of multimedia to carry out the fantastical elements of the play is magical and isn’t additive but rather illuminating to the characters’ inner lives.

Both Kim and Craig-Galván rave about this female-powered creative collaboration, with Kim calling it a “dreamy, joyful, generous” process and Craig-Galvan amazed at the visual interpretations of her own, as she quips, “ridiculous stage directions.” The show promises to be a truly theatrical event.