WHERE: Lounge Theatre(Lounge 1) 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard
WHY:
Yokko’s work onstage is nothing short of riveting. She’s created a spare, text-light piece that follows the events of Macbeth in a way that’s both highly physical and mostly focused on Lady Macbeth’s interior life. Honestly, it’s chilling. I’ve seen more than my fair share of Macbeths, and I still couldn’t look away. If Butoh excites you, go see it. If Macbeth turns you off, consider going to see it anyway.
WHERE: Assistance League Theatre 1367 N. St. Andrews Place
WHY:
As soon as you walk in the theatreyou feel a contagious energy – you are bearing witness to a special performance where actors and non-actors share the stage to honor the promotoras who’ve fought for their community, the safety of their bodies, better working conditions and have built a union connecting janitors across the state of California. Written and directed by Jeanette Godoy, this play is powerful and full of urgency as it gives insight into the battles endured by immigrant janitors who fought to protect women working late night janitorial shifts. This fight for women, led by women, redefined how immigrant women were seen in the workplace. It is a testament to the power of coming together and sacrificing by any means necessary. Go see this show – by the end of the show you’ll be shouting YA BASTA, Sí Se Puede!
A great gift is to be reminded of the power of stillness. The show opens with a live cellist, violinist and pianist while Anabella stands looking at the audience. This brave moment seems to last an eternity; you begin to feel uncomfortable and immediately know that this show will not spare your heart. Through her use of ballet en pointe, song, multiple characters (all performed by Anabella) and modern dance, Anabella captures the heart of the audience with her penetrating eyes and daring ability to share painful truths with intense intimacy. She has a keen sense of humor, and takes us on a journey of youthful innocence, trauma and survival. Tackling issues that many don’t come back from, Anabella shows us that art is a constant saviour; it will always give us new breath, a new life on our own terms. Go see this show and hope you can get in!
WHERE: Studio/Stage 120 N. Western Av, Los Angeles 90004
WHY:
We are living in times when – now, more than ever – it is vital that we share experiences that can save lives. For too long, mental health has carried a negative stigma and a stamp of shame, discussed behind closed doors. Jessie refuses to live this kind of life and brings the audience into her personal experience of living with bipolar and schizophrenia hallucinations. Her fearless humor and directness draws the audience in, not through pity but hope. The original songs brought to life with Jessie’s beautiful voice, and her dancing, are gifts to the audience as she reveals how she’s been able to thrive and live her best life! GO! This is a celebration of the mind, body and heart. A yummy example of how much you can bear even when you think you can’t keep going. Keep going!
WHY: This is an amazing show! The music, the talent, the script make this one of the shows you don’t want to miss at the fringe this year!
Written by Terri Weiss, directed and choreographed by John Coppola, composed by Geraldo Herrera Benavides with lyrics by Bill Berry this musical brings the challenges of a young girl coping with loss who though music finds harmony and family. This uplifting musical brings the audience to their feet as they celebrate the ability of the human spirit to recover from tragedy. This is a show for the whole family.
WHY: This lovely one woman show explores in an articulate, humorous and entertaining performance the inner workings of Stacy Dymalksi’s mind and heart when it comes to self identity and relationships. Although definitely female focused there were men in attendance laughing and acknowledging that finding ones true self in a relationship is hard – but satisfying.
Sigrid Gilmer’s “Mama Metal” packs an emotional punch. A testimonial to a life turned upside down, Sigrid takes us on a raw, unapologetic journey full of vulnerable heartbreak, stabbing humor and cold metal fury. “Mama Metal,” presented by IAMA Theatre Company, runs May 23-June 23 at Atwater Village Theatre. LAFPI was fortunate enough to speak with this hard rock writer before opening night.
LAFPI: How did your partnership with IAMA ignite and can you share this play’s development process?
Sigrid: I wrote “Mama Metal” in 2017, when I was a member of the Humanitas’ PlayLA Writer’s Group. About six of us would meet monthly for a year to write on a new play. At the end of the process we were paired with a local theatre and I had the good fortune to team up with IAMA Theatre Company. Then I began my magnificent collaboration with director Deena Selenow and she staged a beautiful reading at Open Space Cafe on Fairfax.
LAFPI: Why did you choose to tell this intimately personal story now?
Sigrid: Five years ago my step-father died suddenly and my mom was diagnosed with Lewy-Body Dementia/Parkinson’s. I went from being a struggling – albeit carefree – artist, to being my mother’s primary caregiver. “Mama Metal” was written four years into that journey. The process of watching my mother decline, called anticipatory grief – thank you therapy – was disorienting. My emotions were constantly shifting – sadness, rage, confusion, guilt. Memories were assaultive and relentless. Everything was surreal, overwhelming and terribly funny. What makes you laugh will make you cry, right? That openness, when we laugh or cry feels like the same emotional neighborhood and I was living in that raw, emotionally naked terrane. I wrote the play to navigate, sort and understand that landscape.
LAFPI: Why heavy metal? How were you introduced to it and how does/did this style of music speak to you?
Sigrid: I like metal for its naked aggression, rhythm and rage: that’s what I feel like on the inside. I think my attraction to metal started when I was about 7 or 8. I had a babysitter who constantly played rock – Journey, ELO, Styx, the Eagles, The Stones, The Beatles, Queen, Kiss, etc. From there it was just a slippery slope to Metallica, Sabbath, and Maiden. I like any music that rages against the machine. Metal also has a strong theatrical element; it is over the top, deeply orchestral and complicated. Different melodies and rhythms running throughout them all coalescing into this magnificent tapestry of sound.
LAFPI: What advice do you have for your fellow women playwrights, advocating for their voices to be heard onstage?
Sigrid: Write plays. Then write more. Send your work everywhere. Say yes to gigs. Get your plays up, by any means necessary. Self-produce. Find your artistic tribe. Write and write and write. Develop your own voice and view of the world until it screams. Until it is undeniable. Nurture your desires and idiosyncrasies. Create your own space. Write. Write. Write.
Cast members Chris Gardner, Jamie Wollrab, Lee Sherman, Courtney Sauls, Graham Sibley, Rodney To. Photo by Jeff Lorch
For tickets and more info about “Mama Metal,” visit iamatheatre.com
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Alyson Mead speaks with Jacqueline Goldfinger about designer babies, scientific advances, and her new play Babel, presented in a staged reading by Sacred Fools for one night only, on Sunday, January 27th.
What conversations do you want to have? Send your suggestions for compelling female playwrights or theater artists working on LA stages to Alyson Mead at [email protected], then listen to “What She Said.”
What conversations do you want to have? Send your suggestions for compelling female playwrights or theater artists working on LA stages to Alyson Mead at [email protected], then listen to “What She Said.”
Women writers aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions and neither is Wendy Graf in her play Exit Wounds, one of two recipients of the Moss & Kitty Carlisle Hart New Play Initiative Silver Medallion, playing through December 16 at GTC Burbank. So LAFPI decided to ask Wendy some questions of our own.
LAFPI: What inspired you to write this play from this perspective?
Wendy Graf: I became interested in what happens to the families and love ones of evil people and/or people who commit evil acts. I started watching a number of documentaries like Hitler’s Children. Then there was, of course, another mass shooting and that story opportunity kind of clicked in my head. I wondered what if anything was the effect on the shooter’s loved ones and families and if that effect bled out to future generations. I also felt it was a vehicle for me to vent my anger and frustration and desperation about the ongoing lack of gun control in this country, even in the face of every day tragic massacres.
LAFPI: We love when women writers tackle current social issues from a woman’s perspective. How do you view gun violence as a feminist issue?
Wendy: I view gun violence as an EVERYONE issue. As a mother I suppose I view it through a feminist lens, for when I see all those children and families affected I do relate to it as a mother and as a writer, putting myself in their shoes. But please let’s not make it only a feminist issue. If we do that I’m afraid that, sadly, it will be diminished in the eyes of the gun lobby and supporters, for whom it is already so diminished and dismissed. Attention must be paid!
Dor Gvirtsman and Suanne Spoke – Photo by Ed Krieger
LAFPI: How do you see the nature/nurture debate playing a role in your play?
Wendy: One of the things I was also interested in exploring in this play was the notion of viewing a family member through a lens of another family member. Is this legitimate, do they actually see these qualities in another family member or are they projecting these qualities onto them? In the case of Exit Wounds, does the father actually see the qualities of the troubled brother in his son or is he projecting in hopes of early identification? Does the past dictate the future? These are the questions I love exploring!
LAFPI: What message would you want victims of mass shootings to receive from this play?
Wendy: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry we could not do enough to stop this madness, but we will keep trying in every way possible.
LAFPI: The woman character of this play shares certain rules to live by which were passed down to her from her father. Do you think there are still universal rules which have molded the current culture of American society and what rules do you live by?
Wendy: I think there are definitely rules that have molded the current culture of America, but the trouble is we are not in sync anymore in America about what those rules are. We no longer agree what universal rules are molding us and which we are adhering to. It’s like my character in the play says “Guns are a Rorsharch test, Danny. Or like one of those drawings that you see one thing when you look at it one way and then you turn it, look at it from another angle, and you see something else.” Sadly I’m afraid we have come to a point in America where the “universal rules” are like that. We seem to be seeing different things completely. I feel like my universal rules are moral and based on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all, as we all are created equal, but the other side feels those are their universal truths, yet they see things completely differently. We have hit a very tragic time in America when we don’t all see our universal, fundamental truths as being the same.
Dor Gvirtsman and Suanne Spoke – Photo by Ed Krieger
LAFPI: What would you like audiences to take away from this play?
Wendy: I don’t presume to offer answers, only questions. I have no agenda for what I want the audience to take away, other than to see the truth of human behavior and something of their own humanity. To see something of themselves reflected in the characters and, without necessarily condoning or accepting them, to somehow understand their actions. I leave it up to the audience to answer the questions. I hope it will start conversations about why, and maybe if we can talk about why and try to understand, change will become possible. Maybe we can move toward seeing our fundamental, universal truths closer to being the same.
LAFPI: Is there anything else you would like to share with your fellow artists of LAFPI?
Wendy: Keep on writing. Keep on questioning. Keep on asking “what if”?
For more information and tickets to EXIT WOUNDS visit www.hartnpi.org
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
January, 2019
December, 2018
