Category Archives: Female Artists

The FPI Files: Finding Empathy in Echo’s “For Want of a Horse”

Female Artists, playwriting, Producing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

by Casey Fleming

“PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE HOW THIS PLAY ENDS!” reads the page two playbill note of For Want of a Horse, staged by Atwater Village’s Echo Theater Company. 

Here is where I would put a brisk, snappy summary of the play for you – an implied promise that I won’t be perfectly keeping, because I’m not quite sure how I would explain this world premiere. This, I believe, is a compliment to the audaciousness of playwright Olivia Dufault who, in her “darkly comic, deeply human exploration of love, desire and unconventional relationships,” brings to the stage something challenging and deeply, unusually original.

From the Echo’s website, continued: “Calvin is devoted to his wife, Bonnie. But if Calvin is going to move forward, he needs to open up their relationship to include his new romantic partner. One complication: that partner would be Q-Tip – and Q-Tip is a horse.”

Jenny Soo, Joey Stromberg and Griffin Kelly – Photo by Cooper Bates

Put simply and likely predictably, it’s a shocking play. It is a testament to the writing, direction, and performance of the play that its innumerable shocking moments never felt played for the sake of shock alone, and even a note as direct as the plea in the playbill felt entirely warranted. Leaving the show, I heard two audience members say to one another that they’d have so much to talk about on the car ride home. What other marker of success should we determine theatre by? I don’t know exactly how to explain this play to you, nor to myself, nor what it made me walk away thinking, exactly. But I did walk away asking myself a multitude of questions and for that, I am grateful.

Prominently among these questions – on my way out and still now, as I sit writing – was why does it matter that a trans woman wrote this? As evident later on in this piece, I was able to send questions to playwright Olivia Dufault following the performance. I’m not sure I could tell you why, but I didn’t choose to ask a single one about gender. Sitting in the audience watching, my own trans-ness surfaced and stayed top of mind, and I felt my own interpretation of the play deeply and monumentally ground itself in what I heard the show say about gender, from its first line and every moment forward. What did it change, to me, knowing that this show was written by someone who shares an aspect of this identity? Everything. Nothing. Or in truth, something, somewhere in the murky space in between quiet relation and direct confrontation and a long, long road adorned with familiar waypoints, headed into the unknown.

Joey Stromberg and Jenny Soo – Photo by Cooper Bates

In addition to being trans, I’m aromantic- & asexual-spectrum – a set of identities that, upon their declaration, outline an even greater gulf between me and what/who this play works to portray. The profoundly distinct and distant experience I have with all types of romantic attraction thoroughly colored the type of attention I paid to this show, most explicably manifesting as what I think I’d term ‘heightened awareness’ of the questions it was asking in the moments and motions they were asked. An early line from Bonnie (played by Jenny Soo) about her reckoning with a difficult schoolchild echoed over and over again in my head: ‘as long as you’re not hurting anybody.’ As long as you’re not hurting anybody, as long as you’re not hurting anybody. You could take any word of that sentence and challenge it with this play. What is hurt, exactly? Who decides? How am I, the person sitting beneath the house lights, currently making that decision? “Anybody” accounts for who? What are the limits to empathy?

To dive further into the answers this play offers, and really, what challenges it strives to leave unanswered and openly on the table, I was able to send some questions to playwright Olivia Dufault who shared insight into the evolution, intention and staging of this world premiere.

Casey Fleming: Olivia, I read that your inspiration for this play came from your own reaction to an atypical interview (a New York magazine article entitled “What It’s Like to Date a Horse,” published in 2014). What, within your own experience reading and engaging with the article, made you feel that you HAD to write this play? 

Olivia Dufault

Olivia Dufault: When I first read the interview that inspired this play, my immediate response was shock, horror, and perverse amusement. But as I continued, I began to feel terrible pangs of empathy for everyone involved in the tragic situation – the husband, the wife, the horse. I found myself conflicted by these emotions; to what degree was empathy an appropriate response in this context? From this internal wrestling, this strange play emerged.

Casey: Walking out of the show, I heard a pair of audience members discussing how lively their conversation in the car on the way home would be. What two questions do you hope audience members walk away from this show asking themselves?

Olivia: What are the benefits and perils of empathy? And what exactly goes on in the head of a horse? 

Casey: What did you learn about yourself over the course of working on this play?

Olivia: I have a high tolerance for discomforting topics. Audacious subject matter invites audacious collaborators. And that it’s shockingly easy to write from the point of view of a barnyard animal.

Casey: How does your idea of what a playwright should do or be responsible for doing – universally, at scale – inform your approach to writing For Want of a Horse?

Olivia: Honestly, I wrote this play ten years ago, and did so very much for myself. That’s always been my relationship with my work. This play was made to challenge and amuse me; I hope it does the same for others.

I was lucky enough to get to speak with another artist who was challenged and amused by For Want of a Horse – director Elana Luo. She spoke directly to her experience working on the play and the practical, emotional, and logistical learnings that accompanied. 

Casey: In interpreting “challenge” to mean both content and technical ask, where were the areas of greatest challenge while directing this play? How did you approach and guide the cast/crew through them?

Elana Luo


Elana Luo: The play moves quickly between scenes in different locations, so we had to figure out how to utilize and transform the space accordingly, or perhaps not. It was a feat of coordination between all departments – Alex Mollo’s set, Leah Morrison’s costumes, Matt Richter’s lights, Alysha Bermudez’s sounds, and the actors who had to wrangle it all. I’m very grateful to my cast and crew for their collaboration and ingenuity.

Casey: Over the course of working on For Want of a Horse, what part of your understanding of the show shifted the most between table read and opening night?

Elana: I got to understand each of the characters much more intimately. Steve [Steven Culp], Griffin [Kelly], Jenny [Soo] and Joey [Stromberg] all brought their own perspectives and truly embody their roles, which has added more layers and realism to Olivia’s already well-drawn characters.

Casey: How has For Want of a Horse changed your approach to directing or helped you grow?

Elana: I’ve never directed a horse before. Lots of poop and subsequent mucking thereof. It’s a very humbling experience for a big and important director such as myself.

Casey: If you were to break down your vision for the technical design of the show into a few key words, what would they be?

Elana: Beautiful. Beastly. Hopefully Disney doesn’t come after us.

“For Want of a Horse,” written by Olivia Dufault and directed by Echo associate artistic director Elana Luo, runs at the Atwater Village Theatre through May 25th. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (747) 350-8066 or go to EchoTheaterCompany.com.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

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The FPI Files: Returning Soldiers Speak… Now, Their Families’ Stories

Female Artists, playwriting, Reading, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

by Leilani Squire

I was born and raised in the military. My father was deployed on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Okinawa when I was born at Tripler Army Hospital on the outskirts of Honolulu. This was during the Korean War. He served thirty years in the Navy, which means I grew up inside the military complex.

It is different to be raised in the military instead of being raised in the civilian world. As I write this, I see how I really can’t explain the difference because I do not have a reference to what it means to grow up outside of the military. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I thought of the playwriting project Military Family Staged Readings—to better understand the bridge between the two worlds.

There is also a difference between those who wear the uniform and those who wait for the return of the deployed. Each experiences the military in a different way, and hard as we try, there remains a gap of understanding, of experiences. My father was deployed many times—leaving on a big ship and returning six months or a year later. When he left I was one way, and when he returned I was a different person. We both changed during his deployment and it took time to reconnect and establish our relationship as father and daughter.

You may wonder why I begin this blog post about a child whose father deploys to a far away country and what that has to do with playwriting and the theater. Most people in our society do not understand what it means to be a spouse, child, mother or father of those who wear the uniform.

a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery

Since 2010, I have worked with Veterans helping them tell their stories through poetry, prose, and playwriting through the organization Returning Soldiers Speak. As rewarding and meaningful and important as this work has been, I yearned to do something different. I wanted to honor the family members of the military.

I guess you could say that I wanted to honor my mother who was a military wife for thirty years. And my sisters who moved from place to place with each new set of orders. And that little girl who waited for her father’s return. So, I wrote a proposal of a playwriting project for Veterans and family members—playwriting workshops that would culminate in a series of staged readings for the public—and submitted it to the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.  We were awarded the grant (that is, a matching grant) and began the playwriting workshops last fall.

The interview process was challenging because each person was wonderful and full of potential and passion, but due to the constraints of our budget, we couldn’t accept all of them.

Our playwrights are Benjamin Fortier, a Marine Corps Veteran who was in Fallujah in 2006; Gregory Hillman, a Marine Corps Veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan; Jeffrey Webster, a Coast Guard Veteran who does ceremonies for Veterans in Hospice; Bryan Caldwell, a grandson of a Navy Captain; Denah Angel, a daughter whose father served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War; and Liisa Rose, a wife whose husband was an Air Force Colonel who served for almost twenty-nine years.

Some live in Los Angeles, others live in various parts of the country. The challenge has been how to bring all of us together—and so enter Zoom. It amazes me how intimate the workshops have been using this virtual platform.

Liisa Rose and her husband, Mark

One Saturday morning during our Zoom playwriting workshop, we were focusing on Liisa Rose’s play.  Her play asks the question: Is the current state of the country worth giving one’s life for? This is a provocative question to ask at any time, but to ask this question during these turbulent times is daring, brave, and important.

Support and Defend is the title of Liisa’s play and the main character faces the challenges of grieving the death of her husband (a character who died while deployed to Afghanistan) and raising her two almost-adult children. Much of Liisa’s play draws upon her own experiences in the military (but thank goodness she and her husband are living happily in Arizona).

At one point in our conversation, Liisa began telling us about a very personal experience that happened when her husband returned home from yet another deployment. I asked her if she had written about that and she said no. I suggested she write a monologue for the main character. She did. And then she wrote a scene based on their experience. It is one of the most powerful things I have ever heard or read.

She debated whether the scene belonged in the play, and if it did, where in the play’s structure would the scene reveal what it needs to reveal? She also wondered what her husband would say if she told him that she wanted to write this scene. He told her that would be okay. And ultimately, we decided that the play needs it.

It has been my honor to work with Liisa; she is a good playwright and has written an important play. The question she poses about weighing the current state of one’s country drives the story forward, and invites us to look with new awareness and search for an answer. After each reading, the playwright and the audience will engage in dialogue. I am curious what shape the dialogue will take after hearing Support and Defend.

Denah Angel Shenkman

Our other wonderful female playwright is Denah Angel Shenkman. I know Denah from Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA where we have worked together for many projects—I as a playwright and Denah as an actor.

A while ago, Denah told me the story about the Greek side of her family. During World War Two, the family’s house was taken over by the Nazis and her two aunts had to fend for themselves. They eventually escaped and found their way to America and joined their father. Theirs was complicated journey and a fascinating journey. I knew this project would be an opportunity for Denah to begin writing about her ancestors.

In writing her play, Denah has drawn upon her family’s story, and at the same time embraced the creative process of letting the story and the characters define the play. She has known all along what story she wants to tell, and it has been exciting to watch her take the leap into an unknown place and find the elements and aspects of the characters and their journeys.

One of the first times (if not the first time) Denah, Jim Lunsford (our wonderful dramaturge) and I met, she said that she wanted to write a love story. She wanted to show the complexities of what it means to live during war and to discover love in that harsh and brutal world. She began with three characters, added another character, and then another character to deepen and strengthen the theme, conflict, story and plot. She has drawn upon her Greek heritage in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that add spice and flavor, history and authenticity to the play. How she weaves Greek mythology throughout the characters’ lives—their relationships and their dialogue—makes sense in this world of her creation, and invites us to envision what it means to live in a place rooted in mythology.

We might inquire: How does ancient mythology speak to me in the 21st century? What can I learn? How might I use myth to create myth? What can I learn from the historical context of the play that will serve me during these turbulent times? For me to ask such questions means the playwright has done the work and written a play of meaning and authenticity. I am excited to bear witness to the dialogue between the playwright and the audience after the reading of An Era.

Denah Angel and Leilani Squire (top, l to r) with dramaturge Jim Lunsford

I must give a shout out to Jim Lunsford, our incredible dramaturge. I couldn’t have done this project without him. He understands theater in a way that I wish I did. He sees through to the essences of structure in a way that I wish I did. He envisions the whole picture, while I see the specifics—we make a wonderful team.

I am directing An Era and honored and excited to be doing so. Keith Szarabajka and Joe Garcia will direct readings as well.

The staged reading series begins with Denah Angel Shenkman’s An Era on March 25 and closes with Liisa Rose’s Support and Defend  on April 29.

There are four other staged readings in the series that will also be awesome:

  • April 1 – Gregory Hillman, Self-less
  • April 8 – Benjamin Fortier, The Park
  • April 15 – Jeffrey Webster, Killing to the Sound of Trumpets
  • April 22 – Bryan Caldwell, Flowers From Hell

I hope you join us for these wonderful plays, engage in the dialogue after the reading,and enjoy the camaraderie of community.

Military Family Staged Readings take place March 25 – April 29, Wednesdays at 7:30pm, followed by dialogues between the playwrights and audiences. The readings take place at Sawyer’s Playhouse, 11031 Camarillo Street in North Hollywood, CA. Donations will be gratefully accepted. For more info, visit returningsoldiersspeak.org/military-family-staged-readings-project

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

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“Red Harlem” in a World Premiere at The Company of Angels Theater of Los Angeles

Artists, Female Artists, LAFPI, Performing Arts, Playwright, playwriting, race, Theaters, Women, , ,

By Alison Minami

It is little known historical fact that in 1932, the Communist Party of the USA spearheaded a film project highlighting the plight of Black Americans that was fully paid for and sponsored by Joseph Stalin. Over a dozen Black Americans were recruited from Harlem to travel to the Soviet Union for filming and production, and Langston Hughes was hired to revise the screenplay in order to make the story and its characters more realistic and responsive to the Black American experience. At the time, James Ford, a Black Tennesseean who became a prominent civil rights leader, was the Vice-Presidential candidate on the American Communist Party’s presidential ticket. It was Ford who convinced Stalin to fund the film as a way to garner support for the Communist Party more globally. The film was absolutely a propagandist project against American capitalism, but for many of the Black actors involved, it was the first time they felt seen, heard, and respected as artists. Red Harlem is a play that imagines the lives of four of these artists as they embark upon a journey from the Cotton Club of Harlem to the vibrant nightclub scene in Berlin to the grandeur of Moscow where they are treated for the first time as first-class citizens, free from the unrelenting racism they’ve known their whole lives in America.

Red Harlem is having its World Premiere with the Company of Angels Theater in Los Angeles. For me, watching the play in full production was particularly gratifying as I had the pleasure of participating in the Company of Angels’ Professional Playwrights’ Group with the playwright Kimba Henderson back in 2021. At the time, Red Harlem was in its very early development; Kimba was still discovering the character arcs and their relationships to one another. To see the fully fleshed camaraderie between the members of this tight-knit group, despite their conflicting needs, desires, and fears, was incredibly satisfying and moving.

Photo by Rafael Cardenas

The world of the play is big and all-encompassing in terms of the diversity of characters and the depth of human experience in the 1930s. What makes it so dynamic is that it is transnational, transpolitical, and transracial. All the borders are blurred as Kimba resists the urge to put her characters into their own separate boxes. Here there are no clean-cut dichotomies of good vs. evil, moral vs. immoral, or villains vs. heroes. Lenore, a staunch Communist, falls for David, a Jewish man from Brooklyn whom Lenore believes to be half-black. Shifty is a member of the working class, a person with no party affiliation, but one with a keen eye for hustle, and an eventual soft spot for Velma, the cross-dressing nightclub manager in Berlin. Selena and Will are a couple who love and support each other’s aspirations but are susceptible to competition and jealousy as the power between them shifts once in the Soviet Union. Misha, the general who is appointed handler to the actors, is providing cover for the Communist Party whilst growing his empathy for the eclectic group under his charge. And finally, there’s Colonel Cooper, factually the world-renowned engineer who constructed the Dnieper Dam for the Soviets and brought electricity to millions, who also happens to run into this film production and plays an influential role in shutting it down. At every turn, the characters’ own core beliefs are challenged through their encounters in a new land, across racial and cultural borders.

Photos by Rafael Cardenas

One of the more interesting aspects of the play for me is how Kimba addresses colorism. Selena, a regular dancer at the Cotton Club, is employable because of her light skin tone, while Lenore knows all too well the sting of rejection simply because of her darker complexion. In the Soviet Union, this color hierarchy is switched, and Lenore feels like her talent can finally shine. Simultaneously, Lenore falls for David but feels betrayed when she learns that he is Jewish and not a light skinned Black person as he’d allowed her to believe. All the nuanced assumptions around race—and what it means to be Black in America vs. elsewhere—reminded me of how much race has been socially constructed for the purpose of building an American empire.

In talking with Kimba, we discuss the significance of historical fiction and the import of Red Harlem today. Kimba says, “I don’t want to write something if I don’t feel it’s relevant” and how “the play kept getting more and more relevant.” She points out, by way of example, how the Brownshirts were like the Proud Boys, and how the Nazi rhetoric mirrors much of what we hear from our polarizing President. And too, the fight for world dominance and ideological superiority, at the expense of masses of civilian populations, is age-old and still at play in a war that is happening right now as I write this.

Playwright Kimba Henderson

Further, I always like to ask other writers about their process. It’s out of my personal desire to glean their magic tricks: How did they do it? What’s in the secret sauce?  For Kimba, she quips, “flow writing.” When she worked with the Robey Theatre Company, she had a mentor encourage her to place her characters in a place they’d never normally be, and to explore through freewriting, why they happened to be there and how they dealt with the discomfort. Kimba frequently employs What-if writing exercises like this, particularly in the world-building phase of her development. She says that she has pages and pages of such kind of writing on each of her characters, scribblings that never make it to the final play. She knows them and their pasts so well that when she’s asked any dramaturgical question, she can readily imagine how a character might respond. In one of her best examples, Kimba describes a late addition to play, a scene where David writes a heartfelt letter to Selena apologizing for withholding the truth about his being Jewish. In it, he tries to explain his philosophy on life, recounting a memory of his father standing outside Small’s Paradise, a Harlem Jazz club, tapping his foot and enjoying the music but never allowing himself entry. David never wanted to live his life like his father, standing on the perimeter of life’s joy.

The play is directed by Kimba’s longtime friend and artistic collaborator, Bernadette Speakes. Kimba credits Speakes for her ability to take viewers from setting to setting, across the globe with a small moving set of screens, some well curated projections, and a few stage blocks. Even in the 99-seater space, the play manages to pull off a kind of magical splendor. There are big musical and dance numbers with choreography and costuming befitting of professional entertainers and denizens of nightlife in the 1930s. The play is, after all, about performers and their passion for their art at all costs. Kimba says, “you can’t own people’s artistry. They own that. That is theirs,” and that this play, ultimately, is about these actors, each in their own way, “taking ownership of their artistry.”  That message carries resonance. At all times, both then and now, artists like myself and hopefully you the reader, through whatever sacrifices and concessions we have made, have been staking a claim to our creative lives.

This is a story that needs to be told, and I hope that it gets told many times over—on stages, on small and big screens, to classrooms full of historians, to world leaders who claim historical amnesia, and to all the artists of color who are still waiting for permission.

The World Premiere of Red Harlem at Company of Angels ran February 14 – March 15. Go Here for more information about the production.

World Premiere: A Subtle Kind of Murder

Female Artists, Feminism, Playwright, playwriting, Theaters, Women

By Alison Minami

When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are.  It’s a subtle kind of murder.  —Jim Morrison

The play A Subtle Kind of Murder written by Dale Dunn had its world premiere at the New Mexico Actors Lab this past summer, and it has just been nominated for the Broadway World Awards in the categories of Best New Play, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Ensemble Acting, Best Scenic Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Production! This achievement could not make me happier or be more inspiring for myself as a fellow playwright who offered feedback in the early stages of writing. I had the pleasure of being a part of Jennie Webb’s Next Draft Workshop with Dale back in 2021, reading early drafts of the script when the sinewy musculature hadn’t been fully realized and the thematic threads were not neatly tied. It is always satisfying to see a play come together after being a part of its developmental process. Dale knew clearly what she wanted to write about, but there was a lot of metaphor and symbolism within the overlapping worlds she was creating, especially tied to the multimedia aspect of her piece that needed shaping. What I remembered most about her play was that it was deeply feminist, and it spoke to the relentless sexism and abuse of young women who are trying to make something of themselves professionally. While I did not get to see the production, I reached out to Dale to read the latest production copy of the play. I’ve now just read it, and all I can say is that it leaves a reader breathless! I can only imagine what it was like to have a seat in the darkened theater. Five years in the making, and the final script is simultaneously heartbreaking, gut-punching and, dare I say, hopeful.

A Subtle Kind of Murder is a play seeded by a confluence of ideas (and worlds) that are all thematically tied to living as a woman in a sexually predatory patriarchy. Jane, an acclaimed novelist, has been hired to write a screenplay adaptation of the 1947 noir murder mystery novel In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. Under deadline to finish the script, Jane sequesters herself in her childhood home, a remote Kansas farmhouse with the Filmmaker, her staunch but strict motivator who encourages Jane to stay focused and get the job done. However, the two are unexpectedly interrupted by the Woman in Brown, a young, bright-eyed woman who stumbles into the farmhouse after being followed by the Man in the Hat. The Man in the Hat, a shadowy figure whose voice and presence is felt by all the women, but never materializes until play’s end, doubles as the serial killer from Hughes’ novel and the bigtime executive who once sexually assaulted Jane in a Hollywood studio, when she was once a young, naïve assistant, whose dreams of making it big in the industry were killed from the humiliating transgression.  Not coincidentally, Jane’s current writing contract is with the same Hollywood executive who assaulted her decades before; he does not recognize her because she’s taken on the pen name Jane Franklin, after Ben Franklin’s sister, a woman who never got an education nor a fair shot while her brother was given every resource to become the famous intellectual, inventor, and founding father. So, it’s fair to say, Jane has something to prove and an axe to grind.

As the play progresses, we start to gather that the Woman in Brown, like the Man in the Hat, doubles as the murder victim in the Hughes novel as well as the younger version of Jane. She is, as Jane describes her, “the young woman who had the nerve to think of the world as her oyster.” Both the Woman in Brown and the Filmmaker are versions of Jane at different stages of her life. They serve as figments of her imagination as she is haunted by the chilling veil of a man’s rapaciousness while she fights to claim her agency as a woman and an artist. Jane references her own acclaimed novel, which is the same title as this play, by describing a subtle kind of murder as the “the murder of the self.” Jane goes on to say “The subtle kind of murder leaves you in a sort of tortured half life….dazed…powerless…often fighting shame and regret.” As the three women argue over Jane’s chosen pen name, she declares “Jane. It’s every woman’s name.” Here is the crux of the play for me. Aren’t we women all Jane? Even in 2025, when there is lip service paid toward a #MeToo movement that holds powerful men accountable, it seems that for every jailed Weinstein, Cosby, or Epstein, there is another man lurking in the shadows, ready to decimate a woman as, in Dale’s words, “just another girl in the office.” Ultimately, as Dale describes, the play is about “self-forgiveness.” She says, “there are so many Why didn’t I?’s in life.” She is quick to answer the question: “Well, you didn’t, and it’s okay. You have to look at it. And then leave it.”  She goes on to explain, “Jane is confronting her past, the assault that made her turn away from her ambitions, and she needs to see it for what it is in order to move past it and do the creative work she is meant to do.” The pain of regret and humiliation is suffocating, and it consumes so many victims of assault. But it’s not just physical assault that women contend with, it’s the multitude of micro-aggressions that tell us to behave, to please, to keep quiet, to wait our turn, to act right, to apologize, to shrink, to cower, and on and on and on. A woman must permit herself to reject it all, to say no, to get out from under the patriarchal power.

Dale Dunn, Playwright and Co-Artistic Director of Just Say It Theater

The play is a multi-media performance that utilizes film projection and sound to tell its story. Dale has a lot of experience using projections in her staged works. She sees it as a theatrical tool to serve as “an extension of the mind” and to be “inside the writer’s [Jane’s] mind” as opposed to being a place setter. Throughout the play there is the projection of Jane’s text as it is being typed, the thunderous and chilling projection of the ocean—the place where the Woman in Brown is found murdered—and of the diner into which the Woman in Brown escapes. All of the stage design and multimedia lends itself to the mirrored and mysterious worlds characteristic of the noir genre.

Dale herself is no newbie to the theater. She has worked in theaters across the nation including the Public Theater in New York and the Red Barn Theater in Key West. She co-founded her own theater in New Mexico called Just Say It Theater and has years of teaching experience in both playwriting and production at New Mexico School for the Arts. Her longtime theater partner, Lynn Goodwin served as both the dramaturg and director of A Subtle Kind of Murder, which explains the synergy, flexibility, experimentation, and care that the ensemble carried throughout the developmental process from table read to production.

I asked Dale whether or not she had a recording of the piece that I could view; Sadly, she didn’t have anything, only a muffled and grainy recording that wouldn’t do the play justice. At first, I felt that this was disappointing, but I also realize it’s sort of the point. Nothing can replace the ephemeral magic of theatre. I truly hope A Subtle Kind of Murder gets another production; It’s a play that every Jane (and John) should see.

East West Players in Good Hands: Meet Lily Tung Crystal

Director, Female Artists, LAFPI, Performance, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Production, Theaters, Theatre, Women, , , , , , ,

By Alison Minami

Lily Tung Crystal, artistic director of East West Players in Little Tokyo of Los Angeles, has made a full circle back to Southern California. While the path may have been unconventional and circuitous, every place she’s had the pleasure of making home along her artistic journey has contributed to her role as a thoughtful and influential leader in the Asian American theatre community.

Lily’s first stage was the raised fireplace of her childhood home in Rancho Palos Verdes. She’d use the handle of the fireplace screen pulley as her microphone and sing the showstoppers she’d learned from outings with her mother to the Pantages or the Ahmanson. Having once been a competitive dancer and carrying a natural ear for music, Lily’s mother held a deep appreciation for the arts and passed this on to her daughter. At the age of seven, Lily began taking singing and piano, which ultimately led her to musical theater—roles in Oliver, The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz to name a few. Despite being one of the better singers, Lily never got the lead, possibly because the directors couldn’t square Lily’s Asian face with the traditional white casting of these shows. At the time, representation was barely a conversation, and it never dawned on Lily that she could ever see her onstage talents as anything more than a hobby.

After graduating Cornell University, Lily moved to China to work as both an educator and a journalist. All the while she kept her hand in the theatre—but mostly as an avocation, something to keep her creative spirit nurtured. Eventually Lily made her way back to her home state of California, but this time to San Francisco, where she found herself joining community theatre and acting classes. Even as she was immersing herself in the Bay Area theatre scene, she never considered herself a professional actress despite joining the union and landing significant onstage roles. Claiming the identity was a slow process, and Lily recalls herself thinking, “Maybe I can say I’m an actor now. Can I really say that?”  Asking for permission is an all too familiar refrain for artists in the shadows, especially those of color—I certainly have had my fair share of imposter syndrome around my creative life—but once Lily gave it to herself and said YES, there was no holding her back.

In 2009 Lily received a Theatre Bay Area Titan Award, which led her to start the Bay Area Asian American Actors Collective, where she found kinship with fellow actor Leon Goertzen. A year later the two co-founded Ferocious Lotus, an Asian American theatre company in the San Francisco Bay Area. As it turns out, in one year, Lily birthed a theatre company and a baby! She remembers sitting in rehearsals for their first show—a night of one-acts co-sponsored by the Asian American Theatre Company—with her infant strapped in a baby carrier. I am particularly delighted by this image in my mind’s eye—a scrappy and determined young Lily with a script in one hand and a bottle in another, baby nuzzled up against her body—as it demonstrates the grit and passion that Lily has always brought to her work. With Lily at the helm as founding co-artistic director and later, artistic director, Ferocious Lotus went on to produce and support many emerging Asian American playwrights and artists and became a vibrant and influential theatre space with national recognition and reach.

In 2019, Lily moved on from Ferocious Lotus to become artistic director at Theater Mu, the premiere Asian American theatre of the Midwest based in Minneapolis. There Lily continued to grow the landscape of Asian American theatre and stretch the boundaries of definition and opportunity, always striving for diversity and equity in development, education, production, and outreach. Five years later in 2024, Lily found herself back in Southern California, the stomping ground of her youth, taking on the role of Artistic Director at East West Players (EWP).

EWP is the longest standing Asian American theatre and theatre of color in the nation, and Lily is ushering in its 60th anniversary. Honored by the task, she was particularly mindful of the curation of such a milestone season, aiming to create balance between the OGs of Asian American theatre–the elders like Philip Kan Gotanda and David Henry Hwang, who laid the foundation when there was no Asian American representation to speak—and the next generation of playwrights, like Lauren Yee, Prince Gomolvilas, and Jaclyn Backhaus, who have created works that have become Asian American classics in their own right.

In what she coins a “widening circles” vision for EWP, Lily focuses on several values that undergird her goals. Think of the concentric circles in the frequency of sound waves. In the first circle, Lily wants to encompass as much of the Asian American diaspora as possible. While Asian American representation in the theatre has historically limited itself to East Asian cultures, Lily recognizes the need for wider visibility for all Asians American voices including those from South, Southwest, and Southeast Asian American communities. Her second circle aims to acknowledge all the creativity and labor of the people backstage. What of the set and sound designers, costumers, and stagehands? Lily is doing just this by inaugurating a fellowship for backstage artists, where recipients will get paid on-the-job training to learn firsthand the behind-the-scenes work of production. The third circle aims to address intersectionality with other marginalized communities— LGBTQ, disability, or specific racialized communities to name a few examples. The fourth circle—and there’s some overlap here, but that’s the point—considers the question of how we make theater accessible to all people. EWP has made moves to make the theatre more affordable with $20 tickets or pay-what-you-can performances as well as affinity evenings for specific audiences. For example, for Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee, EWP worked with Khmer leaders in Los Angeles to ensure that the show could be accessible to Khmer audiences; it stands to reason that a play about a people should be viewed and experienced by them, or else, whom and what is it really for? The final circle aims to innovate alongside and in collaboration with the film and television industry. A great example is in this season’s revival production of Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die, which utilized high level film projections to capture the old-timey feel of Hollywood circa 1930s.

Notwithstanding all the managerial and administrative duties that come with leading a theatre of EWP’s size and stature, Lily has found space to nurture her own creative projects. This springtime, she will direct a revival of David Henry Hwang’s Flower Drum Song for this season’s last show. This is especially exciting for Lily who has known Hwang for years as a mentor and friend—and whose name is on the EWP theatre—but has never collaborated with him artistically. Hwang is also updating the musical after first rewriting it in 2002 to be more relevant to the times—Oh the times! Combine that with Lily’s musical theatre sensibility, and the show promises to be a tour de force.

The show runs from October 19 through November 16 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Secondly, as I write this, Lily is completing her first tech week as director for नेहा & Neel (pronounced Neha and Neel) written by playwright Ankita Raturi and produced by Artists at Play. नेहा & Neel is about an Indian immigrant mother who goes on a road trip with her teenage son, in a last-ditch attempt to teach him his culture before he is off to college. Raturi’s play resists preachy polemics and instead engages with serious issues—racism, colonialism, identity in America—through humor. In another serendipitous collaboration, Lily found herself crossing paths again with Raturi, an artist she’d supported during her tenure at Theater Mu, but whose new work Fifty Boxes of Earth, which Lily programmed for Mu’s 2024-2025 season, she did not get to see to its fruition because of her departure last year. So, it was an honor to be asked by AAP and Raturi to direct this piece and to celebrate, as Lily describes, a play that centers on “Asian joy.”

Given the current political climate and the blatant assaults from this administration on people of color and the arts—EWP lost all its NEA funding—Lily does not take lightly the mandate of EWP.  She says, “It is more important than ever to continue to tell our stories and to lift up BIPOC stories. When people don’t know our stories, it’s so easy for them to perceive us as other.” She goes on to emphasize how important it is that “people see us for the true Americans that we are.” Everywhere we turn, this administration is pushing us to the margins, rendering us invisible as people of color, and telling us in so many words that “we are not patriotic or don’t belong here.” Lily is adamant that we counter the bigotry with our own narratives of community. She is committed to making EWP a “safe and joyful space to create art together” and it is with this spirit that Lily carries the torch for many generations of Asian American theatre artists—past, present, and future.

Finally, when I ask Lily, how she likes being back in Southern California outside of work, she quips, “the traffic sucks, the food’s great!” And to that I say, “Welcome home!”

The FPI Files: SheLA Arts Summer Theater Festival at the Zephyr

Female Artists, playwriting, Production, Theaters, , , , , , , , ,

by Ally Marie Lardner

This July (from the 8th to the 13th), the SheLA Arts Summer Theater Festival is taking over West Hollywood’s Zephyr Theatre. Four new plays by gender-marginalized playwrights will be showcased at this premier new works festival, and I’ve got the inside scoop straight from those very playwrights!

Aditi Pradhan

MEET ADITI PRADHAN, the playwright behind The Great Tikka Tour.

Play Synopsis: Perpetually single Roshini is helping her older sister, Divya, plan her wedding when she’s visited by an unexpected guest: the ghost of her recently deceased mother, dishing out dating advice. Roshini realizes that in order to release the ghost, she must find the perfect tikka masala for Divya’s wedding. The sisters traverse the streets of Los Angeles on their mission, while Roshini lets her fear of intimacy get in the way of her relationships and Divya questions whether she wants her arranged marriage at all. While both sisters try to figure out their romantic lives, they learn that perhaps the greatest love story of all was between their mother and her two daughters.

Ally Marie Lardner: Hey Aditi! What was the inspiration for your play?

Aditi Pradhan: I was inspired to write this play when I was navigating the early days of my relationship. My mom, who had an arranged marriage, would give me advice, and I found myself wondering how she could relate to my interracial relationship. It made me question the assumptions I’d made about arranged marriage—and about my mother. I’m recently engaged, and this show has taken on a new meaning for me!

Ally: Who do you think should definitely see this play? 

Aditi: Anyone who wants a lighthearted comedy that celebrates the women who hold us up.

Rehearsing “The Great Tikka Tour”

Ally: What do you want audience members to know before they arrive? 

Aditi: The less they know going in, the better!

Ally: What’s one lesson you’ve learned so far in the process? 

Aditi: It’s been really awesome to take this play that is so based on my experiences, and work with the creative team to bring it to life! I’ve loved hearing their perspectives on colorism, arranged marriages, and family relationships.

Ally: One last question for now, Aditi: What are you like as a writer?

Aditi: I tend to start with a world—whether that means a physical space or a time period or a phenomenon. I got the idea of a play that took place mostly in restaurants, and from there, the tikka tour was born! Writing and producing this play has definitely left me craving tikka masala.

Check out Aditi’s play, “The Great Tikka Tour,” on July 8 at 7:30pm or July 11 at 7:30pm!

MEET CELESTE MORENO, who wrote book, music, & lyrics for The Tears of la Llorona (Las Lágrimas de la Llorona).

Celeste Moreno

Play Synopsis: Set 100 years ago along the US/Mexico border, “The Tears of La Llorona” retells the Mexican myth of the Weeping Woman. Llorona has become infamous for stealing children in the night, but the Calaveras—a band of mariachi women—guide us through a reimagining of her origin story. Resurrected from the dead, she seeks vengeance on her murderer. But fate creates uncertainty within Llorona after chance encounters with her husband, a girl she finds kinship with, her lover, a white boy exploring Mexico for the first time, and an old Abuelo who is her connection between the living and spirit worlds.

Ally: Hey Celeste. What was the inspiration for your play?

Celeste Moreno: My Mexican great-grandmother, Nani, married an American rancher. The story is that he threatened her—if she were ever to befriend anyone or attempt to learn English, he would kill her. She escaped her captor, changed her name, and fled across the country with two of her children. From other women of Mexican heritage, I have heard family history that echoes hers—stories of women kidnapped, forced into marriage, sometimes killed. Not a new story, and one that remains relevant today…

Ally: What do you want audience members to know before they arrive? 

Celeste: Do you know the legend of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman? Long ago, she drowned her children in a fit of madness. Unable to rest even in death, her tortured spirit now wails night after night, lamenting for all eternity, compelled to snatch up small children that wander into the dark… [This] is a gothic music theater ghost story, based on the old Mexican myth La Llorona—The Weeping Woman—re-envisioned through the lens of personal family history.

Ally: Who should definitely see this play? 

Celeste: This play is for those who celebrate their cultural differences—those left behind, those ignored. La Llorona is speaking directly to the Latino community, providing a new theatrical piece with music that is in English and Spanish, bringing themes of Anglo/indigenous clash to reflect the experience of a huge portion of our continent’s population.

Ally: What are three plays you wish everyone could see before encountering yours? 

Celeste: My play leans into the storytelling of classic Greek tragedy, in particular, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (Ted Hughes translation). Though stylized, the story speaks to the human parts of us.  Pan’s Labryinth, with its evocative imagery, visuals, and dark mythic tone, informs the tone.  Fiddler on the Roof, with its culturally specific music, was also a huge influence.

Ally: Thanks for sharing, Celeste. Tell us: why is your play necessary, here and now?

Celeste: Given the state of the U.S., there has never been a more prescient time for this story. My story of the clash of Anglo and indigenous, a story of a family torn apart, is now mirroring events unfolding daily in our nation. While happy to see Llorona given life on stage, I am furious that events set over 100 years ago feel like stories heard on the street, in offices, happening to people all around me. I am furious that we have to implement protocols to ensure that my actors and audience are safe from marauding kidnappers who hunt people based on the color of their skin, with the blessing of our federal government.

Check out Celeste’s play, The Tears of la Llorona, on July 9 at 7:30pm, July 12 at 8:30pm, or July 13 at 12pm! **A Digital Performance will be available for online viewing July 15-22.**

MEET EVA POLLITT, the playwright behind ÉLÉPHANT.

Eva Pollitt

Play Synopsis: Set in a 19th-century Parisian brothel, ÉLÉPHANT follows 13-year-old Clérèse as she comes of age under the care of her mother, Magdith, a sex worker desperate to shield her from a brutal world. When a visitor arrives, Clérèse’s body begins to change, and a fantastical journey unfolds. Developed with Rising Sun Performance Company over several years, this dreamlike, allegorical tale explores puberty, trauma, and transformation. Inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, global documentaries, and lived experience, ÉLÉPHANT offers an intimate, raw, and visually striking exploration of girlhood, womanhood, and the cost of survival.

Ally: Hey Eva. Tell us about the inspiration for your play!

Eva Pollitt: [The play is] a combination of fever dreams, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, a big elephant statue in the French town I was living in, and my own explorations of loneliness and longing for love.

Ally: Who should definitely see this play? 

Eva: Mothers and Daughters. Anyone who is interested in French culture. Anyone who likes feminist magical realism.

Ally: Is there anything you want audience members to know before they arrive?

Eva: They are about to see a violent world through the magical eyes of a child.

Ally: What are three pieces of art you think everyone should see before encountering this play?

Eva: 1) Toulouse-Lautrec Paintings. 2) The film It Felt Like Love by Eliza Hittman. And 3) Any theatre work by Angélica Liddell.

Rehearsing ÉLÉPHANT

Ally: What’s one big budget item or otherwise crazy-ambitious idea you have for a future production of this play? (If you can share without spoiling too much!)

 Eva: I’d love for it to go to the Festival D’Avignon—the biggest theatre festival in the Francophone world. While most plays are in French, there are many international artists and multilingual plays as well… I’m curious what French audiences would make of the story, language, and world.

Ally: Sound amazing! Last question for now: What do you hope audiences take away after seeing the performance?

Eva: “I hope their hearts feel splintered open in a cathartic way. I hope they feel more inclined to love, no matter how much bravery it takes.”

Check out Eva’s play, ÉLÉPHANT, on July 10 at 7:30pm or July 12 at 5:00pm!

Regan Lavin

MEET REGAN LAVIN, the playwright behind BACCHANALIA.

Play Synopsis: In a remote forest, Agave and Sage welcome four young artists to an off-the-grid retreat. What begins as a creative escape devolves into something far darker as Agave introduces disturbing exercises, covertly doses the group with psychedelics, and casts Owen as the reincarnation of Dionysus. Under her influence, alliances fracture, reality blurs, and the artists spiral into chaotic psychosis. As identities dissolve and the group transforms into a modern Greek Chorus, the retreat hurtles toward a violent, mythic finale—echoing the tragic ecstasy of The Bacchae. A haunting exploration of power, community, and the thin line between art, humanity, and madness.

Ally: Hey Regan. What was the inspiration for your play?

Regan Lavin: I’ve always loved Greek tragedy, especially Euripides’ The Bacchae. After a recent read of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History… I began thinking again about what makes us transcend and forget ourselves and the social mores we are taught. What can bring us to that state of joyous ecstasy? I fell down this wormhole of researching the Dionysian festivals… the rites were thought to put their participants—primarily women—in a trance, and bring them to a state of catharsis wherein they could forget themselves. In a day and age where many people want to escape, this show is my exploration of what that might look like now, as well as [serve as] a cautionary tale regarding how quickly community can turn to cult when power is brought into play.

AML: Who should definitely see this play? 

Regan: Artists—and I use that term broadly! If you crochet in your free time, if you write poetry in your journal, if you think you’re awful at whatever form of art you practice, but it brings you joy, you are still an artist!… It’s okay to make art just for the sake of creating!

Ally: What do you want audience members to know before they arrive?

Regan: First and foremost, I want audiences to know the content warnings before arriving since this play can get dark and triggering. I also want audience members to know that this play does get a little weird and a little out there… it’s a world premiere, so I’m still learning a lot about what works in the script and what I want to change for next time! My director, Samara, has been such a fantastic partner in helping me refine each of these characters and make the script really sing.

Ally: What are three pieces of art you think everyone would see before encountering your play?

Regan: Definitely Euripides’ The Bacchae and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, since they were my two biggest inspirations to write this play. I’d also include Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Susan Soon He Stanton’s Solstice Party.

Rehearsing BACCHANALIA

Ally: Tell us about your writing process!

Regan: I describe my process as working in “concentric circles,” a term I learned from one of my college mentors, Michael Rau. I’ll write the first draft of a work, bringing in all the incoherent ideas and pieces I want to use and letting it be messy, before then editing it down… A bad first draft is always better than a nonexistent one. I’ll often even challenge myself to write the worst script I could conceive of just to get out of my perfectionist brain and stop judging myself.

Ally: What’s one big budget item or otherwise crazy-ambitious idea you have for a future production of this play? (If you can share without spoiling too much!)

Regan: My dream for this production would be an outdoor, immersive production in the middle of the woods, where the audience can engage in some of the artistic activities if they choose, allowing them to truly feel the call of nature and the dirt under their feet. Although this piece gets dark, I also want it to offer an idea of the alternative that could be and provide audiences a chance to regain a childlike sense of wonder and awe towards making art.

Check out Regan’s play, BACCHANALIA, on July 12 at 2:30pm or July 13 at 3:00pm! **A Digital Performance will be available for online viewing July 15-22.**

Four creative new plays by four promising female writers? For theatre nerds like us, there’s nothing more exciting… except maybe a way to do it on a budget. For those of us who overspent on Fringe shows (no shame there!), the SheLA Two Show Pass offers a cost-effective way to attend two shows of your choosing—effectively designing your own personal program. Don’t miss your chance to attend these world premieres!

I’ll leave you with Regan Lavin’s last words, because I think here, she speaks for all of us at the LAFPI, SheLA and our theatre community in general:

Ally: Why are your plays necessary, here and now?

Regan: All art is political, whether the creator intends for it to be or not, and [these plays are] no exception. Community is one of the most beautiful things in the world, and artistic community is particularly vital and political. Too often, power-hungry individuals attempt to impose conformity, control, regulation, and obedience in the name of community, distorting its true meaning. [These plays are] necessary to remind people to lean on and embrace community while cautioning against that exploitation.

The SheLA Summer Theatre Festival runs Tuesday, July 8 – Sunday, July 13, with additional digital performances available for viewing through Tuesday, July 22. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to shenycarts.org/she-la

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

Want to hear from more women artists? Make a Tax-Deductible Donation to LAFPI!

Donate Now!

The FPI Files: A Stage for Remembrance – “The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon”

Female Artists, playwriting, Production, Theaters, , , , , , , , ,

by Carolina Pilar Xique

I’ve recently become an avid adversary of statues.

Not all of them. The ones dedicated to the human form, like the Greek statues that live in the Louvre, can stay for now. I only play devil’s advocate against the ones that memorialize war heroes (or criminals, depending on who you ask) and historical figures who have ruined other people’s histories.

You could say that I hold a grudge against statues. When dozens of statues were defaced & dismounted in 2020, including one of Robert E. Lee, I was among the many that were happy to see them go. I am deeply unsettled by the fact that we are currently living in a time when plastering your face on the side of a mountain, your name on the top of a building, or the country’s name on a body of water is the greatest achievement of our government system. Frankly, it’s become childish. It takes me back to one of my earliest memories, when my younger sister learned how to spell her name and wrote it on every inch of our bedroom furniture. What is the point of memorializing someone if they inflict pain on more communities than they do pride?

Thankfully, the statues can’t argue back with me because they are, in fact, statues.

I am only half-joking about this sentiment. But statues have been at the forefront of my mind lately. And each time, I find myself often questioning, “Who deserves to be remembered well? To be memorialized forever? Who gets to decide that? How much harm constitutes a legacy of infamy? When we memorialize someone or something that has damaged more lives than repaired them, what does that say about us?”

Playwright/Performer Rebeca Alemán

But there are people who deserve to be remembered: champions of the suffering, the marginalized, the most vulnerable of us. And they rarely ever are. There is such power in speaking their names and their stories. The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon by Rebeca Alemán of Water People Theater brings two names to the forefront, stories that many of us likely haven’t heard before, but should have: Miroslava Breach and Anabel Flores.

This production is a monument to them and to all women who experience violence at the hands of corrupt governments. Miroslava Breach and Anabel Flores, presente.

I was able to send some questions to the playwright of The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, Rebeca Alemán (who also performs in the production), to learn more about the inspiration behind bringing these important histories onto the stage and the piece’s evolution, from its years across the country with Water People Theater, its run at Latino Theater Company‘s 2024 Encuentro festival, to now.

Carolina Pilar Xique: This play is based on real events. Can you briefly summarize the story, or stories, that inspired you to write this piece? Particularly, the stories of Miroslava Breach and Anabel Flores?

Rebeca Alemán: When I learned the devastating stories of Miroslava Breach and Anabel Flores, two Mexican journalists murdered simply for telling the truth and defending human rights, I felt a deep responsibility to respond through what I know best: theater. Their stories have stayed with me. Miroslava’s son was just eight years old; Anabel’s baby was only two weeks old when she was taken. As my character Paulina says in the play, “How could I leave them alone? I couldn’t.”

They were women. They were mothers. They were journalists doing their job, and they were killed for it. That is a brutal violation of human rights.

Carolina: These stories are so important to tell. How do you navigate the responsibility of representing real tragedies through art while still creating a powerful and engaging narrative?

Rebeca: Every day I ask myself what needs to change, what must be heard, what cannot and must not be forgotten. What needs to be remembered. Theater is an extraordinarily powerful space, and we have a responsibility to use it with intention and integrity. Since the founding of Water People Theater, we have brought stories to the stage that are deeply committed to human rights, stories that move, provoke and invite reflection. When art comes from a true commitment to humanity, it can bring us together, inspire empathy and solidarity, and speak out for human rights.

Eric K. Roberts and Rebeca Alemán – Photo courtesy of Latino Theater Company

Carolina: The play was produced in Chicago, New York, and now it’s coming back to Los Angeles. What is unique about this production, cast and interpretation of the story?

Rebeca: I would say what truly makes this production unique is its deeply human approach, which has grown and evolved with each staging. The story is told from the perspective of what it means – on a human level – for a journalist – a woman – to become a victim of an attack simply for exposing corruption. A woman who suffers extreme violence – losing her mother, her memory, her history, and her past. Throughout the play, Paulina fights to recover her memory while Rodrigo, her friend, stays by her side every step of the way, supporting her in her pursuit of justice. Each city has brought its own unique energy to the characters’ journey and the play itself.

Carolina: What has it been like to bring The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon back to the Latino Theater Company, but for a longer run after presenting it at Encuentro? Will audiences see anything new they may not have seen in last year’s run?

Rebeca: We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to return to Los Angeles with this play. Our experience at the Encuentro festival was unforgettable, and this invitation to come back, now on a larger stage with expanded possibilities, is a meaningful recognition of the work of the entire team. As both writer and actress, it is incredibly rewarding to witness how the play continues to evolve, revealing new layers. Audiences will experience a renewed staging that remains faithful to the spirit and intimacy of the original, while incorporating new projections, scenic elements and an even stronger emotional connection between the characters. All of this allows the story to resonate more deeply with the audience.

Rebeca Alemán – Photo courtesy of Latino Theater Company

Carolina: Is there a particular line or moment in the play that you feel encapsulates its core message or emotional truth?

Rebeca: “There are so many things that aren’t reported because some journalists keep quiet and because media outlets bury other cases. And then there are the people, the poor people who don’t search for justice because they’re afraid.” – Paulina

The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, written by Rebeca Alemán and directed by Iraida Tapias, plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m. at the Los Angeles Theatre Centerthrough May 25. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (call (213) 489-0994 or go to latinotheaterco.org.

Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.

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The FPI Files: New “Winter’s Tale” Speaks to Our Time

Director, Female Artists, Interview, playwriting, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Sarah Garic

Why do we go back to Shakespeare? Time may pass, whole centuries even, and yet these plays continue to show that we humans are working through the same things… over and over again. So then, what changes? I like to think that you can never listen to a song and hear it exactly the same as you did before. Maybe there’s something new that sparked – a chord, a thought, a color… because the day, time, setting, potentially you were different. And in this particularly interesting moment in history, I wonder… what will resonate with the audience – with you! – in a play in which a king exerts violent power over his family, his subjects, at the harm of those he holds most dear, potentially even himself?

Tracy Young first lifted The Winter’s Tale into modern verse through Play On Shakespeare, a non-profit company promoting and creating contemporary modern translations of Shakespeare’s plays. For Tracy, a director and playwright with a deep portfolio spanning new plays to translations and adaptations, accessibility is a driving force: “Shakespeare wrote for everybody to be able to enjoy the plays; he was not an elitist.”

Now, you may be thinking, “I don’t know if I buy that; Shakespeare isn’t for me.” And you’re probably not alone in that sentiment. My mom once told me she would have to take a class before she could understand Shakespeare’s plays. I feel you mom! I’ve taken many Shakespeare classes, acted in his plays, and feel like I’m barely scratching the surface.

Tracy Young

Tracy hears us, she hears my mom, and all those who may think that Shakespeare stands on a lofty pedestal unreachable for us mere mortals. That is exactly why she is doing this work. Her goal is to render this play as something that can and should engage everyone. So the question is, what might spark with you now in Tracy Young and Lisa Wolpe’s adapted The Winter’s Tale, playing at the Skylight Theatre Company? And what will you hear in 5, 10, 15 years down the road if you chance across this play again? Here’s hoping that the tyrannical king will resonate a bit less.

And on that note, Tracy and I dove right into the juicy stuff.

Sarah Garic: What is resonating now, in the rehearsal room, with all that is happening in the U.S., in the world; metaphysically, spiritually…?

Tracy Young: The original theme is about a man who gives in to false thinking. He suspects his wife and best friend of having an affair… Hmm we’ve definitely seen that storyline before! Horrible consequences role out as a result of conspiratorial, paranoid, and destructive thought processes. This really resonates with the rampant online ecosphere of disinformation, conspiracy-minded thinking and weaponized information that we are living through right now. And this play is asking, what are the consequences of weaponized information? Time will reveal the long-term harms, but certainly the characters’ and people’s ideologies are being shaped by things that may not be true.

Misha Osherovich as Perdita & Israel Erron Ford in “The Winter’s Tale” – photo by Jason Williams courtesy of Skylight Theatre Company

Sarah: Is there a particular character whose story was emphasized in this adaptation?

Tracy: We emphasized the role of Perdita, which means little lost one. She is the daughter of King Leontes and Queen Hermione. Royalty is her curse, and she is sent away and uprooted from who she is, her home, her original place in the world. She grows up in these other places and with other people.

In our adaptation, the actor who plays that role is trans and the character is trans. We focus on the theme of trans-ness and trans-identity, ensuring that there is textual support. In fact, a lot of Shakespeare’s plays integrate trans-ness.

This culture currently has heightened weaponization of language against trans-culture and trans-identity. The character’s marginalization has resonance with her trans-ness as well.

I find that no matter who we are or how we identify, we can recognize ourselves and what it means to be alive and navigate ourselves and the world with these plays as a support. This is why I find Shakespeare’s plays incredibly adaptable to the exploration of modern themes and language.

Sarah: I want to hop back to the idea of being displaced from community. How do you address the question of whether we have agency in choosing who is our community and where is our home? Is Perdita – and the broader “we” – forever stuck with who our father is, etc.?

Tracy: That is really interesting because in the original text, the characters all reunite after a 16-year flash forward. Time has been a factor, and the king is sort of welcomed back into the community. There is a controversial ending in which they are all reunited and there is forgiveness and even happiness maybe.

In the adaptation, we’ve changed some of the way that the last moments play out. We, and particularly the character of Hermione, wrestle with the question, Can you embrace your husband after experiencing such trauma? Should you? In the original, Hermione embraces Leontes.

Misha Osherovich, Spencer Jamison as Hermoine & Daniel DeYoung as Leontes – photo by Jason Williams courtesy of Skylight Theatre Company

Sarah: She embraces the monster. I am really curious by how we deal with monsters. If Hermione embraces Leontes in the original, is it possible that Leontes becomes less scary to her?

Tracy: A lot of times when Leontes is portrayed, he is the villain until he’s not. Somehow the monster is able to find humanity at the end of the play; it lets people off the hook for complicity with the own monsters that we may carry.

In this adaptation, I try to humanize Leontes from the beginning. Leontes has a lot of internalized trauma. The play wants to relate to all the characters in some way; no one is excluded. Shakespeare creates worlds where there are complexity and nuance because humans are so complicated and contradictory.

In the journey that Leontes takes, you see how hideous and destructive he is, and yet, you see and track what were the things that contributed to that … what kind of things set the stage? And we explore that without forcing forgiveness or diminishing the culpability of what the person has done.

In this adaptation, we are actively reckoning with the complexity of doing harm in all the different ways.

Shaan Dasani, Victoria Hoffman, Daniel DeYoung, Israel Erron Ford, Quest Sapp, Iman Nazemzadeh, KT Vogt, Misha Osherovich & Spencer Jamison – Jason Williams courtesy of Skylight Theatre Company

Sarah: Going to need to soak that one in… Switching gears here, what does a modern translation and then adaptation entail?

Tracy: For a modern translation, the first directive is do no harm. When you think it needs to change, the goal is to really interrogate why it needs to change before you change it

Then, the overarching goal is to make the writing more accessible, which of course is going to be subjective. I used my own sensibility and experience being a theatre-maker for many, many years.

For example, with the syntax: often we don’t speak that way anymore; we use a different vocabulary, a different way of forming phrases. I’m looking to unravel the syntax knot while keeping the iambic pentameter structure. With a modern translation, we can stay in time with the play rather than struggling with the language being too antiquated.

There are also events of the past that the audience would have recognized back then, but that are not recognizable now. In some cases, there is a modern equivalent that speaks in a similar way. My mission is to try and find a modern-day analog while keeping the verse intact.

Sarah: Whew, that’s not for the faint of heart!

Tracy: Oh! And the comedy! One of the main challenges is the comedy; comedy needs to be situated in the present-day for us to understand it. Jokes have their own timing and construction of syntax; they also require content accessibility. Ever been in a theatre when some people laugh, but most don’t get it?

Iman Nazemzadeh, Quest Sapp, Israel Erron Ford, Daniel DeYoung & KT Vogt – photo by Jason Williams courtesy of Skylight Theatre Company

Sarah: Yup, that’s been me… once, twice, thrice?

Tracy: In this play, there are a bunch of moments that are comedic bits. I try to deal with the jokes by asking, what kind of a joke is it? And then you try to re-write it in a way that people will recognize!

“The Winter’s Tale” by William Shakespeare, in modern verse translation by Tracy Young, adapted by Lisa Volpe and Tracy Young and directed by Tracy Young, produced by Gary Grossman and Armando Huipe for Skylight Theatre Company in Los Feliz, runs through June 14th. For tickets call  (213) 761-7061 or www.skylighttheatre.org

The FPI Files: Laura Shamas Recounts Her Passion For “Four Women in Red”

Female Artists, Interview, playwriting, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Leilani Squire

I recently had the honor of speaking with playwright and LAFPI Co-Founder Laura Annawyn Shamas (Chickasaw Nation). She wrote Four Women In Red now playing at The Victory Theatre in Burbank.

The play is about four Indigenous women who are the survivors of their missing relatives and friends, who are devastated by the loss, and yet who continue to search for the missing against all odds of finding their loved ones.  Laura said that it was hard writing the play because of the subject matter. But she is passionate about it and wants change and so she wrote a play. She realizes that it is hard on the actors and the director because they have to relive the trauma during the rehearsal process and performances. However, the director and the actors are willing to go to those places over and over in spite of the emotional toll doing the play has on them.

“The ending is something people have not seen before,” Laura said when we talked about the power and beauty of the production. The four women onstage create a memorable final stage picture of unity and determination … and defiance.

Zoey Reyes, Harriette Feliz, Jehnean Washington and Carolyn Dunn in “Four Women In Red” – Photo by Tim Sullens

In the play, one of the female characters says, “It always falls to us.” It is the women who keep taking action. It is the women who support each other. It is the women who keep the hope alive. The four characters embody the strength and resilience of Native American Women, and the search for justice. Laura said that “these women” have been resisting systemic oppression for hundreds of years. They have been fighting against the oppression. What she means by “these women” are not only the four women in the play—but all Indigenous women.

She said, “Story is medicine. This is what is taught in the tribal way. This is what the tribes teach.”

Playwright Laura Shamas – Photo by Stephanie Girard

Laura believes in the magic of theater and theater as an art form. She went on to say, “The playwright helps the audience to experience a temporary collective. There is an electrical, an alchemical response when sitting in the audience with others and watching actors perform on stage. A lived interaction. An aliveness. Something about the live interaction of experiencing the actors in real time – this is an active response. Not passive like watching a streaming video or a movie that takes place in the past, even if the story is in the present. Watching a play on stage is active – living and experiencing in the moment. We need this kind of collective experience now as a society. We need to cry and laugh together. This is what theater is about. This is the magic of theater. And we need the magic and the collective more than ever.”

With all the divisiveness and prejudices and everything else happening in the world, we do need the magic and the collective experience of live theater more than ever. As I sat in the audience and watched Four Women In Red, I felt as if I was experiencing the story and the journey of the characters in community. I felt the immediacy and aliveness of each moment. and I sensed the audience experiencing the same.

Harriette Feliz, Jehnean Washington, Carolyn Dunn and Zoey Reyes – Photo by Tim Sullens

I asked Laura, what did she learn as a person as she wrote the play. Her answer encompassed more than the writing of the play, but the process and journey that began five years ago: “I will always need to keep learning. I will always try to keep learning. As an artist.”

Laura said she was at every rehearsal, wondering how to make it better, and that she changed words during the last of the rehearsals. She added, “I feel very humbled by the show. I still have a lot to learn about the topic.”

Laura hopes to bring attention to the important topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives. She hopes to shine a light on the issue so that people will be aware of what is happening and to take action. And she says she is proud to have been a small part of the larger picture. “If some change happens, no matter how small, if someone takes action because they saw the play, then this five-year journey will be worth it.”

“My hope is that once they see the play, they can’t stop thinking about the issue – the issue of missing native women,” Laura continued.

The systemic oppression Native women experience is another issue that people need to bring attention and take action to in order for change to happen. “A chorus of voices to bring real action is what is needed now, “ she said.

Carolyn Dunn, Jehnean Washington, Harriette Feliz and Zoey Reyes – Photo by Tim Sullens

I said that, to me, the ending of the play is a call to action. She thanked me for seeing that. She emphasized that, “There are a few calls to actions in the play.”

Laura suggested a few ways that we can help bring awareness and to take action:

  1. Call your Representative and ask what they are doing about the issue.
  2. Go to National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) website and donate.  The website is https://www.niwrc.org
  3. Be part of a search for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.  

During opening weekend, Tayana Viscarra (Piro-Tewa Pueblo, Apache, Kumiai, European) and Norm Sands (Apache, Yaqui, European), co-founders and leaders of Way of the Sacred Mountain, an indigenous-led, grassroots partnership providing healing and support for families and communities affected by Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), talked to the audience after the performance. They talked about conducting searches, and they may be a place to find how to be part of a search. Their website is https://www.wayofthesacredmountain.org

At the end of our dialogue, Laura offered this advice to playwrights: “Write something you care about. Write what you’re passionate about. What is it you care most about and what do you want to tell the audience about?”

I thought of the plays that I’m writing and how I’m passionate about them and how I love the characters and how they are alive within my life and how I’m alive with their lives. And Laura’s advice makes me even more determined to finish the plays – even though one may always be working on the play, according to Laura – and get it out into the world.

“Four Women In Red” by Laura Annawyn Shamas (Chickasaw Nation), Directed by Jeanette Harrison (Descendent of the Onondaga Nation), Produced by Maria Gobetti runs through March 23, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm and Sunday at 4:00pm, at The Victory Theatre Center in Burbank. For tickets call (818) 841-5421 or visit thevictorytheatrecenter.org.

The taste of fire

Female Artists, Home, Playwright, playwriting, Writing

The view from my house on Tuesday, January 7, 2025

by Cynthia Wands

January 11, 2025

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m writing this while I’m watching the smoke from the Palisades Fire continue to menace the skyline. I’ve been on evacuation alert since Tuesday, when I packed up my car, reassured the cat (Ted) that we’re in this together, and that we’ll leave once I’m given a Mandatory Evacuation Order. It’s been four days of trying to remain calm and organized during the power outages, the buzz of evacuation alerts, and the sleepless nights hunched over the phone, tracking the Watch Duty fire maps.

Dear friends have lost everything, their house burned to the ground that Tuesday night. And so did thousands of their neighbors. The images of the neighborhoods charred beyond recognition look like the aftermath of the bombings in Dresden during World War Two.

And there’s a lot in this disaster that reminds me of what war might be like: the constant awareness that at any moment your life could be shattered; knowing that other lives have already been ravaged; there’s the unexpected roar of helicopters, and the shock of the hurricane winds that slammed through that dark night; the occasional burst of acrid smoke that make your eyes water; and the scent of burnt everything when you step outside to see if the fire is on the ridge line.

You get jumpy. And bursts of emotion can surprise you. Last night a friend was online with me as we were both yelling at the newscasters ON THE TELEVISION. I know. I know they can’t hear us, but it was the only yelling we could do. HOW MANY HELICOPTERS ARE ON THEIR WAY? WHERE’S THE FIRE? STOP THE STAMMERING! WHERE? WHERE IS IT? STOP IT!

That kind of thing. You’re so helpless that the only sense of engagement is yelling at the television. At least the power was on.

I’m thinking that these fires, and the disaster of these fires, will change the stories we tell about our life here in Los Angeles. We’ve had other fires, and earthquakes, and riots. And mudslides. But this disaster feels differently for me – its about the four elements: fire, air, water, earth. Its about home and refuge and community.

It’s also about the thousand little things we live with, the thousands of decisions we make about the things in our life. When I was packing up the car in case I needed to evacuate, I had to evaluate the value of any item I would carry away with me. And that’s when the story of my life here became a kind of inventory – what do you take with you when you have to leave everything else behind? After I packed up the legal documents, the computer, the medicines, cat treats, my grandmother’s quilt, Eric’s artwork – then I paused. Could I fit the artwork on the walls in the car? Family portraits? Some of it would fit. But could I fit the big pieces of artwork, the big paintings, the six foot mannequin, the six panel art screen – maybe not. The family china? The books? Oh, the many books – do I have time to go through my favorite books? Maybe I’d get more books. Later.

And that’s when the story became a thousand different stories. The mosaic of my life here: when I lived here with Eric, as I’ve lived here without him, the dinner parties with the fancy wine glasses. I felt every object asking “Would you take me?”

In the end, I took what I could. I hope I’ll be able to unpack it all when the evacuation alerts end, and the air is cleared of smoke, and the bits of the mosaic of lives burnt by fire finds a new pattern.

Just now I stepped outside to watch the trees thrash around in the winds. The air tasted like fire.