LOS ANGELES, CA – February 6, 2012 – Nonprofit organization Overtone Industries presents the world premiere of its new opera The Woman in the Wall, with two weekends of performances opening Friday, March 23, 2012 at the Masonic Lodge in Culver City.  Reuniting the award-winning Overtone creative team of the critically-acclaimed 2010 Songs & Dances of Imaginary Lands, The Woman in the Wall is an operatic work by Composer O-Lan Jones and Librettist Kathleen Cramer, conducted by David O, and produced by Vibrant Production Management.  Inspired by the 14th Century tradition of The Anchoress, the opera is a “mystery play” in the ancient tradition; it explores the openings and paths inside that are revealed when all doors are locked shut.  For more information, please see http://www.overtoneindustries.org and https://www.facebook.com/overtoneindustries

The opera, which is written in Medieval modes using instruments of the time, will run for two weekends – on Fridays and Saturdays – from March 23 to March 31, 2012 with performances starting at 8:00pm.  Ticket prices are $25 for Peasants (seating closest to the performers), $40 for Royalty (seating in the middle of the performance space), and $50 for the Virtuous (reserved seating on an elevated platform).  Online tickets can be purchased via http://www.overtoneindustries.org or by calling Overtone Industries at 323-655-2410.  Performances, which are ceremonial in nature, will be held in the atmospheric Masonic Lodge at 9635 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232 (http://culvercitymasons.org; 310-836-0467). The show is suitable for mature teen and adult audiences.

The subject of the production is inspired by the 14th Century tradition of The Anchoress – a woman who volunteers to be enclosed for the rest of her life in a church cell – with one window open to the sacred world and the other open to the ordinary world.  Over the course of seven days, which cover seventeen years, we follow The Anchoress, “Marianna” (Gretchen Johnson), as she becomes the inspirational advisor to everyone from the peasants to the king.  As we follow her journey inward through her temptations, doubts, revelations, and fears, we see how she transforms the people’s questions in relation to the Seven Virtues that light her way.  Ultimately, the work is a “mystery play” in the ancient tradition; it explores the openings and paths inside that are revealed when all doors are locked shut.  The production features an orchestra of 10 instrumentalists, a cast of a dozen principal singers, and a 30-member chorus from the Angel City Chorale, led by Sue Fink.

 

The Woman in the Wall is a new operatic work written in Medieval modes by Composer O-Lan Jones and Librettist Kathleen Cramer. In balcony - Livia Reiner, Kathleen Kelso, and Octavia Leclerc-Jones. Below - Gretchen Johnson as Marianna. Photo Credit: Emily Brooke Sandor

Credits –
The Woman in the Wall reunites the innovative Overtone Industries creative team of Composer O-Lan Jones, Librettist Kathleen Cramer, Conductor David O, and producer Vibrant Production Management, that most recently collaborated on the critically-acclaimed experimental opera Songs & Dances of Imaginary Lands, which was honored with Ovation Award nominations for Music Direction and Scenic Design, and a win for Costume Design for the 2009-2010 season.

- Composer & Director – O-Lan Jones
- Librettist – Kathleen Cramer
- Music Director – David O
- Scenic & Costume Designer – TBA
- Marianna, The Anchoress – Gretchen Johnson
- Remaining Cast & Orchestra – TBA
- Producer – Vibrant Production Management

O-Lan Jones, Director & Composer –
O-Lan Jones is the Artistic Director of Overtone Industries, guiding her company in the creation of new mythological operas and theatricales. Miz Jones is a full-service artist – an award-winning actor, sound designer, writer and composer.  She has been consistently involved in experimental theater, music and opera since the age of 16.  She originated roles in the plays of Sam Shepard, Julie Hebert, and Beth Henley, among others.  The press has referred to her as an “uncategorizable legend.”

As an actress she has worked with directors Tim Burton, Jonathan Demme, Ivan Reitman, Paul Schrader, John Schlesinger, Oliver Stone, Peter Weir, and Paul Bartel who directed Shelf Life, a movie she wrote and starred in.  She is perhaps best known for playing Esmeralda, the reclusive Christian organist in Edward Scissorhands, and numerous waitress roles (Seinfeld, Shoot the Moon, Miracle Mile, Natural Born Killers, and The Truman Show).  A repeat member of Burton’s ensemble casts, she also played hick trailer-dwelling mama Sue Ann Norris in Mars Attacks! Television credits include Lonesome Dove and The X-Files; and she was a series regular on CBS’s Harts of the West.

Last summer she sang a major role in Terry Wolverton & David Ornette Cherry’s opera Embers at Grand Performances in downtown LA.  She will soon appear in Aram Rappaport’s new film Syrup.

Miz Jones has worked as a composer creating original music, songs, sound designs and scores for more than 40 productions.  On the West Coast she has written music for Padua Hills Playwrights, LA Women’s Shakespeare Company, San Diego Rep, the Taper Too and California Shakespeare Festival in the Bay Area.  On the East Coast, her music has been showcased at Playwright’s Horizons, the Workhouse, La Mama, and the Kurt Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

She was the director, choreographer and one of the 11 composers who created Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands.  The critically-acclaimed opera was called “an ambitious, possibly groundbreaking new opera” (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times), “epic avante-garde opera… a carnival fun house” (Anthony Byrnes, KCRW), and “a feast for the senses” (Mayank Keshaviah, LA Weekly).

She has composed three short operas; five musicals; and has scored two short films.  Jones is also the Founder and Artistic Director of Overtone Industries, whose work the Los Angeles Times called “audaciously experimental entertainment.”  www.o-lanjones.com

Kathleen Cramer, Librettist –

Kathleen Cramer is a Bay Area artist who has written for Overtone Industries for many years.  In San Francisco, she began a serious collaboration with O-Lan Jones, yielding five operas.  In addition to The Woman in the Wall, she collaborated with Jones on the critically-acclaimed Songs & Dances Of Imaginary Lands in 2010.  She also wrote Happy Hour Becomes Electra, for Overtone’s production String of Pearls, and collaborated with Jones on The Man Whose Brother Was Eaten by Wolves and The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater, which premiered at [INSIDE] the Ford.

After beginning her career in New York’s Off-Off Broadway scene, working with many cutting edge playwrights, Cramer co-founded the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles, which held both a school and an acclaimed festival every summer for 18 years. She also writes for the magazine Works and Conversations as a contributing editor.


David O, Music Director –
David O is an award-winning composer, performer, and musical director.  His work has been featured at Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Kennedy Center, The Mark Taper Forum, and the Hollywood Bowl, as well as other venues in Los Angeles and around the world.  His choral composition, A Map of Los Angeles, was commissioned by the LA Master Chorale with performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2008 and 2009.  Thousands of Los Angeles children and their parents know David as “The Professor” for his six years of performances with Summersounds at the Hollywood Bowl, produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  His original musicals include The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and The Legend of Alex, both commissioned by Center Theatre Group’s P.L.A.Y. Program, and Imagine, commissioned by South Coast Repertory Theater. The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip was performed as part of the inaugural season of the Kirk Douglas Theater.

David is the musical director, arranger, and co-composer for Disney Creative Entertainment’s new production, Toy Story: The Musical, which opened at Disney California Adventure in 2011.  Some of David’s most unique work includes non-traditional theater pieces for which he served as both musical director and composer.  Most notably, he created an entirely a capella score for Hippolytos, a new translation of Euripides’ tragedy commissioned to inaugurate the Fleischman Theater at the newly-refurbished Getty Villa in Malibu.  In addition, David was the composer, musical director, and on-stage pianist/percussionist for A Noise Within’s production of Ubu Roi, for which he received the 2006 Ovation Award for Sound Design in a Large Theater.  For the 2009-2010 season, he was nominated for an Ovation Award in Music Direction for Overtone’s Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands.

David has musically directed countless musical theater productions in the Los Angeles area, including the world premiere of 13, the musical by Jason Robert Brown.  He has also served as musical director for the West Coast premieres of Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party and Little Fish.  Other notable productions as Musical Director include The Last 5 Years (Pasadena Playhouse), The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World ([INSIDE] the Ford), and Divorce: the Musical (Hudson Mainstage). http://www.davidomusic.com

Gretchen Johnson, The Anchoress “Marianna” –
The Woman in the Wall, written especially for her by O-Lan Jones and Kathleen Cramer, is Gretchen Johnson’s fourth collaboration with Overtone Industries. Johnson performed in the company’s epic performance of Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands, staged in a sprawling, empty Culver City car dealership where the production received rave reviews, including one from the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Swed.  She appeared in the Overtone presentations of Herakles and the Hydra at The Met Theater and New York’s Carnegie Hall, and The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater, also written for her, at [Inside] the Ford.  She is currently at work on a recital of under-sung and unsung music of Hollywood composers and poets.  In addition to concert stages and recital halls, she has produced and performed recitals at the Goethe Institute and other local venues including coffee houses, private salons, retirement villages and the historic steps of Echo Park’s Delta Street.  A specialist in new music theater, she has premiered works by Meredith Monk and the BOBS and, in a role written especially for her, she toured for two seasons with the Los Angeles Opera’s community production of Who Wants To Be An Opera Singer?  An active recitalist and concert performer, she has performed new works by Los Angeles-based composer Enrique Gonzáles-Medina, including Siete Poeminimos, Los Versos de la Maestra, and concert presentations of his opera Serafina y Arcángela.

Angel City Chorale –
Angel City Chorale, conducted by Founder/Artistic Director Sue Fink, i
s a multi-talented, multicultural choir ensemble of 160 men and
 women that truly reflects the spirit of Los Angeles, the city it calls
 home.  Performing an extraordinary repertoire, ranging from Classical a
nd Folk to Pop and Gospel, has become the group’s hallmark.  Angel
 City Chorale has appeared at such venues as Staples Center, the Los A
ngeles Convention Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the John A
nson Ford Amphitheater.  The choir has performed with Stevie Wonder,
 Luther Vandross, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.  Angel City Chorale has b
een selected by internationally acclaimed Music Director and Record Producer Frank McNamara to appear in an hour-long PBS special, The
 American Tenors. http://www.angelcitychorale.org

Vibrant Production Management, Producers –
Vibrant Production Management works with artists of various disciplines to create and manage original, vivid artistic experiences. Vibrant offers comprehensive production services from concept to completion. Beginning with a shared vision, the firm assembles teams of artists and managers to provide energy and movement to a project. The firm handles logistics, allowing the artistic product to be presented as high-quality, seamless entertainment. Providing hands-on production management coordination from scheduling to show calling, Vibrant works in collaboration with artists to bring ideas to life. Vibrant Production Management is a partnership between Sara Adelman and Michelle Magaldi.  Adelman and Magaldi have been producing and managing live events together for over ten years in and around Los Angeles as independent contractors and employees of award-winning arts organizations. 

http://vibrantmgmt.com

Overtone Industries –
Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning Overtone Industries creates vivid, original myths and fables, bringing them to life in the form of opera and music/theater.  The organization is passionate about live performance and its transformational power, created as performers and audiences participate together in each unfolding moment.  Overtone believes that artistic expression is an essential ingredient to our lives; a catalyst for artists and audience members to understand themselves and each other in a fresh new way.  By exploring new relationships among words, acting, movement, and music, the non-profit ultimately seeks to create work geared to invite a broad demographic of people to experience together the Big Questions and the Big Joy of being alive.  Overtone Industries’ work has been performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and in New York at the Kurt Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. http://www.overtoneindustries.org

Support –
Overtone Industries currently receives support from Achilles Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Metabolic Studio, The National Endowment for the Arts as well as a plethora of generous individual donors.

For more information, to request images, or arrange interviews please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

The Woman in the Wall, a “mystery play” in the ancient tradition, explores the openings and paths inside that are revealed when all doors are locked shut. Foreground - Gretchen Johnson as Marianna. Background - Livia Reiner, Octavia Leclerc-Jones, and Kathleen Kelso. Photo Credit: Emily Brooke Sandor

The Industry

The Industry Presents The World Premiere Of

Crescent City, A Hyperopera
Set Within Cityscape Installations By Six LA-Based Contemporary Artists
Thursday, May 10 – Sunday, May 27, 2012

At Atwater Crossing in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA – February 2, 2012 – The Industry presents the world premiere of Crescent City, a hyperopera by composer Anne LeBaron and librettist Douglas Kearney, under the direction of Yuval Sharon, from Thursday, May 10 to Sunday, May 27, 2012 at Atwater Crossing in Los Angeles.  The massive new site-specific production, which audiences will experience in 360-degrees, is set in a mythical cityscape with abstract sets by an extraordinary group of six LA-based installation artists. The installations will be on view on select days for the run of the production, then transformed in the evening with performances of the opera.  For more information, www.TheIndustryLA.org.

With a gala opening of the opera on Thursday, May 10, 2012, Crescent City will run for three weeks, Thursdays through Sundays, closing on May 27, 2012.   All performances begin at 8:00pm.  Ticket prices range from $25 to $100 and will be available via http://theindustryla.org/tickets/ starting April 1, 2012.  Performances are suitable for audience members 12-years-old or older.  Collaborating visual artists include Mason Cooley, Brianna Gorton, Katie Grinnan, Alice Konitz, Jeff Kopp and Olga Koumoundouros – all members of the vibrant Los Angeles art scene.  On Friday, May 11, 2012, The Industry will host an artists’ reception on set, inviting guests to see the installations up close.  Installations are on view to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays from noon to 6:00pm, with guided tours hourly during the run of the production.  Atwater Crossing is located at 3245 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039 (www.atwatercrossing.com).


More About Crescent City –
In the wake of a devastating hurricane, Crescent City is a shell of its former self where the few remaining inhabitants struggle for survival.  The bad waters of an impending new storm wake up the notorious ghosts of the city’s past, including the legendary voodoo goddess Marie Laveau (played by Gwendolyn Brown).   Marie pleads with the awakened voodoo gods to save the city. They agree to come to her aid on one condition: they must be able to find one good person among the ragtag and desperate citizenry.  Crescent City becomes a travelogue in search of the one who will make the city worthy of salvation.

Anne LeBaron’s hybrid sound world encompasses an otherworldly brew of electronica, bluegrass, jazz, and improvisation. The production includes a live 16-piece orchestra (including Timur and the Dime Museum) with such diverse instrumentation as laptop, chromelodeon, and shakuhachi.

Audience members will be seated in and around the city, seeing and hearing the action in every other part of the city through live video streams and sophisticated sound technology.

“I’m excited by the different ways audiences will be able to experience the work,” says Director Yuval Sharon. “Letting imaginations run wild when the space is open during the day should increase people’s curiosity about how the opera plays out by night.”

To listen to “The Nurses’ Scene,” an excerpt from a Crescent City workshop performance at New York City Opera’s VOX in 2006, please click http://theindustryla.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Crescent-City-excerpt-nurses.mp3.

A detailed synopsis of Crescent City can be viewed at http://www.annelebaron.com/Crescent_City_synopsis.pdf

Hyperopera –
Hyperopera, a concept that has evolved in LeBaron’s work and teaching at California Institute of the Arts, is a mega collaboration bringing together artists from many different disciplines.  Crescent City unites not only the creative voices of the writers and producers, but also contemporary visual artists with the set, lighting, video, and sound designers.  Crescent City is LeBaron’s most ambitious experiment with this theory to-date.

Crescent City Credits –
- Composer – Anne LeBaron – www.annelebaron.com
- Librettist – Douglas Kearney – www.douglaskearney.com
- Director – Yuval Sharon – www.yuvalsharon.com
- Conductor – Marc Lowenstein
- Producer – Laura Kay Swanson
- Curator – Brianna Gorton – http://briannagorton.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html
- Set Designer – Sibyl Wickersheimer – www.sawgirl.com
- Costume Designer – Ivy Chou
- Lighting Designer – Elizabeth Harper – www.eharperdesign.com
- Sound Designer – Martin Gimenez
- Video Designer – Jason Thompson
- Technical Director – Eric Nolfo

Visual Installation Artists –
- Mason Cooley – http://masoncooley.blogspot.com
- Brianna Gorton – http://briannagorton.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html
- Katie Grinnan – http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/honigman/honigman8-4-04.asp
- Alice Konitz – alicekonitz.com
- Jeff Kopp – http://redlingfineart.com/artists/jeff-kopp
- Olga Koumoundouros – www.vielmetter.com/artists/olga-koumoundouros.html

Timur & the Dime Museum (photo credit: Sandra Powers)

Cast –
The cast of 18 includes:
- Marie Laveau – Gwendolyn Brown – http://www.gwendolynbrown.com
- The Good Man – Cedric Berry – http://www.cedricberry.com/Cedric_Berry/Home.html
- Deadly Belle – Timur Bekbosunov – www.theoperaoftimur.com
- Homesick Woman – Lillian Sengpiehl – http://tinyurl.com/Robert-Gilder-L-Sengpiehl
- Jesse – Anthony Faatolia – http://www.ashleyfaatoalia.com
- The Nurses – Maria Elena Altany and Ji Young Yang
- The Cop – Jonathan Mack – http://www.jonathanmack.la/


Anne LeBaron –
Anne LeBaron’s compositions embrace an exotic array of subjects encompassing vast reaches of space and time, ranging from the mysterious Singing Dune of Kazakhstan, to probes into physical and cultural forms of extinction, to legendary figures such as Pope Joan, Eurydice, Marie Laveau, and the American Housewife.  Widely recognized for her work in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms, she has earned numerous awards and prizes, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Alpert Award in the Arts, a Fulbright Full Fellowship, an award from the Rockefeller MAP Fund for her opera, Sucktion, and a 2009-2010 Cultural Exchange International Grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for The Silent Steppe Cantata.  Also an accomplished harpist, LeBaron is renowned for her pioneering methods of developing and implementing extended harp techniques, electronic enhancements, and notation in compositional and improvisational contexts.  She currently teaches composition and related subjects, such as Concert Theater and Hyperopera, at the California Institute of the Arts. http://www.annelebaron.com

Douglas Kearney –
Douglas Kearney’s work as a poet, performer and librettist has been featured in many fine publications and venues in print, in-the-flesh and in digital code.  His first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 (Red Hen Press).  His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and was published by Fence Books in December 2009.  In 2010, it was named a finalist for the Pen Center USA Literary Award in poetry.  In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers’ Award. He lives in the San Fernando Valley with his family and teaches courses in African American poetry, opera and myth at California Institute of the Arts. http://www.douglaskearney.com

Yuval Sharon –
Yuval Sharon’s directorial work has been described as “magical” (The Village Voice), “ingenious” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “a major event, where surprise sidesteps operatic convention” (Los Angeles Times).  He has worked both with international houses like the San Francisco Opera, the Mariinsky Theater, the Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria, and the Komische Oper Berlin, as well as experimental venues like Berkeley Opera, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Deitch Projects. He was Assistant Director to Achim Freyer on the Los Angeles Ring Cycle. Sharon was Project Director for four years of New York City Opera’s VOX, an annual workshop of new American opera, which became the most important crucible for new opera in the country under his direction.  Sharon will also be directing Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan LaBarbara in John Cage’s Song Books this March as part of San Francisco Symphony’s Mavericks Festival, which includes a Carnegie Hall performance.  The Los Angeles Times also just named Sharon a “Face to Watch” in 2012. More information is at http://www.yuvalsharon.com.

Marc Lowenstein –
Marc Lowenstein conducted the world premieres of several new operas including The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, Dice Thrown, WET, The Scarlet Letter, and The Peach Blossom Fan, as well as the American premieres of R. Murray Schaefer’s Loving and Georges Aperghis’ Sextuor.  For four years, he conducted with the New York City Opera’s new music festival VOX and conducted on the Monday Evening Concert Series, with Jacaranda, the California Ear Unit, the Vinny Golia Ensemble, the Kadima Conservatory, the CalArts New Century Players, and Ensemble Green.  He was the founder and music director of the Berkeley Contemporary Opera, a company that produced four seasons of contemporary operas.  As a singer, he specializes in contemporary music and has performed over twenty-five opera roles including the premiere of What to Wear by Michael Gordon and Richard Foreman and he recently sang the American premiere of Frank Denyer’s Out of the Shattered Shadows.  Lowenstein has written a full-length opera based on the screenplay of The Fisher King and is working on two others.  He has written several shorter chamber works as well. He occasionally moonlights as a professional whistler and amateur Klezmer clarinetist. He teaches theory, conducting, composition and history at California Institute of the Arts.

Laura Kay Swanson –
Laura Kay Swanson brings a wide range of experience to The Industry. A graduate of the MFA Producing Program at California Institute of the Arts, she produced Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and was musical director and assistant producer for Hellzapoppin’, a musical adaptation based on the 1941 film. She was the associate producer for the world premiere of the CalArts Center for New Performance production of Gertrude Stein’s Brewsie and Willie, winner of three 2011 LA Weekly Theater Awards.  She also produced and directed a music video of the aria, “Hymn to the Sun” from Akhnaten by Philip Glass, which premiered at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) in 2011 as part of the CalArts Film/Video showcase. Other producing credits include Rain Coloring Forest at REDCAT, featuring Indonesian artist and choreographer Sardono Kusumo and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, and The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, a contemporary chamber opera by Veronika Krausas. Prior to becoming a producer, she was a professional opera singer and has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, REDCAT, Carnegie Hall, and New York City Opera.

The Industry –
Founded by Artistic Director Yuval Sharon and Producing Director Laura Kay Swanson, The Industry produces new interdisciplinary work that merges music, visual arts, and performance to expand the traditional definition of opera. The Industry is a recipient of the MAP Grant from The Doris Duke Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  http://theindustryla.org



Atwater Crossing –
Spanning five industrial buildings across two city blocks, Atwater Crossing houses an array of creative offices and studios, artisanal manufacturing facilities, locations for photography and film shoots, theaters showcasing original productions, LEED platinum loft homes and Atwater Crossing Kitchen, serving wood-fired, Mediterranean-inspired fare. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (atxkitchen.com).  Public programs, events, and workshops feed the evolving culture and community of ATX.  Learn more at http://www.atwatercrossing.com.



Links –
- Website – www.TheIndustryLA.org
- Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Industry/124606140952622
- Twitter – TheIndustry_LA
- YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/TheindustryArts
- Tickets - http://theindustryla.org/tickets/  (sales start 4/1/12)

For more information, images, or to request interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

The Los Angeles artists creating new installation works for Crescent City are:
1) Olga Koumoundouros (photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer)
2) Katie Grinnan (photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer)
3) Jeff Kopp (photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen; courtesy of Redling Fine Art)
4) Alice Konitz (photo credit: Gene Ogami)
5) Mason Cooley (photo credit: Josh White)
6) Brianna Gorton (photo credit: Brendan Threadgill)
Please note: Works shown are representative of these artists’ sensibility, though not the actual Crescent City installations.

Vox Femina Los Angeles

Vox Femina Los Angeles Presents
From Shakespeare to Shamrocks
A Spring Concert Joining the English & Irish in Song
At Zipper Concert Hall in the Colburn School of Music in LA
Saint Patrick’s Day – March 17, 2012

LOS ANGELES, CA - January 20, 2012 - Vox Femina Los Angeles continues its 15th anniversary season with From Shakespeare to Shamrocks, a spring concert celebration that brings the English and Irish together in song on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2012 at the Zipper Concert Hall in the Colburn School of Music.  In this bi-cultural evening, Vox Femina will unite classic Shakespeare sonnets with authentic Irish music sung in Gaelic.  From classical works to folk songs, traditions new and old from England, Scotland and Ireland will be celebrated at the event.  The performance starts at 8:00pm. Tickets are $25-30 during presale, $35 at the door.  Group rates are also available.  Zipper Concert Hall at The Colburn School is located at 200 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Public parking is available at lots adjacent to the school and limited street parking is also available within the area.  For tickets and additional information, please see www.voxfeminala.org.

From Shakespeare to Shamrocks –
The tradition of setting Shakespeare’s texts to music has long featured both male and female voices. Vox will be turning this convention upside down with compositions arranged purely for the female voice.  The latter part of the concert comprises Irish and Scottish music including Scottish “waulking” folk songs, traditionally sung by women as they gather to clean clothes.

Singer-Composer Moira Smiley has been engaged by Vox to perform at the event, which will include Smiley singing the solo on the traditional Irish piece “Si do Mhaimeo,” as well as performing a solo set of traditional folk songs.  The last selection of the evening, “The Irish Blessing,” was arranged for Vox, for female voices only, in 2007 by Graeme Langager as a tribute to Lynn Bielefelt, a dear friend and long-time supporter of Vox, who succumbed to breast cancer in 2001.  The original composition of “The Irish Blessing” was dear to her heart.

“Music from the British Isles is diverse and rich in story – particularly from a woman’s perspective,” says Dr. Iris S. Levine, Vox Femina’s Artistic Director, “We’re excited to bring the vibrant music of this region to Los Angeles for a special Saint Patrick’s Day celebration.”

Additional Vox Femina 2012 Events –

• February 2012 – Vox has been honored with an invitation to perform Mahler No. 8 Symphony of a Thousand with 14 other choirs and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Saturday, February 4, 2012 at Shrine Auditorium.  This spectacular performance will include over 1,000 instrumentalists and singers.

• March 2012 – Vox has been chosen via blind audition to perform at the American Choral Directors Association Western Division Conference in Reno, NV on Thursday, March 1, 2012.

• May 2012 – Colors of Love: A Celebration of 15 Years with Vox Femina Los Angeles, a fundraising event on Saturday, May 12, 2012 at the Ebell Club in Highland Park, will feature live music, dancing, food, drink, and memories from 15 wonderful years of giving women voice.

• June 2012 – Celebrating the Muse will look back at the music, people, and events that have inspired Vox Femina over the past 15 years.  This special concert will be held on Saturday, June 16, 2012 at Zipper Concert Hall in the Colburn School of Music.

Vox Femina Background –
Vox Femina Los Angeles is a women’s choral ensemble dedicated to the performance of quality choral literature from a world perspective with an emphasis on music by women composers. The chorus was founded in 1997 by Artistic Director Dr. Iris S. Levine.  The 21 founding members of Vox Femina first appeared on stage as guest artists with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles in April 1997.  Since that time, Vox has quickly established itself as one of the premier women’s choruses in the United States with a demonstrated ability to perform highly eclectic repertoire, some of which can be heard on several recordings. It actively fulfills its mission through an aggressive schedule of performances, touring and educational outreach.  Vox has demonstrated its support and encouragement of living composers through commissioning new works.  Auditions are held every August.

Dr. Iris S. Levine, Artistic Director –
Nationally recognized for her excellence in choral conducting, Dr. Iris S. Levine is the founder and artistic director of Vox Femina Los Angeles, the city’s premier women’s chorus. Through her extensive experience with women’s choral literature and innovative concert programming, Dr. Levine has charted Vox Femina’s 15-year journey, building its prominence in the choral community by way of numerous appearances at ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) conventions, and over 100 appearances throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Dr. Levine earned her Doctorate in Choral Music from the University of Southern California under the tutelage of Rod Eichenberger and James Vail, and she holds a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting from Temple University in Philadelphia, where she studied with Alan Harler.  Dr. Levine is Department Chair and Professor of Music at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.  She is also the Artistic Director for the Master Chorus at Stephen S. Wise Temple, where her choral arrangements are often performed.  Dr. Levine is also National Chair of the ACDA Repertoire and Standards Committee for Women’s Choirs and is highly sought as guest clinician and adjudicator for choral festivals throughout the country.

Moira Smiley, Special Guest–
LA-based Singer-Composer Moira Smiley leads moira smiley & VOCO, travels the world as a vocalist and creates music for dance, theater and film.  Her voice, improvisations and compositions can be heard on feature films, documentaries, BBC, PBS, and on over 40 recordings including her recent albums blink (with VOCO) and rua (solo): fiercely spare and elegantly lush collections of warped traditionals and new songcraft.  She has sung with leading ensembles and artists around the world including Paul Hillier’s Theater of Voices, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, KITKA Vocal Ensemble, New World Symphony, and Shakespeare Santa Cruz.  Featured in Lincoln Center, UCLALive, Royal Festival Hall, folk and classical music festivals across the U.S. and Canada, Smiley’s work has received praise in Billboard and Gramophone.  For more information please visit www.moirasmiley.com and www.myspace.com/vocoinfo.

The Colburn School/Zipper Hall –
The Colburn School’s mission is to provide the highest quality performing arts education in an optimal learning environment.  Founded in 1950, The Colburn School was established as a small preparatory school in connection with the University of Southern California’s School of Music.  The School became an independent, nonprofit institution in 1980 through the generous support of its benefactor, Richard D. Colburn.  In 1998, The Colburn School moved to its current location on South Grand Avenue.  One of LA’s most popular performance halls, the intimate 435-seat Zipper Hall at The Colburn School is home to many arts groups from the greater Los Angeles area, including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Pacifica, Southwest Chamber Music, Monday Evening Concerts, Lark Musical Society, and Piano Spheres.  For more information, please call 213-621-4514 or visit http://www.colburnschool.edu.

Vox Femina –
Vox Femina Los Angeles gives women voice through the performance of quality choral literature.  Diverse in culture, age, race, belief, and sexual identity, Vox is a chorus committed to commissioning new works and raising awareness about issues that affect the family of women.  Through music, the chorus aims to create a world that affirms the worth and dignity of every person.
Key Links –
- Official Site – http://www.voxfeminala.org
- Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/VoxFemina

# # #

For more information, images, and interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Vox Femina Los Angeles 2012 (photo credit: Paul Kawabori)

Photo credit Jeff Woodward.

501 (see three) ARTS and Highways Performance Space present Who’s Hungry -Santa Monica, part of an ongoing series of experimental tabletop puppet plays that give a voice and face to hunger, with four performances on Fridays and Saturdays from January 27 to February 4, 2012.  The plays, produced and written by Dan Froot, designed and directed by Dan Hurlin, with music by Amy Denio (a Meet The Composer commission), aim to raise awareness of the lives of those of us who, on a daily basis, must choose between life’s basic necessities – food or rent, food or medicine, food or bus fare. The upcoming production weaves together the stories of five homeless and/or hungry residents of Santa Monica, California, incorporating puppetry, dance, music, and text.

501 (see three) ARTS & Highways Performance Space Present

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica

Experimental Puppet Theater

Putting a Face on Food Insecurity

With Four Performances on Fridays & Saturdays
January 27 to February 4, 2012

JUST ADDED: A 5th Show on Sat. 1/4 at 5:00pm [details here]

LOS ANGELES, CA – October 24, 2011 – 501 (see three) ARTS and Highways Performance Space present Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica, part of an ongoing series of experimental tabletop puppet plays that give a voice and face to hunger, with four performances on Fridays and Saturdays from January 27 to February 4, 2012.  The plays, produced and written by Dan Froot, designed and directed by Dan Hurlin, with music by Amy Denio (a Meet The Composer commission), aim to raise awareness of the lives of those of us who, on a daily basis, must choose between life’s basic necessities – food or rent, food or medicine, food or bus fare. The upcoming production weaves together the stories of five homeless and/or hungry residents of Santa Monica, California, incorporating puppetry, dance, music, and text.  Nightly shows start at 8:30pm. General admission tickets are $20, students and seniors are $15. Highways Performance Space at the 18th Street Arts Center is located at 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404 (310-315-1459; http://highwaysperformance.org).  For more information on Who’s Hungry, please visit http://danfroot.com/repertory/.

“This project is about people’s lives – people who, at times, happen to go without food,” says Froot, “They have some truly beautiful, moving and hilarious stories that might otherwise go untold.”

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica Synopsis -
In Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica, the performers serve the audience a visual and narrative feast.  The 90-minute puppet theater adaptation tells the oral histories of five very different homeless and hungry Santa Monicans, through five 15- to 20-minute segments, woven together much as a chef weaves a succession of flavors into a cohesive multi-course meal.  Overall, the project incorporates a range of puppetry styles in order to give each of the five stories its own aesthetic treatment. Presented on a specially built 24-foot dinner table, the audience views the action from one side, as if they are banquet guests.  Incorporated into the evening are Delft china, Matchbox cars, televisions, rod puppets, as well as puppets inspired by Japanese Bunraku, and much more.

Joining the audience at the table are:
- Angel – who tumbled into homelessness after a prominent career as an interior designer
- Sharon – a caseworker for an addiction recovery agency and recovering heroin addict herself
- Chris – an original member of the notorious 1970s surfing/skateboarding crew known as the Z-Boys
- Mike – who endured an eviction from subsidized housing while undergoing a dire health crisis
- Chanel – who headed to New York City when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, feeling the need to run down the street in fear with her fellow New Yorkers

The production will feature four puppeteers and three musicians.  The highly collaborative cast, performers with rich puppetry, dance, and acting backgrounds, includes Zachary Tolchinsky, Rachael Lincoln, Sheetal Gandhi, and Darius Mannino. Original scores have been commissioned from the award winning Seattle-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio (a Meet The Composer commission), to be performed live.  Denio’s work merges jazz, experimental folk, ska, and funk with a range of instruments including, but not limited to, many that are in scale with the puppetry such as toy pianos, ukuleles, and bongos.  Denio will lead a small ensemble, choreographed and staged in the space to interact with the puppeteers and the puppets/objects themselves. Collaborating with Denio in the ensemble are musicians Mike Flanagan and Daniel Corral.

"Sharon" puppet designed by Dan Hurlin. She's a Bunraku-style puppet, operated by three people simultaneously: one on feet and/or arm, one on one or both arms, one on head/torso. Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

The inaugural set of Who’s Hungry puppet plays premiered in West Hollywood in 2008 with narrators from that area.  This new Santa Monica installment in the series takes the experimental strategy of the project to a new level, primarily by inviting the local community narrators into the heart of the creative team. These narrators have collaborated with Hurlin and Froot throughout the process – from story adaptation through construction, rehearsal and performance.

“The project allows each of these individuals to clearly imprint their agency onto the play, deepening it,” says Hurlin, “While they may not have complete control over their lives, we wanted them to have control of their own stories.”

Robert Coughlin, one of the community narrators from the West Hollywood pilot project, reflected on sharing his story with the Who’s Hungry audience: “I’m just so grateful that I’ve had this opportunity to have some clarity and to pull back from my own life.  I get to detach from all that and use it as a tool, and not let it consume me any longer.  I get to build from it; not let it bring me down.  It’s beautiful.”

Object Theater –
Object Theater, a sub-category of puppetry, is a performance style that utilizes the animation of objects – found and/or constructed – for theatrical effect.  A theater of objects goes beyond merely “containing objects” – practitioners of the genre employ the rich functional and symbolic values inherent in objects as potent tools for the theater.  Froot felt that combing puppets with the materiality of Object Theater – bridging theater, visual art and puppetry – was the perfect way to tell these stories for, among other things, the intimate environment and endless creative potential to create a vast range of sensibilities from intense depth to whimsy, from realism to poetry.

“This form of puppet theater creates a very close, communal experience since the audience must sit together, near the action, in order to see these small objects,” says Froot, “It also puts the audience in an empathic role, more so than live theater with human actors – when we watch object theater, we must engage and project ourselves onto the puppets and objects with an active imagination.”

Food Insecurity –

The USDA classifies those who at times go hungry because they cannot afford enough food as having “very low food security.” According to the USDA, around one in six Americans had a hard time putting food on the table at some point last year. That’s roughly 49 million people (14.5% of the population). This figure is virtually unchanged from the previous year.

“To clarify, though, we’re not making a statement about world hunger, or even about hunger in the U.S. per se,” says Froot, “The project is more about who is going through your recycling bins… we want to help them tell their stories.”

left-to-right: Dan Froot (producer/playwright), Amy Denio (composer) and Dan Hurlin (designer/director) Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

Dan Froot, Producer / Playwright –

Dan Froot’s work has toured internationally since 1983. Awards include a Bessie (New York Dance & Performance Award) and a City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship. He has worked with Yoshiko Chuma, Ping Chong, David Dorfman, Mabou Mines, Ralph Lemon, and Victoria Marks, among others. He teaches at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance.

Dan Hurlin, Designer / Director –

Dan Hurlin received a United States Artists Fellowship, two Obie awards, a 2001 Bessie, and a 2004 Alpert Award. His puppet theater work tours internationally. He has performed with Ping Chong, Janie Geiser, and Jeffrey M. Jones, and directed works by Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, and John C. Russell among others. Hurlin currently teaches dance and puppetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

Amy Denio, Composer –

Amy Denio is a multi-instrumentalist composer and singer based in Seattle, WA. Her music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Seattle Opera House, Detroit Institute of Art, and the Venice Biennale, among many other venues. She tours as a soloist as well as with her projects Tiptons Sax Quartet and Kultur Shock.

Highway’s Performance Space –

Highways Performance Space is Southern California’s boldest center for new performance. Now in its 23rd year, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages fierce new artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative works.  Recently described by the Los Angeles Times as “a hub of experimental theater, dance, solo drama, and other multimedia performance,” Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms.

501 (see three) ARTS –

Who’s Hungry is a project of 501 (see three) ARTS, an independent artist-run non-profit corporation supporting the creation and production of original dance, music, theater and interdisciplinary performance works by its members. The company is dedicated to redefining the role of the performing arts, artists and audiences in a globalized world through innovative approaches to artistic production.

Supporters –

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica was commissioned in part by Vermont Performance Lab and was developed in part during a creative residency at Vermont Performance Lab. The project is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Program; Los Angeles County Arts Commission; UCLA Center for Community Partnership; Southwest Oral History Association; The MAP Fund; a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation; The Jim Henson Foundation; a Performance Practice and Research grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts; and a grant from Meet The Composer’s New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program, leadership support for which is generously provided by MetLife Foundation.  Additional support is provided by ASCAP, BMI Foundation, Inc., Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Jerome Foundation, mediaThefoundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation and the Virgil Thomson Foundation, Ltd.  The score is commissioned through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, which is made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund.

“This is not didactic victim art, some sort of pity party,” says Froot, summing up the production, “It’s not about feeling sorry for anybody – each of these people is sharing their unique oral history with us, their lives – with dignity and a fair amount of humor.”

#         #         #

For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Rachael Lincoln in rehearsal for "Who's Hungry - Santa Monica," with Delft Buddha by Dan Hurlin Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

Save the Date: 

What:
The Industry presents World Premiere of
Crescent City, a hyperopera

Crescent City is a hyperopera by composer Anne LeBaron, widely recognized for her work in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms, and librettist Douglas Kearney, a poet, performer and recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award. The opera, which incorporates installations by six contemporary LA-based artists, tells the epic story of a mythical city, decimated by one hurricane and on the verge of being wiped off the face of the earth by another, and the voodoo priestess determined to save it. A roving band of revelers spreads chaos throughout the streets of the city, capturing the action of the opera with live video along the way. www.TheIndustryLA.org

When:
Thu. May 10 – Sun. May 27, 2012
Thu. – Sun. for 3 Weeks

- Special Sneak-Peek Reading at the Annenberg Community Beach House - http://www.annenbergbeachhouse.com
- Mon. Feb. 6, 2012

- Performance – Gala Opening Night – Thu. May 10, 2012
- Art Gallery – Opening – Fri. May 11, 2012
- Performance – Closing Night – Sun. May 27, 2012

Where:
Atwater Crossing
3245 Casitas Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90039
www.atwatercrossing.com

Who:
About The Industry –
Founded by Artistic Director Yuval Sharon and Producing Director Laura Kay Swanson, The Industry produces new interdisciplinary work that merges music, visual arts, and performance to expand the traditional definition of opera. The Industry has received support for Crescent City from The Doris Duke Foundation and the generosity of individual supporters.

Crescent City Credits –
Director – Yuval Sharon – www.yuvalsharon.com
Producer – Laura Kay Swanson
Associate Producer – Rachel Scandling
Music – Anne LeBaron – www.annelebaron.com
Libretto – Douglas Kearney – www.douglaskearney.com
Curator – Brianna Gorton – http://briannagorton.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html

Visual Installation Artists –
Mason Cooley – http://masoncooley.blogspot.com
Brianna Gorton – http://briannagorton.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html
Katie Grinnan – http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/honigman/honigman8-4-04.asp
Alice Konitz – alicekonitz.com
Olga Koumoundouros – www.vielmetter.com/artists/olga-koumoundouros.html

Set Designer – Sibyl Wickersheimer – www.sawgirl.com
Lighting Designer – Elizabeth Harper – www.eharperdesign.com
Sound Designer – Martin Gimenez
Video Designer – Jason Thompson

Timur & the Dime Museum (photo credit: Sandra Powers)

Cast –
The cast of 18 includes:
Marie Laveau – Gwendolyn Brown – http://www.gwendolynbrown.com
The Good Man – Cedric Berry –  http://www.cedricberry.com/Cedric_Berry/Home.html
Deadly Belle – Timur Bekbosunov – www.theoperaoftimur.com
Homesick Woman – Lillian Sengpiehl – http://tinyurl.com/Robert-Gilder-L-Sengpiehl
Jesse – Anthony Faatolia – http://www.ashleyfaatoalia.com
The Nurses – Maria Elena Altany and Ji Young Yang

More About Crescent City:
Previously featured in workshop performances at New York City Opera’s VOX Festival of new American opera, this massive site-specific production, which audiences will experience in 360 degrees, will be realized in an industrial warehouse space with abstract sets by an extraordinary group of visual installation artists.  At the world premiere, each audience member will be seated in a section of the city – the Cemetery, Swamp, Hospital, Dive Bar, Good Man’s Shack or Junk Heap. They will be able to see and hear the action in every other part of the city through live video streams and sophisticated sound technology.

The production features a live orchestra comprised of The Dime Museum and includes such diverse instrumentation as laptop, chromelodeon, and didjeridu. LeBaron’s hybrid sound world encompasses electronica, bluegrass, jazz, and improvisation.

The installation will function as an art exhibition by day, which transforms into the performance space at night, providing viewers multiple opportunities to engage with the world of Crescent City. “I’m excited by the different ways audiences will be able to experience the work,” says director Yuval Sharon. “Letting imaginations run wild when the space is open during the day should increase people’s curiosity about how the opera plays out by night.”

With every purchase of a ticket to Crescent City, audiences will be provided with downloadable audio program notes and an insider’s guide to the production that is meant to be listened to on the way to the performance space.  These notes are meant to enhance the Crescent City experience and extend the production out into the world.

With a gala opening of the opera on Thursday, May 10, 2012 and gallery exhibition opening on Friday, May 11, 2012, Crescent City will run for three weeks, Thursdays through Sundays, closing on May 27, 2012.

Yuval Sharon –
Yuval Sharon’s directorial work has been described as “magical” (The Village Voice), “ingenious” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “a major event, where surprise sidesteps operatic convention” (Los Angeles Times). He has worked both with international houses like the San Francisco Opera, the Mariinsky Theater, the Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria, and the Komische Oper Berlin, as well as experimental venues like Berkeley Opera, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Deitch Projects. He was assistant director to Achim Freyer on the Los Angeles Ring Cycle. Sharon was Project Director for four years of New York City Opera’s VOX, an annual workshop of new American opera, which became the most important crucible for new opera in the country under his direction.  Sharon will also be directing Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan LaBarbara in the John Cage Songbooks this March as part of San Francisco Symphony’s Mavericks Festival at Carnegie Hall.  More information is at http://www.yuvalsharon.com.

Ages –
For 12 and older

Tix –
TBD

Website – www.TheIndustryLA.org
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Industry/124606140952622
Twitter - TheIndustry_LA
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/TheindustryArts

Press Contact:
Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada – 213-840-1201 – lynn@greengalactic.com

The Los Angeles artists creating new installation works for Crescent City are:
1) Olga Koumoundouros (photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer)
2) Katie Grinnan (photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer)
3) Liz Glynn (photo credit: Maryanne Williams)
4) Alice Konitz (photo credit: Gene Ogami)
5) Mason Cooley (photo credit: Josh White)
6) Brianna Gorton (photo credit: Brendan Threadgill)
Please note: Works shown are representative of these artists’ sensibility, though not the actual Crescent City installations. 

Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

501 (see three) ARTS and Highways Performance Space present Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica, part of an ongoing series of experimental tabletop puppet plays that give a voice and face to hunger, with four performances on Fridays and Saturdays from January 27 to February 4, 2012.  The plays, produced and written by Dan Froot, designed and directed by Dan Hurlin, with music by Amy Denio (a Meet The Composer commission), aim to raise awareness of the lives of those of us who, on a daily basis, must choose between life’s basic necessities – food or rent, food or medicine, food or bus fare. The upcoming production weaves together the stories of five homeless and/or hungry residents of Santa Monica, California, incorporating puppetry, dance, music, and text.

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica
Backgrounder

Telling stories from the lives of five food-insecure residents of Santa Monica, CA
in the medium of experimental puppetry

501 (see three) ARTS and Highways Performance Space present Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica, part of an ongoing series of experimental tabletop puppet plays that give a voice and face to hunger, with four performances on Fridays and Saturdays from January 27 to February 4, 2012.  The plays, produced and written by Dan Froot, designed and directed by Dan Hurlin, with music by Amy Denio (a Meet The Composer commission), aim to raise awareness of the lives of those of us who, on a daily basis, must choose between life’s basic necessities – food or rent, food or medicine, food or bus fare. The upcoming production weaves together the stories of five homeless and/or hungry residents of Santa Monica, California, incorporating puppetry, dance, music, and text.  Nightly shows start at 8:30pm. General admission tickets are $20, students and seniors are $15. Highways Performance Space at the 18th Street Arts Center is located at 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404 (310-315-1459; http://highwaysperformance.org).

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica Synopsis -
In Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica, the performers serve the audience a visual and narrative feast.  The 90-minute puppet theater adaptation tells the oral histories of five very different homeless and/or food-insecure Santa Monicans, through five 15- to 20-minute segments, woven together much as a chef weaves a succession of flavors into a cohesive multi-course meal.  

Who’s Hungry is the brainchild of award-winning playwright, composer, choreographer and performer Dan Froot, an associate professor in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance. Working in close collaboration with Froot is Dan Hurlin, a nationally acclaimed puppet artist who is designing and constructing the objects and sets, as well as directing.

Overall, the project incorporates a range of puppetry styles in order to give each of the five stories its own aesthetic treatment. Presented on a specially built 24-foot dinner table, the audience views the action from one side, as if they are banquet guests.  Incorporated into the evening are Delft china, Matchbox cars, televisions, rod puppets, as well as puppets inspired by Japanese Bunraku, and much more.

Joining the audience at the table are:
• Angel – who tumbled into homelessness after a prominent career as an interior designer.
Her story literally sets the scene for the evening, as puppeteers enact an intricate, energetic dance, laying out eight settings of tableware painted blue and white in the delicate style of Delft china.  This is followed by the choreographed manipulation of dozens of other Delft objects: a sandwich opens to become a laptop computer, a tree emerges from a trap door in the table, a Range Rover drives from plate to plate, pursued by a tow truck.  Meanwhile, a barrage of recorded voices gossip about Angel’s gradual rise to prominence as an interior designer and her precipitous tumble into homelessness.  Her story is characterized by direct object manipulation and a kinetic whorl of movement set to Amy Denio’s percussive score.  Angel’s story finds the physically agile puppeteers zipping around, under, on top of the 24-foot table, and through its trap doors.

• Sharon – a caseworker for an addiction recovery agency and recovering heroin addict herself. 
Her story zeros in on her 20-yard walk across the parking lot from a courthouse to a van that will take her to an 18-month lock-down rehab program (“the longest walk I ever took”).  It is performed by three fully visible puppeteers operating a 36-inch high Bunraku-style figure.  The character’s inner monologue is spoken live – the production’s own version of a Tayu, the traditional narrator in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater.  It details a suspended moment of dizzying terror and rage as the character faces the painful abyss of life without mind-numbing drugs.  There are no other puppets or set pieces in this Beckett-inspired void, allowing the audience’s focus to rest on the puppeteers’ subtle manipulation of the figure.

• Chris – an original member of the notorious 1970s surfing/skateboarding crew known as the Z-Boys
.
Shunning the fame and fortune sought by his compatriots, Chris lived a spartan life, surfing the world in search of the perfect wave.  His near-death confrontation with relentless 20-foot Hawaiian waves while night-surfing is portrayed by two-dimensional rod-puppet surfer against an undulating toy theater-style wave machine.  The simple narrative is played out visually.  Far out on an ocean reef, the character loses his board in the pounding surf and exhausts himself to the point of hallucination as he swims in circles for hours trying to find it.  Instead of sea creatures, the water is alive with liquor bottles, electric guitars, skateboards, and other icons that have defined him.  The text is a defiant paean to independence and self-reliance, embedded in a suite of Denio’s original punk songs.

• Mike – who endured an eviction from subsidized housing while undergoing a dire health crisis
.
Mike’s lighthearted optimism is challenged by a corrupt housing system.  His story tells of a social services caseworker who engineers Mike’s eviction from government subsidized housing as Mike endures a dire health crisis.  The creators employ an ironic telling of Mike’s story – a 1950s-style sitcom depicted by shadow puppetry.  Think: a cross between The Dick Van Dyke Show and Eraserhead.  Two full-scale rabbit-eared TV consoles (pink!) are lowered onto the table.  Their screens are made of rear-projection material, and use overhead projectors as light sources.  Black-and-white room interiors are projected as “sets” behind Hurlin’s laser-cut shadow puppets.  Two puppeteers operate the puppets underneath each TV set.  The punchy, fast-paced script is voiced by the puppeteers on a recording, complete with canned laughter.  The live musicians play the show’s theme song and transition music between scenes.

• Chanel – who headed to New York City when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, feeling the need to run down the street in fear with her fellow New Yorkers.

Chanel, born and bred in Brooklyn, is living in Atlanta GA when she hears news reports of the World Trade Center towers collapsing.  She feels it is her place to be “running down the street in fear” with her fellow New Yorkers.  Chanel hops into her car and barrels north on the interstate, thus beginning her desperate odyssey.  The table is transformed into a variety of landscapes in several different scales, navigated by a white car (in matching scale).  With her radio broken and only one CD to listen to on the 12-hour ride, Chanel has a conversation in her mind with her brother, who lives in Brooklyn. She hasn’t heard from her brother since the day started, and her concern prompts her to retell a traumatic childhood story about she and her brother being chased through the woods after a fist fight with a group of racist kids.  Invisible inlaid magnets propel the car through spooky pine barrens while a voice narrates a scene of racist violence in the woods behind a reform school. In another scene, a long conveyer belt moves the road faster and faster beneath the car, as the character’s psyche, and the vehicle itself, begin to fall to pieces.

The production will feature four puppeteers and three musicians.  The highly collaborative cast, performers with rich puppetry, dance, and acting backgrounds, includes Zachary Tolchinsky, Rachael Lincoln, Sheetal Gandhi, and Darius Mannino. Original scores have been commissioned from the award-winning Seattle-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio, to be performed live.  Denio’s work merges jazz, experimental folk, ska, and funk with a range of instruments including, but not limited to, many that are in scale with the puppetry such as toy pianos, ukuleles, and bongos.  Denio will lead a small ensemble, choreographed and staged in the space to interact with the puppeteers and the puppets/objects themselves. Collaborating with Denio in the ensemble are musicians Mike Flanagan and Daniel Corral.


Who’s Hungry – West Hollywood (2008) –
The inaugural set of Who’s Hungry puppet plays, created by Froot and Hurlin, premiered in West Hollywood in 2008 with three hungry and homeless narrators from that area.   The first installment of Who’s Hungry consisted of three short “toy theater” plays that premiered at The Great Hall in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, and has since been presented at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT) and Great Small Works’ 9th International Toy Theater Festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse (Brooklyn, NY). Toy theater is a miniaturized form of puppet theater performed on tabletop-sized stages.  Excerpts from the 2008 Who’s Hungry – West Hollywood triptych, which includes “What the Fireman Said,” “Dawn by Me,” and “Eight Days Without a Dog,” can be viewed in streaming video at http://vimeo.com/album/167845.

The new Santa Monica installment in the series takes the experimental strategy of the project to a new level, primarily by inviting the local community narrators into the heart of the creative team. These narrators have collaborated with Hurlin and Froot throughout the process – from story adaptation through construction, rehearsal and performance.

Who’s Hungry Artist’s Statement –
I believe that bringing diverse groups of people together to listen to each other’s stories is an end in itself.  Life stories have the power to dispel fear, challenge one’s values, and inspire compassion.  There is urgency in the impulse to tell these particular stories, considering that one out of every 30 Santa Monicans is homeless on any given day, and that many more are food-insecure.  “Food insecurity” is defined in a report by the National Research Council as existing “whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways is limited or uncertain.” Even at its most local, food insecurity is the nexus of so many systematic social predicaments: healthcare, education, unemployment, trade policies, the housing market and so much more.  I want to stop seeing hunger as an issue, and begin understanding, from the perspective of the street, forces that come between the world’s abundance and so many of the people around me.

I also believe that the way a story is told is as important as the story itself.  My collaborators and I want our work to be judged as much for its artistic achievement as for its social impact.  Our intent is to bear witness to our neighbors’ otherwise untold stories, rather than to compose broad statements about “hunger in America.”

Everything about this project is small: these are local narratives, embodied in small-scale handcrafted worlds.  Skilled puppeteers animate handheld objects; a band of three musicians sets the tone for each play.  Our audiences too will be small: each performance will accommodate a maximum of 90 people. This intimate gathering of economically diverse audiences from neighborhoods surrounding the show’s venues is one of the project’s main purposes.  Foregoing the anonymity of larger groups, our audiences will huddle together for optimal viewing of the miniature objects.  Immediately afterward they will be invited to participate in facilitated discussions between the artists and community narrators, as well as representatives from local social service agencies, and fellow audience members.

– Dan Froot, Who’s Hungry Producer/Playwright

Key Terms:

Object Theater –

Object Theater, a sub-category of puppetry, is a performance style that utilizes the animation of objects – found and/or constructed – for theatrical effect.  A theater of objects goes beyond merely “containing objects” – practitioners of the genre employ the rich functional and symbolic values inherent in objects as potent tools for the theater.  Froot felt that combing puppets with the materiality of Object Theater – bridging theater, visual art and puppetry – was the perfect way to tell these stories for, among other things, the intimate environment and endless creative potential to create a vast range of sensibilities from intense depth to whimsy, from realism to poetry.


Food Insecurity –

The USDA classifies those who at times go hungry because they cannot afford enough food as having “very low food security.” According to the USDA, around one in six Americans had a hard time putting food on the table at some point last year. That’s roughly 49 million people (14.5% of the population). This figure is virtually unchanged from the previous year.

“To clarify, though, we’re not making a statement about world hunger, or even about hunger in the U.S. per se,” says Froot, “The project is more about who is going through your recycling bins… we want to help them tell their stories.”

left-to-right: Dan Froot (producer/playwright), Amy Denio (composer) and Dan Hurlin (designer/director) Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

Creative Team:


Dan Froot, Producer / Playwright –

Dan Froot’s work has toured internationally since 1983. Awards include a Bessie (New York Dance & Performance Award) and a City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship. He has worked with Yoshiko Chuma, Ping Chong, David Dorfman, Mabou Mines, Ralph Lemon, and Victoria Marks, among others. He teaches at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance.

Dan Hurlin, Designer / Director –

Dan Hurlin received a United States Artists Fellowship, two Obie awards, a 2001 Bessie, and a 2004 Alpert Award. His puppet theater work tours internationally. He has performed with Ping Chong, Janie Geiser, and Jeffrey M. Jones, and directed works by Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, and John C. Russell among others. Hurlin currently teaches dance and puppetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

Amy Denio, Composer –
Amy Denio is a multi-instrumentalist composer and singer based in Seattle, WA. Her music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Seattle Opera House, Detroit Institute of Art, and the Venice Biennale, among many other venues. She tours as a soloist as well as with her projects, the Tiptons Sax Quartet and Kultur Shock.

Cast:


Rachael Lincoln –
Dancer and choreographer Rachael Lincoln has performed with Jo Kreiter Flyaway Productions, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Kim Epifano, Scoot Wells and Dancers, The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Jess Curtis, wee dance, The Joe Goode Performance Group, and Project Bandaloop.  Her work has been presented at Sophiensaele Theater (Berlin), Theater Artaud (San Francisco), Middlebury College, UCLA, The San Francisco International Dance Festival, The Dublin Fringe Festival, The Bytom Dance Festival (Poland), and The Indonesian Dance Festival (Jakarta). She also teaches classes and workshops in modern technique and improvisation.

Sheetal Gandhi –
Sheetal Gandhi is perhaps best known for her work in Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion (Oceane/principal dancer, original creator of the role). She also appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams on Broadway, as well as in regional theater, commercials, and numerous dance productions. The dancer and choreographer not only incorporates elements of traditional Indian dance into pieces she creates for California Contemporary Dancers, but also weaves in global culture.  She also teaches modern and West African dance technique.

Darius Mannino –
Darius Mannino is an actor, puppeteer, and director dedicated to the creation of new, original, ensemble-driven theatrical works. Performance credits include trembler.SHIFTER (REDCAT); Disfarmer (St. Ann’s Warehouse, NY; MASS MoCA and Institute for Contemporary Art, MA); Oh My Tiger and Ocean Flight (Highways Performance Space); Circle Course (REDCAT and Kathmandu International Theatre Festival, Nepal); Mycenaean (BAM Next Wave Festival, NY); Invisible Glass (REDCAT); Moby Dick and Short Stories (Perseverance Theatre, AK).  Recent directing credits include distancedisplacement (Ishyo Arts Center, Rwanda).  Mannino received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Zachary Tolchinsky –
Zachariah Tolchinsky is a recent graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. His credits include: Crime and Punishment (Vgik International Theatre Festival) and Richard III (Essen, Germany). As a puppeteer, he has worked in Scotland and in the US. Credits include: Cut the Strings (Barclays Bank) and The Last Rights of Baron Von Zirner (Princeton University).  Tolchinsky is originally from Phoenix, AZ.

Ensemble:

Daniel Corral –
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Corral has accompanied avant-garde puppetry across the USA, had his music performed by an orchestra riding the Santa Monica Pier Ferris Wheel, been featured at a USC faculty concert of original player piano music, displayed his multi-movement music boxes at galleries in Los Angeles, and composed for films and dance performances.  He also composes, arranges and plays for Timur and the Dime Museum and collaborated with designer Caitlin Lainoff on a puppet opera for The Dime Museum. He recently founded Free Reed Conspiracy.

Mike Flanagan –
Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and SoCal native Mike Flanagan has played venues including the Walt Disney Concert Hall (for Glenn Branca’s Hallucination City), the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry (with traditional Irish pub band Paddy’s Pig), Royce Hall (bard for The Yes Men), and the House of Blues (fronting rock band Willoughby).  Flanagan composed and was the musical director for the ‘80s musical The Next Big Thing and has written music for film and television. He toured the world with Giant Ant Farm, teaches guitar and mandolin, and missed his annual haircut last year. He also plays in Nellie Bly and the children’s folk band the Hollow Trees.

501 (see three) ARTS –

Who’s Hungry is a project of 501 (see three) ARTS, an independent artist-run non-profit corporation supporting the creation and production of original dance, music, theater and interdisciplinary performance works by its members. The company is dedicated to redefining the role of the performing arts, artists and audiences in a globalized world through innovative approaches to artistic production.  501 (see three) ARTS’ community partners are Hunger Action Los Angeles, OPCC and SaMoShel.

Highway’s Performance Space –

Highways Performance Space is Southern California’s boldest center for new performance. Now in its 23rd year, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages fierce new artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative works.  Recently described by the Los Angeles Times as “a hub of experimental theater, dance, solo drama, and other multimedia performance,” Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms.

Vermont Performance Lab –
In July 2011, Vermont Performance Lab hosted Froot, Hurlin, and Denio for a two-week residency to develop Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica to rehearse the plays, construct the puppet theaters, record the musical score, and share the work in process with local audiences.  The artists worked at the recording studios of Guilford Sound and the hall of the Broad Brook Grange where they rehearsed and held workshop performances of Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica on a 24-foot long dining table for audiences of 30-35 people.

Supporters –

Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica was commissioned in part by Vermont Performance Lab and was developed in part during a creative residency at Vermont Performance Lab. The project is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Program; Los Angeles County Arts Commission; UCLA Center for Community Partnership; Southwest Oral History Association; The MAP Fund; a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation; The Jim Henson Foundation; a Performance Practice and Research grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts; and a grant from Meet The Composer’s New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program, leadership support for which is generously provided by MetLife Foundation.  Additional support is provided by ASCAP, BMI Foundation, Inc., Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Jerome Foundation, mediaThefoundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation and the Virgil Thomson Foundation, Ltd.  The score is commissioned through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, which is made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund.


Quotes:

“This project is about people’s lives – people who, at times, happen to go without food.  They have some truly beautiful, moving and hilarious stories that might otherwise go untold.” – Dan Froot, Who’s Hungry Producer / Playwright

“This is not didactic victim art, some sort of pity party — It’s not about feeling sorry for anybody – each of these people is sharing their unique oral history with us, their lives – with dignity and a fair amount of humor.” – Dan Froot, Who’s Hungry Producer / Playwright

“This form of puppet theater creates a very close, communal experience since the audience must sit together, near the action, in order to see these small objects. It also puts the audience in an empathic role, more so than live theater with human actors – when we watch object theater, we must engage and project ourselves onto the puppets and objects with an active imagination.” – Dan Froot, Who’s Hungry Producer / Playwright

“The project allows each of these individuals to clearly imprint their agency onto the play, deepening it. While they may not have complete control over their lives, we wanted them to have control of their own stories.” – Dan Hurlin, Who’s Hungry Designer / Director

“I’m just so grateful that I’ve had this opportunity to have some clarity and to pull back from my own life.  I get to detach from all that and use it as a tool, and not let it consume me any longer.  I get to build from it; not let it bring me down.  It’s beautiful.”  – Robert Coughlin, one of Who’s Hungry’s Community Narrators (West Hollywood)

“When artist Dan Froot first approached us about giving voice to the often voiceless who deal with hunger and poverty – using the arts of theatre, music, puppetry and oral history – we were intrigued. And when, on opening night, the lights went down and the performance began, we were transformed.” – Andrew Campbell, City of West Hollywood Cultural Affairs Administrator

“Who’s Hungry is a visionary project that breaks new ground in thinking about the relationship between art and politics. Complementing and complicating the touching portraits of people’s hardships is the witty and deft choreography in which we see the motions of both puppets and puppeteers. Together their movements gesture towards the possibility of a world dedicated to the communal support of all its members, a world in which the question “who’s hungry?” would receive a prompt and compassionate response.” – Susan Leigh Foster, Ph.D., renowned Dance Studies scholar and UCLA professor

“Who’s Hungry opens up the full spectrum of the lives of homeless and hungry people — the humorous side and the triumphs large and small that make life worth living, as well as sadness and desperation. This play goes much further to humanize the situation of poor people than dreary photos that try to get you to donate money. When you see this performance you’ll realize just how much we all have in common and that the fact that you live in a house and someone else can’t afford to, doesn’t have to be a barrier to the communication necessary between both sides to implement solutions to poverty.” – Frank Tamborello, Executive Director, Hunger Action Los Angeles

Links:


•    Who’s Hungry Official Site – http://danfroot.com/repertory/
•    Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica Blog – http://whoshungrysantamonica.blogspot.com/
•    Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica Images – http://tinyurl.com/WHSMpics
•    Who’s Hungry – Santa Monica Promotional Video – http://youtu.be/vlm3kVnOf6U
•    Who’s Hungry Info Sheet – http://tinyurl.com/WHSMInfoSheet
•    Highways Performance Space -  http://highwaysperformance.org
•    Tickets – http://tinyurl.com/highwaysWHSMtickets


Publicity Contact:

For more information, high res images, and interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Rachael Lincoln in rehearsal for "Who's Hungry - Santa Monica," with Delft Buddha by Dan Hurlin Photo credit: Jeff Woodward

After a 5 year hiatus, underground performance party pioneer Dream Circus Theatre (DCT) returns to the limelight with I Am Vegetable at the Premiere Events Center (aka Lot 613) in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, October 8, 2011.  I Am Vegetable is a delectable interactive costume party that merges theater, story telling, music, performance art, and dancing with imaginative sets that integrate the audience with the action.  The event soundscape incorporates dubstep, electro/breaks, house, tech house, and ambient/downtempo with a tasty DJ line-up that features John Kelley, Shayn, Trevor + Travis Wyse, Petey, and more. The creative brains behind I Am Vegetable are musician and event director Teo Castro and costume designer Mikiko Nagao, who have collaborated on creative underground events since the 1990s.  I Am Vegetable runs from 9:00pm to 3:30am. Tickets range from $20 to $40. Premiere Events Center/Lot 613 (http://www.lot613.com) is located at 613 Imperial St., Los Angeles, CA 90021. 

Underground Performance Party Pioneer
Dream Circus Theatre Presents
I Am Vegetable
A Wildly Costumed Interactive Theatrical Dance Event
At Premiere Events Center (Lot 613) in Downtown LA
Saturday, October 8, 2011

LOS ANGELES, CA – September 16, 2011 – After a 5 year hiatus, underground performance party pioneer Dream Circus Theatre (DCT) returns to the limelight with I Am Vegetable at the Premiere Events Center (aka Lot 613) in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, October 8, 2011.  I Am Vegetable is a delectable interactive costume party that merges theater, story telling, music, performance art, and dancing with imaginative sets that integrate the audience with the action.  The event soundscape incorporates dubstep, electro/breaks, house, tech house, and ambient/downtempo with a tasty DJ line-up that features John Kelley, Shayn, Trevor + Travis Wyse, Petey, and more. The creative brains behind I Am Vegetable are musician and event director Teo Castro and costume designer Mikiko Nagao, who have collaborated on creative underground events since the 1990s.  I Am Vegetable runs from 9:00pm to 3:30am. Tickets range from $20 to $40. Premiere Events Center/Lot 613 (http://www.lot613.com) is located at 613 Imperial St., Los Angeles, CA 90021. For more information, please visit http://www.dreamcircus.com or call 310-853-3075.

Attendees are encouraged to wear vegetable-themed costumes and bring their favorite organic vegetables for the communal soup that will be served all night long. The event will be streamed live at http://www.stickam.com. Guests must be 21 years of age or older to attend. A limited number of advance tickets can be purchased for $20-25 at http://fla.vor.us/1100057-I-AM-VEGETABLE-tickets/I-AM-VEGETABLE-Los-Angeles–.html. On the day of event, tickets are $30 with vegetable costume and organic vegetable for the communal soup, $40 “plain jane.” Street parking is free.  $10 secured valet parking will also be available. Please also see DCT’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/dreamcircus.theatre as well as the event page at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=247783768584432

I Am Vegetable welcomes Fud-gee Bear and Electric GrassHopper back from a Deep Hi Bear Nation. Climbing out from the underground city of Zion, rising like a phoenix from the ashes, they will bring magic, mystery and fantasy back into our world once again.  Event attendees will be transported into a world where they can mingle with roaming I Am Vegetable characters in elaborate costumes, get a scrub down in the make-believe “Vegetable Wash,” and wander down the interactive “Vegetable Brick Road” (a floor with interactive screens and projections) on their way to the “Veggie Voyeurism Museum” (a “green light” district of steamy vegetables).

In the “Market Membrane” front room, a farmer’s market-themed area, guests can enjoy dubstep/electro breaks DJ sets, VJs, theatrical performances, and a costume contest. The outside “Mushroom Garden,” is a place for attendees to sit, lounge, drink, and eat.  More DJs, VJs, an ambient room, and photo booth will be set as a soup bowl.  Out back, attendees will find the “Psycho-Ponics Ward,” a black-lit room with house/tech DJ sets, VJs and theatrical performances with a backdrop of vegetables hooked up to tubes. The upstairs area houses the chill zone known as “The Refrigerator” with VJs and ambient music.

Interactive characters will roam throughout the event space.  Examples include the “Mr. Snails” characters (like the Mr. Smiths from the Matrix movies) – Secret Service snails who try to capture veggie attendees – and “The Garlic Informant,” who saves the veggies from the Mr. Snails.

The event is a vehicle to launch nutritional vegetable awareness and support the organic health movement for sustainable living.  Organic local food companies will be participating.

Featured DJs by Event Area:

Market Membrane - a vegetable marketplace full of sinful, carnal delights features dubstep/electro breaks with:
- John Kelley (Ball of Wax / Moontribe) - site
- Shayn Almeida (Intetech / Deep LA) – site
- Bartek (Quade / Ball of Wax) – site
- SuneviL LovechiLd – site
- Petey (Technique) – site

Psycho-Ponics Ward – veggie crazed madness, with padded walls and black lights, is hosted by Fade Dra and features house/tech house with:
- HAWT DJs Mikey + Eddie B. (HAWT Music) - site
- Frank Fader (Dogtown DJs) – site
- Ben Annand (Moontribe / Tropical) – site
- DJ Xian Fayette (I Am)
- DJ M*Linss (Dogtown DJs)

The Mushroom Garden - outside chill area features ambient/downtempo with:
- Imagika – site
- Trevor + Travis Wyse (Green Sector) – site
- Maggie (Moontribe) – site
- Kevin Chills (See Thru Sound) – site

Click here to watch Dream Circus Theatre in action.

Teo Castro, Co-Founder Dream Circus Theatre / Producer / Writer
Party planner, performer and legend in the L.A. underground circuit, Teo Castro runs Dream Circus Theatre with his wife, Mikiko Nagao.  The collective organizes the legendary “I Am” series of themed events that merge theatrical performances and electronic music into party environments. Castro and Nagao also created a street music and clothing company called Stoner Generation. He worked with Bill Manspeaker (Green Jello), Lou Maglia (former president of Island Records), and Art Jaeger (former executive at Capitol Records) in executive and production capacities at QTOPIA Event Center in Hollywood, which later became the Vanguard. For Insomniac Events, he created Dream Circus Village at Electric Daisy Carnival.  Other organizations and artists he has worked with over the years include Red Bull, M-Audio, Native Instruments, Magic (Las Vegas), Jane’s Addiction, Snoop Dog, Lollapalooza LLC, Coachella Music Festival, Burning Man, Cirque du Soleil, Dance with Films, House of Blues, Charlie Armstrong (Paramount Pictures), and PF Chang’s.

Mikiko Nagao, Costume Designer / Event Creator –
Mikiko Nagao is an innovative costume designer who has worked on commercial, film, television, and theater projects for the past 10 years. With her husband Teo Castro, she runs Dream Circus Theatre.  She has created custom designs for over 100 productions including costumes for stilt walker clowns, medieval soldiers, angelic space gods, large monsters, Victorian characters, and more. Past large-scale productions include creating costumes for Dream Circus Theatre’s 2003 tour of 35 cities with Lollapalooza.  Nagao studied at Bantan Design Fashion Institute (Tokyo) and Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (San Francisco and Los Angeles).  http://MKOCostumes.com

Dream Circus Theatre –
Dream Circus Theatre (DCT) was initially involved in the local underground scene in the mid 1990s, the first in the Los Angeles area to merge theatrical performances such as fire dancers, aerialists, performance artists, and art installations in a DJ dance party environment.  DCT is known for their innovative series of event/parties called “I Am” – costume, themed parties, which fuse all the elements mentioned above. DCT has self-produced, created and written over 100 original events and shows.

Castro, Nagao and/or Dream Circus Theatre have been featured in news and entertainment media around the world including the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, KCRW, KPFK, KROQ, KLOS, MTV, CNN, FNN, CBS-TV, Bad Boys, MTV, Rolling Stone, and Time Magazine (Asia).

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For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Re-Animator™ – The Musical

By Popular Demand
Re-Animator™ – The Musical
Extended AGAIN Through Sunday, August 14, 2011
At the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood

Special Midnight Madness Fridays 6/24, 7/1 & 7/8

“Bloody hilarious.” – Terry Morgan, LAist.com
“Terribly inappropriate … it’s glorious!” – Anthony Byrnes, KCRW

LOS ANGELES, CA – Re-Animator™ – The Musical, the horror-comedy based on the 1985 cult movie hit and earlier H.P. Lovecraft story, has extended its run due to popular demand through Sunday, August 14, 2011 at the Steve Allen Theater.  The new performance schedule for this funny, bloody and tuneful production includes three shows per weekend:  Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8:00pm.  Additionally, the production that refuses to die will hold three special Midnight Madness shows with opening bands on Friday, June 24th, Friday, July 1st, and Friday, July 8th. Midnight Madness shows cost $15 and doors open at 10:45pm for the all ages preshow. Bands to be announced on the Re-Animator site. Ticket prices for 8:00pm shows are $30 for general admission, $15 for students (with ID) as well as all Center for Inquiry members.  The Steve Allen Theater is located at 4773 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027.  For theater information please call 323-666-4268 or visit http://steveallentheater.com.  For ticket purchases only please call 800-595-4849.  For more information on the musical please visit http://www.re-animatorthemusical.com.  Online tickets can be purchased through the Re-Animator or venue web sites.

The production has been setting records and sending grinning patrons out of the theater humming the tunes and washing off blood.  Stuart Gordon, who directed both the new musical and the movie on which it is based, notes “There’s a lot of liquid spurting through the air. The special effects are even better in 4D than they are in 3D.”  Costumes are encouraged and seating is open – come early and sit up front in the “splash zone.”

According to his letters, Lovecraft wrote the original story as a parody of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Re-Animator – The Musical is the story of brilliant yet amoral medical student Herbert West whose discovery, a bright green glowing serum, can actually revive the dead. He involves fellow student Dan Cain and his fiancée Megan Halsey in his research by murdering and then re-animating their cat. Cain, realizing the enormous potential of West’s research, agrees to smuggle him into the hospital morgue, which results in an orgy of bloody mayhem.

Those special effects are being delivered by the same folks who executed them for the 1985 movie: Tony Doublin, John Naulin, and John Beuchler. The blood flows so freely that the first few rows are designated as the “splash zone.” Laura Fine Hawkes, who last designed the equally bloody Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Taper, provides the creepy sets, Joe Kucharski the moldering costumes, and Jeff Ravitz the cadaverous lighting. Stage managing the madness is the unflappable Joe Begos.  Steve Pope helms the Technical Direction.

The cast includes Jesse Merlin, Rachel Avery, Chris L. McKenna, Harry S. Murphy, Mark Beltzman, Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, Liesel Hanson, and Graham Skipper as Herbert West.

Music and lyrics by Mark Nutter. Libretto by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris. Adapted from the story by H.P. Lovecraft. Based on the film H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator produced by Brian Yuzna . Play produced by Dean Schramm and Stuart Gordon
. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Musical director: Peter Adams. Choreography by Cynthia Carle.

“Mark Nutter’s songs are absolutely inspired,” says Gordon, “They are dark, twisted and yet also insanely cheerful at the same time.”

Stuart Gordon (Director/Producer/Co-Librettist) –
“Re-Animator” has become Gordon’s middle name since the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won a Critics’ Prize in 1985. The legendary horror film has also spawned comic books, video games, sequels, and fan fiction. Previously, as Artistic Director of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company, Gordon had the opportunity to work directly with Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, and Kurt Vonnegut, adapting their stories to stage.  He also collaborated with David Mamet, directing and producing the world premiere of Sexual Perversity in Chicago.  Gordon is a big fan of Lovecraft and has adapted several of his stories for the screen. They include not only Re-Animator, but also From Beyond, Castle Freak (from The Outsider), and Dagon, as well as the Masters of Horror episode “Dreams in the Witch-House.” Additional directing credits include Dolls, Robot Jox, Pit and the Pendulum, Fortress, Space Truckers, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, King of Ants, Edmond, and Stuck.  Gordon created the Disney blockbuster Honey I Shrunk the Kids.  He also executive produced its sequel, Honey I Blew Up the Kid.  With his writing partner Paoli, he wrote Body Snatchers, and The Dentist.  He lives in Los Angeles with his actress wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (who he murders in his films whenever possible) and three daughters.

Shakespeare by the Sea’s 2008 production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream;" photo credit: Marilyn Edwards

Shakespeare by the Sea (SBTS) announces its 14th season of bringing free Shakespeare performances to the masses in Southern California, opening with the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing on June 9, 2011 followed one week later, on June 16, with the opening of the ultimate family drama The Tragedy of King Lear. SBTS performances run for 10 weeks throughout Los Angeles and Orange County – over 40 performances in all – beginning with shows in San Pedro at Point Fermin Park from June 9th through July 2nd.  Starting July 6th the troupe hits the road on a tour that will reach a total of 21 public parks in 19 towns – from Pasadena to Laguna Niguel – into August.  The production wraps up back in San Pedro for two grand finale performances on August 12 and 13, 2011.  All performances are in the evening starting at either 7:00pm or 8:00pm.  Audiences are encouraged to gather with friends and family early to dine picnic-style under the stars to make the most of this classic entertainment experience.  Admission is always free!

Photos from past Shakespeare by the Sea productions 1st & 3rd image: 2009's "Love’s Labour’s Lost" (photo credit: Mickey Elliot); center: 2009's "As You Like It" (photo credit: Marilyn Edwards)

For Immediate Release:  March 18, 2011 [updated: 5/9/11]

Shakespeare by the Sea
Announces 14th Season
With Admission-Free Performances of
Much Ado About Nothing and The Tragedy of King Lear
June 9 – August 13, 2011
Throughout Los Angeles and Orange County

LOS ANGELES, CA – Shakespeare by the Sea (SBTS) announces its 14th season of bringing free Shakespeare performances to the masses in Southern California, opening with the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing on June 9, 2011 followed one week later, on June 16, with the opening of the ultimate family drama The Tragedy of King Lear. SBTS performances run for 10 weeks throughout Los Angeles and Orange County – over 40 performances in all – beginning with shows in San Pedro at Point Fermin Park from June 9th through July 2nd.  Starting July 6th the troupe hits the road on a tour that will reach a total of 21 public parks in 19 towns – from Pasadena to Laguna Niguel – into August.  The production wraps up back in San Pedro for two grand finale performances on August 12 and 13, 2011.  All performances are in the evening starting at either 7:00pm or 8:00pm.  Audiences are encouraged to gather with friends and family early to dine picnic-style under the stars to make the most of this classic entertainment experience.  Admission is always free!  Learn more at www.shakespearebythesea.org or by calling 310-217-7596.

Cities on this year’s tour include: Altadena, Beverly Hills (new), El Segundo, Glendale (new), Hermosa Beach, La Crescenta, Laguna Niguel, Lakewood, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Playa Vista, Rancho Palos Verdes (2 parks), Rossmoor, Rowland Heights (2 parks), San Pedro, South Pasadena, Whittier, and three more TBD.  See production schedules, full location information, and times at http://www.shakespearebythesea.org/locations.html.

“Shakespeare by the Sea creates magical experiences with bewitching performances in idyllic park settings throughout the Greater Los Angeles Area,” says founding member and Producing Artistic Director Lisa Coffi, “We not only attract die-hard fans of The Bard, but all sorts of people – even some who are experiencing their very first play.  We are really proud to bring these amazing plays to such diverse audiences, particularly to those who normally would not be able to afford this type of entertainment.”

Much Ado About Nothing -
The festive Much Ado About Nothing may very well be the first modern romantic comedy.  The play juxtaposes two very different pairs of lovers – the sweet Claudio and Hero are contrasted with the more experienced (and cynical) Benedick and Beatrice who incessantly proclaim their scorn for love, marriage, and each other – until they are tricked into falling in love.

The Tragedy of King Lear –
Considered one of the great theatrical masterpieces of all time, The Tragedy of King Lear is a heart-wrenching story of betrayal, intrigue, and family dysfunction. The title character descends into madness after dividing his estate between the two deceitful of his three daughters. The dark play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological Celtic king.

Returning once again to SBTS this year are Directors Amy Louise Sebelius and Stephanie Coltrin, Scenic Designer Aaron Jackson, and Costume Designer Valerie Wright-Blair.

Amy Louise Sebelius, Director –
Much Ado About Nothing is directed by Amy Louise Sebelius, a founding member of the Garage Theatre in Long Beach.  Sebelius is no stranger to Shakespeare by the Sea, having performed as Kate in SBTS’s 1999 production of The Taming of the Shrew while earning her BFA in Theater from CSU Long Beach. She is a graduate of the Los Angeles Theatre Academy, and holds an MFA from the University of Alabama where she was involved with Alabama Shakespeare.  She teaches acting, theater history, Shakespeare, and improvisation at the Orange County High School of the Arts, Santa Ana College, Santiago Canyon College, and South Coast Repertory. This will be the third installation of Sebelius’ work featured by SBTS.

Stephanie Coltrin, Director –
The Tragedy of King Lear is directed by Stephanie Coltrin who currently serves as the Artistic Director for both the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities (CLOSBC) and Hermosa Beach Playhouse. After completing her studies in Theatre Arts and Directing at Brigham Young University, Coltrin moved to Los Angeles where she had the pleasure of creating theater in every capacity – as a producer, production manager, stage manager, and designer – for various theaters all over town including the Odyssey, Tiffany, Hudson, Blank, and Tamarind Theatres, LATC, Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare, Reprise, McCoy Rigby, and many others. Coltrin is an Ovation Award-winning Artistic Director and Ovation-nominated Director for CLOSBC’s production of Miss Saigon, which won “Best Musical of the Year” in 2009.  This is Coltrin’s second year directing a challenging drama for SBTS.

Aaron Jackson, Scenic Designer –
SBTS’s veteran Scenic Designer, Aaron Jackson, returns for his seventh season to create designs that enhance the outdoor performance spaces for the productions. Jackson has the additional challenge of creating a scenic design that will work for both of the alternating plays. He is currently the staff Scenic Artist at UC Irvine/Clair Trevor School of the Arts and has also designed shows in New York, Arizona, Texas, and Georgia.  In addition, he works as an illustrator and concept artist for clients that include Stiletto Entertainment, Cartoon Network, IMAG Productions, and Mercedes-Benz, among others.

Valerie Wright-Blair, Costume Designer –
Costume Designer Valerie Wright-Blair is back on board for her eighth season with SBTS.  Wright-Blair graduated from Otis Art Institute and has designed an array of gowns for private clients and celebrities for such high profile events as the Academy Awards® and Emmy® awards.  She has also designed for film and theatre productions including the Westchester Playhouse, Torrance Theatre Company, Little Fish Theatre, and South Bay Civic Light Opera.  Her garments have also appeared in People, National Bridal,  Apparel News, and on CNN.

Shakespeare by the Sea –
Since 1998, Shakespeare by the Sea has presented quality, admission-free Shakespeare performances in dozens of communities throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. The free summer festival has become a tradition for thousands of Southern California families. Last year’s attendance reached a record breaking 21,000 total audience members.  Shakespeare by the Sea’s mission is to bring new, contemporary and classic works to an underserved, culturally diverse audience in order to ignite imagination, promote literacy, and encourage artistic expression. Partnerships with local city organizations, as well as generous donations, make these free performances possible.

For audiences seeking quality, family entertainment, Shakespeare by the Sea’s free performances cannot be beat. The comedies are timeless, the admission ticketless, and the experience priceless.

This season’s performances are sponsored by Orange County Community Foundation, Union Pacific Railroad, Newport Beach Arts Commission, LA County Supervisor Don Knabe, and LA County Arts Commission.

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For more information, photos, or interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Shakespeare by the Sea’s 2008 production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream;" photo credit: Marilyn Edwards

LDTP "The Slumber of Reason" - Photo Credit: Dorit Thies

Innovative performance group the Latina Dance Theater Project (LDTP) announces the return of their critically acclaimed piece, The Slumber of Reason (El Sueño de la Razon), to Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles for one weekend only, Friday, February 25 and Saturday, February 26, 2011. Directed by Tim Perez, The Slumber of Reason is a series of ten dark and humorous vignettes that depict various follies and foibles of mankind.  The creative springboard for this interdisciplinary work is Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s tour-de-force prints, Los Caprichos (The Caprices), considered one of the most profound indictments of human vice ever set on paper.  The Slumber of Reason show times are at 8:00pm on both nights.

For Immediate Release:  January 25, 2011

Latina Dance Theater Project Presents
The Slumber of Reason (El Sueño de la Razon)
At Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles
February 25-26, 2011

A Multidisciplinary Dance Theater Performance
Inspired by Goya’s Iconic Los Caprichos

LOS ANGELES, CA – Innovative performance group the Latina Dance Theater Project (LDTP) announces the return of their critically acclaimed piece, The Slumber of Reason (El Sueño de la Razon), to Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles for one weekend only, Friday, February 25 and Saturday, February 26, 2011. Directed by Tim Perez, The Slumber of Reason is a series of ten dark and humorous vignettes that depict various follies and foibles of mankind.  The creative springboard for this interdisciplinary work is Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s tour-de-force prints, Los Caprichos (The Caprices), considered one of the most profound indictments of human vice ever set on paper.   The Slumber of Reason show times are at 8:00pm on both nights.  General admission tickets cost $25 (available online and at the door). Bootleg Theater is located at 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057.  For venue and ticket information, please call 213-389-3856 or visit http://www.bootlegtheater.org. For information on LDTP, please see:  http://www.latinadanceproject.com or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Latina-Dance-Project/107898625906942

“Even though Goya created his visions of chaos and brutality hundreds of years ago, they are still remarkably profound and relate to issues here and now,” says Licia Perea of LDTP, “His powerful images inspired us to create a new set of modern day ‘caprichos’ that explore contemporary demons.”

“El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos” or “The Sleep/Dream of Reason Produces Monsters” (1799) - Francisco de Goya

The Slumber of Reason –
“El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos” or “The Sleep/Dream of Reason Produces Monsters” (1799), which the production takes its name from, is the title Goya gave to what became his most famous Los Caprichos etching.  The work depicts a sleeping gentleman, surrounded by bats and other evil-looking creatures.  This now iconic image commented on the lack of critical thinking in Spanish society at the time.

Following Goya’s example, LDTP uses humor as a tool for social criticism in the production’s ten vignettes.  Each vignette illustrates a human folly or vice which may surface when a person does not use intelligence or reason to guide action. The vices targeted by LDTP range from relatively harmless texting obsessions, to preoccupation with physical beauty, to much more serious destructive urges that instigate war and murder.  Hot button issues such as immigration, environmental degradation, and racism are also explored.

“In over 200 years of time, it’s pretty insane that the situation in the world isn’t necessarily better and has not really changed all that much,” says Perea, “We hope the world we recreate in this work not only hits the audience in the gut with this realization, but also makes them laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.”

Described as “edgy and thought-provoking” and “something different,” by theater reviewer Marianne Fritz of SocCal.com, The Slumber of Reason defies categorization, incorporating a fascinating hybrid of creative genres. The music in the work, by composer Wes Hambright, is as diverse as the different themes in the show, incorporating styles ranging from techno to blues. LDTP members in this production — Perea, Juanita Suarez, Eva Tessler, and Jose Garcia Davis – also bring together a variety of creative talents, weaving together a rich tapestry of dance, song, art, and theater into the production.



Los Caprichos -
Enigmatic and controversial, Los Caprichos (1799), by Francisco de Goya, were created in a time of economic crisis and social unrest in Spain. Goya, who earned his living as a well-known court painter of the period, also used his art to denounce social abuses and superstitions in a passionate critique of ignorance and oppression. The Caprichos candidly deal with themes such as the Spanish Inquisition, corruption within the church and among the nobility, witchcraft, marital mistakes, and the general stupidity of the populace. Its subhuman cast includes witches, goblins, monks, aristocrats, prostitutes, and animals acting like human fools inhabiting a world on the margins of reason.  The Caprichos (a term that translates to “whims,” “fantasies,” or “expressions of imagination”) are not, however, solely bleak in nature, they also often demonstrate the artist’s wickedly satirical wit.

LDTP The Slumber of Reason – “Goya with Witches” bottom-to-top: Jose Garcia Davis (Goya w/ top hat); Licia Perea, Juanita Suarez, Gabriela Nugent (apprentice) and Eva Tessler (top) (Photo Credit: Dorit Thies)

Latina Dance Theater Project –
LDTP is a group of five nationally recognized Latina/o dance theater artists who explore the voices of the hybrid cultures of Mexico, the United States, and Brazil. While none of the members of this unique company live in the same city, they are brought together by their passion to work as an equal, collaborative company.  LDTP members are Licia Perea, a COLA and two-time NEA Fellow (Los Angeles); Juanita Suarez, PHD, recipient of MAP Fund and Berolzheimer Foundation grants (Brockport, NY); Eva Tessler, multiple recipient from the Arizona Commission on the Arts (Tucson, AZ); Eluza Santos, PHD, a United Arts Council of NC grantee (Vitoria, Brazil); and award-winning writer, director, set designer, and performer Jose Garcia Davis (Los Angeles).  The Company was founded in 2002 as a rising voice of a new aesthetic in contemporary dance-theater, having toured nationally and internationally since its inception.  LDTP is joined by guest collaborators: acclaimed director Tim Perez (Vancouver, BC); costume designer Susie Cox (Dallas, TX); and critically acclaimed composer Wes Hambright (Los Angeles).

Bootleg Theater -
Bootleg Theater is a space for art: a place where Los Angeles artists can come together and create new, exciting theatrical events.  Bootleg is dedicated to producing and presenting theater, music, dance, and film in the venue’s 10,000-square foot 1930s warehouse, located in the Rampart District just west of Downtown LA. The facility, comprised of two performance spaces and a lounge, plays an integral role in the development and advancement of Bootleg’s goals: to provide a community convening place; produce brave, boundary-pushing, artistically outstanding, and highly collaborative new work — work that is exciting to people of all ages and ethnicities; and serve as a reflection of the City we all call home.

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For more information, press passes, photos, or interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

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One weekend only!

Latina Dance Theater Project Presents
The Slumber of Reason (El Sueño de la Razon)

A multidisciplinary dance theater performance
Inspired by Goya’s Los Caprichos

Friday & Saturday, February 25 – 26, 2011
8:00pm

General Admission $25
Tickets at http://www.bootlegtheater.org

Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90057

This performance is made possible by

Top Photo:

LDTP The Slumber of Reason – “Baghdad is Burning”
Licia Perea (bottom) and Gabriela Nugent (apprentice; top)
(Photo Credit: Dorit Thies)