“I’ve done some things, and some of you may have come for some of them.” With that, Wallace Shawn – whose program bio mentioned neither My Dinner with Andre nor The Princess Bride – embarked upon an evening of readings called “Real World, Fake World, Dream World,” presented by UCLA Live at Royce Hall on [...]
Inconceivable.
With that catch phrase from The Princess Bride out of the way, let’s consider the life’s work (so far) of Wallace Shawn, a native New Yorker with a big-screen background, a small library of plays to his name (and an Obie award), a 2009 collection of essays (now out in paperback), and a political [...]
On Aug. 21, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles presented “Sure on this Shining Night,” an evening of classical and contemporary music from Giuseppe Verdi to Morten Lauridsen to Lady Gaga. Joining the massive group was a new entity, the GMCLA Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) Choir, and with it powerhouse young voices from nearby [...]
Mindshare LA feels like a new experience made from a number of familiar ones. On its website, the event calls itself an evening of “enlightened debauchery,” and it promises “intellectual stimulation in a club-like atmosphere.” Doug Campbell, co-founder (with Adam Mefford) and MC for the July 15 event, likened the evening to having one’s brain [...]
UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event brought two highly influential voices of graphic narrative to the same podium on April 23. The effect was startling and instructive.
Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and the syndicated strip Dykes to Watch Out For, said it best: Words and pictures are, when combined, [...]
In “Leaving (and other rabbit tricks),” the second of four dances in this weekend’s Highways Performance Space event, Brad Culver and Genevieve Carson convey the insurmountable distance between two minds, and it is riveting. Arianne MacBean’s choreography notes in the program simply give shared credit where due to her two performers. It is pieces like [...]
When David Longstreth heard his music Saturday night (Feb. 27) at Walt Disney Concert Hall, his body reacted. Deft toe tapping and a kind of rhythmic saunter embodied the swells and trills of The Getty Address, played in its entirety with the small orchestra of Alarm Will Sound. The operatic and genre-dissolving 2005 album would [...]
If anyone doubted the production prowess of Lineage Dance, the third annual Pasadena Dance Festival proved them wrong. Managing Director Peggy Burt and Associate Director Caterina Mercante, who served as festival coordinator, pulled off an extraordinary event. Between the obvious varieties in the audience, the marketplace of the lobby, and the stunning range and skill [...]
When artist Ted Meyer first felt some relief from Gaucher’s Disease, his stance on scars and the meanings of bodies changed. “I came to view my own body as something I could almost depend on, not something always fighting with me.” In Scarred for Life, the Brewery artist’s exhibition of mono-prints, Meyer explores this transcendence [...]
On Thursday night at Theatre Theater near Mid-City, Rogue Machine Theatre presented its eighth monthly “Rant & Rave,” self-described as “An Ongoing Art Project Where Prose Finds Voice.” In the timeless form of nonfiction first-person prose, eight men and women waxed narrative around this month’s topic – yes, February’s – love.
But this was far from [...]
