Wallace Shawn

“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 Saturday, Jan. 22.

With no introduction, Shawn delivered a list of facts about the world, crafted into an easy sort of stand-up routine, before he embarked on the first essay.  Works by Elizabeth Eisenberg, poet John Ashbery, and Shawn himself followed, and a generally captivated audience responded in kind with the occasional belly laugh and applause.

Shawn navigated the “Real World, Fake World, Dream World” theme by moving from nonfiction to fiction and theater.  He navigated a sloppily produced Q&A (though R. Crumb takes the cake) by eloquently repeating and answering questions from what My Dinner with Andre really means to whether he enjoys being on the television series Gossip Girl. (He does.)

One rather insightful audience member, who reminded me of the Hollywood book club-goer who actually reads and ponders the material before attending, pointed out Shawn’s frequent use of non-human animals in his theater works.  With a slow, steady pace that by that point in the evening seemed characteristic of him, Shawn replied that he seeks the universal and the connective element in his work, that whatever divides nations and ideologies can almost certainly be surpassed through the animal qualities we all have in common.

Despite the program’s regression into disorganized Q&A, Shawn provided an excellent and informative glimpse of his own ideas, those that influence him, and the many forms a writer can choose to be as dissident as is pleasing.  One can only hope that Shawn will give more readings here in the future.

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 inclination rarely so articulate in a world of star-powered political involvement.  His film work ranges from Woody Allen’s direction to the entrancing dialogue of My Dinner With Andre, from the sneaky plotting of a Princess Bride bad-guy to the guileless voice acting of toy dino Rex in the Toy Story franchise.  Shawn’s plays garner praise and discourse alike from the worlds of art and politics.  His collected essays have been well received academically and popularly.

Wallace Shawn

On Saturday, Jan. 22, UCLA Live will be hosting “Real World, Fake World, Dream World.”  The evening lecture from Shawn will be held at Royce Hall at 8 p.m., part of the performance season’s written word events.  Readings and discussions of his own works and those he admires will be followed by a Q&A and signing.

Culture Spot LA is happy to announce a ticket giveaway!  To be entered in a drawing for a pair of tickets to  “Real World, Fake World, Dream World,” send an email to editor@culturespotla.com with the Real Reason you’d like to attend.  (Every reason will be entered, but good karma for honest answers.)  A winner will be selected at random from the entries received by Wednesday, Jan. 19, at noon.  This writer is looking forward to closing her eyes and hearing Rex the timid toy dinosaur wax political.

The first act of the evening featured a range of interesting works, dip though they occasionally did into the aforementioned camp.  Several opera pieces featured excellent soloists like baritone John Musselman and the engaging, exuberant tenor DJ Pick.  The opportunity for gesture and expression allowed a greater range for the performative singers.  The evening’s conductor, Dominic Gregorio, was finishing his tenure with the group gracefully, and his enthusiasm for the operatic numbers was especially enjoyable.

After a short intermission, a world-premiere commissioned work brought the choir together with electronica musician John Tejada.  “The End of It All” was part house music, part movie chorus, and, though musically somewhat infantile, fascinating.  The interactions between live, organic sound and hyper-produced beats and tones synthesized, at its best, a uniquely pleasing listening experience.

“Baba Yetu,” which introduced the GSA Youth Choir, struck me as odd, but this may be because the tune is used in (if not from?) turn-based computer game Civilization IV.  The “Dance With Me Medley,” with Madonna and Gaga and a great deal of musical mash-up and soul bearing, brought out the best of the smaller ensemble and brought the audience to its feet.  A brief solo from Pasadena City College student Cristie Wilson made the otherwise insufferable “Lean on Me” utterly pleasing — encore for Wilson, if you please?

A semi-costumed history lesson on Harvey Milk did get off on the right foot with the aforementioned and heart-wrenching Sondheim number.  That said, it otherwise felt somewhat clumsily integrated to the singers’ purpose, an obstructive framework for otherwise skillfully chosen songs like “There Won’t Be Trumpets” and Paul Simon’s “American Tune.”  (Barring these details, the Harvey Milk Schools Project is well worth looking into; see below.)

Ironically, the evening’s second-to-last number — one that had as much potential as “Lean on Me” to be made entirely of cheese — was “True Colors,” the Lauper pop-tune from pop songsters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.  The combined choirs — a veritable plethora of ages, aesthetics, and all other visible indicators of individuality — fully embodied the truth that a group of people with a common belief can demonstrate deepest humanity by cooperating in song.  This reviewer did a fair amount of tear drying.

Whether ending the evening with Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There” was total overkill is debatable; there was also a short encore piece.  The truly powerful moments of the evening stood in the unity of the performers, the enthusiasm of the group, and the articulate, happy voice of its executive director, the praiseworthy Hywel W. Sims.  The group is entering its 32nd season, and while there will be a handing-off of the baton, the GMCLA’s capacity for meaningful entertainment is promising.

Notable performances (apart from Pick and Wilson) were ASL Interpreter Jon Maher, USC student Marisa Leigh Esposito, John Tejada, and John Tejada’s intuitive music technology.

The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles will be performing a holiday concert Dec. 18 and 19 in Glendale, as well as two more concerts in the “Power of 3” season.  More information on this and the anti-bullying Harvey Milk Schools Foundation can be found at www.gmcla.org.

Image from J-Walt's animated digital art show, part of Mindshare LA's July event.

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 “poked from different directions.”  It is part work party, part lecture hall, part singles’ night with cocktails.  More to the point, Mindshare LA is a monthly event with short lectures, food trucks, a cash bar, and a DJ downstairs for listening-time chatterboxes.

Thursday’s event was held at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles for a third time, though the Mindshare location does change.  (That said, who knew our city had such breathtaking alleyway views?)  Colored lights, free soda from sponsor Izze, and local jam band Boom Boom Boom set the opening mood.  Between the overpriced and underwhelming Munchie Machine and the CoolHaus ice cream truck that lacked my beloved mint chocolate chip, the food trucks were a bust — but, like the location, the food trucks do change with each event.

In a packed dance hall turned lecture hall, complete with white folding chairs I thought I’d only ever see at outdoor weddings, Caltech types mingled with American Apparel model lookalikes.  This writer chatted with IBM brains and a fair number of marketing and brand-formation types.  Read: mixed bag.     Hats, boots, bow ties, haircuts, beards, and wacky patterns made every person stand out at least a little, and that was before any of the talking started.

At 8:30, the short form lectures kicked off with Caltech’s Frances Arnold, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, who discussed bacteria construction and design, paired somewhat forcibly with the idea of “Molecular Sex.”  (Sex prevailed as the evening’s theme.)  Arnold’s talk was brilliant and brief, and successfully piqued the audience’s attention.

The next lecture came from branding mind Eduardo Caccia, a riff on culture and attitude south of the border — in retrospect, an almost awkwardly powerful reminder that the subset of urban Americans at Club 740 for the evening may not have been as enlightened as they thought.

A quick video from Hear Me passed along the mere idea of using online music composition to unite orphans across the globe; sonic artist Mileece represented the New Age with her art-and-sound installations based on feedback from plants.

When adult-film star Nina Hartley finally arrived to breeze through her principles of Radical Self-Acceptance, the somewhat forced sexual implications in every lecture came together.  I’m pleased to report that the Hear Me table and Nina Hartley’s sex-advice table seemed to have the longest lines in the post-lecture fair that the upstairs dance floor became.  None of the miniature lectures delved far into their subjects, though Mileece may have tried to do that.  Each could either pique just enough individual interest for a table visit or pass along information with as casual an acknowledgement as a Twitter feed.

To Mindshare LA’s credit, the evening reads and runs like an Internet browser window.  Everywhere there are tabs (like at the reasonably priced bar, for instance) and bookmarked (literally and figuratively) things to Check Out Later.  Everyone is checking messages and chatting.  Even as the noisemakers during the lectures were asked to relegate their conversations to Dr. Rx and DJ Sugarpill’s rooms downstairs, the Twitterers, bloggers, writers, text message addicts, and combinations of such stayed multiply occupied throughout the evening without offending a soul.

A self-help plug and a prize giveaway broke up the lecturing.  (I recommend J-Walt’s digital art, one of the best post-show installations.)  This was the only time the cleverly partitioned schedule for the evening felt fractured, and even the universal challenge of the Good Q&A seemed aptly met by the Mindshare LA production crew.

With an age- and appearance-range to skew the average years and lifestyle upward and inward, Mindshare LA reminded me somewhat of being at a little liberal arts college in Ohio that I used to know.  This is not necessarily a good thing.  But in the curious, questioning, happy-go-lucky, brain-teased mood of the evening at large, Campbell answered my sole question for him with poise and a smile.  Confronted with the fact that such a narrow margin of people in a clearly privileged atmosphere were perhaps doomed to objectify and demean the very classes and kinds they were purporting to include in Changing the World plans, Campbell basically replied: “I’ll think about it.”

Mindshare LA is a monthly event found online at www.mindshare.la and around downtown Los Angeles.  General admission is $30, with food trucks outside throughout the event.  Lectures are available online, a la TED, and Mind Share is on Twitter and Facebook.

Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel spoke at UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event on April 23.

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, greater than the sum of their parts.  As she spoke of her life and her background in art, her family, and her work, Bechdel both demonstrated her contemporary relevance and looked to a well-respected colleague, Harvey Pekar.  He followed her presentation with a frank, open monologue to assuage all doubt that Pekar is the Everyman’s comics writer.

Bechdel’s presentation ranged from facts to philosophy.  She read from Fun Home about her late father and displayed excerpts of the book’s images.  When she demonstrated the steps between idea and printed page, the already staggering power of her work increased: text, sketches, ink, and shading in what she laughingly calls “method” comics.  Bechdel’s comics resound even without the potent subject matters of sexuality, family dynamics, politics, and what it means to be as clear as possible and yet hidden in the nuances of self-expression.  Her presentation was as layered as her work, and captured an already smitten audience before referring to the work and influence of Pekar.

American Splendor, Pekar made it clear, was never drawn by him.  (Bechdel had earlier displayed a stick-figure storyboard Pekar once doodled in a diner.)  And yet his stories about the mundane Cleveland life of a medical filing clerk have reached a zenith of cult celebrity.  Among the illustrators fleshing out the text of his work are Bechdel and R. Crumb; in 2003, the film American Splendor created a documentary and biopic out Pekar’s life and work.  Yet perhaps the most appealing and relieving aspect of his low-tech, straightforward storytelling was just that.  It was low-tech and straightforward, as quotidian and relatable as American Splendor itself.

In the words of scholar Hillary Chute, the term “graphic novel” is often “an awkwardly popular misnomer.”  These works are hardly the stuff of fiction.  In a brief Q&A, Bechdel and Pekar spoke of family, next moves, movies (as options, as realities), and, very highly, of each other.  Throughout the night, both authors seemed absolutely and even disarmingly themselves – a feat only more smoothly accomplished by their medium.

Upcoming literary events at UCLA Live include a reading by David Sedaris. For more information, visit www.uclalive.org.  

Photo by Rollence Patugan

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 these that place dance performance at the highest tier of human understanding.  Carson backs away from Culver with a smile so endearing that she magically disappears; there is an unnamable, unbearable tension resolved in embrace.  “Leaving (and other rabbit tricks)” is well-suited to a postmodern theme among the choreographers without moving itself to an artistic observation deck.  It is as present as its dancers.

Four-Headed Dance is a biennial installation, this the third, of works by noted Los Angeles choreographers.  This weekend’s program begins with a stage fairly littered with the thematic paraphernalia of “In Record Time,” Ilaan Egeland Mazzini’s new solo work.  Despite its heavy captioning in the program notes, “In Record Time” conveys a sort of removed sense of girlhood influences, Mazzini demonstrating hula-hoops and go-go boots, sexy housewife icons and an almost unhinged interaction with all eyes laid on her.  She is a captivating performer.  Furthermore, the highly presentational use of props, lights, costumes, and that crumbling fourth wall contrast beautifully with the simple MacBean approach that follows, speaking to the breadth and possibility of postmodern dance with that unnamable, undeniable Los Angeles quirk.

Intermission is followed by Carmella Hermann’s “Tuesday,” in Leah Piehl’s tidy and impressive, if apparently nonsequitur, costuming.  The score crab-walks and thoughtful-walks and inquisitive-walks Hermann around another littered stage; again, the high contrast of postmodern options is felt when the next piece, “Repeat After Me,” begins.  Three pairs of dancers refreshingly cross generational and cultural lines in vignettes that, though frustrating in their meandering, fairly capture the essence of selective social heredity.  It’s also nice to see from the program notes that the Los Angeles County Arts Commission is part of the show.

Catch the performance Saturday, April 3, at 8:30 p.m. at the 18th Street Arts Center, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica.

Dirty Projectors / photo by Sarah Cass, courtesy of LA Phil

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 serve as an oeuvre all by itself if Dirty Projectors, Longstreth’s Brooklyn-based ensemble, had ceased music-making that year.  (They didn’t, and 2009’s Bitte Orca reached the top tier of album reviews for publications like Pitchfork Media and TIME.)

The concert began with four pieces of music by the LA Philharmonic under the baton of Diego Matheuz, who, like LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, studied in Venezuela’s El Sistema.  John Orfe performed two Ligeti etudes as if the piano were an extension of himself; between the etudes, an orchestral Wagner prelude from Tristan und Isolde hinted at the foreboding and resolution of Getty. Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite closed the first segment of the concert, and its adoption of various styles and attitudes into a coherent whole unlatched the mental gates that keep music in categories.

The Getty Address poured out soon after from baroque, opera, folk, epic poetry, and some new, strange, effective vocal style that involves vowels with one’s tongue out.  With Alan Pierson conducting the sizeable ensemble of Dirty Projectors and Alarm Will Sound, the sonic variety and mind-bending percussive precision of the album came to life.  A trio of vocalists — Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle in red, blue and yellow cloaks — struck complex harmonies with almost unsettling ease.  Deradoorian, in red, simultaneously managed a keyboard and computer.  Brian McOmber and Nat Baldwin provided heart-fluttering drums and bass.  Longstreth’s eyes darted from conductor to ensemble, from the trio’s rhythmic swaying to his own guitars; throughout, a live connection to the music kept him engaged almost to distraction.  As Alarm Will Sound colored in the landscape of The Getty Address, the captivated audience of young and old, American Apparel and Brooks Brothers, was energized and reverent, seeming to float away with the strings and jump to life with McOmber’s sudden entrances.

Pierson, it should be noted, conducted a wide-ranging and stylistically unprecedented group with ease.  The journey of Getty’s fictional protagonist Don Henley – “based more on my brother Jake, Hernán Cortes and also Stephen Dedalus from… Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” than on the Eagle frontman himself, says Longstreth – takes route through sleepy strings and driving rhythms, with vocals as unpredictable as they are perfectly suited to the concept.  “Ponds and Puddles,” mid-Getty, brings to mind the rock opera; “Finches’ Song at Oceanic Parking Lot,” which ends the journey, warbles its way past any such simple categorization.

Even in the recent evolution of cross-generic pastiche across the fine arts, Saturday night was a feat.  Longstreth’s work in Getty is a patchwork without seams.  Dirty Projectors, Alarm Will Sound, and the inimitable Alan Pierson filled the potential of genre defiance to its greatest capacity.  Furthermore, the already coherent work in Getty seemed all the more unified under a baton.

After multiple standing ovations from the packed hall, Dirty Projectors returned to the stage for a kind of chaser, calm selections from Bitte Orca.  Songs from the equally engaging if far less conceptual album served to showcase the band by itself.  The trio of women from Getty’s “chorus” continued to strike remarkable chords, McOmber and Baldwin filled in the counterintuitive rhythm, and Longstreth carried on his tiny dance of mini-conducting.

Upcoming events of similar genre-blending at Disney Hall include French electronic duo Air on March 28 and guitarist Pat Metheny’s new Orchestrionics tour on April 19. Visit www.laphil.com.

The Feb. 20 performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium topped off a day of festival classes and workshops (which this reviewer will most certainly observe next year).  The listings, which share the concert program, include modern and modern partnering, jazz, injury prevention, pilatesstick (yes, pilatesstick), musical theater dance, Bollywood dancing, salsa, and more, in an almost overwhelming range of options.  That far-reaching dance-for-all mentality translated to the concert listings as well.  Should the dreamlike sparring of the Capoeira Batuque demonstration fail to pique an interest, the fluid grace of Terri Best’s inimitable Through the Desert might do the trick, dancers pouring in and out of their lines and formations across a desert stage.  (A tip of the pen to Ric Zimmerman and Alison Brummer, the evening’s lighting designers.)  And if Best’s work is appealing, then perhaps so are her classes at Edge in Hollywood (which this reviewer most certainly did attend Wednesday evening!).  The beauty of this Pasadena Dance Festival is the cycle it begins, one of dance for all and, one would hope, all for dance.

The program included two past works by Lineage Dance as well, one with live musical performance by a melancholic Wil Seabrook.  The bold beginning of Luminario Ballet’s If the Walls Could Scream spoke of technical virtue and spot-on choreography, trademarks of West Coast concert dance; the costumes and enthusiasms of Ballet Folclorico do Brasil and Yogen’s Bollywood Step Dance brought the world to the Pasadena stage in vibrant color.  Two ballroom demonstrations tilted this reviewer’s head in the best way.  Headlining act Hubbard Street 2, borrowed from Chicago for the evening, performed Lucas Crandall’s exuberant, teasing Gimme. The flirting, flicking, tied-up-with-string piece delighted a cheering audience (much of it with hair still wrapped tightly in buns).  Revelations Dance Company hung from aerial dance equipment; Lux Aeterna Dance Company, in this case simply Jacob “Kujo” Lyons, provided the obligatory nod to minimalism with an Arvo Part-accompanied solo.  (Recognize Lyons?  Because he’s definitely the performer in that national Levi’s commercial.  Entertainment capital of. the. world., folks.)

When Kurt Joos established dance theater in Germany (the roots of Pina Bausch et. al), his The Green Table used elements of both art forms to convey the mass effect of a few powerful men’s decisions.  They sit around a green table planning pocket-filling warfare, and the vignettes of cultural fallout ensue.  In a weirdly meaningful tease on the theme, KIN Dance Company’s Board Room closed the Saturday night program with a light-hearted dance theater approach to (perhaps you’ve guessed?) the economy.  Blackberries at the meeting table, tomfoolery when authority seems all but absent.  One could call it “relatable.”  And, given the Lineage mission for educational, thematic, accessible dance, one could call it the perfect close to an incredible evening of dance. 

Scarred for Life was first inspired by a former dancer who’d fallen from a tree, subsequently wheelchair-bound but no less compelling.  Her reparative surgery left a long, curving scar down her back – now reproduced in shades of blue alongside her portrait.  Her back is turned to the camera, with a long blue stretch of paint crossing the scar, and she looks over her shoulder from the wheelchair.  Meyer’s exhibit features not only colorful, lively impressions of scars, but the unique stories and portraits (also Meyer’s) behind each diversion from the Platonic body ideal.  Some of the surgical scars come from chronic needs, others from the most private of emergencies: scoliosis or a lung transplant, self-mutilation or near-death experiences. Meyer’s work accomplishes his considerable goal of turning “these lasting monuments, often thought of as unsightly, into things of beauty.” Martha de Perez, the tireless curator at the Art Share Los Angeles gallery, felt that this message of positive body image and personal narrative would create a powerful gallery show for the venue.

Art Share is a nonprofit arts outreach and support center in the Downtown Arts District, with gallery, performance, classroom, and residential spaces in the converted warehouse at Fourth Place and Hewitt. The juxtaposition of threat and recovery, scars and success, in Meyer’s work can be viewed as a reflection of the organization itself, which redirects young local energy away from violence and destruction, and instead toward expression and creation. The high success rate (gauged in part by high school graduations) stems from free art, music, and dance classes, mentoring, and special programs according to students’ needs.  All of this, though, relies in part on the underpinning of a strong arts community in Los Angeles, including artists like Meyer, events like the Downtown Art Walk, and the Art Share-centered Open Studio Tour series in the Arts District.  In addition to showing his works in the gallery space at Art Share, Meyer will be helping teach one of the free art classes offered to students there.

The exhibition has also been to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, New York University’s Medical School Gallery, and the Brevard Museum of Art in Florida.  But most of the subjects in Scarred For Life are local – and several will be in attendance at the reception Friday night, along with students like Assistant Curator Enrique Lopez and Art Share’s Executive Director, Tracy Kelly.  Art Share’s gallery events tend to draw a lively crowd of artists, buyers, students, Arts District residents, and visitors from around the city and California.

Read more about Meyer at www.tedmeyer.com and www.artyourworld.com. For more information about Art Share, visit www.artsharela.org.

[Editor’s Note: The author also does free PR for the nonprofit Art Share.]

But this was far from an evening of Hallmark cards.  As if anyone needed proof that Los Angeles fosters dazzling wits, every piece was original, enrapturing, and deeply relatable.  This included Michael Redfield’s praise of fatherhood versus the haze of twenty-something-hood while his wife and infant daughter stood by, and Betsy Zajko’s chronology of how one’s unique heart is shaped by both the good and the bad.

It also included a pleasing hybridization of universal themes and local lore.  In the work of Julio Martinez, theater critic and KPFK voice, both the golden heart of honest parenting and the totally disturbing reality of reality television made appearances.  Even the political realities of love, the ones fueled by Prop 8 and the question of marriage across the country, came into play with Ralph Bruneau and Katherine Cortez.  Their tales were poignant and quiet, but firm, reminders that politics is not a player in who loves whom, but rather an unwelcome jury to the private and the sacred.

Michael O’Keefe read his poems straight, while Douglas Kearney created prose from poems, the latter eliciting shouts of praise with a streaming exploration of how to write a love poem for a wife who does not want a “love poem.”  Deborah Puette, the evening’s stand-out for timing and poise, achieved a unique sense of love first appearing: not taken for granted, or easily felt, but simply waiting for the right moment to enter, unexpected and strong.

Creator/producers Roxanne Hart and John Pollono played a part in the pace of the evening, which neither rushed the audience into philosophy of the heart nor put the evening’s album on a repeat of parenting stories.  The evening felt cohesive even as it featured a tremendous variety of attitude and style.  (Furthermore, with Ron Bottitta acting as a clever MC, the impressive résumés of each reader didn’t go unrecognized.)  Martinez’s familiar and easy way preceded Redfield’s excitability, then Zajko’s quiet sting.  Bruno’s wisdom as a counselor led to an intermission as cheerful and chatty as a well-planned cocktail party in the intimate black box theater setting.  Puette’s remarkable storytelling abilities brought the audience back to attention.  (She swung “the role of a 5-year-old in a petticoat” during her eighth pregnant month.)  O’Keefe’s arresting presence led smoothly into Cortez’s reality check, while the live praises for Kearney’s work ended the Rant & Rave of Love with an audience enthusiastic for more.

The next Rant & Rave event will be held on March 15, with the theme “secrets” and with performers to be announced.  Tickets are $15, but often sell out.  Email RSVP@roguemachinetheatre.com to reserve a ticket at will call.  For more information, check www.roguemachinetheatre.com.