Kathleen Turner as Molly Ivins in "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins" / Photo by Mark Garvin from Philadelphia Theatre Company’s world premiere production

Kathleen Turner is currently onstage at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles for the West Coast premiere of “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.” David Esbjornson directs the one-woman show about the famous columnist and political commentator from Texas, which continues through Feb. 19.

“Red Hot Patriot” is a roaring salute to Ivins’ sharp-tongued humor and a fitting tribute to her work as a voice of the people and a crusader for American rights. She authored bestselling books and worked on staff at such newspapers as the Houston Chronicle, Texas Observer, Dallas Times Herald, Fort Worth Star Telegram and The New York Times, where, among other things, she wrote Elvis’ obituary.

It’s perhaps no surprise that “Red Hot Patriot” is getting rave reviews, since it has a powerhouse creative team. Turner, of course, is the award-winning actress famous for her roles in such movies as “Body Heat” and “Romancing the Stone” and equally lauded for her work in theater. Esbjornson has directed world premieres of plays by the likes of Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Arther Miller and Neil Simon. And how appropriate is it that playwrights Margaret and Allison Engel are also journalists?

Margaret is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who was a reporter at The Washington Post and now directs the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation. Her twin sister Allison has been a reporter, columnist and editor and is currently the associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California.

Allison Engel talked with Culture Spot about Ivins, Turner and women in theater.

Culture Spot: Why Molly Ivins, and why a play?

Allison Engel: The day that Molly Ivins died — and we’re coming up on the fifth-year anniversary of her death — my twin sister Margaret, whom we all call Peggy, called me and said, “We should do a one-woman play about Molly Ivins.” What we were thinking about is “Mark Twain Tonight” that Hal Holbrook has been performing for 40 years, and also there have been other one-person plays about writers.

Peggy and I felt that Molly was taken from us way too soon — she died at age 62. She had so many years of brilliant writing and it just seemed inconceivable that we would not hear her voice anymore. That said, there were still a lot of people that didn’t know Molly Ivins, even though at her height she was syndicated in nearly 400 newspapers.

So we had this idea that we would model it on “Mark Twain Tonight,” which is basically Hal Holbrook standing  in front of a curtain and giving different anecdotes of Mark Twain, but as we got into it further, theater professionals told us that … we really needed to make it more of a play about Molly’s life.

CS: Why was Kathleen Turner the right actress to play her, and how did she get onboard?

AE: From the very beginning, we thought Kathleen Turner would be perfect because she can play that brassy, bold, fearless person. We had no idea how perfect she was for it until this happened: I told a friend of mine, Jim Autry from Iowa, that we were working on this play, and he had met Molly several times and he asked, “Who are you thinking of playing her?” We said, “Kathleen Turner,” and he said, “You know I sit on a board with Kathleen.” I said, “No, I didn’t know that.” And it was People for the American Way, which is the progressive organization that Norman Lear began. Both Jim and Kathleen had been on the board for decades. He said, “I’m going to tell her about this,” and I said, “Oh, no, Jim, you can’t do that yet because we don’t have the permission.” We just wrote it before we got permission because we knew we’d have to have something to show whoever handled her estate to see whether they’d want to go with the idea since we didn’t have a track record as playwrights. He said he wouldn’t tell her, and then of course two weeks later he did tell her, and she said to him, “I want that script.”

As it turns out, Kathleen lives in New York, and Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas who was a very close friend of Molly’s, lived in New York for a while after she was governor, and she lived in the same building as Kathleen — coincidence of all coincidences. And when Molly would come to visit Ann, if Kathleen was around, they’d invite her up. Not only did she know Molly, but she and Molly had many of the same philosophies and were fighting for the same things: first amendment rights, the rights of women and all those progressive issues. So Kathleen … said she was interested in it, and that really helped when we went to Molly’s longtime agent who held the rights to her writing.

CS: I could tell Kathleen had a deep connection with Molly. It was beyond incredible acting, and at the end when she took her bows before a standing ovation, she looked like she was in tears.

AE: That’s exactly right. Kathleen is an extraordinary actress in any role, but in this role she really has a personal connection to Molly as far as the things Molly fought for and believed in and tried to bring to the public’s attention in her feeling that you are a citizen no matter what else and that you have an obligation to get involved in politics, even as rotten and awful as it is now. So it’s not just words on a stage. Kathleen really believes in those issues and admires Molly for how she was such a fighter all her life, and Kathleen has a long, long history of activism.

[In the play,] Molly talks about how she went around once a month at her own expense and spoke in small towns — we didn’t put this little factoid in the play, but Molly’s only caveat on going around and speaking to groups was that she not go to San Francisco or New York or places where there are a lot of liberals where she would just be preaching to the choir — she went to these little towns and continued speechifying as John Henry Faulk had done in his lifetime. And Kathleen also has spoken on behalf of Planned Parenthood and People for the American Way — I think she’s been on the board for 25 years, so this is not just a one-time or dilettante effort; she is very committed and has given generously of her time over the years — so it had real resonance for her.

CS: What was it like working with Kathleen and putting the piece together?

AE: It really made us appreciate how hard actors in the theater work. When a play gets on its feet, it’s eight performances a week. And Kathleen does not use understudies. On Saturdays and Sundays, there are two performances each day. … When it’s a one-woman show and you’re on stage the entire time, the stamina and the concentration that takes is remarkable. Kathleen’s powers of memorization are just jaw-dropping. She was in another play before this, and when this ends she is going to go back to that play where she’s on stage for two hours — it’s not a one-woman play but she’s the main character. So she came back to our production and had to relearn the whole thing because we had made some changes and it had been nine months or so since we had done it, and within four or five days she was off book and had it memorized. That is just amazing.

She is also incredibly punctual and she never missed a performance for illness in Philadelphia when the play premiered [at the Philadelphia Theatre Company in March 2010]. She is truly an incredibly hard worker, and then also those moments of brilliance that you can’t really write in, she just does it. It’s been such a treat to work with her, and she’s also been very helpful. As she says herself, “I’m not a writer, but I’m a great re-writer,” so in the rehearsal room first time around if there were lines that were just too long or seemed clunky or redundant or didn’t belong here, we totally respected her opinion on that. So she was involved in shaping the play absolutely.

CS: As journalists, you and your sister must have done a lot of research, and everything sounded so authentic that I wanted to know how much of the script was quoted material?

AE: It started out being primarily quoted material, about 80 percent, because we had so much wonderful material to work with. Molly had written columns for years and years, and she’d written books, and there had been interviews with her, and she’d been on “60 Minutes,” so there was a lot of material. But as the play progressed in putting it together, we realized as we moved away from just anecdote after anecdote, there had to be some connective tissue and that wouldn’t necessarily be in something she had written.  So it became closer to 50-50. It’s interesting, sometimes in reviews they’ll quote a line [thinking it was] Molly’s and it really wasn’t a line of Molly’s. We tried to make it sound like something she would say in her voice.

CS: What is an example of something we would think, “Oh, she must have said that or written that,” but you actually created it in her voice?

AE: One example would be when she says, “Alcohol may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route.” It sounds like something she’d say and it made sense because she was talking about her problems with alcohol, but that is not her line.

CS: How did you find or decide on the drama of her relationship with her father to drive the piece?

AE: That actually was true in real life. It was well documented that she had this drama with her father. And that was absolutely true about that column. She finally was writing a column about him, and the day she was writing it he  committed suicide. That really happened. It sounds like you couldn’t make it up; it’s such a dramatic thing. … It’s hard to get anything more gripping or compelling than that. … We did not have to embellish that at all.

CS: What has the reaction been in Philadelphia, Austin and Los Angeles so far?

AE: It’s been incredibly gratifying. At first in Philadelphia we were a little concerned because Molly had connections with many cities across the country. She had connections with many cities in Texas, connections with [Northampton, Massachusetts, where she attended] Smith College, Boulder, Colorado, Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she was a reporter; but she really didn’t have a connection with Philadelphia. So when it did so well in Philadelphia, that was such a positive thing for us.

There was a planeload of Texans, friends of Molly’s, who came to Philadelphia to see the play, and again we were concerned and hopeful that they would feel that we had captured Molly. They were very kind and generous about letting us know and people were crying, people who knew her. And that’s been the case everywhere, certainly in Austin, and just the other night in Los Angeles at one of the previews there was a woman afterwards crying who had known Molly and thought that it had captured her so well. [Molly’s] brother and sister went to Philadelphia and then went afterwards separately to Kathleen thanking her for her portrayal. And Lou Dubose, who was her co-writer on her two books on [President George W. Bush], who had worked with her for years and had known her so well, and [her co-editor at the Texas Observer] Kaye Northcutt — those were people we were very anxious to hear what they thought, and they did tell us that it very fairly captured the Molly they knew.

CS: That’s high praise.

AE: Molly has a lot of very close friends in Austin, and a lot of people are protective of her memory and they want her to be remembered in the right way. We were careful; we did not want to turn her into a standup comedian. She was very funny; we could have just done one-liners one after another, but that was really not what Molly was about. As she said, she used humor to make a point and to get people to listen. She was a very diligent reporter who researched her stories thoroughly. She wrote about the savings and loan crisis and a lot about government finance and topics where she did a lot of research. She wasn’t one of those people that just commented with one zinger after another; she put in her time covering the legislature and was really a student of government.

I think one of the most remarkable things about her was that she had a nationwide audience and was such a prescient commentator on the national political scene from Austin, Texas. She could have stayed in New York, she could have gone to Washington, D. C., but she didn’t want to be part of the pack and was very independent, and I think the fact that she was able to do that from Austin really says a lot about her skill and her intelligence, and it also put the lie to the fact that you have to be in New York or Washington, D. C., to be a national political commentator. Since Peggy and I have both been reporters both in large cities and also out of the corridors of power, that really resonated with us, because I don’t think you have to be in New York or Washington, D. C., to be able to have an informed opinion or comment on the national scene.

CS: Is there anything about this play that the media are not asking you about that you think is an interesting point that’s not being touched on?

AE: Another reason why we wanted to do the play is that there aren’t that many roles for actresses over 50. My twin went to a women’s conference before we even started writing the play, and Jane Fonda and Sally Field were there and they made a plea to these women writers saying, “We’ve aged out of most of the good roles, so please write things for women our age.” So we had that in the back of our minds also. I don’t think there’s a surplus of roles either in film or theater for women once they get past 40, so that was another reason why we wanted to do that.

CS: That’s true. There are a lot of great actresses that you never see anymore and wonder, “Where have they been?”

AE: At USC at the Annenberg School, Professor Stacy Smith does a survey once a year about the number of women in films and television versus men, and it’s just shocking, every year, it doesn’t get any better. They go to studio executives with hard data, and not only do they count numbers, but they also look at the number of times women are dressed in suggestive outfits. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s seriously out of whack. [For more on this topic, visit http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication%20and%20Journalism/SmithS.aspx]

CS: Where is the show headed next?

AE: It’s going to two cities in Texas this spring. It’s going to the Allied Theatre Group at Stage West in Fort Worth in May, and Houston’s Main Street Theater in June. Kathleen will not be in those productions because, as I said, she is going back to this other play. So they will have Texas actresses. In Austin, there was a great Texas actress named Barbara Chisholm…. She was amazing and fabulous too. There are a lot of wonderful actresses who are over 50 in theaters all over America and, as I said, they don’t have enough roles written for them.

In 1981, the exhibition “Multicultural Focus” was mounted at Los Angeles Municipal Gallery Barnsdall Park where Josine Starrels was Gallery Director. The exhibition was organized by Sheila Pinkel for the Los Angeles Center For Photographic Studies and curated by 12 artist/curators in the Los Angeles area, three each from the Asian, Black, Latino, and White communities, The show was one of two exhibitions selected to celebrate the Los Angeles Bicentennial, and it was the first cross‐cultural exhibition of photography in the Los Angeles area. Suzanne Muchnic, called it “the best contemporary show (of photography) of the year,” Los Angeles Times: Dec. 27, 1981.

“Refocus: Multicultural Focus” will include current work by 19 of the original artists in the exhibition. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition providing images from the original show juxtaposed to contemporary work and statements by participating artists. Catalogue essays by Deborah Bright, Carla Williams and Paul Von Blum will reflect the concept of and changes that have taken place in multiculturalism and photography during the last 30 years.

Participating artists are: Arden Alger, Don Anton, Stephen Axelrad, Carroll Parrott Blue, Elizabeth Bryant, Gillian Brown, Steve Berens, Dennis Callwood, Todd Gray, Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Willie Robert Middlebrook, Patrick Nagatani, Joan Salinger, Rick Tejeda‐Flores, Linda Wolf, Nancy Webber, Mihoko Yamagata and Bruce Yonemoto.

ARENA 1, 3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica 90405. Hours are noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. For more information, call (310) 397-7456 or visit www.santamonicaartstudios.com.

Ray and Charles Eames photographing an early model of the exhibition "Mathematica: A World of Numbers and Beyond," 1960 / ©2011 Eames Office, LLC

You may not know it, but most people are informally aware of Charles and Bernice “Ray” Eames’ aesthetic impact on the world. In “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” producers Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey recount the lives and creative output of the Eameses, who are best known for their modern furniture (such as the molded plywood Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman) and their ventures into film (most notably “Powers of Ten,” where a couple is seen picnicking at regular scale, and perspective then zooms out to a view from the far universe and finally zooms back in and through to the atomic level).

The film (written by Cohn and narrated by James Franco) follows the collaborative couple’s career as it moves from furniture design and manufacturing to the postindustrial communication of ideas and information. Their work had ties to political, economic, and technological development (some of their clients were the U.S. government, furniture retailer Herman Miller, and IBM) and their work subsequently tracked the complex changes in culture. This mix of partnerships revealed an unsettling relationship between art, commerce, and culture that appeared to catch the Eameses between modern and postmodern sensibilities.

The irony in the title of the film is the fact that Ray rarely painted, even though she was highly capable (she studied under Hans Hoffman), and the fact that Charles dropped out of architecture school and was never a licensed architect. The irony in the film is how the subjects of the documentary are disturbingly tarnished by abrupt emphasis on infidelity issues and by the questioning of Charles’ authorship (former office staff members in the film claimed he took full credit for collaborative efforts). After getting to “know” the Eameses, the infidelity segment at the end of the film made me feel sorry for a neglected Ray. The issues with authorship similarly followed the film’s building up of the Eameses in a very positive light, and then unexpectedly tearing them down by unraveling the documentary’s carefully crafted personas.

The infusing of these negative aspects into the film was troubling, especially if they were inserted for dramatic subjectivity in the documentary format. It was disturbing to see the film’s subjects besmirched after presenting them in such a delicately admirable way. It could possibly be that the Eameses had been rendered too likable for their flaws to be exposed, but for the first film to be made about them since their deaths (Charles in 1978 and Ray in 1988), I think the positive aspects of their lives would be more appropriate for a lasting, historical preservation of their significance. After all, this film seems to fulfill a need to solidify their influence and positive accomplishments in the historical record, not their shortcomings.

“Eames: The Architect and the Painter” presents a documentary that reveals the limitations of imposing a (cinematic) form upon a collaborative couple who were endlessly dynamic and complex. By trying to compress a chaotic expanse of creative output into a tidy historical narrative, the resulting message regarding Charles and Ray can be appropriately ambiguous and disconnected. The chronicled accelerating change in their work’s media and messages captures the disjointed, experimental approach of the Eameses, which is interestingly mirrored by the splintering and clouding of the film’s message as it tries to contain the voluminous chaos of their production. Like “Powers of Ten,” the film tries to view something dauntingly large and diverse; unlike “Powers of Ten,” the film doesn’t maintain a distinct, linear progression and becomes unfocused by a diffused detail overload.

But it seems the Eameses weren’t concise, and the entangled layering of information appeared similarly unfocused. If intentional, this defocusing not only is an effective and clever means of understanding the atmosphere created by their quirky and experimental collaboration, but it poetically captures the essence of the Eames epoch.

I struggled with the desire to see clearly organized and objective historical information, but by taking a distanced perspective after viewing the film, the blur came into focus and I was able to appreciate the Eameses in a fully personal, subjective way. The oddly convincing point of view used in this documentary conveys the unusual beauty of the Eameses’ insatiably creative, inquisitive, and progressive process, which left an enduring impact on aesthetics and design. “Eames: The Architect and the Painter” is a great chance to get to know formally, or be reacquainted with, the artists and their legacy.

“Eames: The Architect and the Painter” opened in Los Angeles in November and is available on DVD from First Run Features.

—Bryan Kent, Culture Spot LA

Guest contributor Bryan Kent is an artist working in New York City.

The UCLA Choral Outreach Program at Venice High School on Oct. 26, 2011

Teenagers listening to a teacher with utmost interest and intense concentration… teenagers following instructions with utter devotion, striving to be the best they can be… and ultimately, teenagers grinning as happily as if they were at a party, even though what they’ve been doing was, in fact, hard musical work. Elusive though such visions often are, they’re fully apparent in recent photos from Venice and Mira Costa high schools, depicting their students’ participation in the new UCLA Choral Outreach Program.

The instructor who so inspires them, smiling an infectious smile in every photo, is UCLA’s associate director of choral activities, Dr. Rebecca Lord, whose youthful, pixieish appearance belies her years of experience as a soprano soloist, actress, dancer, violinist and orchestral conductor. The outreach program, developed this year by Lord and Professor Donald Neuen, director of choral activities, sends Lord traveling to middle and high schools in the greater Los Angeles area, offering knowledge and training to enhance the quality of school choir performances, and striving to help high school choral directors make choral singing an exciting, enjoyable activity in which students want to take part.

The outreach program, which was launched in October, is designed to remedy the recent dearth in public school music education. The current depressed economy has caused funding for the arts to be cut, eliminating music programs altogether in many schools, and making it almost impossible for the remaining public-school music teachers to dedicate the time and energy needed to really bring forth the joy, excitement and passion of great music.

The aim of Lord and her associates is to work with teachers to build a stronger arts community, giving the students quality artistic experiences that the schools can no longer afford to provide. Through hands-on coaching sessions offered free of charge, they seek to help school choir directors make their ensembles shine, to motivate music students to prepare for a higher education and to instill in them a love of singing and music that will last a lifetime. So far 140 schools in and near the UCLA area have been contacted about the outreach program.

Upon request, at the choir director’s convenience, Lord visits a school and hears its choir. She validates the students’ and director’s good work. Then she helps them to enhance it by studying their previously rehearsed repertoire with them, bringing her own expertise to the proceedings. In her coaching sessions, or “clinics” as UCLA has dubbed them, Lord helps students to improve their vocal technique, phrasing and musicality, instructs them on how to properly stand and hold their scores, and assists them with their diction, in French, German and Italian as well as in English, so they can sing the classic choral repertoire in all its original languages.

Perhaps most importantly of all, she helps students to enhance their personal expression in song. Choral singing demands such concentration from a purely musical standpoint that emotional expression is easily lost, but with unique “acting” exercises, Lord encourages students to remember the meaning of the text they sing and convey that meaning to their audience in a compelling way. Under her guidance, students learn to infuse their singing with passion, all too rarely heard on a middle and high school level, making the music exciting not only for audiences but also for the young singers themselves.

In addition to coaching, the outreach program provides free concerts for middle and high school students, performed by the UCLA Choruses and held in UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. These concerts are conceived to enhance middle and high schoolers’ understanding of choral singing and help to motivate them by exposing them to professional-quality performances.

“Every time my students visit the UCLA Choirs,” states public school choral director Heather Gold, who annually brings her students to UCLA to hear chorale rehearsals, “they come back more dedicated to excellence, excited to rehearse.”

The goal of the new outreach concerts is to bring such dedication and excitement to a greater number of students than ever before. The first concert took place on Dec. 2, with enormous success.

“I was able to feel the emotion of music in a way I never have before,” declares one student who attended the concert. “I was inspired.”

Other concerts will follow in 2012 on March 16 and June 8.

Over the past two months, Lord and her associates have worked with more than a dozen schools and hope to work with many more in the future. To do so, however, they will need increased financial support in the following months. The Choral Outreach Program is funded entirely by private donations and cannot continue beyond 2011 unless devotees of musical education continue to donate. Any financial assistance will be greatly appreciated by faculty and students alike. Donations can be made by visiting the UCLA Choral Activities website, www.uclachoralmusic.com, and clicking “Give.”

“We love working with the students,” Lord declares, “watching their faces catch on fire with excitement as they express themselves and grow as artists. We rejoice as they cheer each other on, building teamwork and achieving excellence.”

The teachers and students with whom Lord has worked thus far return her enthusiasm. “Dr. Lord is professional, knowledgeable, articulate, inspiring, and my students loved her,” states one teacher. “You have a real gem there!”

“Dr. Lord gave me a solid model for my musical persona,” declares a student, “the professional musician that I want to be.”

But perhaps the most encouraging quote of all is one from another student, simple in nature, but expressing a joy that sums up the motivation, devotion and ambition that the outreach program aims to arouse:

“I had fun singing! I hope Dr. Lord comes again soon!”

—Jordan Serchuk, Culture Spot LA

Contributing writer Jordan Serchuk recently graduated from UCLA’s music department.

The week after Thanksgiving, the Polish playwright Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk will be in town for two public readings of her plays (directed by two mainstays of the Los Angeles theater scene): Pantofelnik’s Suitcase, directed by Katharine Noon (Ghost Road Company) at the Atwater Village Theatre, on Nov. 29, and The Mayor, directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera (Playwrights’ Arena) at USC, on Dec. 1. Los Angeles audiences will have the rare opportunity to encounter Sikorska-Miszczuk’s unusual brand of very dark comedy and to hear this playwright’s work in English translation.

Dear Mr. Pantofelnik:

I’m writing to you regarding an important matter. Though you might not

find this particularly disturbing, I’m standing on one leg. … Where are you? Please come back this instant. Tell me all the stories I was deprived of. And please connect me to the pipe pumping water from the wellspring of our national culture. By the way, who are you? What is your religion? Just to be on the safe side, I celebrate Ramadan, go to Midnight Mass, meditate in Nepal, and fast on Yom Kippur. But I don’t know who I am, so it’s all phony anyway. I’m scared someone will denounce me any day now. I love you: did you know that?

Your devoted son, Franswa. [Writing to a father he has never met – Ed.]

—from Pantofelnik’s Suitcase, by Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk

The two plays which will be read next week are thematically connected: both deal with contemporary Polish citizens trying to come to terms with their history, particularly the history of the second World War and the troubled relationship of Poles to Jews. Sikorska-Miszczuk bases the world of her plays, in part, on the Polish town of Jedwabne, which has had its deeply upsetting history — the Poles attacked the Jews of the town during the Nazi invasion — extensively publicized and explored in Jan Gross’ book Neighbors, Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s play Nasza Klasa (Our Class), and the reporting of Anna Bikont (mentioned below), among many others.

With so many other writers searching for factual accounts relating to Jedwabne, Sikorska-Miszczuk’s work takes a different tack: it makes frequent use of surrealism, breaking the fourth wall, self-referentiality, and acerbic irony. She acknowledges the disturbing humor that can arise around situations of historical atrocity. Her character Franswa writes to his father, “I’m scared someone will denounce me any day now.” When people live in fear due to facts from the past having been concealed — when the truth is not fully understood — situations of inadvertent comedy can emerge. Sikorska-Miszczuk’s plays are not documentaries, nor are they intended to be. No one could accuse her of taking her subject matter lightly — rather, she finds dramatic strategies other than funerary seriousness with which to address this tragic history.

Here’s what Sikorska-Miszczuk has written about the connection between the two plays that will be presented in LA:

“In 2009, I wrote ‘The Mayor,’ a play in which I tried to tell the story of a mythical Town that has to face the Truth about a past atrocity. …

Two years later, I concluded that the story I had told in ‘The Mayor’ was too ‘cryptic.’ The main character — the mayor of the title — is a real-life person described by the journalist Anna Bikont in her excellent and riveting reportage ‘Jedwabne — the desperate search for something positive.’ (Gazeta Wyborcza, March 23-24, 2002)

I decided therefore to retell the story, based on the facts and expertise, as another of my characters, Franswa Jackoh, says to the Miserable Tour Guide at the Holocaust Museum in ‘Pantofelnik’s Suitcase.’ … I was looking for a less mythical space in which to place my characters. All the same, the play is a fiction, and not a docu-drama.

It was my intention for both plays to be treated as parts of a whole, while recognizing that they are separate.”

—Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Warsaw, September 2011

To give a few examples of Sikorska-Miszczuk’s surrealist tendencies at work, in Pantofelnik’s Suitcase, an answering machine and a Narrator figure speak directly to the audience. The main character, Pantofelnik, writes a letter to heaven (quoted above) trying to reach his lost father. He discovers information about him through an improbable coincidence at a Holocaust museum, with the help of a Miserable Tour Guide whose work at the museum has made her depressed about humanity and history. The tour guide is so sad she wants to quit her job when Pantofelnik’s story, and quest for his father, gives her a new source of hope.

This sort of fairy-tale-esque plotting, speaking inanimate objects, and characters named by personality (“Miserable Tour Guide”) may bring the plays of Sarah Ruhl to mind; but Sikorska-Miszczuk’s situations have sharper edges. The facts of history and the characters’ confused psychological responses to those facts give these plays teeth. Her dramatic sensibility, unlike Ruhl’s, does not necessarily move towards the happy ending. It may be more accurate to compare her to Tony Kushner; or it may be that there is no exact analog for her writing in the English-language theater. LA residents will have a chance to decide for themselves.

—Dara Weinberg, Culture Spot LA

More information on the readings:

Ghost Road Company presents Pantofelnik’s Suitcase, by Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, directed by Katharine Noon

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 8 p.m.
Atwater Village Theatre
Free admission

A reception with the playwright will follow the performance.
For reservations and information, call (310) 281-8341 or visit www.ghostroad.org.
http://www.facebook.com/events/165221403573662/

Sponsored by Adam Mickiewicz Institute

USC School of Theatre presents The Mayor, by Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera

Thursday, Dec. 1, 7 p.m.

MCC Studio Theatre
Free, no reservations required

A short talkback with the playwright will follow the performance.

For information, call the School of Theatre at (213) 740-8686 or visit http://theatre.usc.edu.

Guest contributor Dara Weinberg is originally from Los Angeles but currently living in Poland, studying theater, on a Fulbright. Her writing is recently published or forthcoming in Biweekly.pl, American Theatre, The Hopkins Review, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Explosion-Proof and Foothill.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre visits the Broad Stage through Nov. 27. / Photo courtesy of the Broad Stage

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre puts the play in the Bard’s plays with endless rambunctious energy and side-splitting physical humor — so much so, that you’ll feel as if no one could have more fun onstage with William Shakespeare’s comedies than this London-based troupe that performs at home in an authentic reproduction of the Bard’s 1599 playhouse. Returning to Santa Monica for the third year, the Globe’s incomparable actors once again turned the Broad Stage into a rollicking party for “The Comedy of Errors.”

“The Comedy of Errors” is one of the Bard’s — or, given the current vigorous debate about authorship, someone’s — earliest plays. William Shakespeare or not William Shakespeare? It hardly matters. These words have been entertaining for centuries, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre knows how to play with them like true poets.

The setup for the play is that Egeon, a Syracusan merchant, shows up in Ephesus in search of his wife and son, lost in a shipwreck 25 years earlier. His other son, an identical twin, has also been traveling in search of his mother and brother and winds up in the same place unbeknownst to Egeon. The separated twins also have servants that happen to be twins. In the end, the entire family is reunited — but only after many comical cases of mistaken identity.

Eight cast members play multiple roles and make no secret of the switches, lending opportunity for even more laughs than are scripted.  Bill Buckhurst plays Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus. Fergal McElherron plays the twin Dromio brothers, servants to the separated Antipholuses. Buckhurst and McElherron smoothly transition between characters with changes in speech and personality so precise that the glasses for the Syracuse guys really aren’t even necessary.

In one scene, a door placed center stage divides the inside and outside of Antipholus of Ephesus’ house. Buckhurst and McElherron run back and forth playing the twins. Then the antics are kicked up a notch when someone starts revolving the door and all of the actors must run back and forth. There was a funny bit when Buckhurst, probably on purpose, forgets to take his glasses off when he switches to the Ephesus twin. That’s just one example of how the group doesn’t miss a single opportunity for laughs. The way they handle the final scene in the play when both sets of twins are revealed is hilarious — and I won’t give it away.

The actors are masters of slapstick, physical comedy, not unlike the Three Stooges or even cartoons. At one point when Dromio is being kneed in the groin by Antipholus because he failed to do something Antipholus had unknowingly told the other Dromio to do, McElherron bounces up in the air with each blow, like in a cartoon fight. Then he adds an extra bounce after Buckhurst has already stopped the punishment. In yet another scene, McElherron suffers blows to the leg and then, by some unbelievable feat of double-jointedness, moves off stage with his leg bent 90 degrees! The women characters don’t get quite as much opportunity in this area, but Laura Rodgers as Adriana takes a number of comically lascivious poses with Antipholus of Syracuse whom she mistakes for her husband.

Because Buckhurst and McElherron are onstage practically forever and because they are positively amazing in their dual roles, it’s easy to see why they steal the show. But everyone is outstanding: the aforementioned Rodgers as Adriana, Duncan Wisbey as Angelo/Duke, Cornelius Booth as Dr. Pinch/Egeon, Dana Gartland as Luciana, Sophie Scott as various merchants and Emma Pallant who suavely transitions from courtesan to abbess. Other cast members help with sound effects and contribute beautiful singing and music along with the principals (who play accordion, clarinet and drums), with a little help from composer and music director Alex Silverman.

To be honest, it’s hard to know how the actors ever catch their breath because the pace of practically the entire play is breakneck. They are obviously having fun up there. Kudos to the actors and director Rebecca Gatward for the perfectly orchestrated chaos. Despite the pace, the audience never gets lost in the language. The actors speak their lines as if from the heart rather than memory, making the intent of every line clear.

Set and costume designer Liz Cooke creates a simple environment with a wooden stage and rustic tent and opts for more contemporary apparel to create the Turkish ambiance. Though spartan, it works. And on opening night, we didn’t feel deprived of the visual splendor that comes with elaborate Elizabethan costumes, since we could ogle amazing brocades and pearls on many of the audience members who knew how to party like it’s 1623!

Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole has impressed us again with his merry players, and the Broad Stage staff and audience know how to play off of their playfulness. We’re already looking forward to the Globe Theatre’s fourth year in Santa Monica.

—Julie Riggott, Culture Spot LA

Performances continue through Nov. 27 at the Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica, (310) 434-3200, http://thebroadstage.com. Other shows coming up at the Broad Stage and the smaller Edye include: “Jane Austen Unscripted” with holiday tea (Dec. 3-18) and Helen Hunt in “Our Town” (Jan. 13-Feb. 12).

Maya Beiser / photo by Merri Cyr

Glennie and Beiser will perform two individual sets and then come together to debut a new work written for them by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang.

Israeli-born Beiser will perform pieces from her 2010 record Provenance, which features work by composers of Iranian, Israeli and Armenian descent, among others, drawing inspiration from the Spanish Golden Age and the multicultural confluence of music, art and culture there — plus, in Beiser’s words, her own “crazy rendition” of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”

Evelyn Glennie / photo by Jim Callaghan

From the world’s first full-time solo percussionist expect a free-flowing program style. Glennie gives more than 100 performances per year worldwide, offering her fans a transfixing, multi-instrumental, dynamic experience. She often performs barefoot to enhance her incredible ability to sense sound through vibration. She has collaborated with Björk and Sting, and she played in the Oscar the Grouch Band on “Sesame Street.”

For tickets and more information, visit http://www.uclalive.org/calendar/event_detail.asp?id=133.

Image from the Juno Project at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. / Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

The A x S Festival 2011 runs Oct. 1 through 16, continuing the Pasadena Arts Council’s biennial celebration of Pasadena’s unique heritage as a city of art and science. The festival, focused on the theme of fire and water, features two weeks of art, dance, music, theater, performance and conversation at venues throughout the city. Plus, beginning this month, many Pasadena arts venues are participating in the Getty’s “Pacific Standard Time” creative collaboration. Art Night (Oct. 14 from 6 to 10 p.m.) is your opportunity to experience “Pacific Standard Time” and the A x S Festival for free, with free transportation between 15 participating cultural institutions.

Some of the highlights of A x S include:

“WORLDS”: Experience the art and science of our solar system in “WORLDS” at the Art Center College of Design’s Williamson Gallery. The objects and images on display include contemporary art, sculpture and large-scale installations as well as NASA spacecraft imagery, meteorites and science fiction video. Also on view are high-resolution prints of historical astronomical book sketches by Galileo, Copernicus and other astronomers — scanned and drawn from the rare-book collection at the Huntington Library. The exhibit runs Oct. 14, 2011 through Jan. 15, 2012 (opening night reception Oct. 13).

“Sunflowers in Snow”: Boston Court Performing Arts Center partners with Red Hen Press in an evening of spoken word and poetry, focusing on the theme of fire and water and featuring Garrett Hongo, Jim Tilley and Evie Shockley, on Oct. 10 at 7 p.m.

“Beneath the Surface”: Experience the mystery of the Juno spacecraft’s visit to Jupiter before it actually gets there in 2016 with Jet Propulsion Laboratory Visual Strategist Dan Good’s interactive installation at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Oct. 16 will feature a full day of speakers and activities, as well as free admission. The exhibit runs through Jan. 8, 2012.

“Picturing the Bomb”: This exhibit at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery features photographs from the secret world of the Manhattan Project, curated by Rachel Fermi (granddaughter of physicist Enrico Fermi) and Esther Samra. Opens Oct. 5.

Among the many choices on Art Night are: Kidspace Museum’s activities with JPL Gravity Scientist Sami Asmar, the Norton Simon Museum’s “Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California,” and Armory Center for the Arts’ “Speaking in Tongues: The Art of Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken.”

For a brief synopsis of “Pacific Standard Time,” read our recent post.

Image from the exhibit "California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Beginning on Oct. 1, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980” brings together more than 60 cultural institutions throughout Southern California to tell the story of the rise of the L.A. art scene and its impact on the art world. This colossal collaboration was initiated by the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Center has organized four exhibitions and an installation, along with films, lectures, panel discussions, classes and more, continuing into 2012.

Participating museums, galleries, educational institutions and other venues span L.A., Pasadena and Long Beach and extend as far as San Diego, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs. Exhibits and events cover a wide variety of artistic developments — everything from pop, post-minimalism and modernist architecture to Chicano performance art, Japanese-American design and African-American film. Important L.A. artists featured in various exhibits include John Baldessari, Judy Chicago, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha and Betye Saar. A jam-packed website provides opportunities to browse by exhibit, location, date and type of art and suggests complementary exhibits of interest as you explore.

Given the number and range of events related to “Pacific Standard Time,” the historical overview exhibit at the Getty is a good place to start: “Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970″ runs Oct. 1, 2011, through Feb. 5, 2012, concurrently with another exhibit revealing how artists at that time disseminated their work, “Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics, 1950-1980.”

In addition to a photography exhibit called “In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945-1980,” which will be on view Dec. 20, 2011, to May 6, 2012, visitors to the Getty can see De Wain Valentine’s “Gray Column,” a 12-foot-high column of polyester resin, and Robert Irwin’s “Black on White,” a monumental wedge of granite, through March 2012.

Image from the exhibit “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Monarch Bay Homes, Laguna Niguel (Outdoor Dining Terrace) (1961). Carlos Diniz Ladd & Kelsey. Screenprint 20 1/8 x 26 in. LACMA, Gift of Gilbert Ortiz and Edward Cella Art + Architecture, M.2010.76.2 Photograph © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA.

Plácido Domingo performs the baritone title role in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” at LA Opera Feb. 11 through March 4.

Things kicked off with Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” which continues through Oct. 9. This Romantic Russian opera, based on the classic verse novel of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, is a company premiere from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Finnish National Opera. It stars Oksana Dyka and Dalibor Jenis as Tatiana and Onegin. This production marks only the second time LA Opera has mounted a Tchaikovsky work.

Mozart’s comic “Così Fan Tutte” presents another rare opportunity: it hasn’t been on stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 15 years. It runs through Oct. 8. Featuring period staging by director Nicholas Hytner in a production from the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, “Così Fan Tutte” has a clever and entertaining plot about two young men testing their lovers’ faithfulness. The title translates from the Italian as “Woman Are All Alike.”

Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” runs Nov. 6-26. This French version of the story of literature’s most famous lovers is a revival for LA Opera, conducted by Plácido Domingo. Tenor sensation Vittorio Grigolo makes his company debut as Roméo, and Nino Machaidze returns as Juliette.

Plácido Domingo performs the baritone title role in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” Feb. 11 through March 4. James Conlon, internationally recognized as a master of Verdi, conducts. Described by LA Opera as a “grand-scale study of power and treachery,” this Italian opera “finds an emotional center in the tender and unbreakable bond between father and daughter.” This production from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is a company premiere.

On stage Feb. 25 through March 17 at LA Opera is “Albert Herring” by Benjamin Britten.

On stage Feb. 25 through March 17, “Albert Herring” is the second in a series (after last season’s “The Turn of the Screw”) celebrating the upcoming centenary of the birth of British composer Benjamin Britten. In this production from the Santa Fe Opera, American tenor Alek Shrader makes his company debut in the title role, a comic character who becomes May Queen by virtue of his being the only virgin in his English country village.

A true warhorse, Puccini’s “La Bohème” returns May 12 to June 2. Rising young American singers Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello star as the bohemian young Parisians Mimi and Rodolfo in this heartbreaking story of opera’s most famous lovers, sung in Italian. This is a revival of an LA Opera original production.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at LA Opera as it celebrates its 25th anniversary with an Open House from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 5. They’ve planned a series of free activities to showcase the fascinating world of opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.