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From Encounter to Fade-out: Moxie Theatre’s ‘Fade’ by Tanya Saracho

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The Moxie Theatre production of Fade written by Tanya Saracho and directed by Maria Patrice Amon, featuring Javier Guerrero as Abel and Sofia Sassone as Lucia, is a powerful, moving, and timely work, exploring the intersections of gender, class, ethnicity, and value in the Trumpian America. Lucia, a new hire at the TV/Film studio, struggles to find her place as a script writer. Abel, a custodian in Lucia’s building, tries to survive as a single-father after a period of incarceration.

Through the two “Mexican” (one may want to use Latinx to maintain a gender-neutral and inclusive tone) characters, the play interrogates a variety of questions and issues of stereotypes, difference within one racial/ethnic group, identity (politics), tokenism, sexual discrimination, reality of the entertainment industry, and their effects on people, particularly on the underrepresented population in the United States.   [Read more…]

Politics, Reality, and Invention at the Time of Trial: San Diego Repertory Theatre’s ‘Actually’

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One of the first new words the daughter of my friend learned at her elementary school was “actually.” In the first week of her school, she repeated “actually this and actually that,” proudly parading this new addition to her vocabulary. This 6-year-old was also testing the magic of the word “actually” her teacher used while talking to her students. She seemed to have discovered this adverb’s power to validate one’s claim and/or opinion by repudiating the authenticity of the opponent’s argument.

Anna Ziegler’s Actually uses this very word as its title to interrogate the political, gender, and racial dynamics revealed during the Title IX investigation and hearing of a sexual misconduct case at a college campus.   [Read more…]

Refugees Cast in ‘The Jungle’, an Earnest Play about Migrant Camp Life in Calais

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As a response to its successful run at the Young Vic (December 2017-January 2018), The Jungle opened at Playhouse Theatre in London in June 2018 for a 20-week engagement. Created by Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy and directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, The Jungle tells the stories of the inhabitants of the makeshift camp in Calais, France, known as the Jungle.

The Jungle was an unofficial refugee camp with more than 8,000 individuals from over 17 countries including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Chad, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kurdistan, and Iran. The inhabitants of the camp were awaiting a chance to cross the Channel to the UK.   [Read more…]

Rewriting the Culture War with Music: Diversionary Theatre’s ‘The Loneliest Girl in the World’

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The world premiere of The Loneliest Girl in the World is a creative and moving work that looks at an early period of the gay rights movement by paralleling the lives of two figures, Anita Bryant and Thom Higgins (just Tommy in the musical).

The show opens with the press conference in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1977, where Tommy threw a pie in Anita’s face. The next two scenes take the audience back to the 1959 Miss America pageant, where Anita was the second runner-up. A young Tommy watches the pageant on TV while baking a pie with his mother. These scenes sets Tommy’s fixation on Anita, who, in his imagination, sings and dances with him.

The rest of the musical alternates between Anita and Tommy, capturing key events and experiences in their lives: Anita’s marriage to the former disc-jockey Robert Green, who becomes her manager; Anita’s appearances in commercials; her thriving career in the music industry. Tommy’s moving to a new city; his growing awareness of his sexuality; his first awkward encounter with Kyle, his future boyfriend, highlighted by a musical number “Twin Bed.”   [Read more…]

Moxie Theatre’s ’The Madres’: The Women’s “Performance” during the Dirty War

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The Moxie Theatre production (National New Play Network, Rolling World Premiere) of The Madres, written by Stephanie Alison Walker and co-directed by Maria Patrice Amon and Jennifer Eve Thorn, presents a “slice of life” of those affected by the Dirty War (1976-1983)—a seven-year campaign by the Argentine government which led to the kidnapping and murder of over 30,000 people under the direction of General Jorge Rafael Videla.

During the Dirty War demonstrations began on April 30, 1977 in Buenos Aires when fourteen mothers assembled in the Plaza de Mayo (a square built to celebrate the beginning of the Argentine republic on 25 May 1810) to petition for information on the fate of their “disappeared” children. These demonstrations—which some historians call political “performance”—grew during the Videla regime and drew international attention.

All of the demonstrators wore white shawls embroidered with the names of the disappeared. Their demonstration became more choreographed over time as the participants increased in number. Today the Mothers continue marching in the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday.   [Read more…]

The Life and Performances of Nathan Gunn – FLYING SOLO

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The San Diego Repertory Theatre production of FLYING SOLO, a collaboration of Nathan Gunn and Hershey Felder, chronicles Nathan Gunn’s life and career. The show captivates the audience not only with musical selections from the operas and musicals that he has performed but with its genuine portrayal of Gunn’s life and his relationship with those who have influenced him.

In addition to numerous operas and operettas at major venues around the world, Gunn has starred in a number of musicals including Sweeny Todd (The Houston Grand Opera), Camelot and Carousel (both with the New York Philharmonic) and Show Boat (Carnegie Hall and the Lyric Opera of Chicago). He will be seen in the revival production of The Magic Flute (directed and designed by Julie Taymor) at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2018.   [Read more…]

Race and Class in a Time of Crisis: Jeff Daniels’ ‘FLINT’

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The Purple Rose Theatre Company’s production of FLINT, written by Jeff Daniels and directed by Guy Sanville, is a powerful, evocative, and moving work packed with “tough language.” The 75-minute performance gives witness to two sets of families — an African American couple Mitchell and Olivia and a white couple Eddie and Karen — responding not only to the Flint water crisis but also to the current political, social, and cultural climate.

Set in Mitchell and Olivia’s home in September 2014, five months after the city switched the water supply, the couple attempts to decipher the city’s confusing and conflicting instructions through postings on their phones.

The setting provides a realistic feel — a small kitchen complete with sink, cupboards, a refrigerator, a small dining table, and three chairs. This humbly furnished space becomes the site for conversation, contention, and confrontation. The thrust stage of the intimate 168-seat theatre allows for the complete digestion of the external and internal damage, and pain of each character   [Read more…]

Remembering ‘White Christmas’ and Irving Berlin’s Legacy at San Diego Rep

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Hershey Felder’s Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin (directed by Trevor Hay) opened at the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Stage on December 22, 2017.

One of the pleasures of attending Felder’s shows (in which he portrays world-renowned composers such as Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Bernstein) is his unique “story-telling” with the composer’s music that illuminates the relationship between his music and life. A skillful actor, Felder entertains his audience with his personification of the composer and other characters. By the end of the show, his audiences, through key events in the composer’s life, “get to know” a human being, not just a composer.   [Read more…]

Voices of Insiders and Outsiders: Ping Chong+Company’s ALAXSXA/ALASKA

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Ping Chong + Company’s new multimedia workALAXSXA/ALASKA premiered at the Harper Studio Theater at the University of Alaska, Anchorage on August 31, 2017.

The title ALAXSXA/ALASKA is two different words for Alaska: Alaxsxa, an ancient word of the Unangax tribe, meaning the land against the sea breaks, was changed, by Russian traders in the eighteenth century, to Alaska. The juxtaposition of the two names suggests social, political, and cultural encounters and clashes between the natives and new settlers.

Integrating multiple theatre languages such as puppetry, video projections, movement, and music within a small performing area with a table in the center and two stools, ALAXSXA/ALASKA portrays past encounters between indigenous Alaskan Native communities and newcomers with three performers.   [Read more…]

Review: Martyna Majok’s ‘Ironbound’ Encapsulates Struggle of a Polish Immigrant Woman

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Moxie Theatre is staging its first production the 2017-2018 season, Martyna Majok’s “Ironbound.” Directed by Jennifer Eve Thorn, “Ironbound” is a story about a Polish immigrant woman “for whom love is a luxury and a liability as she fights to survive in America,” as described in the program.

Set at a bus stop at night in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Jacque Wilke portrays the life of Darja from 1992 — shortly after she emigrated to the United States with her first husband Maks (Arusi Santi) — until 2014, when she deals with her unfaithful boyfriend Tommy (Eric Casalini), a letter carrier.

Using 2014 as a jumping-off point, the play’s narrative goes switches between defining moments in Darja’s relationships with her two husbands (only her first husband appears on stage), her son (who never appears on stage) and Tommy, her current boyfriend. Vic (Carter Piggee), a high school kid, who finds Darja at the bus stop after she has been beaten by her second husband, acts as a Good Samaritan.   [Read more…]

Staging Trust, Love and Healing: Karen Hartman’s ‘Roz and Ray’ at San Diego Repertory Theatre

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San Diego Repertory Theatre is presenting Karen Hartman’s Roz and Ray, directed by Delcia Turner Sonnenberg, featuring Carla Harting and Steven Lone, at the Lyceum Stage. Set in Hartman’s hometown, San Diego, Roz and Ray portrays two people who are personally and professionally involved in the controversial treatment of hemophilia. The play spans 15 years, from 1976 through 1987 and a single day in 1991.

The beginning scene takes place at Children’s Hospital in San Diego in 1976, when Roz Kagan, a brilliant and caring doctor, explains to Ray, a father of twin sons with hemophilia, about a cutting-edge blood transfusion treatment using freeze-dried powdered concentrates containing Factor 8 and 9. Roz is excited about this new treatment because the concentrates can be stored and administered at home, eliminating countless trips to the hospital to receive conventional full-blood transfusion treatment. In the 1980s however, it was found that Factor 8 and 9 concentrates contained tainted blood from donors with AIDS, leaving more than half of the hemophiliac population in the United States infected with HIV.   [Read more…]

Rediscovering Japan: the Tsukiji Fish Market

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By Yuko Kurahashi

In early June 2017, I visited my family and friends in Tokyo, Japan. An additional purpose of this trip was to present a paper on theatre education in the United States at the Japanese Society for Theatre Research Conference held on the campus of Keio University located in Hiyoshi, Yokohama, about 12 miles west of the central Tokyo, my alma mater. During my stay, I also visited the Tsukiji Fish Market, one of the most famous fish markets in the world. This essay is about the Tsukiji Fish Market.

On June 9, 2017, I visited the Tsukiji Fish Market, Japan’s most famous wholesale fish market located on the east side of Tokyo. My mother said she and her mother-in-law used to go there to buy fresh fish in preparation for New Year’s celebration.   [Read more…]

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