Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk
(Turn on captions to see movie titles) [Read more…]
From Encounter to Fade-out: Moxie Theatre’s ‘Fade’ by Tanya Saracho
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’
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…]
Jim Carrey Acceptance Speech at the Britannia Awards | Video Worth Watching
In his acceptance speech for BAFTA’s Charlie Chaplin Excellence in Comedy Award, Jim Carrey reminded the audience that Chaplin’s comedy included pointed social commentary that took on the American right-wing of his day. He went on to draw parallels to current events, saying that “we are fighting those same evils today” and dedicating the award to Chaplin and contemporary heroes, including Christopher Steele, Christine Blasey Ford and Colin Kaepernick. [h/t to Shelly P.] [Read more…]
Ntozake Shange – a laying on of hands / i found god in myself | Video Worth Watching
R.I.P. Ntozake Shange, (October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018). StarTribune writer Rohan Preston notes that Shange’s “For Colored Girls”—an empowering series of interwoven poems on love and loss, joy and pain—introduced choreopoem into the dictionary. The poems were gathered into a show that opened off-Broadway in 1975, and on Broadway in 1976, and has been produced consistently ever since. Shange, 70, had suffered multiple strokes in recent years, but she had been on the mend lately, creating new work, giving readings and being feted for her work. She died in her sleep Saturday morning in an assisted living facility in Bowie, Md., where she lived. [Read more…]
Tyger – Guilherme Marcondes | Video Worth Watching
Following the election results in Brazil has been a bit discouraging with the “Brazilian Trump”—Jair Bolsonaro—getting 46% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. Perhaps a slight silver-lining to this dark news cloud is that thinking of things Brazilian reminded me of the fantastic 2006 video Tyger by the Brazilian filmmaker Guilherme Marcondes, inspired by William Blake’s poem of the same name. For those curious about how Brazil may be getting its own Trump, check out John Oliver’s take on Last Week Tonight. [Read more…]
Refugees Cast in ‘The Jungle’, an Earnest Play about Migrant Camp Life in Calais
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…]
‘Seize the King’ at La Jolla Playhouse: Self-Righteousness, Greed and Lust for Power
If you come to Will Power’s reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard III at La Jolla Playhouse expecting to hear that line about the winter of our discontent, or at the end of the play hoping to watch Richard stumble around the battle of Bosworth Field, crying for his horse, you will not find it in Seize the King.
But you will find a powerful tale of a contemporary Richard, lusting for his own power, lacking a conscience, and spouting his lines in a modern iambic pentameter, tinged with hip hop. (Will Power, playwright of the piece, is partially responsible for the development and popularity of hip-hop theater).
[Read more…]
The Right-Wing Firestorm Starting With the Smear of ACORN Rages On
By Peter Dreier
In their recent documentary ACORN and the Firestorm, Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard not only reveal how the mighty ACORN fell but also show how the attack on ACORN was a dress rehearsal for our current toxic political culture, including the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right.
Through archival clips and interviews with ACORN staffers, leaders and members, friendly and hostile politicians, and political analysts, the film recounts the group’s history, starting with its founding in Arkansas in 1970 by Wade Rathke, a charismatic and brazen young organizer.
In addition to registering millions of voters, ACORN assisted the working poor to buy homes and avoid foreclosure, challenged banks’ racist and predatory lending practices, stopped companies from spewing cancer-causing pollution in low-income neighborhoods, got local governments to fix up abandoned buildings that had become havens for crime, and fought for fair treatment by employers, landlords, insurance companies, and government. ACORN led the campaign to get Congress to strengthen the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act. It organized the victims of Hurricane Katrina to gain a voice in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. It spearheaded the living-wage movement in more than 100 cities and helped make the federal Earned Income Tax Credit an effective anti-poverty program. [Read more…]
Elemental | Video Worth Watching
From the Vimeo web site:
Photographer Ray Collins captures the magic that happens at the intersection of water and light. Each shot in this film was created from a single one of Ray’s original photos. The stills are transformed into cinemagraphs – a hybrid between photo and video – an infinite loop that makes a single moment last forever.
The original soundtrack was created by two very talented musicians, André Heuvelman on trumpet and Jeroen van Vliet on piano.
Rewriting the Culture War with Music: Diversionary Theatre’s ‘The Loneliest Girl in the World’
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…]
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Students Perform At The 2018 Tony Awards | Video Worth Watching
From the CBS YouTube site:
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, perform Rent’s “Seasons Of Love” in honor of their theatre teacher, Melody Herzfeld, who was named the recipient of the 2018 Excellence in Theatre Education Award, presented by Carnegie Mellon.
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