Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

Jerry Quickley and reg e gaines Return to the Douglas

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 15:35:00 -0800

Quickley and gaines have been friends for a very long time. “We’re friends from the spoken word/poetry scene in the early 1990s,” said Gaines. “We were voiceless, and suddenly got an opportunity to get our voice heard.” Since then, their voices have traveled around the world: Quickley has collaborated with Philip Glass, held a fellowship at Stanford University, and had his work performed from Big Sur to Baghdad, while gaines wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics for the Tony Award®-winning musical Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk. In 2006, Center Theatre Group audiences were treated to their first taste of a Quickley-gaines collaboration when gaines directed Quickley’s solo show Live From the Front at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

Quickley and gaines return to the Douglas on February 8, 2016 with Through the Looking Glass, a collaboration with community members from Leimert Park and Montebello that explores their lives and neighborhoods—and how people from these two unique Los Angeles places see one another. After seven months of co-facilitating writing workshops with participants, Quickley crafted a script based on their work, and gaines is directing a presentation at the Douglas as well as readings on February 2 in Montebello and February 3 in Leimert Park.

Quickley and gaines agree that their nontraditional theatre backgrounds and the strength and length of their friendship have made Through the Looking Glass work. “Most folks who spend a great deal of energy in traditional theatre models are at best uncomfortable with parts of what we’re doing—and more often than not terrified,” said Quickley. They’re spending just a few weeks writing and rehearsing Through the Looking Glass, although the workshops took place over the course of months. “I needed a counterpart who understood that process and was OK with it,” said Quickley of his director. “You need someone who understands and is comfortable with and doesn’t freak out about shortened time frames, not-traditional writers, not-traditional actors. And you need someone who’s very flexible and community-based and has a tremendous amount of theatre insight and intelligence. And fortunately for us, reg e gaines is that person.”

The process of making Through the Looking Glass is not dissimilar to the one that produced Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk. “There was no script. Six days a week, six hours a day for 90 days, we put a piece together that eventually went to Broadway,” said gaines. “That’s my Ph.D. Everything I work on is like that to a certain extent.”

Working with Quickley “in an artistic situation is a piece of cake,” said gaines, thanks to their long friendship. “If he says something, I don’t have to doubt a word that he says; I know that it’s true. Or if I say something and he doesn’t agree, he’ll tell me. There’s no filter or anything like that. That’s a great thing.”

Their ease with one another and the process has been felt viscerally by participants. “They’re absolutely brilliant,” said V. Kali, a Leimert Park community member. She described Jerry as “fearless,” and lauded gaines’ “stellar” listening skills. “They hear things that nobody else hears,” she said. “They’re like musicians in that way. It’s just a joy to work with them.”

Quickley and gaines hope that audiences experience the joys participants experienced in the process of creating Through the Looking Glass. “Courage, fearlessness—and that means community, family, trust, and love,” said Gaines. “That’s all got to come through.”

“My hope,” said Quickley, “is that that process generates hope. My hope is that that process generates more humanity. My hope is that that process generates more understanding.”

Two L.A. Communities Peer 'Through the Looking Glass'

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 14:08:00 -0800

“Through the Looking Glass is an arts-focused, prescriptive community engagement, designed as a vessel to hold a pool of community memories, reflections, and hopes, all of which are executed through an iterative multi-site theatre-making program,” said Quickley. Stated more simply, the goals of the process are to allow “communities to dream together and to feel together, especially in places where there may be a distressed connection between the communities or where there has been no connection.”

Over the course of the project, Quickley used the residents’ autobiographies to create a play that is “a direct reflection of some of the collective memories, longing, milestones, culture, and challenges that link these communities as they consider each other,” said Quickley. “What does it mean to be you, as you imagine the life of the other?”

Quickley created Through the Looking Glass as a visiting fellow at Stanford University; its first iteration paired Stanford students with incarcerated youth. “Our program allows community members who often lack public agency to frame their stories, and by extension those of their community, family, and friends, on a platform—theatre—that both changes the context of and empowers the legitimacy of their stories as well as that of their communities,” said Quickley. “This effect scales through both communities, and the impact is far greater because the communities are in artistic dialogue with one another, as opposed to only gazing inward.”

Through the Looking Glass explores the preconceptions Montebello and Leimert Park have about each other, and what happens when these ideas and reality collide. Participants will perform live stage readings in Montebello on February 2, 2016 and in Leimert Park on February 3, 2016, culminating in a performance at Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre on February 8, 2016.

“We seek to empower communities to be the decision makers about what stories are valuable, individually and collectively, in the spine that connects their history, present, and hopes for the future,” said Quickley.

Through the Looking Glass is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Since 1937, The James Irvine Foundation has provided more than $1.5 billion in grants to over 3,600 nonprofit organizations across the state. The Foundation’s mission is to expand opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful, and inclusive society.

Center Theatre Group Donors Attend David Bowie's 'Lazarus'

Center Theatre Group — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 23:36:00 -0800

Lazarus was sold out for months before its opening, well before the public knew that Bowie was ill. But Goren and Buckhantz were able to secure tickets through Center Theatre Group’s VIP Ticket Desk, which provides donors with assistance in purchasing house seats at our theatres and in New York and London.

Both Goren and Buckhantz admire Bowie’s music, but that was just one reason each (separately) decided to see Lazarus.

“I love the director,” said Buckhantz of van Hove, adding that A View From the Bridge, which he is currently directing on Broadway, “was breathtaking and one of my most memorable theatre experiences. I wanted to see more of his work.”

Goren described herself as “a huge Bowie fan” who was intrigued by the prospect of a Bowie-Walsh-van Hove collaboration as well as seeing Michael C. Hall in the lead role.

“Seeing the show after Bowie's passing has taken on a completely new meaning,” said Goren. “I think that this is the best epitaph Bowie could have written for himself. One really understands what kind of legacy he wanted to leave.”

The show, added Buckhantz, “does reflect on how one approaches one’s death and the feeling of being caught between life and death—a view that is more poignant coming from someone who is still alive but knows that death is imminent.”

According to The New York Times, the artists and creative team behind Lazarus decided not to add anything to the production after Bowie’s death, and to let the art speak for itself. But fans had placed flowers outside the theatre to pay tribute, noted Buckhantz. Goren said that many audience members cried during the show. “Everyone was kind of stunned and silent at the end, filing out of the theatre after a standing ovation,” she said. “I feel very privileged to have been able to experience Lazarus right after Bowie's passing. To me it made for the perfect tribute to his art.”

'Through the Looking Glass' Reflects on 'Appropriate' and 'The Christians'

Patricia Garza — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 23:22:00 -0800

Guided by playwright and poet Jerry Quickley, Through the Looking Glass participants studied and wove into their discussion two plays from the Mark Taper Forum 2015 season: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate and Lucas Hnath’s The Christians. Not only did community members read and deeply analyze the scripts, which deal with a number of themes tackled by Through the Looking Glass, they also were able to interact with and meet the playwrights and attend the shows.

I found the community members’ reactions and thoughtful reflections of both shows illuminating and energizing.

“When I read [Appropriate] I knew it was good,” said Jeanette Franco of Montebello. “I saw it as a dramatic piece; I didn’t find it even remotely funny.” Onstage, however, “It was hilarious,” she said. “Comedy is the best way to discuss issues, and the cast onstage and offstage did a wonderful job portraying the message.”

Lewa Pinkney of Leimert Park also noted a change from reading to watching the play. “I had my own connections with characters,” she said, noting that she felt something for Toni, the older sister, in particular on the page. “But watching her story unfold made me much less sympathetic to her because the actress breathes full life into her and made you see the demons that lie in each of us. It might have been the mirror that was held up to me that I didn’t like to see, but that I need to see.”

Last month, participants attended The Christians and then held a discussion session where they could not stop talking about the play for almost two hours. People brought in quotes from playwright Lucas Hnath’s visit, picked apart themes and underlying allusions, and most importantly, connected the play to their own personal experiences. A number of people said that the play made them reexamine their religious views.

And now it’s the community artists’ turn! Montebello and Leimert Park community members will be presenting their own written work, which Jerry Quickley has molded into a play, next month in both their communities and at our Kirk Douglas Theatre.

A Peek 'Through the Looking Glass'

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:54:00 -0800

In advance of performances on February 2 at Quiet Cannon in Montebello, February 3 at Regency West in Leimert Park, and February 8 at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, take a peek into the process that went into creating Through the Looking Glass with two excerpts of work written by one participant from each community.

V

Present:

Melodic, methodic, mantra in my spirit/bodymind, stepped to me
On purpose, wore his gawd on his sleeve...gave me his heart in
First line of defense/we were not immune to each other, there
Was no need—first breath was a glance, then a smile, and
Sacred/holy holds my life, even now. When real love is yours,
It knows you when it sees you. I am still, in the wind, of its song~

Love missing:

Empty is how it feels now. Lost, I feel stranded. Like the buses
Have stopped running for the night. All the meditations seem
Inadequate. The joy of music doesn't fill the room and when i
Dance, my body feels paralyzed, like i’ve left the building but
I'm the only one who knows it. I’m surprised that anyone can
See or hear me. Perhaps i need a Joshua, a Satchmo, a miles or
Marsalis to blow this jericho down. If the workers in the wiz
Sweatshop can be freed to love again, so can I.

Manny

Iris

Iris came into my life right when I needed her. The only problem was she needed, fuck, I don’t know what she needed. But it wasn’t me.

I met her in a bar and we spoke about books. Her smile was huge and full of joy. Her lips, so plump, beckoned unto mine. The scars on her arms that she tried to hide with bracelets only revealed how imperfectly perfect this angel was. She laughed loud with life, and I laughed more than I had with my current girlfriend in years. She was my escape.

The night I kissed her, I was in awe of her hips as she climbed the first floor to my apartment.

The night I kissed her she told me she didn’t feel the same.

Is It a Lab or a Theatre Lobby - The Kirk Douglas Theatre Experiences with Engaging Audiences

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 15:02:00 -0800

These activities are part of the Douglas Concierge program, which debuted in late 2007. CTG Audience Experience Designer Tom Burmester was looking to engage Douglas audiences more deeply with the work they were seeing and to “break theatre out of the traditional boundaries of the stage,” he said. Burmester looked to the Apple Store’s highly successful concierge program for inspiration, and came up with the idea of creating a skilled concierge team at the Douglas. The concierges serve as a “cross between teaching artists and theatrical guides,” explained Burmester, which is why most of them are working theatre artists as well, and many have advanced degrees in the field.

The concierge staff members facilitate discussions in the form of post-show “downloads,” implement pre-and post-show games for the audiences, and provide theatrical context. And while Burmester applies concepts and methods from game design and human interaction studies, he said that he envisioned the program simply as a way for the audience to talk to someone knowledgeable about theatre—and to get at the core of the art form. After all, every theatre artist creates as a way to converse with the audience. The set, lighting, sound, and even the performers are just tools to facilitate that conversation. The Douglas Concierge ensures that the conversation doesn’t begin when the curtain rises or end when it falls.

Often, that means having the artists onstage collaborate with the concierge team, said Burmester, and “translate what they’re doing on the stage to reach out past it.” For Chavez Ravine, Culture Clash’s Richard Montoya worked with the concierge team to facilitate the post-show downloads, which he later renamed “town halls.” They became extensions of the performance, with a tone and setup that resembled a rally for community activism. Similarly, for I’ve Never Been So Happy, the Rude Mechs transformed the lobby into a pre-show “shindig” with food, dancing, and other party activities.

It has also been rewarding for Burmester to watch personal relationships between concierges and audience members emerge. Over the program’s eight years, the audience has become more social, allowing a community to develop to between artists, patrons, and the concierge staff. If the Douglas Concierge experiment has proven anything, it’s that people love to participate in, and play with, their theatre experience.

In the Community: The Arts in Montebello

Lisa Sloan — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 13:51:00 -0800

Artists have been working in the area that is now Montebello for centuries. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Indians known as the Kizh or Tongva (and called the Gabrielino by the Spanish) lived in this part of the San Gabriel Valley. Song and story were important vehicles of cultural transmission for the Kizh, and music and dance were central to their rituals. The Kizh were expert basket weavers and soapstone carvers. They also built the San Gabriel Mission, which was originally situated at the native site of Shevaanga (the present-day intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue).

Some 130 years after the Mission was built, Simons Co. Brickyard No. 3, which was known as the largest brickyard in the world, opened in Montebello. The Mexican immigrants who worked there, many of them from Guanajuato, built Southern California as we know it today. In the company town that sprang up around the brickyard, workers decompressed by dancing, playing pool, and listening to the Simons Brickyard Band, which became so popular that they were invited to participate in the Rose Parade twice. Alejandro Morales, who was born and raised in Montebello, draws on this history as well as the lives of his parents in his novel The Brick People.

The brickyard closed after World War II, and in the 1950s, the Taylor Ranch House became a center for the arts in Montebello after local journalist Evelyn White took up residence there. White made two rooms available for community meetings and hosted a fledgling arts group at the house. A recent edition of the Montebello Historical Society newsletter quotes White, who died in the early 1980s, discussing her transformation of the property. “I had one desire—to establish a cultural center for the area, and to provide some worthwhile opportunities for our high school youngsters,” said White. “My dream became reality.” Over the years, a variety of organizations met at the Taylor Ranch House, including the Southland Art Association, a weekly breakfast club, and the local Soroptimist organization. Paintings for sale, many of them created in the art classes that met at the house, lined the walls. Each October, White held a competitive art fair. As Montebello resident Kathleen Ragabo told CTG, “The competition was fierce between professionals and amateurs!”

The city of Montebello bought Taylor Ranch in the early 1970s. While the building was demolished in 2008, Montebello residents continue to use the barn on the same site as a community meeting room. A new cultural arts center has been proposed at the former site of the Taylor Ranch House, but the project has been stalled since 2012.

More recently, Randy Reas has continued to make space for the visual arts in Montebello with Keeping the Culture Alive (KTCAlive), a community organization that puts on an annual ArtFest as well as art shows and workshops.

Learn more about Through the Looking Glass and reserve tickets for the readings.

Special thanks to Kathleen Rabago for her assistance with this article.

In the Community: The Performing Arts in Leimert Park

Lisa Sloan — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:41:00 -0800

In 1927, when real estate developer Walter H. Leimert began planning his eponymous subdivision, part of the appeal of this “very beautiful and highly successful residential and business development” was the movie theatre at its center. Nearly 100 years later, the performing arts continue to thrive in Leimert Park, and the Vision Theatre remains the center of Leimert Park Village.

The Art Deco theatre (then called the Leimert Theatre) opened in 1931 as a first-run movie house. It was converted to a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in the 1970s before actress Marla Gibbs purchased the property and re-christened it the Vision Theatre in 1990. In 1999, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs bought the theatre and started renovations to transform it into a performing arts/cultural center that is scheduled to reopen full-time in 2017.

While the Vision Theatre is a monument to Leimert Park’s past, music teacher Fernando Pullum engages the young artists of Leimert Park’s future. The Fernando Pullum Community Arts Center offers free classes in performance practice in music, theatre, and dance as well as music recording and filmmaking for students in South Los Angeles.

Leimert Park boasts a thriving music scene and is also a hub for jazz, hip hop, and Afrobeat. Educational and performance arts gallery The World Stage, often referred to as “The Stage,“ was founded by jazz drummer Billy Higgins and poet Kamau Daáood in 1989. It has since become a black cultural mecca, offering music and poetry workshops and hosting weekly jam sessions as well as a performance series. The Stage has been instrumental in the formation of jazz groups Black/Note and B Sharp Quartet.

Leimert Park also gave us hip hop artists such as Eazy-E and Yo-Yo. Their talents were among those fostered at KAOS Network, a community media center founded by Ben Caldwell in the early 1980s. On Thursday nights, KAOS is the site of Project Blowed, the world’s longest-running hip hop and rap open mic night, which has been going strong since 1994.

Another historic Leimert Park hip hop gathering took place in the most unlikely of places—a health food store! The Good Life Health Food Centre hosted open mic nights on Thursdays until 1997. Good Life artists include Unity Community (Jurassic 5), Ahmad, Skee-lo, Freestyle Fellowship, Rifleman (Hip Hop Clan), Of Mexican Descent, Click, Volume 10, SIN (Medusa), and Kurupt.

If Thursdays in Leimert Park are for hip hop, Sundays are for Afrobeat. The Leimert Park Drum Circle has been gathering in Leimert Plaza Park on Sundays since 1997. All levels of musicians come together to play djembes, maracas, and cowbells and dance to the rhythms.

Learn more about Through the Looking Glass and reserve tickets for the readings.

Read more about Leimert Park:

"Leimert Theater: Envisioning a Neighborhood Landmark" by Yosuke Kitazawa at KCET

"Play festival heralds impending revival of L.A.’s Vision Theatre" by Mike Boehm in the L.A. Times

"Touring Leimert’s Vision, One of LA’s Last Art Deco Theaters" by Adrian Glick Udler at Curbed LA

Coming at Theatre Sideways: The Innovative Art of Sherwood Award Winner Miwa Matreyek

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 23:59:00 -0800

Richard E. Sherwood was a longtime Center Theatre Group board member with a special appreciation for the energy and talent of emerging artists. The $10,000 Sherwood Award was established in 1996 in his memory to nurture innovative, adventurous Los Angeles theatre artists. Matreyek’s multimedia work displays her innovation and sense of adventure. On stage, she uses both moving images and her own body to transport theatregoers from the reaches of space to the deep sea, and beyond. “I really enjoy the illusion and transformation aspects allowed by compositing animation and live performance,” said Matreyek.

This surreal aesthetic allows Matreyek to explore themes such as the relationship between technology and human existence with ease. “Human nature and nature have a strange relationship,” said Matreyek. “It has created this interesting and strange landscape inside of our lives; human nature wants to control, sanitize, shut out nature, while at the same time we are organic beings who ultimately yearn for nature and can’t live without it.” She explores this landscape in fantastical performances such as Myth and Infrastructure, which premiered at TED Global 2010 in Oxford, England. Matreyek projects her animation on a screen, and simultaneously steps behind the screen as a shadow, becoming a part of the fantastical worlds of the video in order to create and alter whole worlds.

Matreyek enjoys the challenge of working to integrate animation and performance. “Creating a visual composition live is interesting in terms of problem solving,” she said. “I love setting up physical and visual puzzles. It’s exciting to figure it out!” Often, that problem solving is solitary, full of long hours of creating animations and testing how they combine with her body movement. “I have a projection screen set up in my living room so that I can immediately play with simple animations, and from there I polish, refine, and expand on my discoveries,” she said.

That solo work is offset by collaborative work with Cloud Eye Control, which Matreyek founded with singer-songwriter Anna Oxygen and experimental theatre artist Chi-wang Yang. Creating with artists from different backgrounds “pushes me outside of my comfort zone,” said Matreyek. This mingling of artists from different disciplines mirrors the mixing of artistic practices in Matreyek’s own work, and perhaps explains why her solo and collaborative work “feed into each other,” as she put it.

Matreyek’s journey to theatre is filled with similarly disparate-seeming influences. “I came into theatre sideways from animation. Theatre surprised me,” she said. Originally a physics major, she switched to art, exploring painting, photo, collage, and eventually music. Putting her collages to music ultimately led her to animation, and the realization that “the music gave my art the quality of time and movement.” As an MFA candidate studying animation at Cal Arts, she began collaborating with theatre artists, who “opened my eyes to telling layered stories combining a sense of ‘liveness’ with animation,” she said. Her passion for science has not dimmed, however, and her work frequently explores “the mechanics of the body and the universe—what I would call the visceral experience of physics,” she added.

Winning the Sherwood is already leading Matreyek down new paths. While accepting the honor at the Ovation Awards at the Ahmanson Theatre, she realized for the first time “the vastness of the L.A. theatre landscape,” she said. And while she is already a part of that landscape—including through previous collaborations with Center Theatre Group, like working as an animation designer and video design consultant for Kirk Douglas Theatre productions—she is looking to root herself in it more deeply, with some help from the Sherwood Award. “For emerging artists, who often have to find and carve out their own path, that recognition, that financial support,” she said, “is very important for establishing yourself.”

Sewing Buttons, Telling Stories, Finding Careers

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 22:10:00 -0800

Over eight weekly sessions at each resource center, teaching artist Manuel Prieto took parents and caregivers through the costume design process from page to stage, using Grey Gardens – the Musical as the source material. Participants read the script and did background research, sketched designs and reviewed textile swatches, and ultimately put everything together into fully imagined renderings of the production’s costumes. The renderings will be displayed at the Ahmanson Theatre in summer 2016, to coincide with the Center Theatre Group production of Grey Gardens. Participants will attend the show and get a chance to see how their work measures up to the professionals’.

“They walked away from the workshops knowing the costume design process and also the skills they need to accomplish that process,” said Prieto. They also “learned skills that have a root in theatre and an application in everyday life,” such as the fact that if you’re shopping for a textile that won’t wrinkle, you want to buy a synthetic blend rather than cotton. At the same time, participants emerged with “some more curiosity about theatre as a multi-faceted art form that combines storytelling, actor, and character work—and how the whole system comes together.”

In addition to bilingual hands-on instruction, participants also got the opportunity to attend panels featuring a mix of artisans, artists, and designers as well as educators and employers discussing how to get into the costume business. “We tried to highlight the whole realm of jobs in theatre that you can be a part of,” said Prieto.

This blend of art and practical skills, career education and creative inspiration grew out of sewing circles Center Theatre Group held at Boyle Heights libraries and the parents’ group at Carmen Lomas Garza Primary Center in fall 2014. Jesus Reyes, the program manager for Center Theatre Group’s community partnerships, explained that participants in the sewing circles came away wanting to create bigger projects and with lots of questions about jobs and education. Working with parent resource centers was a natural fit for the next, expanded iteration of the program. “Parent resource centers already bring in visiting experts on a lot of different subjects,” said Reyes. “And they have a base of people interested in learning.”

Expanding the scope of theatre education to people of all ages and skill levels is a core part of the mission of Center Theatre Group’s education and community programming. “Theatre and the arts are powerful tools to help us communicate within and between generations, and for each of us to discover more about ourselves and our world. We are excited to give folks a chance to explore their own creativity, exercising our imaginations and building community together,” said Center Theatre Group Director of Education and Community Partnerships Leslie K. Johnson.

Friars Charitable Foundation has also recognized the importance of programs like these, and sponsored the costume design workshops. “Everyone on our Board values theatre as an important education tool and we are excited to support innovative programming like this that brings community members together,” said President Marilyn Stambler.

Center Theatre Group is deeply grateful to the Friars Charitable Foundation for its support of this new programming. The Friars Charitable Foundation was established in 1956. The founders included community minded entertainers and leaders from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Today, the Foundation supports charitable efforts that are dedicated to the arts, education, or human services, benefiting the greater Los Angeles community, particularly where its funding can have a significant impact on programs and their participants.

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