TODAY I have a story in the LA Times on the actor Roger Guenveur Smith, who has acted in a number of Spike Lee movies and chronicled American -- and especially California -- history through his solo theater pieces.One of them, Juan and John -- about a fight between Dodger John Roseboro and Giant Juan Marichal -- comes to the Kirk Douglas Theatre this week. I'm traveling this week, so have to be … [Read more...]
New Arts Hall on Westside
BEVERLY Hills has long had a connection to the movies, as well as a reputation for shameless excess. The city is taking a step in a different direction with a new arts center: Ground will be broken in April, with plans to open the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in 2013.HERE is my LA Times piece about the center, which will, in the words of executive director Lou Moore, … [Read more...]
Stew and The Negro Problem Return to LA
RECENTLY I had the pleasure to speak to two of the heroes of '90s indie LA, Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The duo -- then known as The Negro Problem -- have since moved to New York and become "show folk" with the musical Passing Strange. Spike Lee made it into a movie.HERE is my story on the past and future of Stew and The Negro Problem.Two LA shows -- Saturday at the Getty and Tuesday at the Echoplex … [Read more...]
Shocked and Appalled at UCLA
David Sefton -- generally the most intriguing and unpredictable of Los Angeles' arts showmen -- has resigned from his post running the UCLA Live series that takes place at Royce Hall and other venues. Sefton, a native of Liverpool, is being coy about this, but it's hard not to imagine that someone as passionate about his programming, and about his particularly fervent niche of high and low, … [Read more...]
Living by Chance With Rachel Rosenthal
IF laurie anderson was a parisian-born octo-genarian theater pioneer she might be rachel rosenthal. for rosenthal -- to whom many figures of the american avant-garde are indebted -- john cage's "indeterminacy" proved as influential as the velvet underground's dazed strum was on anderson's generation. (okay, that's enough metaphors for one paragraph.)here is my profile of rosenthal, who extols the … [Read more...]