Among the more recent offerings is an anti–Dating Game show called Hook-Up, hosted by Ron Lynch. On the night I attended, female contestants perched onstage during a "videotaped broadcast" were humiliated not so much by their host, or by the fellow behind the screen asking idiotic questions in order to select one of them for a dinner date at Palermo Italian Restaurant up the street on Vermont, as by the crew. These twerps were even more idiotic than the questions, barging in and goading the audience to ramp up the energy, and urging the contestants to be sexier. Pretense of professionalism unraveled before our eyes in a parody that actually delivered its satire with a serving of psychic anguish.
Itelman says he has no real basis for why he selects the acts he does, or a theory for why his selections have hit such a responsive chord among an audience of faithfuls.
PHOTO BY STAR FOREMAN
Up in the air: Fringies
PHOTO BY STAR FOREMAN
REDCAT's Mark Murphy
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"I don't even think about it," he says. "I just work with people who disregard their better judgment by doing theater, and funnily enough, audiences show up. It's really just storytelling."
Steve Allen Theater
4773 Hollywood Blvd., L.A.,
steveallentheater.com
THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL will be the first attempt at a completely noncurated arts festival in Los Angeles. "We don't turn anyone away," explains executive director Ben Hill, who's been planning the festival (June 17-27) for more than two years with compatriots including Ken Peterson and Stacy Jones. Hill has an ebullient, almost childlike energy and brings 15 years of experience in the arts. In Washington, D.C., he founded and produced the Hatchery Festival — a showcase of new plays from emerging playwrights — and he presented ARTBASH at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles.
Hill intends the Hollywood Fringe — modeled on the Edinburgh Fringe — to take as much square footage of one square mile around Hollywood central as can be imagined, with street performers, gas stations turned into makeshift venues, etc. He wants it to be a confrontation with art that pedestrians simply can't avoid. Terence McFarland, executive director of Los Angeles Stage Alliance, says he is impressed with Hill's blend of savvy and enthusiasm, and hopes, as we all do, that the event can become an annual ritual here.
In a highly populist mechanism, performers have been registering with the festival organization and then negotiating their own contractual terms with orthodox and unorthodox venues. The performers are responsible for whatever rental costs they negotiate, as well as insurance. Hill and his staff are unpaid but may keep a percentage of registration fees after all expenses have been taken care of — if there's anything left in the kitty.
Hollywood Fringe
hollywoodfringe.org
REDCAT The son of a TV host and himself a former tap dancer, Mark Murphy — now executive director at REDCAT — knew he wanted to be involved in the theater when he studied Communication Arts as a Catalyst for Social Change at Fairhaven College, in Bellingham, Washington. (It was a major he invented himself.)
Murphy came to L.A. after coordinating programming for On the Boards, a contemporary performing center in Seattle. That was a kind of template for his work as curator at REDCAT, where he presents local and foreign artists side by side. His aesthetic leans toward the interdisciplinary, consistent with the founding principles of CalArts, which oversees the venue.
In addition to getting New York's Wooster Group in as a company in residence, Murphy is trying to develop local performers and companies through his NOW (New Original Works) and Studio (works in development) festivals.
Murphy credits the combination of REDCAT, the "less predictable" programming at UCLA Live, and the "mix of presenting and producing at the New Los Angeles Theatre Center" for creating "more nourishment for the curious soul" in Los Angeles.
His biggest challenge remains the export side. "It's taken a little longer than I imagined to develop a body of work in contemporary theater, as well as dance and hybrid performance forms, which reaches audiences outside of L.A."
Though there are some examples: REDCAT co-commissioned a new work, Under Polaris, by Cloud Eye Control, now touring to the Exit Festival outside Paris, as well as a festival in Austin, Texas, later in April. Murphy also sees an interesting growth in and sophistication of works dealing with identity politics, particularly in the works of Kristina Wong and Lars Jan.
"I suspect that 10 to 20 years from now, when people think about work that captures the essence of artists from L.A., the visual approach to theater will be one of the landmarks."
REDCAT
631 W. Second St., L.A.,
redcat.org
ROGUE MACHINE At Rogue Machine, now in its third season in residence at Theatre/Theater on Pico near La Brea, Artistic Director John Perrin Flynn set out to establish a tight relationship between his theater and a community it would feed with challenging plays by lesser-known writers. Among the more recent examples is a work called Never Land, by the darling of London's Royal Court Theatre, Phyllis Nagy, in a production she directed herself (a fact that may have caused some of the most blistering reviews on record from the generally amiable L.A. critics). At a panel discussion before one of the productions, Nagy described how the Royal Court put on plays without regard for their embrace by critics — or audiences. The artistic staff just did what they felt was good work. That seems to be Flynn's devil-may-care approach for Rogue Machine. And much of the work is very good: a production of Adam Rapp's Bingo With the Indians, for example.
