Email Author Bill Raden

2013 Stories by Bill Raden

• An Experimental Play About Our Health Care System

  published Sep 25, 2013

  In the new theater production Hospital, Wunderbaum, the irreverently incisive Rotterdam theater collective, whose work has wittily examined the abrasive interstices between culture and the lives of ... More >>

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  In Experimental Opera Invisible Cities, Audience Members Will Wander Union Station Wearing Headphones

  published September 26, 2013

  On a blazing Sunday afternoon, the interior of downtown's Union Station provides a cool refuge from an early-September heat wave. But on this... More >>

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  A Theater Festival Resurrects Broadway Movie Palaces

  published Sep 23, 2013

  In 2011, much of the inaugural edition of Radar L.A. -- the biennial festival of new works by renowned international and L.A.-based theater companies and artists -- was centered around downtown's LAT... More >>

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  Radar L.A. Festival: 5 Most Promising Shows

  published Sep 20, 2013

  For theater-habituated Angelenos with an appetite for the cutting edge, the Radar L.A. Festival is more than the mere gathering of "the world's most influential performing ensembles" and "innovative ... More >>

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  Diavolo's Six-Year, Dance-Theater-Circus Extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl

  published Sep 03, 2013

  "Diavolo is not a modern dance company," declares Jacques Heim, the French founder, artistic director and guiding visionary of the Los Angeles-based troupe that over the last 20 years has staked a se... More >>

• Blistered Hands and Bloody Mouths

  published August 15, 2013

  Stage horror can be many things. In the hands of a master, it can tap the unspoken nightmares of an audience to power an allegory about life's... More >>

• Lady Windermere's Fan

  published August 1, 2013

  Inaugurating a new outdoor summer performance series at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the site-specific specialists at Chalk Rep... More >>

• Alcestis

  published July 4, 2013

  How do we live with the fact of our death every moment of every day? According to stage collagist Nancy Keystone's reworking of Euripides, the... More >>

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  Dee Smith's Play Got Mixed Reviews. So She Changed Directors and Started Over

  published Jul 23, 2013

  When it comes to putting up a show, Los Angeles' small theater community isn't generally known for its readiness to give a play a second chance. The custom here is to roll the dice, stoically accept ... More >>

• The Scottsboro Boys

  published June 6, 2013

  From its haunting, memory-play opening to the uplifting poignancy of its final, surprise reveal, John Kander and Fred Ebb's 2010 risk-taking... More >>

• Mahmoud

  published May 23, 2013

  Like it or not, in a country of melting-pot mongrels, the dislocating immigrant experience is part of our cultural DNA. So it is no surprise that... More >>

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  Mary, Queen of Scots and Indie Rock Star

  published Jun 24, 2013

  Back in 2007, stage director Becca Wolff and composer Byron Kahr got to talking. They had just been to see Spring Awakening, the smash, musical Broadway reworking of the 1891 Frank Wedekind play to ... More >>

• The Size of Pike

  published May 16, 2013

  Boys will be boys and men will be men, though the distinction between the two is more likely one of personal income rather than emotional... More >>

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  Jaime Robledo, the Poor Man's Julie Taymor

  published Jun 18, 2013

  See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews Inside East Hollywood's Sacred Fools Theatre on a recent Sunday afternoon, actor Donal Thoms-Cappello is capering through a bizarre step of percussive, deliber... More >>

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  A New Play About the Scandalous Astronaut Lisa Nowak

  published Jun 04, 2013

  "I've come to believe that all theater is 'experimental theater,'" declares Los Angeles stage auteur Joseph Tepperman. "But I don't know -- there's a problem with using that word because then people... More >>

• Silver Lake's Moving Arts Celebrates 20th Anniversary By Bringing Back 20 of Its Plays

  published May 31, 2013

  Theater is ephemeral. No matter how transformative or transcendent or thrillingly hair-raising a particular production might be, unlike a TV show or a movie or a YouTube clip, once the final curtain... More >>

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  Christopher Shinn's Acclaimed Pulitzer Finalist Dying City at Last Arrives in L.A.

  published May 16, 2013

  "When I grew up," recalls playwright Christopher Shinn, "I grew up with the image of the artist as somebody who could be central to the culture in a big way, and that was the kind of artist I wanted... More >>

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  For 66 Years, Verdugo Woodlands Elementary School Dads Have Put On L.A.'s Weirdest Annual Drag Show

  published May 14, 2013

  See also: *10 Best Drag Clubs in L.A. *Our Latest Theater Reviews The year was 1947. Headlines announced the establishment of the Cominform and the formation of the CIA that marked the non-declarati... More >>

• One Night With Janis Joplin

  published March 21, 2013

  The seductive appeal of this musical hagiography by writer-director Randy Johnson is no mystery. Nineteen-sixties rock acts have proved effective... More >>

• S.O.E.

  published March 28, 2013

  Build a better mousetrap, it is said, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or at least to Atwater Village, where playwright Jami Brandli's... More >>

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  Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally Celebrate 10 Years Together By Returning to Where They Met: the Stage

  published Apr 15, 2013

  See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews *12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013 Ask someone to define "Hollywood marriage" -- as in the working-actor-to-working-actor kind -- and chances are the answer you ge... More >>

• Tender Napalm

  published March 21, 2013

  Tender Napalm is hardly the first play to conceptualize the ebbs and flows of romantic love as a martial art. Unlike August Strindberg's... More >>

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  FEATURED STORY

  A New Play About...LAUSD School Lunch?

  published Mar 27, 2013

  Cornerstone Theatre Company does not believe in art for art's sake. Nor, for that matter, do they believe in merely putting on plays. At least not in the marbled-restroom, big-ticket-opulent sense of... More >>

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  FEATURED STORY

  L.A.'s Premiere LGBT Stage Celebrates 30th Anniversary, As Its New Artistic Directors Discuss the Future of Queer Theater

  published Mar 26, 2013

  Only in Los Angeles could you expect to find a star-studded gala in a shopping center parking structure. But that's because only Burbank would think of squeezing its premiere legitimate stage in ami... More >>

• Mike Tyson's One-Man Show at the Pantages Theater Is Surprisingly Good

  published Mar 09, 2013

  See also: *More theater reviews Former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson scored one of the more impressive comebacks of his colorful career last night. That he did so in his one... More >>