Sandra Ross

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A Fan’s Notes

Sandra Ross
Tori Spelling is a supernova in the constellation of pop stars. Which is why I jumped at a chance to cover her theatrical debut in Maybe Baby, It‘s You at the Coronet Theater. I’ve seen every episode of Beverly Hills 90210 twice, but my obsession with Tori Spelling predates her......
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Geek House

Sandra Ross
Photo by Anne Fishbein Next to the fuchsia marabou and other colorful plumage at Buzz, a West Hollywood hipster coffee bar, Gene Franklin Smith stands out. His pallor and sensible sweater ensemble immediately mark him as the kind of person who’s read Bleak House more than once. Charles Dickens’ labyrinthine......
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V-Day Celebration

Sandra Ross
Photo by Joan Marcus “When I was a radical militant feminist, I wanted to be right more than I wanted to win,” admits award-winning playwright Eve Ensler to the 100-odd college-age women (and a sprinkling of men and university instructors) who are attending an October “V-Day” workshop at Cal State......
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Bang the Gong Slowly

Sandra Ross
Photo by Ted Soqui At the blandly institutional Music Center Annex, playwrights David Henry Hwang and Chay Yew are both wearing blue jeans and sipping specialty coffee — but that’s where the outward similarities end. Family man Hwang, properly attired in a pinstriped Oxford shirt, meticulously chooses every word like......
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The Girl With the Voice

Sandra Ross
Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter Actor Maria O’Brien grew up in a house packed with artists, guests of her father, Academy Award–winning actor Edmond O’Brien, and her musical-comedy-star mother, Olga San Juan. “My father had designed our house in Brentwood so that the living room was a stage. I have......
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Speeding Tickets

Sandra Ross
Ticket Source, a ticketing agency for dozens of local small theaters, abruptly cut off its phone lines and shuttered its office last week, leaving a trail of irate artists, producers and theater owners who say they were owed money by the agency. This is the third such closure in four......
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Total Access

Sandra Ross
An audible gasp arose in the Shubert Theater when Barry Humphries satirized deaf culture in Dame Edna: The Royal Tour. Although ASL interpreters are becoming more common on L.A. stages -- larger venues such as the Shubert schedule at least one signed performance per run -- reminders or outright depictions......
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The Playwright’s Playwright

Sandra Ross
Photo by Debra DiPaolo In the theatrical geography of Los Angeles, there’s a much-storied location called Padua Hills, a place far, far from the glaring footlights of showcase theater. According to local legend, artists were nurtured at Padua, and the playwrights’ festival that occurred there became associated with theater luminaries:......
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Puppet Regimes

Sandra Ross
During lulls inside Staples Center, DNC delegates who decide to check out local legit stages will discover that comedy is the overwhelming response of L.A. theater artists to the Gore-fest. And for a convention as tightly scripted as this one, the slightest move toward improvisation has the potential to be......
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L.A.'s Theater Renaissance: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Sandra Ross
Art by Santiago UcedaTHREE SEPARATE L.A. THEATER FESTIVALS IN AS MANY weeks have arrived as if by deus ex machina. On the heels of the A.S.K. New Play readings series at Inside the Ford, which wrapped up on October 31, the Mark Taper Forum launches its 12th New Works Festival......