DaddyO Dies Well

Legendary Los Angeles-based playwright Murray Mednick directs the world premiere of the fifth installment of his “Gary Plays” cycle, a darkly lyrical comedy in which Gary, Mednick’s hardluck protagonist, takes a psychedelic Ayahuasca trip at the behest of DaddyO, his hipster stepfather. The entire octet of Gary Plays is scheduled to be published in April, 2011 by Sideshow Books and distributed by TCG (Theatre Communications Group).

“The Gary Plays is one of the most engaging and ambitious local theater events of the past few seasons… Mednick’s Gary is a sort of L.A. Leopold Bloom.” – 89.9 FM KCRW

“As Murray Mednick experiments with language and investigates the majority’s relationship to indigenous cultures, he is emblematic of a Los Angeles dramatic tradition in much the same way that Clifford Odets is identifiable with Gotham or David Mamet with Chicago….Bursting with Mednick’s patented cascades of imagery and amusing juxtapositions.” –VARIETY

“Always interesting… circles, playfully and endlessly, around various life-and-death issues” – LA WEEKLY

“Intriguing and promising for L.A. Theatre…The writing is as much about the sound of the language itself as what’s going on… a testament to the power of a sustained body of work and that’s not easy” – KCRW

“Daddy O is the epitome of ‘cool.’ There’s more going on here than meets the eye.” –ON STAGE LOS ANGELES

“Magic lives in DADDYO DIES WELL…Delights with delicious themes of the occult, the adventurous, the tragic, and the uplifting. The acting touches your core being and the play as a whole inspires an enchantment….hums with life and it is full of vitality and truth”.-EYE SPY LA

“Will leave all viewers with a “I don’t know what just happened to me, but I know I liked it” sensation. With both script and direction by Mednick, it is a fun, wonderfully strange, and well-executed production. Mednick’s direction is satisfying, detailed, and beautifully choreographed with subtle Greek chorus interjections that add depth to the story.”-LAIST.COM

Starring
Peggy Ann Blow*, Strawn Bovee*, Hugh Dane*, Elizabeth Greer*, Jack Kehler, Melissa Paladino*, Casey Sullivan*
(*Denotes Member of Actors’ Equity Association)

Artistic Director: Guy Zimmerman
Executive Producer: Racquel Lehrman
Producer: Roger Q. Mason
Set Designer: Matt Aston
Costume Designer: Melody Brocious
Lighting Designer: Dan Reed
Music and Sound Designer: John Zalewski
Projection Designer: Marc I. Rosenthal
Stage Manager: Laura Manchester
Casting Director: Raul Clayton Staggs
Publicist: Lucy Pollak

PRODUCTION AND CAST BIOS

Hugh Dane (DADDYO)

Hugh Dane created the role of Daddy O in the Padua Playwrights’ production of Out of the Blue. He is thrilled to reprise the role in this, his fourth Padua Playwrights’ production, and is honored to be directed by the author, Murray Mednick. Hugh is the recipient of an LA Weekly Award for Willie & Esther, Dramalogue Award for The Visit, and 3 NAACP Theatre Award nominations for The Marriage, Undertakers Cut, and Willie & Esther. Hugh received an LA Weekly Award nomination for the Padua Playwrights’ production of Dogmouth. Hugh has numerous film, television and commercial credits. Look for him in his recurring role as Hank in the hit NBC series, The Office, and his recurring role as Cat Daddy on the TVOne sitcom, Love that Girl. He dedicates his performance to Nique, Chris, Chazz, Sebastian, Maxwell, Jameer, Gail, and to his late brother, Billy.

Casey Sullivan (GARY)

Casey Sullivan is a rare LA native. Father and mother met at the Renaissance Festival in Marin. He was doing sonnets and she was singing the folk. Since that mad, crazy conception Casey has traversed many worlds and is glad to stop here in DaddyO Dies Well. Previous creative sojourns include Jerry in Tracy Letts play BUG at US Veterans Arts Alliance; 365 plays/365 days at Center Theatre Group; The Vagabond in The Tavern at the Strater Hotel in Durnago, CO. Lovborg in Hedda Gabler at the Little Fish Theatre. Narrator for staged reading of More Lies about Jerzy at the Black Dahlia. Sex, Relationships, and Sometimes Love at the Actors Playpen; the lawyer in Jurisprudence at the Underground Theatre; Macduff in Othello at Cal Shakespeare Company; Everyman in Everyman with the LA Thespians; The Blunders at The Vermont in Los Feliz. Casey has studied acting with the Antaeus Academy.

Jack Kehler (DR. JONES)

Jack has acted in numerous Padua/Oxblood productions including three by the esteemed Murray Mednick and three by Wesley Walker. Also, Ed Simpson’s Elephant Sighs and Additional Particulars. More recently, Arthur Miller’s Some Kind of Love Story, Burglers of Hamm’s Land of the Tigers and Joe Bay’s the last fling. Some of his films include the Big Lebowski, Love Liza, Invincible, Fever Pitch, Waterworld, Under the Tuscan Sun, Big Trouble and Jeff Phillips’ Errand Boy. A long time member of the Actors Studio, Jack is pleased to be working alongside all involved with daddyo… For liam, carol and shawna.

Elizabeth Greer (GLORIA)

Elizabeth Greer earned a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA from Yale School of Drama. TV credits include Cold Case, The Shield, My Own Worst Enemy, Charmed, and West Wing. Film credits include The Gunrunner Billy Kane, Interference, Transformers 1.5, Meet Market, Cahoots, and Sexting, an awarded short by Neil LaBute. Theatre credits include performances at such venues as Yale Repertory Theater, Lincoln Center, The American Jewish Theater, Skirball Center, and Ensemble Studio Theatre–LA. She is a member of EST-LA’s producing staff and Edgemar Theatre Group. Elizabeth is honored to work with Padua Playwrights on this production. For further information, visit www.elizabethgreer.com.

Melissa Paladino (MARCIA)

MELISSA PALADINO hails from New York, but was last seen as Dee in the West Coast premiere of Adam Rapp’s Bingo with the Indians at Rogue Machine Theatre, of which she is a company member. STAGE: Razorback (Rogue Machine Theatre), Sailor’s Song (LAByrinth Theater Co. at The Public/ John Patrick Shanley), Fight Girl Battle World, Men of Steel, Living Dead in Denmark, The Vampire Cowboy Trilogy (VCT Productions), A Woman From the Past (German Theater Festival). TV/FILM: Time Warner, GSN, Lifetime, Fort Doom, 25 to Life, The Horribly Slow Murderer with an Extremely Inefficient Weapon.

Peggy A. Blow (ANTONIO)

PEGGY ANN BLOW is no stranger to the Gary Plays, having played Antonio in a couple of Padua productions and in the film Gary’s Walk. She began her career in theatre right out of college and has continued ever since, garnering many performance awards, coast-to-coast in musical as well as dramatic theatre. Peggy has guest starred in many prime time network and cable programs. Most recently, she appeared as Judge Lydia Salt in Californication. She thanks you all for your continued support! IMDB/actors access/Hervey Grimes Talent Agency.

Strawn Bovee (MAMA BEAN)

STRAWN BOVEE: The Odyssey Theater: Richard III, The Cherry Orchard, Tartuffe, The Seagull, MacBeth, Three Sisters, Antigone. The Redcat: Double Play. The Hayworth: Iphigenia At Aulis, Sister Cities, The Heiress. City Garage: The Balcony, Savannah Bay, Garbage, the City and Death, The Little Red Hot Man, Over Nothing At All, Journey Among the Dead. Other: Medea, Doll’s House, Landscape, The Shawl, The Possibilities, The Unreasonable Are Dying Out. TV: The Guardian, Gilmore Girls, Judging Amy, Port Charles, General Hospital. Film: Unspeakable Act (upcoming), Just My Luck, All the Ships at Sea, Photosynthesis, My Final Day of Intoxication, Brewster’s Millions. SAG-AFTRA-AEA

PRODUCTION TEAM

Murray Mednick (Writer/Director)

Murray is the founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival and Workshop, where he served as Artistic Director from 1978 through 1995. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939, he was for many years a playwright-in-residence at New York’s Theatre Genesis, which presented much of his early work, including The Hawk, The Deer Kill, The Hunter, Sand, and Are You Lookin’? He was artistic co-director of Theatre Genesis from 1970 -1974, when he emigrated to California. Plays produced since then include Iowa and Blessings (for the PBS series Visions), The Coyote Cycle, Taxes, Scar, Heads, Shatter ‘N Wade, Fedunn, Switchback, Baby Jesus!, Dictator, Freeze, 16 Routines, Mrs.Feuerstein, G-nome, and Joe and Betty. Girl On a Bed, the third in his series of The Gary Plays (following Tirade for Three and Gary’s Walk), was recently made into a film, and the fourth, Out of the Blue, was presented in Los Angeles in 2005. Another play, Clown Show for Bruno, was presented in October of ’06 at the Lost Studio in Hollywood, and then, along with The Destruction of the Fourth World, and the film of Girl on a Bed, at Arts District, Downtown L.A. , as part of a tribute to Mr. Mednick in February, 2009. DaddyO Dies Well is the fifth in the series of Gary Plays.

Mednick is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE, several Bay Area Critics Awards, a 1992 Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award from Theatre LA for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles theatre. He won the 1997 (Dictator) and 2003 (Fedunn) L.A. Weekly Playwriting Awards. His play Joe and Betty received the 2002 American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play Citation. Mednick was awarded the 2002 Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theater by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and a lifetime achievement award from the L.A. Weekly.

Published plays include: The Hawk, the Deer Kill, and The Hunter, published by Bobbs-Merill, Three Plays by Murray Mednick (Padua Hills Press), Switchback (Sun and Moon Press). The Coyote Cycle, Padua Hills Press; Hipsters in Distress, Are You Lookin’?, and other plays (Padua Hills press). Anthologized plays include Freeze, The Deer Kill, Willie the Germ, The Hawk, Sand, Switchback, Taxes, Coyote Plays, and others.

Racquel Lehrman, Theatre Planners (Executive Producer)

Racquel is the founder and managing director of Theatre Planners, her own theatre production/PR firm. She graduated from NYU-Tisch School of the Arts and lived in NY for over ten years producing theatre. Theatre Planners has since developed into a very busy and successful outlet for actors, writers, producers and theatre companies. Doing everything from producing, publicity, consulting, printing, graphics and more. Racquel loves to make productions a reality and help to keep the theatre scene in LA alive and strong. Racquel has acquired the Actor’s Gang old space on El Centro and is the new owner of the LOUNGE THEATRES in Hollywood on Theatre Row. To learn more about Racquel and Theatre Planners, go to www.theatreplanners.com.

Roger Q. Mason (Producer)

Roger Q. Mason is a Los Angeles-based playwright, director, and producer. His plays include Orange Woman, A Ballad for a Moor, Onion Creek, and Lizzie. His work has been featured at such venues as McCarter Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre – LA, and Theatre of NOTE. As a director and producer, he has worked with such companies as EST–LA, USC School of Theatre’s Drama Club, Alive Theatre, A Noise Within, and Rogue Machine Theatre. Mason received an AB in English and Certificates in Theatre and African American Studies from Princeton University. He is currently an MA candidate at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. Mason thanks Murray Mednick and Guy Zimmerman for allowing him to take this theatrical odyssey with them.

Guy Zimmerman (Artistic Director of Padua Playwrights)

An award-winning writer, director and producer, Zimmerman has served as artistic director of Padua Playwrights since 2001. Under his direction this LA-based company has staged over twenty-five productions of new plays, including three in New York City and three abroad, that have garnered a host of LA Weekly, Ovation, Garland, and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards and nominations. Zimmerman has edited a six-volume anthology series for Padua Press, distributed nationally by TCG. He has also produced and directed a series of digital media productions of original plays including Pronghorn, Girl on a Bed, Gary’s Walk (both based on plays by Murray Mednick), and Snout. Previously, Zimmerman wrote for network television, including the shows Cracker, The Pretender and Wonderland. His own plays include La Clarita,The Inside Job, and Vagrant. His articles and essays about film, theater, art, science and politics have been published in the LA Weekly, LA Theater Magazine, Backstage West, the LA Citizen, Cyrano’s Journal, Bedlam Magazine and, most recently, the arts and culture website Times Quotidian. Zimmerman received a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently working towards an MA in Urban Sustainability at Antioch University. He lives in LA with his wife, Jenny Bright and their daughter, Eliza, aged 10.

Laura Manchester (Stage Manager)

Laura Manchester is thrilled to be working with Padua Playwrights and Theatre Planners! She has been in Los Angeles working as an actor, director, and sometimes stage manager since she graduated with her B.A. in Theatre. STAGE MANAGING: Gulf View Drive (Critic’s Choice, LA Weekly award Best Ensemble); The Woman in Black; Spoon River Anthology. DIRECTING: The Shape of Things; The Vagina Monologues; Saint Joan (A.D.); Gulf View Drive (A.D.); The Woman in Black (A.D.); Cindersoot: 21st Century (co-direction); And All the Children Cried. ACTING: (representation: Commercial Talent) Romeo and Juliet; One Night Stands; The Crucible; As You Like It; A Hatful of Rain; The Boys Next Door; Macbeth; As it is in Heaven; I Dream Before I Take the Stand. Many thanks to Racquel for bringing me on board.

Katy Davis (Assistant Stage Manager/House Manager)

Katy Davis recently moved to Los Angeles from Houston where she got her BA in technical theatre. She has been a stage manager for the past five years. Her last project was Among the Thugs with Houston’s up and coming Horsehead Theatre Company. Katy would like to thank her family and friends for all their support in pursuing a career in theatre and film.

Matt Aston (Set Designer)

Matt has designed the sets for over fifty theatrical productions. For Padua Playwrights he designed The Destruction of the Fourth World, Clown Show for Bruno, Tiny Trumpets, Hammers, Acts of Love and participated as an artist in A Thousand Words. He received a grant from LADAD Space to paint paintings inspired by the plays of Padua’s Neo Sacred Revival. Matt received the MFA in stage design on a full scholarship from Southern Methodist University where he studied under William and Jean Eckart.

John Zalewski (Sound Designer)

John Zalewski was inducted into live theater through the work of Reza Abdoh. He’s since created sonic scores for the Humana Festival, the LA Philharmonic, Long Beach Opera, Geffen Playhouse, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, East West Players, Boston Court, LATC/Latino Theater, Padua Playwrights, Antaeus, The Actors’ Gang, 24th Street Theater, Playwrights Arena, Lewis Family Playhouse, Green Beetle, CircleX, Odyssey, chashama, PS122, LaMama, others. He is recipient of awards from LA Weekly, Backstage, Ticketholders, Dramalogue, LA Stage Alliance and the NEA/TCG designer fellowship. He is a member of Antaeus and Evidence Room. Recently he scored a series of short films with Padua called The Furies and is very excited to be working again with Padua Playwrights.

Dan Reed (Lighting Designer)

Dan is a Lighting Director at KTLA 5, a professor of lighting design at Cal Poly Pomona, and has been recently working abroad on theme parks with the CD+M Architectural Lighting Design Group at the new Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi and the Olympic Water Cube in Beijing, China. Recent theatrical designs Cirque Berzerk at Club Nokia, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands with Overtone Industries, Stage Door and The Existents at the Open Fist, and numerous shows with Theatre 40, Gunfighter Nation and Padua Playwrights theatre companies. Awards for lighting design include a pair of Garland Awards for Justine (1997) at the Evidence Room and Fen (2001) at the Open Fist Theatre, and a pair of LA Weekly Awards for Cosmonaut’s Last Message (2003) and Abingdon Square (2004), also at the Open Fist.

Melody Brocious (Costume Designer)

Melody Brocious has been designing costumes in southern California for three years. She has attended the University of California, Irvine, receiving her Masters of Fine Arts. Her work extends into film design, fabric modification, costume construction, and millinery. Favorite projects include costume designs for Lorca in a Green Dress, Cyrano De Bergerac, and Into the Woods.

Kathryn Lochert (Production Assistant/Box Office Manager)

Currently in her 4th year of college, Kathryn is working towards obtaining a BFA in Stage Management from the USC School of Theatre. Kathryn is excited to begin working outside of the collegiate setting and couldn’t be happier than to lend her skills to DaddyO Dies Well and Padua Playwrights Productions as Production Assistant and Box Office Manager for this show. Kathryn would like to thank Roger Q. Mason for such a warm welcome to the team.

HOTEL BARDOT

by Heidi Darchuk

Directed by Guy Zimmerman

with Julia Prudhomme, Chris Goodsen, Corryn Cummins, Brad Culver, Michael Chick, Johnny Klein

Set Design: Tim Keating, Shaun Tyne, Lights: Dan Reed, Costumes: Gwendolyn Jac, Kim Debus, Sound Design: Brad Culver and John Zalewski, Original Music: Brad Culver, Andrew Gilbert, Stage Management: Maggie Goddard, Poster Design: Darrick Chamberlin, Additional Design: Channah Levy, Production Assistance: Jessica Emmanuel, Corryn Cummins

NOTES ON THE PLAY

Inspired by Freud, Jung, Lacan, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and by Tantric texts, whose suggestion to “meditate on your own death” became Darchuk’s mantra during the writing of the play. The action opens as the heroine, K, enters into an already broken afterlife in the form of a rotting hotel and manages to level it to the ground and then escape, in her way, destroying time. By doing so, K transcends a human life of victimhood to become a version of Kali, Indian Goddess of annihilation, time, blackness. The writer here is operating as a lucid dreamer, navigating her nonsensical and surreal landscape with clear, open eyes, fully awake, and unafraid.

Clown Show For Bruno

Written by Murray Mednick, directed by Guy Zimmerman, Art Share LA: March 26 – April 19, 2009

Clown Show is Mednick’s homage to the great Polish writer and artist Bruno Schultz. In 1939, when the Nazis occupied Poland, Schulz was driven into the ghetto and enslaved by a Nazi officer who forced him to paint fairy tale figures on the walls of his son’s bedroom. Caught in an escalating feud between his “protector,” Felix Landau, and another Nazi official, Schulz was shot dead on the streets of his home town on November 19th, 1942 by Landau’s rival – an act of revenge against the man who “owned” him. Written in the fast-paced rhythms of the Yiddish theater, Clown Show utilizes clowning, masks, and mime to tell Schulz’s story. Padua artistic director Guy Zimmerman directs Bill Celentano, Kali Quinn, Daniel A. Stein and Dana Wieluns, all masters of physical theater: Celentano, Quinn, and Wieluns are graduates of The Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, while Stein was a principle instructor there for ten years. This fall, Mr. Stein takes on the position of Director of Movement and Physical Theatre for the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Theatre Consortium.

“The play is based on a true story, but it’s not a biography,” explains Mednick. “It’s a work of empathy, inspired by Bruno’s life and work. It’s as much about me as it is about him. I feel a personal connection, a kinship with Bruno.”

The Destruction of the Fourth World

In The Destruction of the Fourth World by Murray Mednick, the ancient Native American trickster, Coyote, makes ready for the end of the world with his only accomplice – a 13-year-old boy from a dysfunctional Jewish family. “The Destruction of the Fourth World is funny, moving and wise – Mednick is working at the top of his form,” Zimmerman comments.

 

 

The Neo-Sacred Revival

Three Short Plays for the Modern Soul
January 23rd–February 15th 2009 at Art Share L.A.

Review

Three smartly staged one-acts from the current generation of Padua Playwrights illustrate both the risks and the rewards of the long-running writing workshop’s dedication to what they call a “poet’s theater.” The evening’s highlight is Sharon Yablons’ “Acts of Love,” a scathingly funny look at physical desire, emotional intimacy and the sadomasochistic trap awaiting those couples who don’t understand the difference. Richard Azurdia and a nicely nuanced Mickey Swenson are the witless cads unable to muster desire for the women they love and respect; Lake Sharp, Sandra McCurdy and Kim Debus are the significant others grappling with their partners’ mystifying erotic indifference. Gray Palmer directs. Less successful are Guy Zimmerman’s “Hammers” and Heidi Darchuk’s “Tiny Trumpets.” Zimmerman (who also directs) uses a callow screenwriter’s (Gill Gayle) relationship to his brain-damaged brother (Adrian Alex Cruz) to implicate storytelling, history and the past in the fate of the tortured siblings. Darchuk’s tale follows estranged parents (Lisa Denke and Palmer) reuniting for the funeral of their daughter (Caroline Duncan). Though director Gill Gayle ably realizes Darchuk’s dark humor and off-kilter lyricism, the compelling human drama never feels connected to the piece’s more oblique passages. It’s a flaw shared by Zimmerman — trying to score big intellectual points far too unwieldy and abstract for such intimate work.

—Bill Raden, LA Weekly

A Thousand Words

ARTIST~PLAYWRIGHT
Robert Reynolds~Guy Zimmerman, Alberto Miyares~Coleman Hough, Matt Aston~Chris Kelley, Emmeric James Konrad~Sharon Yablon, Taz~Rachel Jendrzejewski, Lilli Mueller~Phinneas Kiyomura, Jett Jackson~Heidi Darchuk, Alexandra Koiv~Alex Forman, Rick Robinson~Alisha Adams

DIRECTORS
Shirley Anderson, Mickey Swenson, Lauren Campedelli, Gray Palmer, Nick Faust, Adrian Alex Cruz, Gill Gayle, Chris Kelley, Mark Adair-Rios

ACTING ENSEMBLE
Michael Shamus Wiles, Mickey Swenson, Phinneas Kiyomura, Coleman Hough, Heidi Darchuk, John Horn, Gregory Littman, Jack Littman, Lisa Denke, Tina Preston, Caroline Duncan, Phoenix Gonzalez, Adrian Alex Cruz, Niamh McCormally, David Bickford, Nicole Disson, Lake Sharp

Reviews

‘A Thousand Words’ writers hope it’s the start of something big
June 11, 2008

Stephen Sondheim and Georges Seurat. John Guare and Wassily Kandinsky. Edward Albee and Louise Nevelson.

Throughout theater history, writers have mined the works and biographies of artists to create such vastly different dramas as “Sunday in the Park With George,” “Six Degrees of Separation” and “Occupant.”

Taking the formula in an experimental direction, Padua Playwrights’ “A Thousand Words” pairs nine dramatists with nine visual artists, most of whom come from the Los Angeles avant-garde scene. Each playwright was commissioned to produce a 10-minute drama using a work from the artist’s studio or an aspect of the artist’s life. (A gallery show featuring the artists’ works will accompany the play.)

“A Thousand Words,” which opens Friday, cross-pollinates two art forms with the hope of isolating the gene of creative inspiration. “It’s a big experiment, and no experiment is ever a failure,” says Coleman Hough, whose “Dressed for Dinner” is in the production.

Hough is best known for her screenplays for Steven Soderbergh’s “Full Frontal” and “Bubble.” Anyone who has seen those strange films will be prepared for the writer’s tendency to mingle mundane chitchat and far-out metaphysics. In Hough’s play, a man and a woman meet for dinner in a restaurant. Their conversation is interrupted by a singing waitress, who emerges from a hole in the table and informs the couple of a subterranean world.

The play is loosely based on a dinner meeting with artist Alberto Miyares at Pacific Dining Car in L.A. The playwright recalls the constant intrusion of ambient noises. She decided to make those interruptions a focal point of the story.

“I never know what I’m writing until I actually do it,” says Hough, who portrays herself in the play. “The creative process is like making paper — the pulp is floating around the water and you just grab it. It’s scoopable. You don’t throw anything away.”

Miyares, a Lincoln Heights-based sculptor, won’t play himself in the production, but he built the set and is contributing new work to the gallery show.

The artist views his creative process as a mystery best left unexamined by the creator. “If I had to write a paragraph explaining what one particular piece is about, it wouldn’t give the piece its voice,” he says. “A painting or sculpture should be able to speak for itself.”

Nurturing artists

If the rationale behind “A Thousand Words” sounds abstruse, the play’s producers hope it will yield something tangible in the long run.

That’s because “A Thousand Words” is a prototype project for a new arts center to be built in the Downtown Arts District, according to Tim Keating, president of L.A. DAD Space, which is co-producing the play along with Padua.

The arts center would be on the ground floor of One Santa Fe, a mixed-use building that is slated for construction this fall with a completion date in 2011. The center would house a 99-seat theater, an art gallery, a multimedia lab and studio space where artists of all disciplines could interact.

“It would be a petri dish of creativity,” Keating says. “It would be a meeting space where artists of all stripes could congregate and influence each other’s development.”

L.A. DAD needs to raise $250,000 to construct the interior of the ground floor. So far they have raised about 30% of that goal. The building owner has offered to rent the space for $1 per month, a gesture of goodwill to the downtown arts community. In recent months, artists have complained that One Santa Fe would accelerate gentrification in the neighborhood, leading to higher rents. Opponents have created a website, www.onesantafe.org, in which they describe the building as “a massive wall, severing the Arts District from the adjacent communities in East LA.”

Despite these grievances, the City Council has approved construction of One Santa Fe. The completed building will occupy former rail yards bounded by Santa Fe Avenue and the Los Angeles River.

The arts center would serve as a home for Padua Playwrights, one of L.A.’s most enduring experimental theater organizations. Since it was founded in 1978 by Murray Mednick, who still serves on the company’s board and continues to write plays for the company, Padua has championed the early work of theater artists such as Sam Shepard, Jon Robin Baitz, John Steppling and David Henry Hwang.

“L.A. is a great place to create art, but not necessarily to show it,” says Padua Artistic Director Guy Zimmerman. “It all comes down to traffic. Every time someone invites me to a play, I have to think twice. I don’t think L.A. has a self-image of being a hotbed of creative activity. But it is and has been for a long time.”

He adds: “What we’re trying to do downtown, in the Arts District, is to sustain this undervalued environment that has nurtured artists for so many years.”

Art meets technology

Padua is using “A Thousand Words” to seed another project: an online community that will combine visual, performing and digital arts. The site, run by L.A. DAD Space, is scheduled to launch in July and will initially offer Web adaptations of five plays from “A Thousand Words.”

Writers will distill their scripts to five-minute screenplays, shot in digital video, then streamed from the site. Padua also wants artists to shoot B-roll footage that Web users could combine and shuffle to create their own art.

Though still in the development phase, Padua’s online ambitions provoke strong reactions from writers.

“As a playwright, I write for the stage,” says Christopher Kelley, whose “Piece” is part of “A Thousand Words.” “The mind-set of a playwright is that you have to think about the stage: When do actors enter? When do they exit?

“Maybe I have a Puritan attitude,” he adds. “But I’m not thrilled by the tendency to put everything on the Web.”

Others are enthusiastic.

“I like the idea of mixing media,” says Phinneas Kiyomura. “We’re already mixing theater and art, so it makes sense to move into the digital world.”

His play “Woods” is about a reclusive artist living in a rural town. A mysterious woman visits him, claiming to be someone he had long forgotten. They argue, and the artist reveals the sculpture he’s working on.

The play was inspired by a visit to artist Lilli Mueller’s studio in downtown L.A. Her sculpture “Transformation” depicts a wooden nest made of tree branches concealing a human body. The rough texture of the sculpture gave Kiyomura the idea of setting his play in backwoods country.

For Kiyomura, creativity is a sometimes lonely and often neurotic process of trial and error. “I think the artistic process oftentimes means making a stab in the dark. So often you come in with an idea of how you’re going to write something, and when you’re done you realize that your whole thesis was wrong. And so you have to cut away your bad idea in the beginning and just go with what’s there.

“We were given a lot of freedom and were told we could relate to the artwork in a loose way. So I had a deadline and no preconceived notion of how to do things. It’s ironic, but I think having more freedom can be more stultifying for an artist.”

David Ng, Los Angeles Times

A New World War

written by Rita Valencia, directed by Guy Zimmerman, Stephanie Feury Studio Theater, April 14 through May 12, 2007.

A New World War was inspired by the current events following the inception of the “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks. That era began in a perfect storm of fear, institutionalized ignorance (corporate news), right wing extremism, millenialism and media consolidation, along with an extraordinarily sophisticated marketing system which used the idea of war as a device to further the ends of a cadre of neo-conservatives and powerful corporate interests. The toll of greivously injured and poisoned remains hidden. The confluence of effective political and social propaganda, alongside the marketing of consumer products (promising perfect satisfaction) and fear (threatening disaster) simultaneously, strikes me as both comic and horrific, and that is the source of the dark humor in a New World War.

I drew from pop culture sources, such as Hal from 2001:A Space Odyssey, The Prisoner television series, and Hindi movies about radicalized youth, overlaid upon romantic era sources such as E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Sandman” and Janacek’s opera, “Katya Kabanova”. This play follows in a Brechtian tradition of socially engaged theater, although the language often uses Dada techniques (cut-up of found/appropriated text and intentional non sequitur).

—Rita Valencia, 2007

Featuring Andy Hopper, Jack Littman, Niamh McCormally and Gray Palmer
Set `Deisgn by Jeffrey Atherton
Sound Design by John Zalewski

Review: ‘A New World War’

The future. An unspecified time and place. The sounds of a battle rage outside.

We’re introduced to the lovely Antar (Niamh McCormally) and her Cyborg husband, the fresh-faced Gauloise (Jack Littman), as they sit blankly in a sparsely furnished living room.
Gauloise, as we learn, has been purchased by Antar to be her own customized life-companion. A robot programmed to love her, Gauloise interprets Antar as the perfect “need-machine” of which only he is equipped to satisfy.

The conflict begins as Antar expresses her dissatisfaction with Gauloise and a desire to cancel her contract. Naturally, this does not sit nicely with either Gauloise or the company from which he came, represented by his technician, “mother-in-law” (Gray Palmer).

The drama takes a turn with the appearance of the gritty, bearded Charly (Andy Hopper), an insurgent fighting in the rebellion outside. His ultimate aim is unclear, but in the immediate, he’s got his lusty eyes on Antar.

Thus we have the premise for a brilliant new work from veteran playwright Rita Valencia. Produced by the famed avant garde theater company Padua Playwrights, “A New World War” manages the all-too-extraordinary feat of being both blissful entertainment and unnerving social commentary.
Valencia’s script takes us seamlessly into this bizarre world with an almost malicious sense of humor. As we enjoy a dazzling array of literary gems, we are simultaneously belly-punched by the poignancy of her insight into the psychology of modern society. Valencia poses serious and unsettling questions about human nature, our relentless cravings and the notion that fulfillment may be achieved at last if only we can get our hands on the right “package.”

The script is served well by a remarkable cast of performers. McCormally, as our would-be heroine, Antar, is absolutely captivating by virtue of her natural beauty and impeccable timing. She plays the part with the same spine chilling ferocity with which she has astonished theater audiences for years.
Littman, as her robotic husband, is perfectly cast, both by sight and talent. His unblemished countenance and the mechanical precision with which he delivers his lines complement his role as a state-of-the-art plaything.

Hopper, as the grimy, cum-struck revolutionary, Charly is a sheer joy to behold. The room veritably stinks with the raw masculinity of a young Brando as he graces the stage.
Palmer is masterful in his role of “mother-in-law,” exuding the sterile cruelty of a fascist with the sudden, hair-raising explosions of a raving psychopath. In a walk-on role, Devon Carson, a true find, if ever there was one, is pure titillation in the role of “Gail.”
The conscientious eye of director Guy Zimmerman rounds out the remarkable script, a stellar cast and the fine set design and lighting.

“A New World War” takes us to a place utterly unexpected and yet, somehow, eerily familiar. It’s a vision of a possible future so unapologetically pessimistic you can’t help but laugh.

Aron Dov Rudnick, Campus Circle

Review: ‘A New World War’: Cyborg Spouse and a Marital Rift
Angry sci-fi comedy. Also reviewed: “The Bay at Nice,” “Who Killed Bob Marley?” and more.
April 20, 2007

All too recognizable elements of present-day conflicts and social dysfunction are projected onto a post-Orwellian future in “A New World War,” an angry sci-fi comedy by Rita Valencia presented by Padua Playwrights.

With incisive wit, Valencia envisions a totalitarian rule maintained by implanted “identity chips” and “fidelity warrants” in which a restless housewife named Antar (Niamh McCormally) violates her contractual obligations to Gauloise (Jack Littman), the cyborg spouse custom-built to meet her subconscious needs.

The irony, of course, is that über-consumer Antar (who achieved fleeting fame as the author of “How to Throw an Awesome Party”) is every bit as programmed and mechanical in her thinking as any cyborg. It’s only after she meets Charly (Andy Hopper), a rugged soldier in the underground resistance, that conflicted loyalties (“He’s the enemy — and he’s hot”) drive Antar to question authority.

In a nicely sinister turn, Gray Palmer’s marriage counselor/cyborg repairman, named “Mother-in-Law,” tries to lure Antar back to the fold with banal pronouncements (“The sooner the terrorists are put down, the sooner you can go shopping”). Evidently a student of modern history, he believes that when truth threatens the reality built on lies we’ve told ourselves, his mission is to ensure that truth will never be revealed.

Rejected by Antar as a machine incapable of change, Gauloise responds with a well-constructed soliloquy filled with that quintessential human quality, self-loathing.

Don’t expect many shades of gray, however. Guy Zimmerman’s energetic staging tightly adheres to the intended political agitprop masquerading as a relationship story (a distinction explicitly stated at one point). When you’re either a placid robot or a rabid insurgent, there’s little breathing room for nuance.

— Philip Brandes, LA Times

Review: ‘A New World War’

You may ask what’s the point of telling yet another futuristic story about the modern military-corporate assault on once-cherished freedoms. As though George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut didn’t get it quite right. Rita Valencia’s new play doesn’t chart new territory, but it does finesse our worst nightmares for the future by positing the question of what, precisely, it means to be human. Somewhere in 2030 America, a young woman named Antar (Niamh McCormally) has signed a contract for a “personal companion” — i.e. a callow robot (Jack Littman) working super hard to be human — programmed for just the right amount of arguments, abuse and sex talk to match the personality of his female owner. She was smitten when they first met, but now she’s not so sure. And the more she doubts, the more insecure and abusive (human) he becomes. Furthermore, the war on terror still hasn’t been won (big surprise), and Antar finds herself attracted to an insurrectionist (Andy Hopper). Turns out her lifetime contract — entered into with a government agent named Mother-in-Law (Gray Palmer) — for the “cyborg” is like having a credit card where the bank can change the terms at will, but you can’t. Mother-in-Law is sort of in control, and Palmer’s performance reveals a certain high blood pressure born of exasperation with his prickly client. All of which adds a healthy dose of levity, under Guy Zimmerman’s nicely droll direction. Valencia’s departure from the sci-fi dystopias of yore comes from the sliver of incompetence that runs through just about everybody. It may not be enough to prevent them from breaking free spirits, but it’s our only hope. And Valencia’s play is onto it.

—Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly

The Future Bites its Own Tail
A theater parable about the exasperating me culture (a.k.a. ego)

The play A New World War, playing at the Stephanie Feury Studio Theater through May 12, is science fiction that turns on itself. It is also theater, of the better sort, in which the future is a mirror that reflects, slightly distorted, the whims and the foolishness of the current world.
This play by Rita Valencia, presented by Padua Playwrights, links its sarcastic fangs on the irritating, so typically American me culture, in other words, “I’m the only purpose for the World to exist” or also “I have the right to get everything I want.” There is no way to stop this from expanding into a critique of our current society and the failure of human communication.

Antar is the name of the young protagonist. She dedicates her life to shopping and enjoying her spouse, Gauloise. Although lately, not so much.

Gauloise has become a bit arrogant and critical of his… mistress? The fact is that the spouse is an android, a cybernetic creation, with smooth skin, perfect hair and profile, especially created to “love” his mistress (all, and I mean everything included.) Although, as I said before, not so much lately. It seems that the perfect leading man has not been performing up to the required level. And buying him cost poor Antar plenty. For some reason the young (and rich) woman, tired of not finding the right man to share her love of shopping, decided to give up on her search, and bought the latest android model as a spouse.

This type of android is especially designed to complement in a precise manner the character of his would be wife. But this time, something happened, and the fitting didn’t work out. An emotional disaster for her, since it was a case of impulse shopping; the moment she saw him she wanted to take him home, signing a “for life” contract without reading it. The outcome: a legal and financial disaster.
When Motherinlaw, the company technician, comes to investigate, she realizes that the maintenance contract has expired. Antar wants an exchange, but it won’t be easy for her to get the company to comply. Whenever the product becomes defective, it is always the customer’s fault.

The fact that a “New World War” has begun does not make things easy for Antar. “Why do we have to fight, when we have everything we need” she asks.

She is going to find out quite soon, when on one of her outings she meets a “terrorist”(a real man in this world of androids) and soon they start a relationship that seems to go nowhere.
But this is only the beginning. From then on the pressure on poor Antar from the corporation escalates with aggressive tactics that increasingly resemble those of an occupying army, rather that those of a gentle, old-fashioned marketing campaign.

Posmodernism is an umbrella that can cover much territory, but less and less with any originality, or meaningful and well thought out content.

This production, on the contrary, represents the best example of this style that we have seen on the stage for a long time, with good, consistent choices, from the script to the staging, acting, and even the lighting design and costumes.

What seem at first to be facile ideas, because of the sharp sense of humor, keep gaining a deeper and deeper meaning until they achieve a very real sense of urgency.

The actress Niamh McCormally creates a very convincing Antar, a spoiled young woman, who, in spite of the lack of sensibility the character is supposed to have, grows into total anguish, through subtle but carefully marked changes. The cold and distant Gauloise finds a perfect embodiment in Jack Littman, and the excellent Gray Palmer sneaks through the constant duplicities of her character, Motherin-law. Andy Hopper is quite impressive in the most “real” and “human” character, which doesn’t mean that he is better than the rest of the cast. Devon Carson, in a brief role, is another example of the ability the director Guy Zimmerman shows in being able to maintain a consistent style that also allows our involvement and understanding of the play.

What is most interesting is discovering a new theater talent. Rita Valencia shows commitment, humor, a concern for social issues and their consequences, a creative mind capable of analysis, and an innate originality and theatrical skill.

—Hugo Quintana, La Opinion (translated from Spanish)

A New World At War

Nothing makes a critic happier when he or she sees fresh, innovative work from a playwright who gets how invaluable it is to spruce up contemporary stories with a fresh eye. 

Rita Valencia is a true working writer. Her stuff is found in print, online, on the stage and everywhere else where there is an enraptured audience. Her latest work is a combination of sci-fi and the new media blitz phrase ‘war on terror’. 

I had the pleasure in speaking with actor Gray Palmer after the show. Now, he said that A New World War is not sci-fi but contains components of the genre. Okay, I can buy that. After the walk home I thought about it some more. There are strong similarities. For one the play is set 25 years in the future. Sci-fi element number one. Not a long time, but a hell far away from today.

Gauloise (Jack Littman) is the cocky but good-looking cyborg, similar to Sean Young’s role in the 1982 thriller Blade Runner. Gauloise is the personal lifetime companion to Antar (Niamh McCormally) a one-hit writer who is already tired of her mate. Gauloise and Antar do not have the love jones for each other the way Harrison Ford and Young did in the movie. Antar is caught up in the revolution right outside her window. Gauloise tries to protect her but she is finding the outside world more intriguing.

Enter Charly. An ill-mannered, disheveled looking soldier who has seen combat at its unspeakable worse. His other talent is bringing out the sexual awakening in Antar by using his rough demeanor. Now, she is in love and has newfound purpose. The only obstacle is that damn ‘husband’ of hers who won’t go away. “ I’ve changed,” she repeats to Gauloise and Mother-in Law (Gray Palmer) whose job is to figure out what is going on and smooth out the couple’s problems. 

Unfortunately, Antar in her Patty Hearst mode and 80s Cyndi Lauper attire, does not want the calm idyllic life with Gauloise. Charly (Andy Hopper) provides the excitement she now feels is lacking. It takes mother-in-law’s entire strength knock some sense into this fickle young woman’s head. A good slap might have helped since she obviously was not hearing what mother-in-law said. Littman and McCormally are the perfect couple in reverse. He wants to stay committed and she wants to leave. Littman plays Gauloise in a very charming, boy band-ish annoying way. He knows it all, he is smarter than most humans and has a tremendous satiable appetite for Antar. Doesn’t seem like a problem in my eyes. Palmer is wonderful as the clean up man. As mother-in-law, he is playful, stern with a wicked sense of humor that drives Antar crazy while making the audience enjoying watching her twist in the wind.

Valencia said she drew form various pop culture resources in making her dark humorous story convincing. The 9/11 attacks, news programs not showing the gruesome images of the bodies killed in war but encouraged people to buy, buy, buy at the nearest mall. Gauloise prevents Antar from seeing the death toll on the streets. Her constant shopping is the way she deals to ease her pain and fright. Antar is kept locked up in her fancy apartment the way the inmates in the Fox television drama Prison Break, Valencia latched on to the show’s premise, and tries to escape. Gauloise is a huge reminder of that son-of-bitch Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey who prevents Antar from doing anything, for her own good of course. Valencia blends science fiction with the real world and delivers a realistic and convincing portrayal peek of what the world could look like in 2032. Frightening to think about but too compelling to ignore.

—Mary E. Monotoro, SoCal.com

Vagrant

Feb 3 – March 4 2006, The Electric Lodge, Venice

Written and Directed by Guy Zimmerman

Christopher Allport Meyer
Niamh McCormally Patty
Patrick Burleigh Larkin

A noir mystery set in a rundown appliance repair shop in South Central Los Angeles. Charged with conflict and dark humor, Vagrant is a play about memory, emotional violence, and redemption.

Produced by T Keaton-Woods
Scenic Design Jeff Atherton
Lighting Design Kathi O’Donohue
Sound Design Don Preston
Technical Director Scott Toumey
Graphic Design La Mer Walker
Publicity Lucy Pollak

Special Thanks: Ryan Cutrona, Kadeina de Elejalde, Morgan Weisser, Mike Wiles, Annie Weirich, Seth Macari, Michelle Haner, Oxblood, Jenny Bright and Eliza, Murray Mednick.

Playwright/Director Statement:
I’ve been reading D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths to my daughter. The material is full of wonders, providing Eliza (age 5) with a wealth of questions her poppa is unable to answer. The myths are full of powerful heroes and villians, all of whom must bow in the end to implacable and volatile forces beyond their control. The crimes these figures commit, either out of inate evil or in moments of blindness, propagate out into the world at large, demanding redress. Vagrant is a play about such crimes; about memory and redemption. Vulnerable, and yet also full of violence, the characters in this noir-vaudeville struggle fiercely to escape dark influences that reach up out of the distant past. Their personalities fracture under the strain, leaving them bewildered and helpless. In their confusion they draw close, correctly recognizing in each other a kind of liberation.

Reviews

Listen to an interview with Guy Zimmerman on KPFK. (2/6/06)

The Twilight Zone meets the theater of the absurd in playwright-director Guy Zimmerman’s compelling and confounding tale of sin and redemption. Meyer (Christopher Allport) is the middle-aged owner of a rundown electronics shop in South-Central L.A. “I like to pamper my patrons,” Meyer says proudly to Larkin (Patrick Burleigh), a young LAPD beat officer. Yet Meyer displays a malevolent streak as the cop delves into the man’s business, or lack thereof. As with many a noir mystery, however, everybody’s got a secret. Is Larkin there to report on a homeless panhandler arrested for pestering Meyer and his younger wife, Patty (Niamh McCormally), or to return Patty’s child, who has been missing these last five years? Is Patty working as a seamstress or a hooker in the back of Meyer’s disheveled store? Is Meyer Patty’s husband, her father or some other relation that connects all three characters? And just who is the titular vagrant of the play? In Zimmerman’s stylized and dreamlike narrative, each party inhabits several personas — parent, sibling, lover, enemy — and the plot line bobs and weaves like Muhammad Ali, landing powerful emotional punches along the way. Kathi O’Donohue’s atmospheric lighting, Don Preston’s moody music and sound, and the impassioned ensemble complement this mystifying story.

—Martín Hernández, LA Weekly

RAVE!!
Confusion part of ‘Vagrant’s’ character

One reason dreams can disorient, as well as fascinate, is that facts get distorted and blend with fiction. That’s why the stories that play in our sleeping minds are frequently hard to retell to another person once we are awake.

With his latest play, “Vagrant,” appearing at the Electric Lodge in Venice, Guy Zimmerman has fashioned a dreamlike state where reality fluctuates and time ceases to be linear.

Hardly your mainstream evening of theater, it is typical of what to expect with Zimmerman, or any Padua Playwrights production. The company, for which Zimmerman has served as artistic director since 2001, has the well-earned honor of being the area’s leader in complex works that dive fearlessly into the text, striving more for an expression of ideas and emotion than presenting a cohesive and easily digestible story.

That description might make some theatergoers wary, but they shouldn’t be. “Vagrant” is funny, and it’s a successful homage to the film noir genre. It’s well-acted and tightly directed by Zimmerman. And its running time of 80 minutes with an intermission keeps the script’s intentional repetition from becoming tiresome.

“Vagrant” is set in an appliance sales and repair shop in Los Angeles, run by an angry man named Meyer (Christopher Allport, who has a recurring role in ABC’s “Commander in Chief”). Larkin (Patrick Burleigh), a policeman, is questioning Meyer about a vagrant whom other officers removed from outside the shop because Meyer complained that he was causing problems.

Larkin also speaks to Meyer’s wife, Patty (Niamh McCormally), who appears to live in a back storage room, and who has been distraught since the disappearance of the couple’s daughter years earlier.

The dialogue is sparse and darkly humorous. For example, Meyer describes Patty by saying, “Once she worms your way into your heart, you need an ax to hack her out.”

The structure of “Vagrant” resembles most David Lynch movies, where halfway through, everything is turned on its side. It becomes unclear who Meyer is, and what relationship he has to Patty and Larkin. You become unsure of who — if anyone — is real.

The script wrestles with the idea of memory, the way humans relive moments — often tragic mistakes — until those moments take on lives of their own. As director, Zimmerman has kept the action spare and the pace swift, befitting the noir genre.

The performances border on melodrama. As Meyer, Allport appears on the verge of exploding. He shouts or growls most of his lines and his expressions fluctuate between scowls and bewilderment.

Burleigh uses piercing stares and a confident tone to make Larkin seem, at first, like the stereotypical cop. Gradually, his assuredness turns to confusion, which adds to the mystery surrounding his character.

McCormally is eerie as the somber Patty. Her blank eyes and lyrical voice register as a woman who has lost her mind.

A major contributor to the success of “Vagrant” is sound designer Don Preston. Foreboding music swells at the most tense moments, heightening the sense of danger.

Those who see “Vagrant” are likely to have a unique take regarding the play’s statement on humanity. And fodder for engaging post-performance debates is a sign that Zimmerman has done his job well.

—Jeff Favre, Daily Breeze

Vagrant (Digital –> Digical –> Dilogical -> Dialogical)

It’s refreshing to see some Los Angeles theatre that has you leave debating what you just witnessed and experienced. Vagrant is not candy on a stick, rather a full-bodied glass of wine. Eerily scored (Twilight Zone meets Sin City), the anachronistic noir of South Los Angeles brings Larkin (Patrick Burleigh), an LAPD officer, into a dilapidated digital repair shop sketchy of its own existence. The shop’s front man, Meyer (Christopher Allport), is a man living the past as NYC bridge-and-tunnel kid who attempts to mask his erred family life with Patty (Niamh McCormally), Meyer’s wife, a creature void of emotion one moment, grounded to life the next.

The trio performs Guy Zimmerman’s work, a sonata form tragedy with a sweet and sour recapitulation giving no pleasing-to-the-mind cadence. Meditating on that last atonal chord is the audience’s only liberation of the past hour and a half (and hopefully more than that).

Writer and director, Guy Zimmerman (also artistic director of the Padua Playwrights) came to Los Angeles in the early 1990s and found himself curiously involved in tragedy after tragedy:

It’s difficult to imagine anything less LA than the tragic mind-set. Even more than most Americans, we Angelinos see nothing wrong with the aspiration to feel happy all the time. We surely rank among the most fervent adherents of the American credo that happiness is a thing and you can have it.

For the characters of the play, the Vagrant who used stand outside the digital repair shop (Meyer pronounces it digical, maybe dilogical) is part of what got in the way of happiness. Now gone, he still can’t’ find it and talks of his lost daughter – Pauline. Memories collide and repeat themselves in different forms in Vagrant, but a truth comes out of this tragedy:

We respond [to the effects of tragedy] because something within us enjoys not being lied to. And this enjoyment may taste even sweeter when we live in LA, crucible of self-protective deceptions.

Vagrant continues through March 4 at the solar powered performance space – The Electric Lodge in Venice.

Block quotes come from “LA Tragedy” by Guy Zimmerman, printed in the November 2003 issue of LA STAGE.

—Zach Behrens, LAist