Results tagged “pasadenaplayhouse”

The Orphans West Symposium, a weekend film series dedicated to home movies, amateur and educational films, industrial and sponsored films, experimental films and newsreels, concludes today at the Silent Movie Theatre. The theme of the 2 pm screening is “On Location: Place and Region in Forgotten Films” and features “Space Explorations: Scott Stark,” “Building the Hollywoodland Sign” (1923) and Early Middle Eastern Films. The 4:30 pm screening is dedicated to “Science, Industry and Education” and features segments on “Sex Mis-Education: The Sex Ed Film in the Moving Image Archive” and “Science in Action (CAS 1952 - 66): Spectral Uses of Kinescopy.” Tickets for each show are $13.

Tucked away in a cozy upper floor of the Pasadena Playhouse is the Carrie Hamilton Theater, a dark, unassuming, 99-seater that is regularly packed with patrons eager to see stage performers with a lot of heart. These performers are members of the Furious Theater Company, a successful nonprofit organization that was formed over seven years ago, whose plays have continued to not only entertain, but incite controversial question after controversial question with each passing season.

THEATRE

What’s up with all the development in Downtown LA? What’s it going to look like in 5, 10 or 20 years? Moderated by Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times architecture critic, ALOUD at the Central Library features panelists Lauren Bon, Tom Gilmore, Martha Welborne and James Von Klemperer, AIA to discuss all things Downtown and development.

There’s something for everyone in LA theatre scene this week: old stuff, new stuff and stuff that’s just out there. Canned Peaches in Syrup The Furious Theatre Company presents this post-apocalyptic comedy, where two tribes of humans remain: cannibals and vegetarians. “Can star-crossed lovers Rog and Julie cross tribal lines?! Can Rog's taste for flesh be suppressed?! Can Julie deny her parents' "meat is murder" mantra?! And, who exactly is Blind Bastard? A lone can...

Willie @ Hollywood Bowl Rakim @ House of Blues Tool @ Staples Center Vibrators @ Anarchy Library Blowfly @ Knitting Factory Fences @ Pasadena Playhouse Jerker @ Moving Arts Northern @ Spaceland 311 @ Greek Sugarcult @ Ventura Theatre Kansas @ Grove of Anaheim Dragonforce @ Wiltern Motochrist @ Cat Club Oslo @ Key Club Kennedy @ Largo Nouvelle Vague, The Submarines @ Henry Fonda photo by jerry milton via flickr...

Coming to a Close: Sexuality

The Furious Theatre Company is the luckiest little ensemble in town, having snagged a residency at the Pasadena Playhouse's balcony theatre at a time when companies are losing their spaces left and right. They've adventurously chosen to use their good fortune to explore a risky undertaking: a new adaptation and re-staging of seventeenth-century dramatist Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I & II. We saw the Fair Maid last Sunday night, in a long, narrow theatre with ropes and rigging draping from the sides, and she's Furious, all right - furiously swashbuckling. Here be pirates.

Okay, it's true confessions time. We've been waiting for Tea at Five, the one-woman play about the life of Katharine Hepburn, to hit the west coast for over two years now. We took our seat in the lovely and historic Pasadena Playhouse opening night, practically biting our nails in nervous anticipation. After all, it seems to take a Kate (or a Cate) to play the Great Kate, and we were ready to see Mulgrew tread the boards in shoes that could be too big to step in to. Tea at Five takes place at Fenwick, the Hepburn family's second home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the first act one stormy eve in 1938, and the second act in 1983. The two acts are almost as disparate as the decades they represent, and stikingly so. Mulgrew bears a fair resemblance to Hepburn the younger; what she lacks in physical proximity (she's shorter and more voluptuous, certainly) she tries to make up with prancing and posing. While it's in an effort to capture the boundless energy and athleticism of the outspoken star, at times it is distracting and a tad bit far-fetched. Act one plays like a frantic highlight reel of Hepburn's trials and tribulations: she's considered "box office poison" after a series of flops, she's not in the running to play Scarlett O'Hara, her brother Dick has penned an inflammatory play, she's turned down a Mr. Hughes' proposal, and there's a hurricane a-comin'. Granted, all of these moments are absolutely historically accurate (though perhaps not on the table all in the same day), but many of the more so-called intimate insights are full of invention and error. The fault lies not in Mulgrew's bold and daring performance, but in Matthew Lombardo's try-hard script; surely if his aim was to uncover the secret thoughts of "Katharine of Arrogance" he would have studied the same material that any devoted fan would have. Certainly the objections of Hepburn's extended family did not gain him access into any top-secret material, and some of his liberties, such as the convoluted tale of her first lover Luddy, border on offensive. It seems Lombardo put the 1993 All About Me videotape on a loop and copied down Kate's witticisms as fast as he could type--the cleverest lines were all written or said by Hepburn herself.