Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
'Focus Group Play' Tests Well in LAbWORKS Theater Festival
Playwrights can have a tough time trying to mesh the personal and the sociopolitical realms of experience without forcing their characters into contrived situations or turning them into unnatural mouthpieces for some point of view. But in her new, perhaps still-developing "Focus Group Play," which is one of seven shows in the Katselas Theatre Company's LAbWORKS series, Carrie Barrett ingeniously hits upon a perfect setting in which greater external forces can be seen impinging on the lives of the people on stage.
Five nervous adults, who could all really use the $125 stipend, are recruited to participate in a focus group to discuss their respective relations to meal replacement bars and to sample new products presently being tested for the market. The session's moderator (Jen Drohan) appears to be a gregariously soulless stick-to-the-script professional drone charged with keeping this somewhat motley crew on point and on schedule. Everyone in the room knows, too, that a cadre of corporate higher-ups are observing their every move from the other side of the one-way glass mirror on one wall.
Each one of these focus group guinea pigs is a bundle of quirks and fears which get activated, much to Miss Moderator's initial discomfort, by even minor revelations about the products, and the company, they are there to discuss. And within the hour they all, even their host, come to legitimately recognize the manipulations and humiliations to which their corporate overlords persistently subject them both in and outside of the room.
Impeccable comic timing from the entire cast and an often very funny script keep the play from devolving into either grim social commentary or lightweight melodrama. Alissa Ford as a desperately cynical troublemaker and Celia Finkelstein as a desperately eager-to-ingratiate simpleton are especially engrossing, and Darcy Shean, Caro Zeller and Brian Hamill round out a remarkable ensemble. Drohan masterfully modulates her transition from an officiously plasticine shill into a vulnerable woman wronged, although her character's complaints about the personal and professional mistreatment she has endured are a bit facile in comparison with everything else Barrett gives us.
Support for LAist comes from
"Focus Group Play," directed by Eric Hunicutt, runs at the Skylight Theatre tonight through October 7. Full-price tickets on the Katselas Theatre Group web site, discount tickets for most performances on LAStageTix and Plays 411.
As Editor-in-Chief of our newsroom, I’m extremely proud of the work our top-notch journalists are doing here at LAist. We’re doing more hard-hitting watchdog journalism than ever before — powerful reporting on the economy, elections, climate and the homelessness crisis that is making a difference in your lives. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to maintain a paywall-free, independent news source that informs, inspires, and engages everyone.
Simply put, we cannot do this essential work without your help. Federal funding for public media has been clawed back by Congress and that means LAist has lost $3.4 million in federal funding over the next two years. So we’re asking for your help. LAist has been there for you and we’re asking you to be here for us.
We rely on donations from readers like you to stay independent, which keeps our nonprofit newsroom strong and accountable to you.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, press freedom is at the core of keeping our nation free and fair. And as the landscape of free press changes, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust, but the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news from our community.
Please take action today to support your trusted source for local news with a donation that makes sense for your budget.
Thank you for your generous support and believing in independent news.
Chip in now to fund your local journalism
(
LAist
)
Trending on LAist
-
With less to prove than LA, the city is becoming a center of impressive culinary creativity. -
Nearly 470 sections of guardrailing were stolen in the last fiscal year in L.A. and Ventura counties.
-
Monarch butterflies are on a path to extinction, but there is a way to support them — and maybe see them in your own yard — by planting milkweed.
-
With California voters facing a decision on redistricting this November, Surf City is poised to join the brewing battle over Congressional voting districts.
-
The drug dealer, the last of five defendants to plead guilty to federal charges linked to the 'Friends' actor’s death, will face a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
-
The weather’s been a little different lately, with humidity, isolated rain and wind gusts throughout much of Southern California. What’s causing the late-summer bout of gray?
Best of LAist