George Orwell's "1984" Coming Back to LA

Well, it's getting busy here at the Gang again, as we gear up for the reopening of "Klub" at The Ivy Substation in Culver City and the return to Los Angeles of our touring production of "1984" directed by our artistic director, Tim Robbins, which will play at REDCAT downtown. I'm so excited that we're going to be performing at REDCAT again. The last time we were there, with "The Exonerated" was a huge success. The people there are awesome, and it's a great venue. Here's a video that our company member Simon Anthony created about "1984." Enjoy!

Actors' Gang Education Program in Flagstaff!!

It was a very exciting weekend for me because Jon Kellam and I were able to take the education program to Arizona and work with a group of students from Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy. After seeing multiple productions at The Actors' Gang, Mike Levin the Theater Instructor for the Academy, asked us to come out and teach a Style Workshop to his talented group of students. Jon and I flew in Friday night, after a ridiculously bumpy ride into the mountains, and were welcomed with open arms by this amazing community. We taught for 8 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday and the students couldn't get enough! As a teacher it was one of the most rewarding teaching experiences I have every had. As you can see from these pictures, the students and a couple of community members, picked up the States and the characters extremely quickly. Fortunately we were able to use the costumes from the local community theater, so the students could develop their images with full costume and make-up. Some of the comments we heard the students say throughout the weekend were: "This is the best theatrical experience I have ever had", "I already know I am a better actor because of this weekend intensive", and "Vanessa is so funny". Ok, so the last one I made up, but honestly it was a great experience all around. If you ever find yourself in Flagstaff, please check out this school because these students are amazing artists. Hopefully we can lure them to LA when they graduate to be a part of the company. This weekend reconfirmed for me the special work that we do as a company and we both were so proud to represent The Actors' Gang!!

Fixing the Lobby!

A project we've been working on for a while now is getting the lights in the lobby to all be on one switch, rather than plugged into a thousand different power strips... both for safety reasons, and because the way we have it set up now is pretty ridiculous. If you've seen a show at the Gang and noticed the lights blinking before the show starts, there is actually a person (often me!) who has climbed behind the counter, manouvered past costumes racks and props, and physically flicks the on/off switch on a power strip.

Susan Obrow from the Culver City Redevelopment Agency has been working tirelessly to get the lobby lighting hard-wired for us. Today she came by with the amazing Danny Barnes, also from Culver City, to look over the bids with Francois-Pierre. Hopefully a winning bid will be chosen soon, and by the next time you see a show here, it will all be completed!

Behind the Scenes Video from "Carnage," by Tim Robbins

Since we're just getting started with this blogging thing, I thought I might share this cool video that Simon Anthony from the Gang made about our last production, "Carnage," which was written by our Artistic Director, Tim Robbins, and directed by Beth Milles. Enjoy!

New Interns!

I love our new interns! Thanks to Vanessa, Steve, VJ, Ned and Cythia we have a really great group this year.

Here is the fabulous Kirsten counting cash from last weekend's closing performance of Klub. (forgive me Mike Schlitt for missing the umlaut)

First Blog attempt

After attending a very informative session on marketing for the arts using web 2.0 technology yesterday, we are inspired to take advantage of some new ideas here at The Gang! Zach Behrens, of LAist.com, showed us all how to harness the power of RSS, blogging, Facebook, etc. Thanks, Zach!

We are striking lights today to prepare for the students at the Culver City High School Academy of Performing and Visual Arts who are coming in to present their annual end of the school year showcase, Java Drama. Here's our great new interns Jesse and Ruben on my favorite piece of equipment, the genie lift.

I'm not sure I have figured out how to upload pictures yet, so if you don't see the photo above, be patient and I'm sure I will figure it out!

Tim Robbins speaks at NAB Conference

"Hello, I'm Tim Robbins. I'd like to thank you for the invitation to address you here at the National Association of Broadcasters. When I first received the invitation I was a little confused because the last time I had contact with the national media I seem to remember them telling me to shut the hell up.

"I would like to start with an apology. To Rush and Sean, and Billo and Savage and Laura what's-her-name. A few years ago they told America that because I had different opinions on the wisdom of going to war that I was a traitor, a Saddam lover, a terrorist supporter, undermining the troops. I was appealing at the time for the inspectors to have more time to find those weapons of mass destruction. I was a naïve dupe of left wing appeasement. And how right they were. If I had known then what I know now, if I had seen the festive and appreciative faces on the streets of Baghdad today, if I had known then what a robust economy we would be in, the unity of our people, the wildfire of democracy that has spread across the Mideast, I would never have said those traitorous, unfounded and irresponsible things. I stand chastened in the face of the wisdom of the talk radio geniuses, and I apologize for standing in the way of freedom."

For the speech in its entirety go to Huntington Post.
To see a video of the speech check out Paper Tiger TV.