King O'Leary cast photo
photo by Kim Zsebe

King O'Leary: Opening Weekend!

Our third annual children's shakespeare show has arrived! King O'Leary, a hilarious adaptation of the Bard's tragedy, King Lear, just opened this last weekened. All shows are completely free and are performed in the park right next to our theatre in Culver City.

I won't give too much away, except to say that the story is now set in the old wild west gold mining community of Boomtown. The characters and plot stay true to the classic play while putting a comedic twist on the story. The kids loved it, and the adults laughed their heads off, too. Check it out! ... and watch out for the buffalo.

Finally, we'd like to extend a special thanks to the James Irvine Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Sony Pictures, The Culver City Redevelopment Agency, and The City of LA Department of Cultural Affairs for making this free program possible.

King O'Leary

As we make the final preparations for the opening of our free park offering this year, I thought I would share a video compilation of last year's piece, "Titus the Clownicus." Enjoy!

If you want to see this year's play, "King O'Leary," it will be running every Saturday and Sunday at 11am starting this Saturday, August 9, in Media Park and closing August 31. Bring the whole family and share in the fun!

Summer Camp: Part Deux

The Summer camps are officially over, and let me tell you, the pre-teen camp, with seventeen kids ages eight through twelve, was a whole different animal. If the Teen camp was roadrunner, starting off at an amiable pace and picking up speed every day, peaking with an explosive performance on Friday, the kids camp was a crazed wolverine fresh out of the cage, with way more energy than seems natural to most interns, like yours truly. That said, it was a very likeable crazed wolverine.



The teen summer camp's lunch time supervision( if you could call it that), consisted of chilling in the park, talking about stuff like favorite movies and shows. PRE-teen summer camp lunchtimes were something like this:

ME: "Alright, everybody, stay on that side of the counter and I'll hand you your lunch."
KIDS: "I want to get it myself!"
ME: "No, I'll hand it to you. Okay, who has the green cooler."
KIDS: "Mine! That's mine!" "Look, I can jump over the counter!"
ME: "No, don't do thattt.... Okaaaay. Just, get back on the other side."

Later, as I'm doing one of my head counts, something I did once about every 2 minutes.

KIDS: "Hey, can I go over there?"\

ME : "No, you have to stay in the park."
KIDS: "Johnny's over there."
ME: "What?! Johnny, get back here!"
KIDS: "When are the other kids gonna get back from IN'n'Out?"
ME: "When Vanessa brings them back."
KIDS: "I wanna get In'n'Out." "I have to go to the bathroom!"

Yes, the constant energy of the campers never ceased to impress me. One of the most interesting tasks presented itself in the form of helping the kids get cleaned up after they finished painting their own set; trying to clean their hands off outside with a garden hose and a spay nozel. One girl approached me, rubbing her cup of blue paint all over her hands and up her arms like it was soap.

"Hi. I kept on putting paint on me, that way it won't dry and it comes off easier."
".... I don't think it works like that."

But despite all the crazy, often high-stress level situations the campers got into, it was a lot of fun helping the Actors' Gang teachers with the camp. And it was never boring. My favorite part of the week came when I got to assist our Poduction Coordinator, Francois Pierre, as he taught the kids about stage lighting. With every new design he threw on the wall with a gobo'd spotlight, with every new color or effect he created with different gels, the kids would go crazy.

"WHOA!!! DO THAT AGAIN!"
"NEAT! That was SO Cool!"

And it really was cool. The kids loved the camp, and I could tell when I watched their performance on Friday, along with all their parents and some grandparents, that they had really gotten a lot out of it.

Prize of Hope Video

Here's a video that Simon Anthony created to show in conjunction with the awards ceremony when we were given the Prize of Hope.




And here is some streaming video from the Awards Ceremony

Summer Camp Part 1

Hi again. It's Alex, here at the Actors' Gang, and as of today we are halfway into our first week of Summer Camp. This week is strictly teens, while two weeks from now we have another theatre camp for pre-teens.

I got here on monday at 9 a.m, quite a switch from working mostly nights for the past couple weeks on 1984. After barely seeing Vanessa for three weeks, it was great to see her again. She's in charge/ the mastermind behind the two Summer Camps. Plus, I was glad to be working at the theatre in Culver City again.

Vj and Justin are teaching the morning sessions and I got the chance to sit in on a little bit of that. Right away the teens got acquainted with the Commedia Del Arte characters that the Gang trains with every Sunday in workshop. It was a welcome reminder to me too, having already forgotten a lot of what I'd learned about Commedia after my USC finals this spring. After that the campers selected a character they were going to portray over the course of the week (Harlequino, Columbina, Brighella... etc.), they went on to pick what they wanted for costumes and makeup.

Watching the camp, and seeing the campers really start to grow as actors has been great, and it's definitely been a learning experience for me, too. The whole thing's giving me the acting bug again.

I take my lunch break at the same time as the campers, too, and have found out they're all really cool kids. Topics of discussion range from favorite movies to what shows they've done to what they're learning to which famous celebrities we've randomly seen around the city. Plus, I've been putting a good word in for USC (despite my afformentioned History of World Theatre amnesia, it's an amazing school). Gotta show them the light before the Bruins here get to 'em first.

The Prize of Hope.

Hi everyone! It's the intern again.

Happy to say that 1984 closed strong at the Redcat, with many sold-out shows the last weekend and a remarkable guest speaker: Gore Vidal. Gore was surprisingly hilarious and predictibly brilliant as he lectured on the destruction of our constitution and the decay of our nation under the current administration. He closed with a morbid tale about Benjamin Franklin: When our Constitutionion was first drafted, he recounted, Franklin stated that throughout history, Republics such as the one defined under our Constitution failed within a short time due to the corruption of the people.

... (Silence for about five seconds. One thousand one. One thousand two... Then, FINALLY, thunderous applause.) It was a disurbing tale from a brilliant man.

After our final show on Sunday, Mia took over and we had a surprisingly quick strike of the set. I said auf wiedersehen to my parnter in crime Annetta, and to Erica, agreeing that we would all reunite one day for corn on the cob and sour kraut.

But while I was away, apparently, some prestigious things have been happening at the Actors' Gang. In June we garnered The Prize of Hope, from Denmark’s Institute for Popular Theatre! The Prize of Hope is awarded to a person or theater "who has worked for human hope in a daring, loving, vulgar, serious, poetic manner with sparkling energy" and is given to "those who encourage people to use their own eyes, ears and voice." YEAH! Vanessa, Justin, and Actors' Gang founding members Cynthia Ettinger and Tim Robbins flew up to Blue Lake, California to accept the prestigous award (pictured above) on June 21st.

It's also a very unique award, as the Institute created the mask specificallly to be an embodiment of what they felt the Gang represents.

I think it looks a little like Voltron. Or a Tic-Tic from 10,000 B.C., not that I'm admitting I saw that movie.

In other news our annual Summer Camp began on monday, this one for teens, and it's going great. More on that later...