The Latino Theatre Company Brings It All Together

I’m a sucker for festivals.

There’s something about seeing one narrative after another after another. For me, it’s not just about losing yourself in the stories, it’s about what it does to time and the people with you. In a perfect world, you enter in the daylight and come out, hours later, in the dark. If you’re lucky enough to go in with the same people, you exit bonded even if you’ve never spoken a word. You’ve gone on a journey together.

At the end of October, the Latino Theatre Company is presenting Encuentro 2024: We Are Here – Presente! — a three-week festival of Latiné theater from across the US and Puerto Rico. Nineteen different theater companies are performing work in Spanish and in English. Almost all shows have either English or Spanish supertitles (depending on the language of the performance).

The sweet spot is either the Thursday night shows (which are all $10) or, my pick, the weekends when you can show up at 2 PM and see shows at 2:00, 4:00, 5:30, and 8:00 PM (just enough time to sneak across the street to Guisado’s and grab some tacos and a beer for dinner). LATC, where the festival takes place downtown, has always been the perfect festival venue with its four theaters and its giant, old bank lobby.

You can check out info on the nineteen companies performing here and take a look at the schedule here.

Grab some friends or make some new ones, commit to a whole day and lose yourself in the theater.

Encuentro 2024: We Are Here – Presente! runs from October 24th through November 10th at LATC in downtown Los Angeles.

This is Anthony Byrnes Opening the Curtain on LA Theater for KCRW.

There is an exit to this hell...but we have to do something.

A good way in to playwright James Ijames' play Kill Move Paradise is to think about other plays where the characters can’t find their way out.

It’s tempting to think of the play as similar to Sartre’s No Exit or maybe Beckett’s Endgame. In all three, the characters are trapped in a purgatory. There is a certain existential dread at discovering one’s condition, a questioning of agency and humanity, a desperate cry from the other side of the void that lives at the heart of all three plays. While Mr. Ijames is clearly drawing on the tradition of those plays (just as his play Fat Ham, which had a stellar run at the Geffen last year, drew on Shakespeare’s Hamlet), it’s painfully clear he’s giving voice to a very different existential crisis.

We can argue about what No Exit or Endgame are ultimately about, but we'd likely agree that the characters have either themselves to blame or — if you’re so inclined — God. The human condition seems to be their essential sin and what’s cast them into no man’s land. Their agency is our agency. Their condition is, perhaps, universal and inescapable. There is no outsider to blame or hold to account.

That’s not the world, or condition, that James Ijames is conjuring on stage.

Before I dive in, not so much a spoiler alert as an apology: to write about the heart of Kill Move Paradise, I have to give away some of the discovery that happens as you sit in the theater and the world unfolds. It’s not as drastic as revealing a whodunnit, but it might take something away from the experience. If that’s you, know this: the play is about the injustice of being a Black man in America. It’s not an easy journey. But it’s a remarkable production of a complicated play, brilliantly acted and directed. If you have the presence to bear witness to that, it will reward you and you shouldn’t miss it.

Okay, you read the sign and you kept reading, here we go...

What’s different about the purgatory of Kill Move Paradise is that these three men and one young boy can point to something outside of themselves that’s to blame: racism. All four characters are innocent Black men killed for nothing more than being Black in America.

As you enter the theater, set designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s painfully steep ramp reaches up beyond the ceiling of the theater. It’s more of a chute that throws these men down onto the stage. It’s so white and so steep that it’s almost pathetic to watch each of them struggle to climb it, to escape. Perversely it’s almost like a skateboard ramp where they aspire to grab the rim, only to have it slam them back to the floor. In the downstage right corner is an ancient dot matrix printer occasionally clicking as it spews tractor feed paper (remember the little tear-off holes?) cataloging the names, so many names. Then dividing the line between audience and stage is a mirrored platform that stretches the full width of the stage separating the two worlds. Above, four dome lights dangle from ceiling flickering. And maybe most importantly, there’s you in the audience.

It’s telling that the theater, or said more clearly, the audience is part of this play. The characters on stage see us, perhaps more clearly than we’d like. They see us watching and even make appeals to us, wonder about us, call out to us. It’s not an audience participation play — at least not during its 80 minutes on stage, but we are there. 

That’s perhaps the starkest difference from Sartre or Beckett. Mr. Ijames play needs an audience not simply to be seen, but to play a part. We are, perhaps, the most significant character in this tragedy. 

Some of the most poignant lines in the play are the characters' appeals to us in the audience: “What are you waiting for?”, “Don’t just sit there.”, “Don’t look away now.” And we sit silent.

All four actors give remarkable, soulful performances. It should come as no shock that they were directed by Gregg T. Daniel. This is another chapter in his outstanding series of plays created across LA’s theaters on big and small stages that chronicle and give powerful voice to the Black experience. For a single director to have created two or three of the productions he has helmed would be worthy of awards and accolades. Taken as a whole, his body of work has such a propulsive urgency that it is the most significant contribution to Los Angeles theater by any single director in the past decade or more. If you haven’t seen his work, this is a great place to start.

Kill Move Paradise isn’t without its flaws. But they are flaws you not only forgive but try to wish away because the soul is so essential. This isn’t an easy show to sit through but it’s an essential one.

Kill Move Paradise plays at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA through November 3rd.

Confessions of a theater junkie.

I’ll be honest, I’m a theater junkie.

If I go too long between seeing a good play (not just a play, a good play) I get a little grumpy. There’s something about the magic of entering into the world of a play, surrounded by a community, by an audience, that feeds my soul. It’s not just about the distraction of narrative. Look, I love to binge a series as much as the next person, but it just isn’t the same for me. It’s the artistry of knowing that someone in my community made this thing I’m experiencing. It’s like the difference between eating a generic meal and a meal when you know the chef. 

For me, KCRW is like that. I get grumpy if I go too long without it. And the magic, like the magic of theater, is all about community. This is radio made here and made for this audience. It’s made for you.

Yes, you can listen to NPR somewhere else or you can stream your music on some other platform — but it’s just not the same. That, to me, feels generic. With KCRW, it’s hearing Novena lose her mind for a song, Evan getting excited about a new ingredient, Madeleine cracking up mid-interview, and Steve telling you, "Onward we go with the news." For me it’s about that care, that connection, that familiarity, that community. You know that you are part of why this station exists.

If, like me, you rely on KCRW to get you through your day or your commute or keep you up to date — take a minute to give back. Let KCRW know we’re reaching you and it makes a difference. I know my life wouldn’t be the same without KCRW. If you feel the same, now's the time to donate.

Thanks, 
Anthony

Where do I find a new father?

Pascal & Julien is the sweet, quirky new children’s theater show at 24th Street Theatre. I hesitate to say “children’s theatre” because if you’re not familiar with 24th Street, children’s theater probably conjures up a saccharine sweet maybe fairytale production that you desperately want to avoid even if you have kids.

That’s not how 24th Street approaches their work.

Instead, they’re trying to make work that’s as accessible to children as it is to the adults who bring them. It’s sophisticated theater that asks something of its audience. Rather than spoon-feeding a simple story with an easy moral, they make theater that has an edge, an ambiguity, and maybe even a challenge for their audience.

Take their latest show, Pascal & Julien. Julien is a 12-year-old boy who decides he wants to pick a new dad. He has a dad — and a home and even a pretty spiffy pair of binoculars — he just wants a new one. That’s where Pascal comes in. Julien’s been watching Pascal at the cafe across the street from his Paris apartment. Watching is maybe too gentle. Let’s say stalking Pascal. He decides Pascal is the perfect candidate to be his new dad, so he interrupts Pascal’s quiet crossword puzzle to announce this new decision with the brashness only a 12-year-old can possess.

The play unfolds over 45 minutes with a series of short vignettes that give us little snapshots into the evolving relationship between this boy and his new friend. Each scene is a bit like observing a man and child at the park for just a moment. The details are wonderfully specific but incomplete.  We learn about each of them from little snippets of information here and there. The play is more about provoking questions than providing simple answers. Why does Julien want a new dad? What’s wrong with his existing dad? What does it mean to be a dad?

And these are not just questions the play evokes, they are questions you can imagine a child asking after the show. That’s likely where the real magic of this show happens — in the car ride home and the conversations it might evoke in a growing mind confronting a constantly confusing world. 

Isn’t that what children’s theater, heck any theater, should do? Get us to ask questions about the world around us?

This is the work 24th Street Theatre has been doing for years: sophisticated theater for growing minds, young and old. Pascal and Julien will have some of the familiar stamps of a 24th Street production: wildly inventive, minimalist projections, and simple, clean acting. You’ll notice the Spanish super-titles hinting that 24th Street embraces their USC-adjacent neighborhood and recognizes, like few other theaters in LA, that our city is home to folks who speak languages other than English. You’ll notice that children's tickets are $2.40 if you live in the neighborhood (or $10 if you don’t), another open embrace to their audience.

I could quibble that Pascal & Julien isn’t as good as some of 24th Street’s previous work — the script’s not quite as magical or profound as some early work. But, no one else in LA is doing children’s theater this sophisticated — heck, virtually no one in LA is doing children’s theater — so this complaint falls flat.

If you’ve got a young one, say between eight and thirteen, treat them to an afternoon in the theater and make sure to have some open time right after the show. If the show works it’s magic, you two just might have some questions to ask each other about Pascal & Julien that might lead to some special conversations about your own family.

Pascal & Julien plays at 24th Street Theatre on the edge of USC and downtown LA through October 27th.