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 that 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 ambiguiety, maybe even a challenge for their audience.

Take their latest show, Pascal & Julien. Julien is a 12-year-old boy who decides he want 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 across 45 minutes with a series of short vignettes that give us little snapshots into the evolving relationship of 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, 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 8 and 13, 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.

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

The Getty tries to make a new 'classic'

Normally, a trip to the Getty Villa’s fall theater productions is an exercise in making the past present. The Getty’s goal, loosely stated, is to give a new life to Greek and Roman classic plays. Like any production of a classic text, the challenge is making the text speak to a modern audience. What is it about The Bacchae or Medea or Oedipus Rex that still has something to say? What still resonates with us? In some of the most striking examples (Luis Alfaro’s Chicano takes on Medea, Oedipus Rex, and Electra come to mind), the production finds a modern context for the central questions of these classic characters to come to life. The success or failure of prior productions has rested on how ‘present’ the question at the heart of these plays is for us.

This year at the Getty Villa is an entirely different project altogether. Instead of breathing new life into a classic text, playwright Will Power has tried to create a new play about a mythic hero, Memnon. This isn’t the dramaturgical work of adapting a classic text, as there is no surviving play about this Greek mythological hero, the king of Ethiopia. Taking what’s known about this classical figure in the non-dramatic writings of other classical Greek authors, Will Power and the Classical Theatre of Harlem crafted a new Greek play, as it were. Thought of differently, rather than making the past present, this is about carrying the present into the past — weaving the bits of historical plot into a new drama. It’s a bit like crafting a collage of existing "facts" into a new fictional whole. We know this happened during the siege of Troy. We know Memnon was the nephew of King Priam and the King of Ethiopia. We know Memnon fought Achilles. Now, make a play.

While this is a thrilling new gesture for the Getty Villa, I’m not sure they are entirely clear on how different a project it truly is.

It’s easy to see Memnon’s attraction. An Ethiopian warrior returns to Troy to defend it from abroad. Why? 

It’s a powerful question. 

At its best, Memnon finds inspiration in what it means for a Black man, who’s been othered in many ways by the society he was born into, to be asked to fight for it. Will Power’s play really begins to cook when Helen, another outsider to Troy, confronts Memnon. Revealed is a new facet of this woman who launched a thousand ships. The burden of being seen as an object, an idea more than a woman, at the heart of this great war leads to questions of duty as someone othered and the difference between being a symbol and being a human. When these two "others" start talking about what Troy means to them, the window to a fascinating play cracks open.

The play, though, is largely a study in form. Rather than writing a modern play about an ancient hero, Will Power has written a play in the rough form of a Greek tragedy. There is the messenger speech, the oration, a sort of odd attempt at a chorus. The text, for all of its poetic beauty, feels distant. If the goal is to make a new classic play, especially at an institution known for its Greek scholars adept at placing the classical into a historical context, that might not be a bad thing. But in a dramatic context, it runs against the greatest strengths of the Getty’s best productions — making them present now.

But it’s not the form as much as the soul of the play that stands in its way.  At the heart of every great Greek tragedy is the tragic hero’s quest or question. Will Oedipus save the Thebes despite what it might cost him? Will Antigone honor her dead brother or the rules of Kreon’s state? These questions — and all the drama that ensues from them — make these plays great. It’s also what makes these characters so compelling. Their flaws and their humanity are revealed through how they confront what they must do.

Memnon has the beginnings of a great question but it doesn’t really chase after it. Why does this great warrior return to Greece? Why does the one who hasn’t been rewarded with the treasures of a society fight for its existence? In an American context, this question has profound resonance. The play toys with the question at moments but distracts itself with all those "historical" details that "must" be part of the story. 

That’s a shame, especially given the bold character that actor Eric Berryman crafts of Memnon (Getty regulars will remember Mr. Berryman from The Persians and The Bacchae, and lucky Angeleno’s may have caught The B-Side at REDCAT). I want to know what makes Berryman’s Memnon tick, but the play doesn’t give him the room to reveal that. Instead, like the text, it feels as though there's a level of remove — it seems like the play about a tragic hero but it doesn’t feel like one.

What should we make of the Getty Villa’s first attempt at presenting a new play? As tough as a modern adaptation of Greek classic is, making a new play is even tougher. Trying to make a new play stand up to the literal classics? Maybe not a fair comparison. It’s exciting to see the Getty continue to evolve, but perhaps we need to let go of the history to find the soul of the past. For me, I’m less interested in Memnon’s battle with Achilles and more intrigued by why he returned in the first place.

Memnon plays at the Getty Villa through September 28th.