Who has to bottom?

On one level, The Bottoming Process is a gay rom-com. Milo's a quirky, nerdy, twenty-something (almost thirty), gay Filipino who's an aspiring writer. Paul is in his forties, white, and a famous-adjacent author who's on the fifth book of his YA series. One day at a WeWork, Paul sneaks a glance at Milo's screen, some pithy, snarky, and sexy post catches his eye. Flirting ensues. A random run-in turns into a first date, turns into a second, and next thing you know they're a couple. Not quite an odd couple, but not entirely at ease. There's something just a bit off. It's not that Paul doesn't support Milo — he does. In fact, he's helping make his dreams come true. Paul's sharing his privilege, opening doors, and making introductions. It's not the support, it may just be that Paul's white.

That's the other level of playwright Nicholas Pilapil's The Bottoming Process. It's an intelligent play about race, assumptions, appropriation, and white privilege.

Milo's got a friend he's known since college, Rosie. She's Asian too and she's also dating a white guy. The two of them, when they're not arguing about Jane Austen, marvel at how they both ended up with white dudes and seem on the cusp of real adult lives. Rosie's more in command of it than Milo, who seems trapped in a role he's all too familiar with — the Asian bottom. 

Milo's consumed by the cultural stereotypes that trap him. It's what he writes about, it's what he argues about, it's him. I won't give away too much of the plot, but you can probably guess where this is going. 

Here's what's great about The Bottoming Process — even though the story is predictable, it never collapses into the stereotypes it's playing with. (That's not entirely fair, Rosie's white-dude-with-a-hat boyfriend is a pretty flimsy stereotype, but he's worth it and serves his purpose.) When we really get to the meat of the drama between Milo and Paul, when they're battling out their relationship — who gets to write whose story, and who bottoms for who — Mr. Pilapil avoids the easy answers and simple villains. 

The Bottoming Process is worth it with a strong script, a terrific cast, and solid direction. Don't miss this world premiere co-production between IAMA Theatre Company and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

The Bottoming Process plays at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Hollywood through June 12th.

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

Love Culture? Support KCRW.

If you're reading this, you know. You know how important community is. You know how important being together in community is.  You know how important challenging, creative ideas are. It's why you go to the theater.

And, it's why you value KCRW. 

It's why I value KCRW and support it as a member. KCRW touches so many different parts of my life. It captures so much of what makes Los Angeles Los Angeles. I can't imagine a day without it. I bet you can't either.

We need you, I need you, to value that support with a donation. Keep KCRW front and center as the rich, vibrant, essential voice for our city. If you're already a member and you can spare a little more, please do. If you're not a member, now's the time to become one.

Thanks,

Anthony

Did the pandemic make the Hollywood Fringe Festival relevant?

If you've been reading or listening to me for a while, you know I haven't historically been a fan of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.  It's not that I don't love Fringe festivals (I do). It's just that I was never really sure how a Fringe festival fit into Los Angeles theater.

The pandemic may have changed all that.

If you've never been to a fringe festival, I'll point you back to how I described it in 2018, 

if you've never done the fringe, it's a bit like doing a tasting menu with a drunk chef.  Everything happens quickly, some things are brilliant, some experiments are catastrophes, and almost everything goes better with a wine pairing.

The idea behind the Hollywood Fringe, like most Fringe festivals, is quantity and compression.  It's a lot of small shows (many less than an hour), playing out over a couple of miles of Hollywood, and scheduled so you can see 2 or 3 shows in the same day.  The fun of the fringe is, like that tasting menu, not the single remarkable thing but the variety of things one after another. To really get that experience, you need to make a day of it - or at least a full evening - and see at least 3 shows.

Now picking those shows can be a bit of a chore.  There’s the sheer quantity of shows and variety of times — and the Fringe program is something of graphic design nightmare — offering little more clarity than an ancient white pages.

A lot of that still holds true (especially the wine pairing).

My gripe, pre-pandemic, with the Hollywood Fringe was: where did it fit in LA theater?  With a hearty 99-seat theater scene and opportunities and theater galore, wasn't all of LA's intimate theater really just one big, year-round fringe festival? Wasn't the fringe festival just serving the faithful in smaller and smaller doses and offering quantity over quality? LA's version of the fringe didn't seem to be growing an audience for theater more broadly and it lacked the national or international draw of other fringe festivals. This wasn't a chance to see the best of fringe from across the circuit of national or international festivals, it was a predominately local festival. My biggest complaint actually accompanied the best shows.  More than once I saw something incredible in the fringe that played a couple of performances and then vanished.  As I said back in 2012, "I love the ephemeral nature of the theater as much as the next guy but shouldn’t there be something more?"

What, I asked smugly, was really the point?

Well, things have changed.

Post-pandemic, LA Theater looks very different.  Between the loss of theater companies, reduced schedules at LA's intimate theaters, and the increased cost of producing at those venues (thanks to everything from the loss of the 99-seat agreement to AB5): LA's vibrant and abundant intimate theater scene feels a little more sparse.

Now, the prospect of a low barrier of entry, come-one-come-all format, and the consolidation of time and geography feels like a breath of fresh air.  Mind you, this isn't so much that the Hollywood Fringe has succeeded, it's more that the rest of LA's theater has constricted making the Fringe now more vital. 

All the challenges that existed with the fringe festival then still exist now.  But LA now needs a Fringe to take up what 99-seat theater has lost.

So be brave, do your best with the fringe website, pick a couple nights between June 8th to 25th, and take a chance on shows that might be magical or might be glorious failures, the future of LA's intimate theater might depend on it.

Cruising down a dystopian Whittier Boulevard

If you hear that the Latino Theatre Company's latest show is titled Whittier Boulevard, your mind likely conjures up low-riders cruising in the 60s. You wouldn't be wrong, but the Latino Theatre Company is complicating that symbol by jumping into the future.

The play, which was collectively written by the ensemble, jumps forward to 2042 Los Angeles. This future has come after some complicated dark times. There was the pandemic, but there was also the arrival of strange, gentle alien angels. We hear of them in the prologue and how they ushered in a brighter moment of peace until, of course, human nature couldn't help but destroy them — literally cut off their wings. Then came a sort of dystopian détente. The city separated, decided to segregate by race and police by race, and perhaps most pressing for our protagonists there is a new policy: the "Age of Relief Protocol" or TRAP for short.

We learn about this TRAP in bits and pieces but finally put together that all citizens older than 75 who are unmarried will be sent down Whittier Boulevard. It's ominous and definitely not a joyous cruise in a low rider.

Against this backdrop, our heroine is an aging Chicana actress, Veronica del Rio. She's been hiding under the radar, but a seemingly random police inspection uncovers all sorts of hidden secrets and the body of the play is driven by an elaborate plan to avoid the consequences. Stylistically, the Latino Theatre Company deploys its "Chicano Noir" lens and the resulting drama pokes fun at itself while trying to weigh the moment we're passing through.

If you've never seen the Latino Theater Company's work, this is an easy on-ramp. The show is beautifully, and ambitiously, designed and the story holds together for the most part. If you can hold onto the larger ideas and let go of the moments when things don't all add up, it's a fun 80 minutes.

Whittier Boulevard plays downtown at LATC through May 28th.