STAGE

My call to the theatre wasn't poetic or romantic--8th grade ceramics class was full, so I took drama.  But as soon as I stepped on the stage, I discovered I was home.  Ever since then I have been an actor, dipping into the many worlds that my profession allows me to be a part of. 

Just about everything featured on this page is work I've done with Critical Mass Performance Group.  I don't have photos or demos of much of my other work in part because theatre is an ephemeral art--but mainly because I was a dreadful archivist for a good long time.  The videos were created by the artistic director of Critical Mass to showcase the pieces as a whole and not my individual performance in them, which is why my face isn't front and center for every second of every frame. 

CRITICAL MASS PERFORMANCE GROUP

“Full of brilliance…formidable…cuts open your mind and heart and digs in, you leave
the theater knowing that you have been reactivated as a living and breathing human being.”             --Deana Alisa Ableser, Easy Reader

I've spent the better part of two decades working, growing and inventing with Critical Mass, under the intrepid direction of Nancy Keystone (we met as theatre undergrads at UCLA).  Our pieces take many years to develop, and involve an unquantifiable alchemical reaction between Nancy and the Company.  What emerges from our strenuous process is something entirely our own: a mélange of movement, music, image, text, sound, heart, soul, intellect, outrage and love.  We mine history, we burrow into the big questions, and somehow manage to weave our explorations into living theatrical tapestries that move the heart and stir the mind.

Since we perform so rarely, we tend to fly under the mainstream-theatrical radar.  Fortunately, there are those who've managed to tune into our frequency, writing articles, blogging, bestowing awards, and delving into our company's creative process in college theater textbooks.  (My schoolgirl heart thrills every time I see the photo from our show Apollo on the cover of that book).  I'm sure a hell of a lot of people scratched their heads and muttered "Who??" when the LA Weekly named Critical Mass the Best Theater Company in LA in 2013, but that's okay.  We're stealthy, but we're fierce, and we're gonna getcha.

Critical Mass on Facebook

SELECTED WORKS

UNTITLED COMMUNION - REDCAT NOW Festival -  July 2017

Whiplashed by the accelerating waves of madness in a tumultuous political time, we took the audience on a whirlwind journey that careened between resistance, fun, panic, thrashing and persistence. Fueled by Jacob Richard's live music, it was a boisterous cri-de-coeur, a rip-roaring primal scream, and a glorious, ecstatic rebirth, all in one. 

I had the honor of portraying a "Sparkle Person" along with Ray Ford.  We brought joy, love and light to the exhausted, downtrodden masses, and at the end we invited the audience to join us onstage for our own special brand of communion: vodka shots, pink cookies, and dancing!  It was a blast.

AMERYKA -

Genesis: June 13, 2010.

99-seat production: February 6-March 7, 2016 @ Shakespeare Center LA

Kirk Douglas Theatre (CTG Block Party):  April 19-29, 2018

Ameryka explores the disconnect between America’s accepted, enshrined ideals and the often heartbreaking way in which those ideals are corrupted for the sake of a “dream.” The connections and collisions of those ideals intersect with Poland’s own centuries-long struggle for independence, revealing the complex relationship that has existed between our two countries since America’s founding—one that continues to confound and amaze.

A diverse cast of 9 plays multiple roles, inhabiting constantly shifting time-spaces and modes of reality, exploding facts of history in order to mine the emotional and poetic events—ultimately revealing the striving, beating human heart that propels every nation towards the realization of its more perfect union.

I play many different Polish women--some real, some imagined: a feisty crane operator-turned-Solidarnosc leader, a loquacious tour guide, an underground journalist, a tipsy 50's artist, an ancient cleaning lady (inspired by my Lithuanian great-grandmother).  I also play England.  It's a hell of a ride.

Our 12-performance run of Ameryka at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2018 garnered many enthusiastic reviews. It was  wonderful to revisit the piece after a 2-year hiatus, yet heartbreaking to realize that the themes of racism and inequality were even more pertinent than when we last performed it in 2016--when Barack Obama was still our President.

The 2018 production was honored with a feature article in American Theatre Magazine

Stage Raw Awards- WINNER (2016 production):

• Production of the Year
• Best Ensemble

Ovation Award Nominations (2016 Production):

• Best Production of a Play, Intimate Theatre
• Acting Ensemble of a Play
• Playwriting for an Original Play, Nancy Keystone
• Featured Actor in a Play, Ray Ford as Gene Jefferson
• Lighting Design, Intimate Theatre, Elizabeth Harper
• Sound Design, Intimate Theatre, Randy Tico
• Costume Design, Intimate Theatre, Lena Sands

LA Drama Critics Circle Award Nomination (2016 Production):

• Best Ensemble

Select Workshop Performances: 

Claremont McKenna College:  Bridges Auditorium - October 8, 2014

University of Redlands - September 27, 2014

Diavolo Dance Theater@Brewery Arts Colony - March 3, 2014

South Coast Repertory - December 6-9, 2012      

Skirball Cultural Center - November 4, 2012        

Shakespeare Center LA - October 28, 2012   

Workshop and Presentation Photos

These photos represent various stages of the work, from research meetings to physical explorations to workshops to partially produced presentations.  Because of the long-term development process, not all actors manage to stay with the project from start to finish, so faces change throughout these photos.

Candid Images From Ameryka @ South Coast Rep

We were honored to kick off the 2012-2013 South Coast Rep Studio SCR season, and didn't mind the schlep down to Orange County one bit.  I took the photos so I'm not in any of them aside from the group shot in the lobby.  But they make me happy, so I'm including them.

Ameryka - Interrogation of Anna W.

As of yet there are no demos of Ameryka, but here is a brief scene in which my character, Anna Walentynowicz, a Polish crane operator, is arrested for stealing candle stubs from a cemetery.

APOLLO                                                                                                                  Portland Center Stage (parts 1, 2 & 3) 2009 / Kirk Douglas Theater (parts 1 & 2) 2005

A trilogy told through a collage of text, image, movement, music and projections, Apollo is an epic narrative of America, exploring the U.S. space program, its relationship with Nazi rocket scientists, and the surprising intersection with the Civil Rights Movement. It ranges from the U.S. Civil War to Nazi Germany, to the American South of the 1960s and to the reaches of Outer Space, focusing on America's century of progress and the legacy of slavery, examining the moral cost of human aspiration.

Work on Apollo spanned over seven years from inception to completion, culminating in a beautifully mounted production at Portland Center Stage.  Many wonderful actors and artists participated in the development process over the years, each adding their own spark of intelligence and inspiration to the finished piece. 

Between the first meeting at Nancy's house and the production in Portland there were countless workshops and presentations to the public.  At one such presentation, two angels named Anthony Byrnes and Luis Alfaro were in the audience. Intrigued by our "little skit," they invited us to develop it further in Center Theater Group's "First Step/Next Step" program (no longer in existence).  They were hugely encouraging as we wrestled with the beast, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for everything that followed.

Gordon Davidson became another of Apollo's angels, guiding the development process along with Luis and Anthony, and eventually inviting us to be part of the premiere season of the Kirk Douglas Theater, making our play one of the last shows he ever produced at Center Theater Group after a brilliant four decades at the helm.  At the time, Apollo consisted of two acts and had a cast of seven--six men and me.  We had no idea that another complete act was tickling at the back of Nancy's brain, waiting to come out.

A while after our successful run at the Douglas, Nancy told us of her vision for the third part of Apollo, having to do with the collision of the Nazi rocket scientists and the Civil Rights movement in the deep south.  As she put it:  while some were trying to escape the bonds of gravity, others were still trying to escape the bonds of slavery.  Our cast grew to 12 with the addition of five extraordinary African American actors, and we dove head first into the challenging, gritty, gripping world of Part Three. 

This final part didn't take quite as long to complete.  We had some exciting performances at USC and Diavolo, and then our last angel appeared: Chris Coleman, the Artistic Director of Portland Center Stage.  Somehow he conjured the funds to bring our cast of 12 and our design crew up to Portland for two months to present our four-hour, three-part, three-set epic about Nazi rocket scientists at his beautiful theater.  I played 20 roles, from Adolph Hitler to Mickey Mouse, from a hoop-skirted Southern Belle to a 1920s German screenwriter, from a mean white lady to a Silver-clad foxtrotting Rocket Muse. People talked of taking it to New York...the Kennedy Center...Europe...aaaaand then the Crash happened.  Suddenly three-part, twelve-actor epics were out-of-fashion and one-man shows were all the rage in post-boom-times theatre-land.

We've never stopped scanning the skies for another Apollo angel. I daresay we never will.

Apollo 1, 2, and 3 - Demo

(Compiled from multiple performances over several years)

Apollo Part 3 - Lunch Counter Scene

(From a performance at Bovard Auditorium, USC)

This scene takes place at the Woolworth's lunch counter during a busy lunch rush.  Arthur Rudolph and Wernher von Braun sit at the counter, showing off their latest rocket designs.  Time slows down when a group of African Americans sits down at the counter and requests service.  White customers beat the protesters as the white waitress (me) repeatedly drops her tray to the floor.  The young black girl bussing tables eventually removes her apron and sits down with the protesters, shrugging off her fear and joining in the struggle.

Photographs From Various Performances of Apollo

What People Said About Apollo

“Soars thrillingly high…”  -- Steve Oxman, LA Times

 “…evocative montage of dance, spoken-work, documentary film and old-fashioned interrogation scenes…echoes with the moral indignation of Arthur Miller…In her sparkling, poetical production, Keystone is like a lonely, outraged Jesuit, questioning the cost to the soul of blood-stained accomplishments, however lofty.” --Steven Leigh Morris (short review), LA Weekly “Pick of the Week”

 “…ebullient, visually oriented and choreographically inventive…Keystone has a gift for tapping into new ways of illuminating events…”  -- Joel Hirschhorn, Variety

“…full of brilliance…formidable…cuts open your mind and heart and digs in, you leave the theater knowing that you have been reactivated as a living and breathing human being.”  -- Deanna Alisa Ableser, Easy Reader

"…unapologetically innovative, mesmerizing, affecting…excellent writing and some of the finest moments of stagecraft I've ever witnessed…essential viewing."   -- Ben Waterhouse, Willamette Week

ALCESTIS
Theater@Boston Court 2013  /  Getty Villa Theater Lab 2012

The story of Alcestis poses some fascinating dilemmas: How do we deal with our assured death in the face of the overpowering will to live? Why are we so addicted to life? What would we do if we could avoid death, even for a little while? What is the actual moment of death like? What is the nature of sacrifice? What is the experience and meaning of resurrection? Can a marriage survive the calamity of a spouse returning from the dead? How do mortals reconcile their relationship to the gods and fate?  What are the consequences of the choices we make?

Alcestis' first angel appeared in the guise of Norman Frisch, who invited us to spend two weeks developing the piece as artists-in-residence at the beautiful Getty Villa in February of 2012.  We gave four performances as part of the Theater Lab series.  Because of the limited rehearsal time, the piece was still quite raw, with minimal set and some scenes being read from music stands. It wasn't meant to be reviewed, but Steven Leigh Morris couldn't help himself and wrote an article about the piece for the LA Weekly.

A while later, Jessica Kubzanski and Michael Michetti strapped on their angel wings and invited us to present Alcestis as a co-production with The Theater@Boston Court, their stunning performance space in Pasadena.  We gathered our forces and completed the piece in record time (for us), with a full run in the summer of 2013.  Alcestis was named one of the Ten Best Productions of 2013 by the LA Weekly, and one of the Highlights of 2013 Theater by the LA Stage Times.  It was also  nominated for multiple LA Drama Critics Circle and LA Weekly Awards.

We did a touch of gender-bending casting, changing the character of the King's father into his mother.  It's the first time I've acted using a walker and no doubt it won't be the last, since I suspect I'll die onstage (unless they cart me off before then).  In addition, I play one of the Fates, doling out the string of lives as a silent, dispassionate overseer.  Rounding out my roles is a bored wife, a dead dancer, and a saucy corpse-washer with an ear for palace gossip.

Alcestis - Demo

This demo was compiled with images from our partially-staged Getty Villa performance.  Again, it wasn't meant to highlight my performance but the piece as a whole.  Please watch--it's cool!

Photographs From the Boston Court Production

What People Said About Alcestis

"Keystone's staging is a kind of marvel — workshop-simple and yet elegant. The adaptation she's concocted is explicitly about the lives we lead today, but without any winking glibness. It arouses more smiles than laughs, because the company's investigation of what it means to be alive, and the shadows that impede that life, are so thoughtful and tender."  --Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly

“…the troupe intones a pair of verbal fugues on the quotidian significances of life and on the contemplation of possible demises, litanies of mortality that forthrightly chill the spine with their accretion of recognizable detail.”  --Myron Meisel, The Hollywood Reporter

"Director-writer Nancy Keystone doesn't exactly crank 'em out quickly through her Critical Mass Performance Group, but they sure are worth waiting for...with Alcestis, Keystone and her team have created a completely involving, scintillating take on Euripides for our time."  --Bob Verini, Arts in LA

"Critical Mass Performance Group uses many physical theatre techniques, including dance, in their performance pieces, resulting in a highly-stylized collage that explores the Euripides text and the source myth from all angles. This is ensemble theatre at its most glorious, visceral and immediate, exploding the text on to the stage. Alcestis is blessed with a talented, emotionally-available company who is able to navigate seamlessly through play."  --Life in LA

THE AKHMATOVA PROJECT (1997-2000)
Actors Gang Theatre

The Akhmatova Project was the first of Critical Mass Performance Group's original, company-devised works, taking a mere three years to complete.  It concerned the life of Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova (1889--1966), who bore poetic witness to a turbulent period of Russian history, from the last of the Tzars to the Russian Revolution, and the rise and eventual fall of Stalin's totalitarian reign of terror. 

The child of Russian nobility, Akhmatova was a shining star of St. Petersburg at 18, published her first volume of poetry when she was 23, and lived a long, extraordinary life of passion and suffering. Stalin knew her to be a powerfully dangerous woman because of her ability to move the Russian people with her verses, so he forbade her to publish for many years.  She was too beloved to do away with completely, but scores of people in her circle were executed, imprisoned, and persecuted, including friends, husbands, lovers, and her only son.  She refused to emigrate the way so many of the cultural elite did at the time, preferring to stay and bear witness to the atrocities taking place in her beloved Russia, and to give them voice. She and her friends found ingenious ways to get her poems to the people, Stalin be damned.

Working on this piece was deeply rewarding, not only because I had the honor of portraying Anna Akhmatova, but because of the insight it gave me as to the power of art and artists to give voice to the unspeakable, to inspire untold millions of people to summon their courage and to endure.  Word of our play spread among the Russian community in Los Angeles, and after every performance old Russian men and women with tear-stained faces would clutch my hand and say, "How did you know, how can you know all this?  Thank you, thank you for this beautiful gift."  I felt the power of art thrumming in my soul, an electrified connection from Anna Akhmatova and her beloved compatriots from another time, another place.  It was an honor to tell their story.

The Akhmatova Project was named one of the Ten Best Productions of 2000 by the Los Angeles Times and was nominated for four LA Weekly Awards (Best Production, Director, Ensemble, Choreography--winner).

The Akhmatova Project - Demo

The Akhmatova Project - Requiem

In this scene, I portray Akhmatova during the Purge years.  People stand outside the prison gates with packages for the imprisoned while I speak Akhmatova's words, the ghost of the Russian voice echoing in the distance.  At a table, I write verses on cigarette papers, making small talk as a friend memorizes--then burns--the evidence.  A spy takes down our banal conversation, deaf to the silent truth being transmitted between us.  Executions follow arrests, as artist after artist succumbs to the Purge of Stalin.

Photographs From The Akhmatova Project

What People Said About The Akhmatova Project

"...The tone is like a sledgehammer pounding an anvil. When sparks fly, they are the words of the poems...The Akhmatova Project is a labor of devotion whose integrity resonates from the stage...an emotional cry, a tone poem, an ode to the vigor of the crafted word, and to the people who craft it."  --Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly

The Akhmatova Project is a numinous study of the struggle of the artist against the state and the often appalling costs of that struggle. Theater doesn't get any more compelling or meaningful than this."  --T.S. Kerrigan, American Reporter

"...the final scene is more like a vacuum struggling against the audience's soul than a culmination or conclusion. I literally felt my soul sucked out of my body in that last moment--and no one, no thing, no single event has ever done that to me."  --Scott Schaeffer, Editor, Mundane Behavior

365 Days/365 Plays  by Suzan-Lori Parks (Week 47) - 2007
Angel's Gate Cultural Center

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wrote a play a day for an entire year, some no more than several sentences, others several pages long.  These plays eventually morphed into a year-long festival involving 700 companies in more than 15 cities nationwide. 365 Plays/365 Days was produced by a variety of Los Angeles theatre companies in locations throughout the city between November 12, 2006 and November 6, 2007.

Critical Mass Performance Group had our way with Week 47.  We threw ourselves into Suzan-Lori's fever-dream for a grand total of two weeks of rehearsal time.  Because we were performing in San Pedro at a decommissioned military base-turned-artists compound overlooking the ocean, we decided to set the 8 plays in the trashed and tawdry milieu of Busted Waterfront Clowns.  Although we always manage to laugh a hell of a lot when creating our pieces, working on 365 Days/365 Plays was an explosion of joyous laughter from start to finish, and what seemed at first to be trifling little bits of theatrical ephemera actually were sweetly moving in the end.  And I got to break a bunch of plates.

365 Days/365 Plays - Demo

365 Days/365 Plays - Photographs

OTHER STAGE WORK

How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found  by Fin Kennedy - 2011
The Theatre@Boston Court - Directed by Nancy Keystone

I first became aware of this incredible play in 2009 while performing Apollo at Portland Center Stage.  It was playing downstairs from us in the studio space, and I was able to see the final dress rehearsal on our night off.  I was knocked back in my seat by the visceral, electrifying work.  The British playwright, Fin Kennedy, flew to Portland for the opening--his first time in America.  I didn't get to meet him, alas, but he did get to see our show while he was there.  Apparently he felt the same way about Apollo as we did about his play, and he wrote a passionate ode to Apollo in his blog when he got back to the UK.

A couple of years later, Nancy Keystone brought How To Disappear to the attention of The Boston Court, and they enthusiastically agreed to produce it.  Because it wasn't a Critical Mass production, I went through the audition process and was so happy to have been approved by the powers-that-be. Nothing is ever a guarantee in this world, and Nancy will only cast an actor if they're right for the role.  I guess I was right.

I was also happy to have been able to meet Fin, who flew out to LA for our production.  He's not only an extraordinary playwright whose play is produced all over the world, but he's also a committed and involved arts educator in the UK, as well as quite charming and handsome, which was a bonus.  

After so many years of creating theatre pieces out of bits of ideas and torrents of documents and electrical filaments and pocket fluff, it almost felt like cheating to be working on a play that was already written.  It was such a pleasure to speak his words on the Boston Court stage with a wonderful company of actors.

Photographs of How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

WORK IN PROGRESS

PRIVACY PROJECT - Start date: March 24, 2015

Critical Mass was honored to have been invited by Joseph Haj (now the Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theatre) to incubate a brand-new work at PlayMakers Rep as guests of the Mellon Foundation.  Select members of the company spent two weeks living and working in beautiful Chapel Hill, North Carolina, delving into the provocative subject of privacy and all that that concept entails in our fast-changing digital age.  The two-week exploration culminated in a 40-minute presentation of some early ideas, sketches and impressions.  (Tentative title: Privacy Settings).

EDUCATION

This wonderful textbook by Stephanie Arnold not only features a photograph of Apollo on its cover, it contains several other photographs from the production as well as many quotes from Nancy Keystone and some of the cast members of Apollo, myself included.  Ms. Arnold traveled to LA to observe our process, and she was a constant presence during rehearsals at Portland Center Stage.  I was honored to have been invited to speak to her theater arts class at Lewis and Clark College about Apollo in 2009. 

I can understand why The Creative Spiritis such a popular textbook in college theater courses--it's a gorgeous book, full of insight, depth and artistry.  Nothing like it existed when I was in college, that's for sure.  It's amazing to think that theatre students across the country are studying the work of Critical Mass Performance Group.  And I must admit, it's pretty cool to see my name in the index.