This month Towne Street Theatre hit the Hollywood radar with Passing Solo, a memory play set in the 1920s about two African American women who share a secret: Their birth certificates read “Negro” but both can – and do – pass as white. Footlights  took the opportunity to speak with company co-founder, artistic director, and star, Nancy Cheryll Davis-Bellamy, to get some insight about this ...

Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami… has now crossed the Atlantic.  World Premiering in 2013 at Los Angeles’ Rogue Machine Theatre, the show moved eastward in 2015: first to Baltimore, then Denver.  Now it moves even farther eastward,  jumping the Atlantic to London’s Donmar Warehouse where the show runs October 6 through December 3, 2016. Powers is a founding member of The Temblors, an Angeleno ...

Helen Mirren narrates the trailer (below) to a new documentary about the ongoing struggle Los Angeles actors have had with their own Union, Actors’ Equity.  In addition, the production companies behind the film, Planet Grande Picture and Hybrid Collective, currently have a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds ($25,000 by November 4, 2016) and move the 65-minute rough cut to completion and festivals.

Hamilton  just got choreographed in a powerful way.  Sarah Tubert translated “Alexander Hamilton”  into American Sign Language. Update September 21, 2016:  Lin-Manuel Miranda, the guy who created Hamilton, thinks Sarah’s piece is special, too.  And posted so on Facebook.

José Luis Valenzuela and Evelina Fernández are an all-in-one husband and wife theatrical team.  José Luis Valenzuela is The Latino Theater Company Artistic Director and the head of the UCLA MFA Director Program.  Evelina Fernández is writer of The Mexican Trilogy which opens this month with José directing.  The pair recently sat down with me to discuss the evolving role of theater in Los Angeles: ...

Wendy Worthington is an actor, producer, and founding member of Neo Ensemble Theatre.  She joined Actors’ Equity Association only a few years ago.  Her motivation was to throw in with fellow Los Angeles actors protesting their union’s termination of the 99-Seat Plan – the vehicle which has fostered the development of intimate theater throughout Los Angeles.  Says Wendy: “I had come to Los Angeles to ...

On September 2, Actors’ Equity has replied to the court about the Plaintiffs’ rebuttal to Equity’s Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit.  The 29 page document may be found here. The Court has all the papers and now a single person, Judge Terry J. Hatter, Jr., will get to revisit the situation he presided over in 1989.  He will decide what happens next.

On September 10, for one weekend only, native Angelena and three time Emmy award winning composer Denise Gentilini and recording artist Lisa Nemzo will mount their original production, I Am Alive,  for an exclusive showing at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.  Gentilini, who is of Armenian descent, tells the story of the Armenian Genocide through the account of her grandparents who survived the systematic killing ...

Sacred Fools Theater Company announces their landmark 20th Season and Beyond, featuring World and Regional Premieres, as well as complementary programming to celebrate their history and community.  Artistic Directors Bryan Bellomo, Danielle Ozymandias, and Alicia Conway Rock have selected a slate of four plays for their 2016–2017 season. “The plays we’ve selected for this platinum anniversary year represent a spectrum of Foolish ideals – a ...

The center of discussion at the town hall meeting this past Monday was an alternative vision from that of Actors’ Equity for what intimate theater can look like in Los Angeles.  Presented by Larry Poindexter, the alternative vision (official PDF here) represents input from a large number of interviews with both Union members and theater companies. The new plan, the Los Angeles Intimate Theatre Code ...