The Ann Bronston Story Project

Bonjour Citygaragistes,

This weekend on the City Garage YouTube channel, we’re happy to present “The Ann Bronston Story Project,” a selection of stories written by company member Ann Bronston and performed by Troy Dunn, Lindsay Plake, and Martha Duncan. They are stories of love, loss, sex, and family that unravel the secret longings and conflicts that can both torment and transform us. I hope you will check them out. And on our web series “Animal Farm: Conversations on Theater and Politics with Steven Leigh Morris and Guests,” Steven talks with Gary Grossman, Artistic Director of the Skylight Theater about the continuing lobbying efforts to pass California Senate Bill 805 to help small nonprofits adapt to the requirements of AB5—especially LA’s alternative theaters.

Here is a link to talk show:
https://citygarage.org/animalfarm/

Correction: In last week’s episode we incorrectly identified our guest Angela J. Davis as a prosecutor for the LA County Superior Court. Our apologies. She was formerly a Federal Prosecutor for the Central District of California, and is now serving as a Commissioner for the LA County Superior Court’s Family Division.

And here is a link to “The Ann Bronston Story Project.” It will be showing on our City Garage YouTube channel from 8:00pm this Friday, June 11th, through noon on Friday, June 18th.

https://www.youtube.com/c/citygaragetheatre

It’s free to view but we ask people to make a donation if they can through our Chuffed page or at “Support Us” on our website:

Chuffed
https://chuffed.org/project/citygarage
City Garage website
Support Us

SAVE THE DATE!

We’re also excited to announce a new project we’ve created just for streaming! Four monologues from “10 x 10” by Neil LaBute. LaBute is one of our favorite playwrights, someone who is willing to take an unflinching look at the truth of things. Not afraid to shock or offend. He pulls no punches and is always after the hard truth of what people do and why they do it. Make sure you mark next Friday, June 18th for the debut of our first original streaming project! More information to come in next week’s newsletter.

Merci,

FM

“Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl

“Macbett” by Ionesco

There will be a reading of “Macbett” by Ionesco on Sunday, August 25 at 6:00pm.
Directed by Ann Bronston. Free.

“Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl

Champagne Preview August 9
Opening Saturday August 10

Pulitzer-prize nominee Sarah Ruhl stands the Orpheus myth on its head and retells it from Eurydice’s point of view. Comic, tragic, silly and poetic in turns, this inventive play follows Eurydice as she does her best to adapt to life in the underworld.

Abandoned by her self-absorbed poet-lover, she rides elevators, has long conversations with stones, defends herself against suspicious men, and finds comfort in the companionship of the ghost of her dead father, though, to his sorrow, she cannot remember who he is. She struggles to recall what it was to be alive and who she was. At last, her easily distracted lover arrives to deliver her. Or will he?

“There’s a sort of beautiful simplicity to the production which makes it feel like a story of a couple who just happen to be dealing with the underworld. Rather than epic, it feels oddly, awkwardly human. It’s a Greek myth scaled down to human proportions. Instead of an all too perfect tragic love story between an untouchable young couple, it becomes the story of a woman who has a creepy guy hit on her on her wedding day. It’s simple, it’s quiet, it’s deeply personal. While this “Eurydice” sidesteps the grand gestures what it gains is simpler story of a woman who’s facing a hostile world with a husband who’s distracted, a man who keeps harassing her, and a world filled with rules to keep her life small. City Garage’s take…lets you hear the play and taps into a vein that feels honest and a bit raw.” — Anthony Byrnes, “Opening The Curtain” KCRW

“What Ruhl does, and this wonderful cast does under the direction of Frederique Michel, is focus not upon Orpheus but what this story means from Eurydice’s point of view….Words alone by a playwright rarely haunt or move. They are meant to be acted out, and this cast captures the eerie and quietly human voyage of these characters. City Garage can and often does perform outrageously stylized works. They do these so very well. But my favorites have always been when the simple life of the characters shine through, the decisions and consequences and experience of what is happening. Eurydice counts as one of my favorites from this company, because even a Stone, even a God, still seem somehow human. The humans meanwhile make me ache for them. Especially the title character, due in larger part to the actor who portrays her.” — David MacDowell Blue, Night Tinted Glasses

“Director Frederique Michel, designer Charles A. Duncombe, and videographer Anthony Sannazzaro—and of course the gifted cast—work considerable stage magic with Ruhl’s slight, whimsical, but (at times) charming play. I came away feeling glad I had seen it.” Will Manus, Total Theatre

Eurydice is a whimsical, often thoughtful exploration of memory as life and loss of memory as death. There’s much more than a tragic love story here. Ruhl’s combination of Becket and Alice in Wonderland leaves a stream of thoughts trickling through your brain long after the flood of images has subsided.”
-Oakland Tribune

Fourth Weekend Q&A: Informal discussion with the cast, crew and director Sunday, September 1st, after the 3:00pm performance.

This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, and by the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission.

“War in the Times of Love” by Jeton Neziraj

New Play Reading
War in the Times of Love
by Jeton Neziraj

Sunday, May 19 @ 7:00pm
“Pay-what-you-can”
Directed by Ann Bronson

City Garage is excited to begin introducing its audience to the work of one of Europe’s most important new playwrights, Jeton Neziraj.

This play, set in an imaginary beauty parlor—within an insane asylum—is the scene of mesmerizing confessions, as four “odd” women evade the traumas of their past by escaping to a shared imaginary world in which they take refuge as in a dream. Neziraj creates a disturbing and cathartic play, blending the mundane and the fantastic, to wrestle with the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Neziraj, author of more than twenty-five plays that have been performed all over the world, was voted “European of the Year” in 2018” for his promotion of progressive ideas and values, and has been called “the Kafka of the Balkans.”

Join us for this special reading, the first in a series of readings of new plays this year, and an introduction to our production of Neziraj’s newest work “Department of Dreams” coming to City Garage this fall.

Please let us know you’re coming! Call 310-453-9939 or email citygargage@citygarage.org to RSVP (not required, but much appreciated).

“Exit the King” by Eugène Ionesco

“Wake” by Gordon Dahlquist

“Grimly Handsome” by Julia Jarcho

“Phoebe Zeitgeist Returns to Earth” by Charles A. Duncombe

“Othello/Desdemona” by Charles A. Duncombe

“Lear” by Young Jean Lee

Hamletmachine: The Arab Spring