Category Archives: Uncategorized

Art of the possible- Astro Boy and the God of Comics at Sacred Fools

Courtesy: Sacred Fools Theatre

21 July 2015 Update: Astro Boy has extended through 8 August

It’s a marvel that the current West Coast Premiere at The Fools takes on so many issues so successfully in the space of seventy minutes.  On its surface, ‘Astro Boy and the God of Comics’ is a retrosynthetic look at Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka, legendary within a circle, but poorly known outside of it.  Natsu Onoda Power has crafted twelve tight vignettes starting with a cartoon character flying off to save the world and working backward to the early years of the man who created him. The steps in between make us ask where exactly the lines between culture and sub-culture, high art and pop art, and science and society are drawn – pun intended.  Director Jaime Robledo and an exceptional cast and crew pull it off much like they did with ‘When Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ a couple of years ago.

This is a tech-heavy show blending live performers, puppets, projections, and real-time art.   It is all required – this artist’s life can’t be told without his creations and those creations have to move.  Tezuka came from a happy childhood, lived through World War II, and watched his art take off into commerce thereafter.  His success in comics fueled an animation empire that generated the beloved Astro Boy cartoon but that ultimately couldn’t sustain itself.

The preshow visuals  warmup the neophyte, hinting at why the man was and is such a big deal.  Small projectors discreetly hidden in the light grid shine on two gauzy screens and the back wall as needed.   It’s ‘Dry Cleaning’ quality work with the added complexities of a large cast living in this half-real, half-animated world.    Matt Richter and Anthony Backman transform a small physical space into a city, a world, a solar-system with tricks of perspective, light, and shadow all without being overtly clever about it.

In an evening of tech done right, it’s live art that vaults ‘Astro Boy’ into tour-de-force.  Performers in Los Angeles are adept at some combination of acting, dancing, singing, and backstage work.  Art Director Aviva Pressman has her ensemble drawing the scenery  in jaw-dropping synch with the rest of the business.    It’s no gimmick, its not mere doodling, and must have presented substantial headscratching in casting.   The actors draw characters and scenery in pens, ink, and charcoal onto large tearaway sheets on the back wall.  The choreography is mesmerizing especially in the Guernica-for-Hiroshima roughly halfway through the work.   Each sheet is ripped down at the end of a scene, crumpled, and hauled off stage.  It’s a damn shame – they’d make fine auction pieces for a theatre in the midst of a capital campaign.  West Liang and Heather Schmidt nimbly represent Tezuka and Astro Boy although the short span of the play doesn’t and can’t fully explore their Gepetto Pinocchio relationship.  There are allusions to Clarke, Dick, and Asimov as the rights, roles, and responsibilities of superhumans bump up against the anxieties of their human creators.   Liang and Schmidt manage to imbue their re-enactions of cartoon scenes with surprising tenderness.  Among the uniformly excellent ensemble, Megumi Kabe stands out with a wistful portrayal, in Japanese, of Tezuka’s utterly loyal but shamefully neglected wife.

Graphic novels, anime, manga –  call them what you will.  At their best, they can take us into worlds orthogonal to more common forms of storytelling.  This intersection of cartoon and stage beautifully serves both and is a tribute to the art of possibilities and the possibilities of art.  Time is running out.  Don’t miss it.

ASTRO BOY AND THE GOD OF COMICS
JUNE 20 – JULY 25, AUGUST 8, 2015
Sacred Fools Theatre Company
Fridays & Saturdays @ 8pm
Sundays @ 7pm
660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90004
(310) 281-8337 or Buy Tickets Online

Cast
Heather Schmidt as Astro Boy
West Liang as Osamu Tezuka

Ensemble:
Zach Brown, Megumi Kabe, Anthony Li, Mandi Moss, Jaime Puckett & Marz Richards

Understudies
Erin Sanzo as Astro Boy
Scot Shamblin  as Osamu Tezuka

Ensemble:
Gregory Guy Gorden , Lisa Anne Nicolai, & Aviva Pressman

Crew:
Lead Producer / Technical Supervisor – Brian W. Wallis
Live Art Director – Aviva Pressman
Assistant Director – Rebecca Larsen
Associate Producer (Design/Tech) – Shaunessy Quinn
Associate Producer (Casting/Outreach) – Seamus Sullivan
Marketing Coordinator – Carrie Keranen
Stage Manager – Heatherlynn Gonzalez
Assistant Stage Manager – Suze Campagna
Scenic Design – DeAnne Millais
Lighting Design – Matt Richter
Costume Design – Linda Muggeridge
Prop Design – Brandon Clark
Puppet Design – Natsu Onoda Power
Sound Design – Jaime Robledo
Original Music – Ryan Johnson
Stunt/Fight Choreography – Mike Mahaffey
Suzuki Trainer – Joe Fria
Projection Video Design – Anthony Backman
Projection Animation Design – Jim Pierce
Animation Painter – Danielle Heitmuller
Stage Crew – Bo Powell & Alyson Schultz
Production Intern – Sophie Pietrkowski
Performance PhotographyJessica Sherman Photography
Key Art – Christopher Komuro

 

 

With Folded Hands

1984 didn’t happen exactly on the year but the foundations had been laid by then. Computers were better when networked and the research labs of the world began to view the schlepping of data and email as indispensable. A few years after that, CERN and Tim Berners-Lee gave us the World Wide Web and stuff happened.

Some of the most sought-after jobs these days, at least among the tech crowd, involve creating machines and algorithms to do what humans once did. The first rule of finance is to find the cheapest source of human labor, close behind that is replacing that labor altogether. With corporations having the effective status of a person, it is unsurprising that they’d seek effective analogs of workers. In this case, the analogs are digital. At some point, the machines will get just good enough to make it a contest between them and us. Science Fiction has loved this theme but it always felt too far off in the future for the current crop to fret. CGP Grey – whoever that may be – says, “Not so fast.” The thesis is not perfect and stacked in aspects but the underlying concern is not. “Grey” does spend some time looking at the human implications of staggering unemployment and the inequalities it will deepen.

An underappreciated representation of these fears, “With Folded Hands,” appeared in 1947 and was adapted into a radio story on Dimension X. It is worth a listen.

Sculpture in the Garden at the Maloof Foundation

Sam Maloof’s name is known to anyone with even a passing acquaintance of woodworking. His handcrafted home in Rancho Cucamonga is a small cathedral of light containing pieces from his illustrious 60 year career. He built it as he built his furniture – in its own time with what he had available, and to suit his family’s needs. It is hard to find one highlight of the tours offered on Thursdays and Saturdays by the Foundation he left behind. For me, it is a dead-heat between the spiral staircase leading to an airy loft and the chance to be cradled in one of his hallmark chairs.

As his fame grew, he and his late wife Alfreda began collecting and cultivating friendships with other artists in greater Southern California. The Sculpture in the Garden exhibit on the Foundation’s grounds until 10 July 2014 is a loving tribute to a couple whose generosity is as renowned as their craft. Over forty artists were asked to pick a spot and to create something for it. They chose well and came up with a wonderful collection of eye-catching pieces, each seeming to sprout from where it sits. The current garden is thanks to Mrs. Beverly Wingate Maloof whom Sam married after Alfreda’s passing.

This is the canonical great way to spend an afternoon. Tour the house and then stroll around the garden, taking each little surprise as it comes along. This exhibit is not for those steeped in theory, looking for profound analytical opportunities. It is an unapologetic celebration. Photography is not allowed in the house. No great loss since Maloof’s creations are documented extensively. Unlike most museums, guests can lay hands on the tables, chairs, and benches. On the grounds, there is no such restriction. Herewith, a sample.

Modern management, foretold

Ma and Pa Undershaft discuss the fate of the family business…

LADY BRITOMART. It would be most unnatural and improper of you to leave it to anyone else, Andrew. Do you suppose this wicked and immoral tradition can be kept up for ever? Do you pretend that Stephen could not carry on the foundry just as well as all the other sons of the big business houses?

UNDERSHAFT. Yes: he could learn the office routine without understanding the business, like all the other sons; and the firm would go on by its own momentum until the real Undershaft–probably an Italian or a German–would invent a new method and cut him out.

— Shaw, Major Barbara

Creepy, Spooky, Kooky, Ooky – The Ghost Sonata in workshop at the Actor’s Gang

Some art forms and authors are known better through satire than in the actual. Few who’ve seen Bugs Bunny can ever take opera seriously. 1999’s Resa Fantastiskt Mystisk by the Burglars of Hamm lampooned Strindberg and his like in unforgettable fashion. Sam Shepard took it in the shorts from the Future Stars of Hollywood and their Go True West. A problem arises when one unfamiliar with such an artistic legend takes in a production of a well-known work to make up for large gaps in one’s knowledge. By one, I mean me.

Brian Finney, an actor capable of great depth, tries his hand at directing Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata at The Actor’s Gang Ivy Substation space in Culver City. It isn’t until the curtain speech that we’re alerted to this being a workshop production, not reviewed, and asked to tell our friends if we happened to like it.

This is an acceptably uneven experiment best enjoyed by those who’ve seen a lot of Strindberg, who understand why he’s a big deal, and who are interested in theatrical experiments. Those people need to move quickly, it closes in a week. Finney and his large, uneven cast apply the Gang’s well-known Style and a lot of effects including a fully lipsynched first scene to a stark and rather depressing work. It is hard for the uninitiated to understand why this play is so highly regarded. There are several flashes of promise when a pairs and trios of characters get in gear and the production begins to take wing. And then it abruptly porpoises and crashes when the broadly-played commedia yanks the air out from under it.

It is the rule in technology that prototypes and breadboards need a lot of extra components and structure to provide flexibility and diagnostics during development. Further, that these are progressively and ruthlessly discarded as an idea becomes a product. It will be interesting to see this play again after the team considers it fully ready – to understand what they considered vital and what were detours. I’m not confident I’ll like the answers, though.

The Ghost Sonata
Wed-Sat 8pm until 26 April 2014
The Actor’s Gang at the Ivy Substation
9070 Venice Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232
$34.99/$30 Seniors and students
Purchase tickets online

Brain in a jar – Major progress

It’s a Petri dish, not a jar but the results from a lab in Vienna are intriguing. Stem cells have been directed to grow so as to form structures reminiscent of brain-like tissue. There is an excellent summary of the work and its implications in Science magazine although the paper by Madeline Lancaster and coworkers appeared in Nature.

Summary Article
Science 30 August 2013:
Vol. 341 no. 6149 pp. 946-947

DOI: 10.1126/science.341.6149.946

News & Analysis

Neurodevelopment
Lab Dishes Up Mini-Brains

Gretchen Vogel

/excerpt
No bigger than apple seeds, the cell clusters are simply referred to as “cerebral organoids.” But that careful language in a paper in this week’s issue of Nature belies the excitement of many neuroscientists at what it reports: the growth from human embryonic stem cells of semiorganized knots of neural tissue that contain the rudiments of key parts of the human brain, including the hippo campus and prefrontal cortex. …
/excerpt

Original paper
Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly
Madeline A. Lancaster, Magdalena Renner, Carol-Anne Martin, Daniel Wenzel,
Louise S. Bicknell, Matthew E. Hurles, Tessa Homfray, Josef M. Penninger,
Andrew P. Jackson, & Juergen A. Knoblich

Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12517

Published online
28 August 2013