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RADAR L.A.—an international festival of contemporary theater—runs this week (June 14-19) to coincide with the Theatre Communications Group (TCG)’s national conference in Los Angeles.
Influential theater ensembles from Chile, Mexico, Japan and Australia are among the 15 companies that will be featured alongside Los Angeles artists. REDCAT is producing the festival—in collaboration with Center Theatre Group and The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival (New York)—and will serve as one of several venues for RADAR L.A. The festival organizers hope that the productions will help spark discussion on the evolution of theater at the pre-conference symposium, the TCG conference and beyond.
Participating in RADAR L.A. are a number of CalArtians, including Travis Preston, dean of CalArts’ School of Theater, who directs a re-mount of last summer’s CalArts Center for New Performance hit Brewsie and Willie. Based on the Gertrude Stein novel about encounters with G.I.s in Paris at the end of World War II, the play was adapted for the stage by Preston, CalArts faculty member Marissa Chibas and former School of Theater Dean Erik Ehn. In the production, Preston directs members of Poor Dog Group, a young theater ensemble with roots at CalArts.
In another RADAR festival offering, two CalArts alumnae share the bill for a production that weaves animation, projection and live theater. Christine Marie (Theater, Integrated Media MFA 09) and Ensemble generate large-scale imagery and incorporate live actors for “an incandescent work of expressionist theater” in Ground to Cloud.
In the accompanying performance-animation piece Myth and Infrastructure, Miwa Matreyek brings audiences along for a hallucinatory journey into other worlds.
Other ensembles participating in RADAR L.A. are:
- Chelfitsch: Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (Japan)
- Teatro Línea De Sombra: Amarillo (Mexico)
- The Company: As You Are Now So Once Were We (Ireland/Chile)
- Los Angeles Poverty Department: State Of Incarceration (Los Angeles)
- Steve Connell And Sekou Andrews: The Word Begins (Los Angeles)
- Teatro En El Blanco: Neva (Chile)
- Rude Mechs: The Method Gun (Austin, Texas)
- Pomo Afro Homos: Fierce Love (Remix) (San Francisco)
- Moving Arts: The Car Plays: L.A. Stories (Los Angeles)
- Fleur Elise Noble: 2 Dimensional Life Of Her (Australia)
- The New American Theatre & Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble: Titus Redux (Los Angeles)
While the TCG conference has sold out, tickets are available for RADAR L.A. performances.