“A Streetcar Named Desire,” photo by Jonathan Potter
From Oct. 15-25, Los Angeles Performance Practice and the Bootleg Theater present the third annual Live Arts Exchange (LAX) Festival, a performance series featuring local artists, including many former and current CalArtians, in contemporary theater, dance, music and cross-genre works.
The 11-day festival officially kicked off with the LAX Launch party on Oct. 15, “a night of female badassery,” which included a powerful roster of female artists, with a portion of ticket sales benefiting Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.
Founded by CalArts School of Theater faculty Miranda Wright (Theater MFA 09) in 2010 and co-directed by Rachel Scandling, Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP) is a producing organization and artists’ network dedicated to supporting Los Angeles’ contemporary performance community.
Events and performances will take place at the Bootleg Theater, an inclusive art space for original, boundary-crossing live theater and performance, and at the nonprofit Automata Arts in Downtown Los Angeles’s Chinatown neighborhood.
LAX Festival productions that feature CalArts alumni:
Tonight (Oct. 20) the festival presents a release party for Timur & The Dime Museum’s album Collapse.
Accordion, keys, samples: Daniel Corral (Music MFA 07)
Lead vocals: faculty Timur Bekbosunov (Music MFA 08)
Electric guitar: Matthew Setzer (Music MFA 08)
Electric bass: David Tranchina (Music MFA 08)
Drums: Andrew Lessman (Music BFA 09)
In this experimental take on the Tennessee Williams’ classic, director Zoe Aja Moore (Theater MFA 11) uses the text as a cultural landmark to examine our collective contemporary memory, sexuality and destabilized identity.
Associate Producer/Assistant Director: Nora King (Theater BFA 14)
Performers: Cristina Fernandez, (Theater MFA 2014), Andrea LeBlanc (Theater MFA 01), Jesse Saler (Theater BFA 07), Ryan Masson (Theater MFA 14)
Scene Design: Liz Toonkel (Theater MFA 12)
Costume Design: Kate Fry (Theater MFA 13)
Taking place in a 10×10 hut, performers Jennie Liu and Andrew Gilbert (Theater BFA 07) create part travelogue, part biography of an artist relationship. Guests are absorbed into an “elaborately coded system of interrelating” with the use of live video and a live soundtrack that’s inspired by the socially binding properties of early house music.
Featuring two unrehearsed performers each performance, the piece orbits around ideas of surrogacy and nostalgia. Participants include Sonny Valicenti (Theater BFA 08), Bob Cucuzza (Theater MFA 11), Christine Wood (Theater BFA 14), Will Green (Theater Advanced Certificate 09) and Heather Ehlers (Theater faculty).
This immersive multimedia experience uses the key Oct. 15, 2015, date in the film Back to the Future as a jumping-off point. Presented by the Mothership LA arts collective includes Duncan Woodbury (Music BFA 11), Mitchell Colley (Theater BFA 11), Keith Skretch (Theater MFA 12) and Alex Gaines (Theater/IM MFA 12).
In this production, two pre-teen BFFs on a Saturday night sleepover in 1995 confront mysterious characters named Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung who crash their party through a Ouija board. Created by Mireya Lucio (Theater MFA 11) and Sallie Merkel (Theater MFA 11), Our So-Called Sleepover originated at the CalArts School of Theater’s New Works Festival.
Event Details
Live Arts Exchange Festival (LAX)
The Bootleg Theater, Beverly Blvd.
Automata, Chung King Ct.
October 15-25
Individual tickets: $15-$20
Festival pass: $100