Category: Visual Arts & Film

Paul Linke of ‘CHiPs’ fame has come full circle in a series of true-to-life plays that span losing his wife and finding love again By Christina Campodonico Storytelling is like shaping a smooth stone, if you ask Paul Linke. “If you go to a river, you’ll see incredibly polished stones sitting in the river. The river keeps moving over [the stone], across it, continually shaping it and honing it, and I always felt like the story is the stone and the river is the act of telling it,” he says. Since 1986, the actor and Mar Vista resident —...

Playwright and actress Ngozi Anyanwu makes peace with death in a play that’s ‘bristling with life’ By Christina Campodonico “What do you think it’s like before you die?” asks MJ, the male lead in the new play “Good Grief,” now making its debut run at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. He imagines it could feel like kissing and crapping all at once: a cathartic moment between ecstasy and sweet release. That’s a strange thought for someone so young — twentysomething and still living at home — to contemplate. But for the play’s 34-year-old author and lead actress...

Rain Pryor embraces the Jewish and African-American heritages that make her whole By Christina Campodonico For all intents and purposes, Rain Pryor should be screwed up — royally. Hookers, ex-girlfriends, hangers-on and ex-wives ran rampant while drugs and alcohol flowed freely in the palatial home of her father, the much beloved and intensely provocative king of comedy Richard Pryor. Her mother’s apartment in the “wrong part” of Beverly Hills wasn’t the most stable environment either. Not long after her father’s 1980 attempt at suicide by self-immolation while freebasing cocaine, 11-year-old Rain discovered her mother Shelley Bonus (Richard Pryor’s second...

Intimate circus show employs music, movement and memories to share the joy of cooking By Bliss Bowen The stereotype of circus and theatrical troupes creating their own families proves doubly true with Les 7 Doigts and their current show “Cuisine & Confessions,” which tumbles into The Broad Stage this weekend. According to Shana Carroll, who choreographed and co-directs the show with husband Sébastien Soldevila, it is a sensory exploration of cast members’ personal memories. The trigger for those memories seems an unlikely inspiration for a circus piece: food. “My husband and I were brainstorming on the next show we...

City Garage mines comedy from a Greek tragedy exploring President Trump’s “aggrieved sense of martyrdom” By Christina Campodonico For some, Trump’s rise to the White House is the dawn of a new era. For others, it feels like the beginning of the end. For City Garage production director Charles A. Duncombe, Trump’s ascendancy to power bears enough resemblance to classic Greek tragedy that he was inspired to write a satirical play. Duncombe has been working on “Trump Unbound,” which gets its first public reading on Monday night, since the morning after election night. “I just felt a visceral need...