New adventures

The next few months will be rather nutty for me. Yesterday, I started working on a 99-seat theatre show in Santa Monica (look ma, I'm assistant stage managing!), which should be a fun way to actually get involved on a show. Armchair critiquing is fun, mind you, but this will be too. On top of that, I will be doing some side marketing work for a medium-sized arts presenting organization, easing them through a transitional period - a great opportunity to experiment and flex my arts management muscles beyond my real job. Bottom line: I'm going to be busy as hell.

There are some performances I'm going to try and see nonetheless: LES GRANDS BALLETS CANADIENS DE MONTREAL in Irvine on April 13, doing a piece by Ohad Naharin, whose work I really liked when Batsheva visted last year; ballerina SYLVIE GUILLEM does some super contemporary stuff with Akram Kahn at UCLA Live on May 2 (already have tickets for this one); PORGY AND BESS at LA Opera from May 4 to 20; MERCE CUNNINGHAM at OCPAC on May 19, doing a rather crazy-fun sounding piece in two different venues on the same evening; and LOS ANGELES BALLET'S next repertory program begins on May 24 at UCLA. The monster musical of the summer, JERSEY BOYS, opens at the Ahmanson on June 3. And AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE starts at the Music Center on July 12, on the last weekend of my 99-seat theatre project. I'll have to juggle my show with ABT's Othello and gala program, but I'll get to follow the company down to Orange County the week after, unhindered by random projects, to enjoy their new Sleeping Beauty. Do I dicate my life, or do my shows?

I'm going to Vegas today, just for the day, driving there in the morning and back in the evening evening - and all because I want to see PHANTOM "The Las Vegas Spectacular." Yes, the Vegas version of Andrew Lloyd Weber's big monster hit of a show. The trip is spur of the moment - I planned it last night, sitting on the couch and thinking that it will probably be the last completely free day that I'm going to have in a very long time. I know people think Phantom of the Opera is a god awful and tacky show, but it's my main guilty pleasure; I'm a sucker for the sappy songs and the sheer spectacle of it (this production promises fabulous new sets and special effects), and it was discounted on Goldstar.

SPEAKING OF NEW ADVENTURES, there was an great article on Matthew Bourne and his company (New Adventures) by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker two weeks ago. It explains his work and profile up until now, including some interesting observations about the relationship between his work and the audience: he's extremely concious of his audience's reaction, not that he's a crowd pleaser, just very careful to make sure the audience feels very welcome in his stuff. I'm also excited that the things Acocella highlights as artisically interesting in Bourne's career are also things that I have chosen as my favorites among his work: Play Without Words for trying out something innovative in theatrical presentation, for example. There, characters came out in triplicate to show, simultaneously, things happening at three different times and places, or in imagination (that sounds odd, but on stage it worked fantastically). The only thing Acocella neglects to mention is basically the entire series of Bourne's work has been presented in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre since Swan Lake. It could be argued that without the Ahmanson's pre-Broadway presentation of the Swan, it wouldn't have gotten the buzz required to lift it to Broadway. And the fact that we've seen a lot of Bourne's big pieces since then - Cinderella, The Car Man, the revival of Nutcracker!, Play Without Words, and Edward Scissorhands, which was actually sold out for three weeks here - gives LA audiences, for America, a kind of unique perspective on his work. New Yorkers have only gotten Swan, Play Without Words and Scissorhands...