May | 2016 | Intimate Excellent
Dancer Marina Valiente
Sunday night ignited another red-hot evening of Forever Flamenco at the Fountain when artistic director Gerardo Morales led a company of world-class artists in our intimate venue in a concert titled ‘Sevilla a Los Angeles.’ Dancers Marina Valiente and Timo Nunez passionately performed to the guitar of Gabriel Osuna and Jesus Montoya‘s soulful singing. Mateo Amper added his artistry on piano. The sold-out concert was produced by Deborah Lawlor and James Bennett.
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For more than 25 years, the Fountain Theatre has produced world-class flamenco in its intimate home on Fountain Avenue and every summer in the 1200-seat outdoor Ford Theatre. Don’t miss this summer’s extraordinary Forever Flamenco at the Ford on July 23rd. It’s LA’s hottest flamenco night of the year!
Sunday night proved why Forever Flamenco at the Fountain was recently hailed in Tvolution magazine as “the best ticket in town.” Ole!
Forever Flamenco (323) 663-1525 More Info
Posted in Arts, arts organizations, Dance, dancer, flamenco, Fountain Theatre, Latino, Los Angeles, non-profit organization, performing arts, singer
Tagged Forever Flamenco, Fountain Theatre, Gabriel Osuna, gerardo morales, Jesus Montoya, Los Angeles, Marina Valiente, Matthew Amper, theater, theatre, Timo Nunez
Students wait in our cafe for the play to begin.
There are few goals for the Fountain more gratifying and rewarding than reaching out and connecting with young people. We enjoyed that realization on Monday morning when 70 students from Glendale High School attended a special performance of our hit play My Mañana Comes. The cast then connected with the students in a warm and honest conversation following the performance, discussing issues of the play and sharing insights into being a professional actor and the artistic process.
Before the performance, the students gathered in our upstairs cafe. They muched snacks, checked their smartphones and chatted excitedly with each other. For many students, this would be the first live performance of a professional play that they’ve seen in their young lives.
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At the 11am curtain time, the students rushed downstairs and entered the theatre. They took their seats. The lights went down. The excited buzz quieted. And the transformative experience of live theatre began.
“School districts are being forced to cut arts education in classrooms, ” admitted Fountain Co-Artistic Director Stephen Sachs. “Now more than ever, it’s up to non-profit arts organizations like ours to fill that gap so young people can benefit from discovering the arts for themselves.”
Monday’s special performance was made possible through Theatre as a Learning Tool, the Fountain Theatre’s educational outreach program that makes theatre accessible to students throughout Southern California. Our thanks to teacher Barbara Berent for working with us in bringing the students from Glendale High School. For us, there are few things more important than introducing young people to the benefit of live theatre.
Posted in Acting, actors, Arts education, arts organizations, Drama, Education, Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles, non-profit organization, Outreach Program, performing arts, plays, Theater, theatre
Tagged Arts education, arts organizations, Barbara Berent, educational outreach, Fountain Theatre, Glendale High School, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Premiere, My Manana Comes, performing arts, plays, students, theater, theatre, Theatre as a Learning Tool
Playwright in the house! The Fountain Theatre was pleased to host Elizabeth Irwin at Saturday night’s performance of our acclaimed LA premiere of her play, My Mañana Comes. Irwin enjoyed watching her play and joined director Armando Molina, movement director Sylvia Bluish and the cast in a Q&A Talkback with the audience immediately after the performance.
Elizabeth Irwin
“Watching the Fountain Theatre’s production of my show was being able to see the most beautiful connection of movement, emotion, design and direction one could hope for as a writer,” says Irwin. “It was an honor to have my work staged at the Fountain and a deep pleasure to be able to connect with their very thoughtful and whip-smart audience.”
Moderated by Fountain producing Director Simon Levy, the post-show discussion included questions to the playwright and actors about the issues of immigration, undocumented workers and fair pay that are dramatized in the play. There was also conversation about the creative process. The chat was lively, insightful, and often lifted with humor.
When the Q&A concluded, Irwin and company gathered in our upstairs cafe for drinks, chat and more laughter. Another wonderful evening at the Fountain.
My Mañana Comes dramatizes four busboys in a fancy New York restaurant as they juggle plates, immigration and their friendship. The Fountain LA premiere has earned rave reviews and runs to June 26th.
It was a pleasure having New York-based playwright Elizabeth Irwin with us and we look forward to having her back. Perhaps with another new play?
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More Info/Get Tickets
Posted in actors, Arts, arts organizations, director, Drama, Fountain Theatre, immigration, Latino, Los Angeles, Mexican American, new plays, non-profit organization, performing arts, plays, playwright, playwriting, restaurant, Theater, theatre
Tagged actors, Armando Molina, director, Elizabeth Irwin, Fountain Theatre, Latino, Lawrence Stallings, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Premiere, My Manana Comes, Pablo Castelblanco, performing arts, Peter Pasco, playwright, playwriting, Richard Azurdia, Simon Levy, Sylvia Blush, theater, theatre
Marina Valiente
by Ernest Kearney
Well once again you have the opportunity of experiencing one of the true treats of L.A.
Sunday, May 22 8pm – Forever Flamenco.
Why do I keep urging you to get down to the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood and partake in this monthly series?
What makes Flamenco so special, you ask?
Well, all right, since you asked –
It is the nature of all life to evolve. From the nascent state we develop until the fullness of our potential is obtained or the natural limitations of our species reached. One can disagree and debate the question of potential-limitation, but not that the ultimate stage bears slight similitude to that of the inception stage.
In a fashion, the babe is lost to the child, the child to the youth, the youth to the adult.
It is true of art forms that they evolve from a primal form, developing intellectual dimensions artistic frameworks. The loss of a certain primal intensity is payment for that progression.
Yeah, that’s a mouthful, I know, so let ‘s put forth some illustrations.
Pliny the Elder reports that Zeuxis, a Greek painter of the 5th century B.C.E., would have guests try to eat the grapes painted on his canvases. And that Parrhasios, a fellow artist of Zeuxis, invited him to view a new work covered over by a lace curtain. When Zeuxis went to lift the lace curtain he found it was part of the painting.
The 13th century Italian artist Giotto liked to paint little flies on his works then watch patrons try to shoo them.
In 1849 twenty to thirty thousand rioting New Yorkers confronted the National Guard troops called up to re-establish order resulting in more than thirty deaths. The cause of their uprising? A production of Shakespeare.
When J. M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World premiered it too caused a riot, though not nearly as bloody.
Timo Nunez
My passion for theatre knows no bounds, but sadly, I’m reduced to imagining what the state of catharsis must have been like to reduce an ancient Greek audience to a sobbing mass incapable of speech, or what passion could be played upon to plunge me into a frenzy of rioting.
When the raw throbbing notes of jazz was first heard it threw some into wild paroxysms. Decent women fainted.
The same can be said of rock and roll and even rap.
Once, not very long ago, the experience of rap was felt by some as less “music” than throbbing hammer blows of anger, rage and revolt.
Now, Ice-T does pamper commercials and you can hear “Fuck the Police” as muzak while waiting in line to make a deposit at Bank of America.
Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 The Great Train Robbery, one of the first film “works” to employ editing in the telling of its story, concludes with one of the robbers on the screen pointing his gun at the audience and firing.
When first shown, members of the audience dived under their seats.
Film, the youngest of arts, has all but lost that quality that permitted those engaging in it to be engulfed by its artifact, transported by its manufactured illusion.
The exception that tests the rule here being Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a 2 hour, 6 minute Christian stuff film with only 16 torture free minutes of which 2 minutes were taken up by the resurrection and none to the tenets of Jesus’ teaching.
Whatever forms the creative imperative embodies, the accretion of artistry infuses accessibilty but defuses the ascendancy of the incipient urging behind the creative act.
Gabriel Osuna
Art, like the Titan Antaeus is robbed of its strength when removed from the soil that is its mother.
Flamenco, I find, still has a fast grip to the dark and tragic history, the pain and passion that was the life breath of the cante jondo, the traditional “deep song.”
In the sound of Flamenco, the fury of its dance, we have echoes from the dark corners of the human soul as profound today as they were three centuries ago.
Nowhere will the sorrow and joy of the human condition find expression with more sublime defiance than in the music and dance of flamenco.
Deborah Lawlor, for one Sunday every month, has lured world class talent to a small corner of Hollywood with the Forever Flamenco series at The Fountain Theatre.
Scheduled to appear at the next performance on Sunday May 22nd at 8:30: Gabriel Osuna will be the evening’s guitarist. Osuna plays with garra, meaning “guts” or “vitality.” Evidence of this is found if you examine his fingers which he coats in Super Glue to give the tips added protection.
Mateo Amper will be at the piano and Gerardo Morales is the featured percussionist as well as the evening’s director.
If these three musicians were matched in a battle of the bands with any philharmonic orchestra in the country, when it was over, it wouldn’t be the ones in tuxes wearing the laurels.
Dancer Timo Nuñez is a melding of grace and raw power who is stunning to watch.
Singer Jesus Montoya is another familiar face in the series, who fills every note he sings with such emotional power it could make bricks weep.
Marina Valiente will be making her debut at the Fountain. I am confident it will be a debut very worth seeing.
I know, I said it before. Well guess what? I’m saying it again: Forever Flamenco – The best tickets in LA. Click
Ernest Kearney is an award winning L.A. playwright and freelance writer. This post originally appeared in The Tvolution.
Posted in Arts, arts organizations, Dance, dancer, flamenco, Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles, Music, performing arts, singer, Theater, theatre
Tagged arts organizations, Dance, Deborah Lawlor, Ernest Kearney, Flamenco, flamenco dancing, flamenco guitar, flamenco music, Forever Flamenco, Fountain Theatre, Gabriel Osuna, gerardo morales, Jesus Montoya, Los Angeles, Marina Valiente, Mateo Amper, performing arts, theater, Timo Nunez
Elizabeth Irwin
New York based playwright Elizabeth Irwin will be attending our hit LA Premiere of her play My Mañana Comes on Saturday May 14th at 8pm. Immediately following the performance, Irwin will be joined by the cast and director for a Q&A Talkback discussion with the audience.
My Mañana Comes is set in the frenzied kitchen of a fancy New York restaurant toiled by four busboys — three Mexican, one African American. The funny and fast-moving new play dramatizes such timely issues as immigration, undocumented workers, fair pay for labor, and chasing the American Dream.
Pablo Castelblanco, Lawrence Stallings and Peter Pasco
Elizabeth Irwin was born in Worcester, raised by Brooklyn and Mexico City. She was a 2013-14 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow and is a member of the Public Theater’s 2015 Emerging Writer’s Group. Her play My Mañana Comes received its off-Broadway debut in September 2014 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater as Playwright Realm’s Page One Production. She continues her work with Playwrights Realm as their 2014-15 Page One Resident Playwright. She was a member of the 2012-13 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Elizabeth is a graduate of Amherst and Harvard and works in the New York City public schools. She is also a pretty great procrasti-baker.
Our Los Angeles Premiere of My Mañana Comes has earned rave reviews everywhere. The Los Angeles Times hails it as “engaging”, Broadway World calls it “wonderful” and Discover Hollywood demands “don’t miss this one!” The production has also been highlighted as Ovation Recommended.
On Saturday May 14th at 8pm, Elizabeth Irwin will be joined by actors Richard Azurdia, Pablo Castelblanco, Peter Posco, Lawrence Stallings and director Armando Molina for a lively post-show discussion. A wonderful evening of great theatre and good conversation with the artists. Join us! MORE INFO/Get Tickets
Posted in Acting, actors, artist, Arts, arts organizations, director, Drama, Fountain Theatre, immigration, Latino, Los Angeles, new plays, non-profit organization, performing arts, plays, playwright, playwriting, Theater, theatre
Tagged actors, African American, director, Elizabeth Irwin, Fountain Theatre, immigration, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Premiere, Mexican, My Manana Comes, new plays, performing arts, plays, playwright, post-show discussion, theater, theatre, undocumented workers