All Episodes
Opening the Curtain — 457 episodes
Matt’s Text
EWhat do we do in the theatre when there is no theater?
‘Home’ review: domestic magic and the fleeting American dream
Four Larks’ creepy and gorgeous ‘Frankenstein’ will punch you in the gut
‘Found’ Review: Finding a musical in scraps of paper
'Revenge Song' review: Geek theatre rules!
The loss of the LA Weekly will drive you nuts
Are we listening?
What does the constitution mean to you?
What’s happening at REDCAT?
Roll with it
Theater for a new year
Best of 2019 LA Theatre: the gender act.
“Best of 2019 LA Theatre: the race act.”
A male swan’s spell
A big play in a tiny space
Punk? Or Poser?
A holiday cab
Theatre tip: just use white people
Comfort food comedy with a dark side
An essential journey
Internal thoughts becoming external cues
Seeing Beckett through a clown's eyes
When a play is more of a story
When is a “Handjob” more than a handjob?
EHolding an imperfect mirror up to LA (vida loca)
Time to get schooled
Breathing female life into a stubborn male classic
The trouble with expectation
The brilliant complexity of a feminist classic
Saying no to the myth
The paid intimacy of immersive theater
Manifest masculinity
Brecht without the politics
A dead man’s legacy
Shocking a culture forward
Sherlock Holmes and the case of too many plot points
Mama drama with power chords
The alchemy of emptiness
Why do you choose what you choose?
The theatre of place: Jordan Downs
Saved by the cast
Enjoy the dancing dildos
The tenure of white supremacy
Doll hubris, anyone?
A play boss-battling itself
A theatrical sudoku puzzle
Female power? Hell yes.
Time for Block Party to evolve
Bring your kids to the theater!
Sometimes the past is more real than the present
A method to the political madness
Questioning a fairy tale
Our inescapable past.
Fighting the patriarchy
Hidden classical treasures
Sleeping with your son
Theatre for a New Year
Best of 2018, part 2
Best of 2018, part 1
The challenge of time and space
A High Sugar "Nutcracker"
Look for the helpers
A mean Lear
Being a Ghost Story of Christmas
Midterm Elections and the theatre
An absence of responsibility
A Lie to make you care
Breaking free from Shakespeare's Ghetto
A blue Jello spit take of truth
An argument for Dramaturgy
The glory of subversion
Catching glimpses of a great play
The present soul of a classic
Too little water; too much drama!
‘Cabaret’ as cover band
"Who gets to be a mom?"
Getting lost in a playwright’s mind
Falling for young fruit
Moms will do anything
Going crazy in the Valley
Easy endings to difficult problems?
Great play! Right theater?
A little stinky is okay - but too much and the whole thing's a mess
An unsatisfying journey
Perverse magic of LA’s intimate theaters
Better than Cats
Straying from a mission to fulfill a promise
Weaving an audience’s soul
Struggling to find the right language
A messy, big play
Xeroxing Kantor’s mirror
Everybody's got a hustle.
What you get to carry as a human being
Shamelessly preaching to the choir
The Venn diagram of high art and fart jokes
The moving target of whiteness
Bearing witness from the choir?
How do we evolve without losing our way?
A soldier's past, missing drama in the present
Hipster Pirates
Is great acting enough?
A not-so-silent retreat
The premature death of a dream
Transitioning to new stories
Theater for a New Year: a busy January
Best of 2017
Circus for the spinning multi-tasker
If it's not tax-deductible, will theater donors still give?
Meaningless entertainment, on the other hand, is actually really hard
A lowbrow holiday in the theater
Wrestling with the 'ghosts of ideas'
A bearded man with a ukulele and a bird mask
An extended poetic metaphor
A fraught political journey
Technology or theater?
A prison story
Appropriated disaster
Arguing with God
The Chicago Greeks
Fall theater preview
A crisis in governance
Don't look behind this door
When the policy is more important than the dramaturgy
Making sense of an inscrutable world
Why the all-star game isn't much of a game
The beasts among us
Missing Dad
Sweet when it should be savory
The wrong kind of spectacle
A Long way to go
A romance with slippery time
A civic tragedy in 4 tweets
Getting lost in a playwright's mind
A lost classic
A House with a shaky foundation
Unfair expectations?
Why we need a good 'Block Party'
We are being watched as we do the watching
A theatrical bologna sandwich
Following your ears back to the beginning
Worse than a wall
Is it the art? Or the frame?
The politics of naked power
A young play
The Irresistible pull of memory
When style gets in the way
Why here? Why now?
A complicated history
An acrobatic whale tale
The politics of collaboration
What makes technique, technique?
A legacy of work: Gordon Davidson
Theater for the new year
It’s all about the audience
It's just Tuesday
A play from before . . .
Don't miss the experience of the forest (or the beauty of a single tree)
#specialNOTsafe
A dire, urgent warning
Getting lost in a Grimm Forest
Polling a Play's Heart
An ugly story told beautifully
"Who's the bad guy?
A culturally appropriate family
As close as possible to the elemental core
A classical dick joke
FOUR LARKS forges a path through the INDUSTRY'S WILDERNESS
Fall Theater Picks
The Equity Saga Continues
No Opposition
An Essential Black, and Blue, Comedy
Taming the Ramones
Lost Soles
A Soulful Trip to the Beach
An Uncertain Future
The Sole of Satire
That’s a Good Trick
A Play to Argue Over
The Revelation in Repetition
Not Quite Prepared for This Disaster
Shock, Awe, and...Jane Fonda?
Unrelenting Drama?
The Bodies Tell as Much of a Story as the Words
Taking Responsibility
Shakespeare's Black Man
Mark It
Our Problem Presents Itself
A Nourishing Question
A Canary in a Bigger Coal Mine
What We’ve Lost
Don't Even Ask Her about Dressing!
A Challenging Chorus
Why Politics Matter
A Verdict without an Indictment
A Backup on the Kościuszko
Whose Play Is It, Anyway?
Opening Weekend
The Fullness of Nothing
Dystopian Delight
The Ritual of Space
Best of 2015
All Hell Breaks Loose
The Recipe Paradox
A Commitment to Actors
Orpheus with an iPhone
The Key to Diversity in the American Theater?
Theater in the Age of Twitter
Neighborly Comfort Food
Hopscotch-ing Tidy Art through Our Messy City
Working Very Hard for Very Little
Equity Lawsuit: It's Deja Vu All Over Again
What Is Appropriate?
You Smiled at the Same Time as Me
October: An El Niño of Theater
A Classic in East LA
A Playwright Building Bridges: An Interview with Luis Alfaro
Grandma Franca's Curse
Fall Theater: Relatives from Out of Town
Our Historical Selves
A Taper Play
Can We Go Home?
Going Home
Why Do We Laugh?
The Veil of Youthful Comedy
It's in the Air
An Audience of One
Don't Pause...Go
Old-School School
What Difference Would It Make?
You Don't Exist
A Vaudevillian Prism
Brutally Beautiful
Art vs. Commerce
The Unexpected Circumstances of Virtuosity
The Next Chapter?
A Lot of Words
The Monkey on Our Backs
The Tough Questions
The Greater Good?
Act One: Who Isn't for a Minimum Wage?
Prologue to Disaster
Give In to the Temptation
Visual Feasts
Engaging Too Much
The Farce of Tyranny
Tis a Gift to Be Simple
The Safety of the Past
The Politics of Click-bait
The Best of 2014
A Séance with Greatness
A Shrinking Theater
One Week out of 52
Holiday Theater for the Whole Family
A Taper Tragedy
The Asian Carp of LA Theater
LA's the Thing
Re-Imagine This! #Pro99
Discord Is Right!
Art Takes A Life
The Magic of Harmony
The Rewards of Time
Is It a Recipe or a Formula?
Upsetting the Hierarchy
Theatre’s Economic Reality
Six Shows Not To Miss: Fall Theater Preview
The Style is All
Let Neil LaBute Push Your Buttons
The Emperor Is Wearing a Speedo
The Mythic Poetry of the Distant Present
Tim Wright: Does Producing Less Lead To More?
Great F**king Show!
#Tonycanyouhearme
A Cinderella Story - Sort Of
Density? Yes. Quality? Uh…
Grappling with Narrative
The Faustian Bargain of Audience
Hitting the Center
It Feels like a Big Play
O for a Muse of Venice
Formally Excavating the Past
Ever Present Technique
Dreaming of a Sun King
A Dance of Specificity and Spontaneity
A Dream of Imagination
An Australian Prologue
Don't Circle the Wagons!
The Cult of Ensemble
Half Baked and a World of White
Relentless Commitment
Vanya et alia
What You Leave Out
For Christ's Sake
I Hope It's the Last Time
It Comes Down to the Comma
What Does It Mean to Be Local?
Theater for a New Year
The Year's Best
Theater in Beverly Hills?
Peter Pan Doesn't Necessarily Have to Fly
Holiday Theater - Everywhere!
The Magic of Less
A Decade of Work
Back to Class
Oops
The Culture of Resonance
Our Invisible City
Gone
Unity
Connecting the Dots
A Theater on a Roll
It's All about Scale
A Feminist Rorschach Test
Zombie Soap Opera
Large Casts: The Redemption of Small Theater
Take Me Back!
The Weight of History
Cold Hard Cash
Who's Story Is It?
Forging Meaning
Space Meet Time
Where's the Revolution?
So Much Has Changed?
An American Classic
Breaking Boundaries or Thank God for Repressive Gender Roles
Sleeping with the Help
Trailer Park Ulysses
Why?
Trust the Actor
Theater Journalism: Size Matters
The Value of Consequences
Balancing Shaw
Defined by Disability?
Horsing Around
And Some Things Change...
Showcasing the Dark Side
The Black Art of Dramaturgy
Remembering John
A Company's Growing Pains
Damn Ephemerality!
Financial Times
Best of 2012
Six Voices
Listen
We, The Audience
A Commercial Formula
Rapture Anyone?
A Study in Manipulation
Tentacle Erotica?
Oh Krapp!
A World Untethered
The Magic of a Little Fishing Line
To Pillage
Five Golden Plates
Quantity or Quality?
Seven Hours
Amateur Virtuosity
A painter's pas de deux
Rodney King: The First Reality TV Star
99% Farce, 1% Satire
A Crown? Or a Tiara?
An Evil Metaphor
Two Languages at War
Does LA Need a Fringe?
Behind an Actor's Eyes
I Miss August
Irising Down on the Details
The Evidence Room Is Back
The Alchemy of Experience
A Greek Betrayal
A Process with Integrity
A Civic Voice for the Theater
A Master Class in Stagecraft and Movement
The Internet of the Soul
En Attendant Urgence
Worst Jesus Movie in the History of Cinema
The Theatrical Languages of LA?
An Exciting Failure
The Stories We Spin
Prison Poetry
The Path Forward
Breakfast in America
In Conversation with Helen Hunt and David Cromer
In the Company of the Male Gaze
Best of 2011
The Soul of Fela!
The Two Sides of Consistency
The Night Watcher
A Hate Crime and a Kiss
LA Theater: A Study in White?
The Responsibility of Space
A Play Called Hope
Adult Culpability and Childhood Innocence
The Poetry of Fluid Time
Cowboys and Dinosaurs
The Responsibility of Image
Where Are the Hollywood Clowns?
Morally Bankrupt and Vacuous...but Funny
The SITI Company's Questions
Ideas in Need of Passion
The Magic of Intimate Theater
A Dark Night of the Soul
An All Too Pretty Labyrinth
Healthcare and Humanity
An All Too Clever Hamlet
Peeling Peer's Onion
A real theatre community?
Was It All Make Believe?
A step into the past...and maybe the future
The Magic of Polaroid
A Desire for Honesty
Spotlight on LA
Fleck's Madness
Sorry, Charlie
Stage Stars
The Merchant of Venice Goes to Wall Street
The Joys of Simulated Nudity
History Plays
Head in the Oven
Natural History Theater
Laughter, Catharsis and a Side of Gore
Quixote's Misfortune Is Not His Imagination
Camino Real
33 Variations
The Pleasure of Consequences
Oh Baby, I'm a Cyclops
Drama of the Everyday
Greed Isn't What It Used to Be
One Final Monologue
A Holiday Wedding
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Recently Closeted Gay Man
Holiday Theater, Anyone?
Arts Funding, Anyone?
The Origin of Theater?
Where's the Next Bet?
A Window to a Playwright
Elizabethan Sitcom
A Winning Season
Artifice and Awareness
A World of Desire
The Cart before the Horse
How Big Is Your Chorus?
Dinosaurs and Storytelling
The History Next Door
The Theater Needs You
Bloody Irresponsible
Brewsie and Willie
Procreation
A Warehouse and a Dream
A Human Lear
Theater on the Fringe
Theater of the Cliche
Anton's Uncles
Towards a Slow Theater
UCLA Live Theater: Thanks for the Memories
Second
The 20th Century Way