Set in 1974, a group of queer women spend their summers together in a remote oceanfront town on Long Island. Their lesbian enclave is disrupted when Eva, a naïve straight woman recently separated from her husband, stumbles unaware into their circle and falls for the charming, tough-talking Lil. This heartfelt play, a landmark in lesbian history, is bursting with friendship, laughter, love and hope, bringing well-rounded, three-dimensional characters that transcend stereotypes and preconceptions to the stage.
Check out this short video to meet the cast of our hot new summer production, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, opening June 17 on our Outdoor Stage.
Welcome to Bluefish Cove. The Fountain Theatre will transform the parking lot surrounding the set on its outdoor stage to create an oceanfront experience for its 40th-anniversary production of the groundbreaking comedy/drama, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove by Jane Chambers. Directed by Hannah Wolf, performances take place June 17 through August 27, with low-priced previews beginning June 14.
Set in 1974, a group of queer women spend their summers together in a remote oceanfront town on Long Island. Their lesbian enclave is disrupted when Eva, a naïve straight woman recently separated from her husband, stumbles unaware into their circle and falls for the charming, tough-talking Lil. This heartfelt play, a landmark in lesbian history, is bursting with friendship, laughter, love and hope, bringing well-rounded, three-dimensional characters that transcend stereotypes and preconceptions to the stage.
“The play ran for two years, from 1981-1983, at the Fountain Theatre 40 years ago starring Jean Smart, before Deborah Lawlor and I acquired the building and established our company,” says Fountain artistic director Stephen Sachs. “It was a benchmark achievement in L.A. theater, a turning point for L.A.’s queer community, and a milestone in the history of our building. Many women saw and remember it. Now its time for generations of young gay women born after the play was produced here to experience it for themselves.”
One of the first playwrights to depict love between women as happy, healthy, and well-adjusted, Jane Chambers (1937-1983) changed the course of American drama with works informed by second-wave feminism and the burgeoning gay rights movement, including A Late Snow (1974), Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1980) and My Blue Heaven (1981). A prolific writer, Chambers also authored novels, poetry, and essays in addition to penning scripts for film and television. She trained as an actress at Rollins College and the Pasadena Playhouse because female students were not admitted to writing classes, and enjoyed success as an off-Broadway performer.
“(Bluefish Cove) was a benchmark achievement in L.A. theater, a turning point for L.A.’s queer community, and a milestone in the history of our building. … Now its time for generations of young gay women born after the play was produced here to experience it for themselves.”
–Stephen Sachs
In 1964, Chambers moved to Maine where she worked for MWTW-TV as a content producer and on-air personality. During President Johnson’s War on Poverty, Chambers took a position as arts coordinator with Jobs Corp, creating theater with inner-city youths. While earning a bachelor’s degree at Goddard College, Chambers returned to New York, co-founded Women’s Interart Theatre with Margot Lewitin, and met her life partner, talent agent Beth Allen. Chambers was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died in 1983. Her pioneering spirit is honored by an annual prize given in her name: The Jane Chambers Award for Playwriting is administered by The Women and Theatre Program. Chambers’ impact on American drama is also celebrated by a reading series at TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) Theatre.
Earlier this month, eager students and their chaperones from three area high schools visited the Fountain Theatre for specially arranged morning performances of our current hit show, The Lifespan of a Fact. These kids had either been participants in Fountain Voices, the Fountain’s acclaimed theatre education program, or were recruited because they were active in their established high school theatre programs. Many of them already had an interest in the arts, some were newly exposed to it, and quite a few were even considering careers as writers and/or performers. All of them were thrilled to be seeing the show.
On Friday, March 3rd, 44 students from Hollywood High School and 15 students from Helen Bernstein High School were bussed to the Fountain to see Lifespan. A week later, on March 10th, approximately 60 students arrived from Compton Early College High School. Pre-show snacks and lunch were provided in the Fountain’s charming upstairs café, and the kids chatted excitedly about both seeing the show and the Q&A with the cast (Inger Tudor, Jonah Robinson, Ron Bottitta) and director (Simon Levy) that followed the performance.
Ali Nezu, Magnet Coordinator for the New Media Academy and the Performing Arts Magnet at Hollywood High School was also excited for the opportunity. “It’s just been a blessing to have such an amazing group of artists and board members and community people that just love and respect the arts and that understand how desperately we need the arts to create social change,” she said. “And the learning that happens in a situation like this, and the engagement level of the students in the content and their own growth is just so much more than in a situational classroom. So I love that we are inspiring students to experience that but then inspire them and empower them to do that in their own lives moving forward.”
“It’s just been a blessing to have such an amazing group of artists and board members and community people that just love and respect the arts, and that understand how desperately we need the arts to create social change,” says Ali Nezu, Magnet Coordinator for the New Media Academy and the Performing Arts Magnet at Hollywood High School.
“I really appreciate how Fountain Voices teaches students how to get into someone else’s shoes,” enthused Ebony Haywood, who teaches English and Theatre at Compton Early Collage. “To understand how someone else is thinking, to how do you put this story together? How do you present, and represent, this story on stage? It’s like an exercise in being human.”
Sherrick O’Quinn, the Fountain’s Theatre Education Manager, agrees. “Fountain Voices is instrumental in giving kids an opportunity to realize and find their voice,” he says. “The programming we are providing is giving them the tools to learn how to be change agents of the future by using the theater arts to communicate their own stories that can change lives, hearts, and minds. Whether it’s learning how to use playwriting or visiting our theater to see a show, we’re creating accessibility to the arts when we’re seeing students increasingly not being given those opportunities – especially in underserved communities.”
When Jeremy Kareken and David Murrell set out to adapt the 2012 book “The Lifespan of a Fact” for the Broadway stage, the longtime creative partners thought they were tackling an auspiciously straightforward assignment.
The source material, for one, came in at a relatively slim 128 pages. But more notably, the text was entirely composed of pithy exchanges between essayist John D’Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal as they worked their way, sentence by sentence, through the former’s nonfiction piece for Believer magazine about the 2002 suicide of a Las Vegas teenager.
“It seemed almost designed to be adapted into a play,” Murrell says during a recent video chat alongside Kareken, “because it’s just dialogue.”
“Emphasis,” Kareken interjects, “on the word ‘seems.’”
Kareken and Murrell soon came to realize that the task was more imposing than they anticipated. Between March 2012, when they first discussed adapting the book, and October 2018, when “The Lifespan of a Fact” opened on Broadway, the duo traded countless drafts, welcomed Gordon Farrell as a third co-writer, and incorporated the ideas of director Leigh Silverman and original stars Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale and Cherry Jones.
Along the way, the “fake news” phenomenon had begun to permeate the political discourse. The play’s central debate — about how a larger truth can sometimes be at odds with factual accuracy — remains remarkably resonant.
“At what point are the facts irrelevant to the essence of the story?” Farrell asks in a phone interview. “That turned out to be a topic of national and global concern. None of the three of us knew or expected that. So somehow or other, we just stumbled onto the zeitgeist.”
Murrell first came across “Lifespan” when he read a scathing review of the book and sent it Kareken’s way, leaving both playwrights curious enough to read D’Agata and Fingal’s work for themselves. Struck by the partly true, partly fictionalized back-and-forth between the artistically inclined D’Agata and the comically meticulous Fingal, they considered penning a movie version or an experimental off-Broadway play before producer Norman Twain acquired the rights and suggested they write for a Broadway audience.
The playwrights decided early on to condense the years-long fact-checking process that played out in real life and add the ticking clock of a deadline, as the character of Fingal is assigned to work on D’Agata’s essay over one weekend. Kareken and Murrell also turned the essay’s editor — heard from only briefly in the book — into a fully fleshed out character who functions as an arbiter between D’Agata and Fingal. And they largely narrowed the play’s focus to the disputes over D’Agata’s opening paragraph in the name of brevity.
“Norman Twain said, ‘Guys, this is an abstract intellectual argument, so this play has got to move’ — and he literally said this — ‘like the Jesus lizard,’” Kareken recalls. “You know, that lizard that runs so quickly over the surface of the river that it doesn’t sink.”
Some realizations, however, took longer than others. Kareken and Murrell were well into the writing process before they came upon one crucial epiphany: They had to get the characters of D’Agata and Fingal in the same room. Although the book depicts a series of long-distance exchanges between the two, the play puts Fingal on a cross-country trip to D’Agata’s Las Vegas home as their Socratic dialogue unfolds in person.
“We were providing dud after dud of drafts — it just wasn’t going anywhere,” Kareken says. “There is such an invasive force of Jim’s character. I mean, he is the engine behind the whole play. By making that physical, that was kind of the thing that finally made us think that this was a possibility.”
In the fall of 2015, Twain floated the possibility of asking another writer to tackle an ending that Kareken and Murrell agreed wasn’t clicking. That’s when Farrell, a veteran playwright who had provided notes on previous drafts, formally boarded the project. After attending a fall 2013 reading, Farrell remembers sharing “strong words” with Kareken and Murrell about that conclusion.
“There was a lot of genius writing, and so much of it was so, so funny and so sharp through the first two-thirds of the play,” Farrell says. “Then they maintained that tone right up to the end, and that’s where it went awry.”
Specifically, Farrell was struck by the poignancy of D’Agata’s essay and perplexed that the play didn’t include more of the writer’s text, especially when it came to the suicide at its core. Upon joining the team, Farrell recalls, “It didn’t take me very long to get into it” and rewrite the final third to dwell more on the human side of the story.
After Twain’s death at age 85 in August 2016, Jeffrey Richards took the lead in producing the project. A November 2017 reading with Radcliffe gave Richards the confidence to forge ahead as the play made its way to Broadway. With Farrell tied up with his teaching duties at New York University, Kareken and Murrell worked with the director Silverman, dramaturge John Dias and the play’s stars to polish the script during rehearsals in the summer of 2018.
By that time, Donald Trump had risen to the presidency and was making false or misleading claims by the thousands. In January 2017, his counselor Kellyanne Conway infamously coined the phrase “alternative facts.” But as Kareken, Murrell and Farrell all emphasized, that topicality was no more than a happy coincidence. With “Lifespan” now being staged at regional theaters across the country, stories such as the spread of coronavirus misinformation and Rep. George Santos’s (R-N.Y.) résumé fabrications underscore the play’s enduring relevance.
“We’re the luckiest playwrights in the world because we look like geniuses,” Murrell says. “But it had absolutely nothing to do with Trump or Kellyanne or anything like that. We started in 2012, and then things happened in the world. It just happened to converge in a very fortunate way.”
After a long list of rave reviews and a successful run of nearly three months, the Fountain Theatre’s world premiere production of the gripping docudrama, Detained, comes to an end on Sunday, May 15th. The final performances of Detained are May 9 and 14 at 8pm, and May 15 at 2pm. Special $10 tickets are available on a limited, first come/first-served basis.
Originally commissioned by immigration attorney Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Projectand written by The Lillys 2021 Lorraine Hansberry Award-winning playwright France-Luce Benson, Detained explores the heartbreak and fierce determination of families fighting to stay together while mass deportation and harsh U.S. immigration legislation become ever more dedicated to keeping them apart. It is both a devastating, in-depth look at everyday people caught in the punishing web of harsh immigration policies, and a celebration of the courage and conviction of those struggling against an often coldblooded institution that seems to have lost sight of its former humanity.
Former cast member Michael Uribes was unable to continue with the show, so Jose Fernando (Daniel’s Husband) has temporarily relinquished his duties as Fountain Theatre House Manager to join the cast of Detained. “It feels great to be switching gears and joining the Detained family in this capacity,” he said. “As someone who immigrated to this country, and has friends and family affected by the politics surrounding immigration, this show is very real to me. It allows me an opportunity to give a voice to our lived experiences.”
Jose Fernando joins the ensemble cast of Detained
Fernando, along with company members Liana Aráuz, Camila Betancourt Ascencio, Christine Avila,Will Dixon,Jan Munroe,Theo PerkinsandMarlo Su, bring to life a variety of characters based on real-life U.S. detainees, their families and supporters, and ICE representatives – all of whom were interviewed by Benson. These characters include a teenage foodie aspiring “chef-lebrity,” a U.S. Veteran, and a mother of two who works as a roofer in New York City.
“This play is a living document, and I’m constantly updating it,” Benson says. “People think that now that Biden is president, things are better. But thousands of people are still facing deportation every day. Many of these people have been living in this country for decades. They own houses, run businesses, pay taxes, have families.”
“No theatre complex in LA has been as staunchly dedicated to social relevance and fighting for equality and justice than the Fountain.”
Ticket Holders LA
The Los Angeles Times notes that, “In familiarizing theatergoers with the immense toll these policies take on individuals and their loved ones, the play reminds us that human rights abuses are more than a talking point… The message of the play comes through loud and clear in (director Mark) Valdez’s staging.” Ticket Holders LA proclaims that, “no theatre complex in LA has been as staunchly dedicated to social relevance and fighting for equality and justice than the Fountain.” TotalTheater.com calls Detained, “Brave and shocking… masterfully directed…” and declares, “The people whose stories are memorialized here remind all of us that we have the power to dismantle a corrupt, inhuman system.” And Showmag.com decrees, “it’s enough to make a person want to run for office… meticulous performance values… every element coalesces into a smooth, almost magazine style of presentation… the play performs an important function to awaken all of us to a system that has grown out of control.” Click here for more reviews and for a list of organizations where you can take action.
Good seats still remain for the final performances of Detained. And to celebrate the last days of the show that People’s World calls “deeply affecting” and “yet another triumph in (the Fountain’s) long line of work,” a limited number of special $10 tickets have been made available with the promo code “Final2.” Don’t miss out — act now!
Please note: All Covid protocols are followed. Proof of both vaccination and booster (if eligible) are required for admission. Masks are strongly encouraged. Snug, surgical-grade respirator masks (N-95/KN-95/KF-94) that cover both mouth and nose are preferred, but blue surgical masks are acceptable. Cloth masks are no longer approved.
I run the Fountain Theatre’s charming upstairs café. Normally, Fridays at the Fountain would be the start of a five-show weekend through Monday night. Six, if we had a Sunday evening Flamenco show as well. There would be a palpable energy in the air.
But on Friday, March 13th, LA’s growing COVID crisis had become critical. The public portions of the theatre – the stage and the café – had been shuttered. The offices were being closed as well.
I should have been working on Friday, March 13th. By 4pm, Pandora would have been rocking one of my favorite show tune stations, and I’d have been singing along with Wicked and A Chorus Line and Into the Woods behind the closed café door as I got the coffee going, bagged chips and cookies for sale, and chatted with local baker Tracy Green when she delivered her weekly order of scrumptious organic mini muffins. I would have caught up with staff when they wandered in for coffee or a snack. I would have arranged fresh flowers on the café tables. Watered the plants out on the deck. Set out food items, made sure the fridge was stocked, and ensured there was plenty of wine on the back counter.
By 6:30pm, actors would have been dropping by to say hello, and get a pre-show caffeine fix as they ate their dinner. If patrons had arrived early, I would have invited them to have a seat and get comfortable while I finished setting up. We would have talked about the show they had come to see and where they had traveled from to see it. Long distance drives from Orange County, Santa Barbara, and Long Beach are not uncommon (and on a Friday night, no less!) Patrons of the Fountain are extremely loyal, and LA’s notorious Friday night traffic has never stopped any of them from persevering to see a great show.
I’d have set out fresh creamer for coffee by 6:45pm and cut fresh lemon wedges for tea. I’d have changed the music to something more appropriate for the show, and turned on the video monitor to run the scroller of past Fountain Theatre productions. I’d have clicked on the twinkle lights draped around the café and the deck, and lit the votive candles that add such warmth and invitation to the space. The stage would have been set. Lights and sound would have been ready. I would have opened the door to let the audience in.
Opening night of Human Interest Story, Feb 15, 2020.
It would have been another Friday night at the Fountain Theatre café. Engaging with patrons. Stepping out from behind the bar to hug a friend who had come to see the show. Getting buzzed off the buzz in the room. And answering a barrage of questions about past productions:
What was that wonderful play about the painting? Either Bakersfield Mist or My Name is Asher Lev. Both featured a painting and had storylines about art.
What was the show about the Latino restaurant workers? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.My Mañana Comes. Yes, a lot of people had that reaction.
What was the one about the border wall and the guy in prison?Building the Wall.
Do you remember the show about the Black girl who was a runner? Sure! It was In the Red and Brown Water, by Tarrell Alvin McCraney. It was the first play in his Brother/Sister trilogy. We also did the second one in that series, The Brothers Size.
Theatre. History. Story-telling. Energy. Friends. Connecting the dots. And, of course, lots of coffee. These were my Friday nights at the Fountain. Until Friday, March 13th. When everything changed.
I have happily worked at the Fountain for over a decade. I’ve been part of dozens of shows in a variety of capacities: production/assistant stage manager, props designer, casting associate, costume maintenance and more. For the past two years I have also been the manager of the charming Fountain Theatre café. I must say, I absolutely love it.
I run the café as I run a show, and I am nourished by it in the process. I am fed by the support of our devoted patrons, by sharing stories of past productions, by greeting first time visitors who inevitably want to know how long we’ve been around, what kinds of shows we do, and, ultimately, how they can become a member. And then there is the question I hear all the time, from guests old and new: will the café ever be open outside of show times? (Answer: it is a long-distance dream.) I feel gratitude every time I’m asked that, because it means they’re comfortable in this charming, funky space. They tell me how much they love the rainbow tables and walls, the gallery of production photographs, the mismatched collection of couches and chairs, the open deck with the hummingbird feeder and the little garden and the view to downtown LA. They want to hang out all day long. They feel a sense of peace, of connection in the space.
Kitchens are often referred to as the heart of a home, and the café is the gathering place of the Fountain Theatre. The room where we all come together to share meals, to talk, to take meetings and to rest. The stage downstairs is the soul of the Fountain. But the café, I believe, is its ever-beating, ever-welcoming, wide-open heart.
So for now, while this pandemic reigns, my Friday nights are different. It’s been nearly four months since I didn’t work that Friday night in March – and I feel it. I miss the energy, the shows, the patrons, the actors, the laughter and the hugs, the fellowship and the connection. But in time, we will tell our stories again. In time, the theatre will open up again. In time, we will gather in the café again. That charming rainbowed place of nourishment and peace and of welcoming home. And in time, we’ll re-connect to each other, again.
The red-hot Dodgers are the best team in baseball right now. They have a MLB leading record of 66 and 29, have won 11 in a row, and their current 30-4 run is now entering historic territory. They are the first National League team to achieve a run of this dominance since the 1936 Giants. This is a great year to be a Dodger fan.
This is also a great season to be a theatre fan. In regional theaters across the country and on Broadway, thought-provoking and powerful new plays are being developed and produced to illuminate the urgency of our times. Right here in Los Angeles, theatre has never been better.
My passion for both theatre and baseball were ignited at an early age and remain heated to this day. I am dedicated to both as a lifetime commitment, a sacred calling. America’s Pastime and The Great Invalid both require a fierce devotion, unyielding faith, a resilience to overcome disappointment, and the joyful capacity to celebrate excellence. To quote ABC’s Wide World of Sports, theatre and baseball each contain “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
Granted, not every aspect of baseball and theatre are identical. In the theatre, only critics, pen and notepad in hand, keep score of the players as the action unfolds. Unlike baseball, a theatre audience does not stand en masse three-quarters into the play to sing, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Yet, one can’t help but see similarities between baseball and professional theatre.
In both theatre and baseball, the crowd gathers together in a common place to engage in a live, shared dramatic experience.
Theatre and baseball can happen anywhere, indoors and outdoors, in settings large and small. On neighborhood streets, in city parks, and in grand municipal buildings.
A baseball game and a stage play both have a beginning, middle and end escalating toward a final resolution in which the dramatic question “who will win?” is ultimately answered.
A stage play and a baseball game are driven by the same engine: conflict. Both have good guys and bad guys, heroes and enemies, humor, action, spectacle, courageous deeds and foolish gaffes, turns of direction and a climax resulting in either a sad or happy ending.
Both theatre and baseball require teamwork and collaboration. We focus on the players in front of us but there is a huge staff of unseen professionals behind the scenes who make the whole experience possible.
Theatre and baseball require years of training and a tremendous amount of practice. Contrary though it may seem, on the field and on the stage, repetitive drilling frees the player so he can let go and perform spontaneously, alive in the moment.
A baseball team, like a cast of actors on stage, are both an ensemble who not only play well together but must also rely on the skill of lead players.
Theatre and baseball are romantic. We idolize our favorite stars on stage and on the field. We swap stories about our favorite memories, spin yarns, follow careers of favorite players, share legends, recall highlights and laugh (or agonize) over famous flops.
Baseball and theatre savor a rich and colorful history, a reverence for tradition, and eccentric superstitions.
Stage plays and baseball games are made of moments. A great baseball game and a powerful play can each have the power to contain that one unforgettable moment — that one crystallized instant of perfect artistry, of joyous elation or agonizing heartbreak that sears itself into your soul forever. You remember it, that baseball play or that moment on stage, for the rest of your life.
My family video of the seventh-inning stretch at Dodger Stadium.
In baseball and theatre, we invest ourselves in the live dramatic event that is unfolding in front of us in real-time. We watch the struggle of other human beings engaged in dramatic conflict and care deeply about their outcome. Who will perish? Who survive?
As to survival, both theatre and baseball have been assailed as dying art forms for years. Both suffer from a decreasing appeal to young people, while viewership for both are getting older. Baseball games and dramatic plays are too slow and too long for this new generation raised on TV and video games.
Even so, my stat-obsessed sport tells me this: Live attendance to Major League Baseball games each year outnumber both NFL and NBA games combined, nationwide. Likewise, attendance for live theatre across the country is on the rise. These facts give me hope and tell me one thing. In this digital age, human beings still crave a fundamental need to assemble together in a shared public event that brings thought, drama, spectacle and enhances their lives.
‘Citizen: An American Lyric’ at the Fountain Theatre
by Carolyn Kellogg
Poet Claudia Rankine was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship grant for her work that engages with contemporary American culture, particularly issues of race. Her most recent book, 2014’s “Citizen,” racked up stacks of awards for its searing take on the personal and political, including the death of Trayvon Martin. Rankine, who taught for many years at Pomona College, is now on the faculty at Yale University. We talked to her about the MacArthur grant and what it means for her work.
What was it like hearing about the award?
It’s very exciting, very surprising, which makes it more exciting.
I’m in my mid-50s. This is an incredible honor, but I’ve been lucky enough to get my work done with or without it. So I feel like having this award given to me at this point in my career, I think in my own imagination, what else? It makes me want to do even more in terms of the subject of my work.
The subject of “Citizen” is, in part, the death of black men in America. And that subject is renewed again as we’re talking. I wonder if you could address that.
To me, the getting of this honor is a kind of recognition, obviously a monetary recognition, which is helpful. But it’s also for me the culture saying: We have an investment in dismantling white dominance in our culture. If you’re trying to do that, we’re going to help you. And that, to me, is encouraging. The MacArthur is given to my subject through me. The subject of trying to change the discourse of black people being equated with criminality and murdered inside a culture where white fear has justified the continued incarceration, murder of blacks and other people of color. I do feel like I am just incidental in a certain way to the prize, and that the prize is being given to the subject — that I am completely invested in.
Claudia Rankine at Fountain Theatre
Could you talk about your ongoing creative project?
Before I was notified about the MacArthur I had been in the process of putting together with Casey Llewellyn, and a number of writers and artists, the Racial Imaginary Institute. Which for us is an interdisciplinary arts and cultural laboratory for the dismantling of white dominance. One of the things I think the culture needs is an actual location where writers and artists and thinkers can come together and put pressure on the language that makes apparent white supremacy and white dominance. I think a lot of us are working separately on these subjects, but it would be nice to have a Racial Imaginary Institute that really has as its goal the dismantling of white supremacy. That each of us can go at it inside of our fields. If you’re a writer, you have the benefit of talking to other artists who are interested in the subject. What are we missing? What isn’t getting said? What are the narratives of white greatness that disallow other things to be brought to the surface? I’m very excited about the creation of the institute, the making of the space, the notion that culturally we’ll know where to go to have these discussions, to actively look at the absences and the erasures around the construction of race, especially the construction of whiteness in America.
Where will it be?
Right now we’re looking for a space, but I assume it will be in New York City. Right now we exist as people with a mission and a name. And with work [the essay collection “The Racial Imaginary” was published by Fence Books in 2015].
When you heard about this award, did you think, I’m buying an island and we’ll have our institute!
No, I think that it’s the kind of thing we’ll have to work toward getting funding for. Not even the MacArthur money can put something into the world like that. I really believe that the culture can change the way we think. Right now we have a media culture, television culture, pop culture that still moves forward on many assumptions around whiteness that we all know to be erroneous and hurtful. I think that this institute could begin to make products — books, give talks, present readings, make art — that shifts the understanding into a place that reflects an actual reality rather than the constructed realities around whiteness.
Tell me a little about the aesthetics underlying your work.
Stephen Sachs, Claudia Rankine, Shirley Jo Finney
I’m committed to an interdisciplinary investigation of cultural dynamics. The reason I will forever identify as a poet is because I think poetry is the one genre that privileges feelings. And so no matter what I’m working on, I’m also interested in the impact of the reality with the human psyche. So for me, the work has to bring the reality up against the experience of the reality. And all of my work is how do you get that to be apparent, and apparent in language? The felt experience. For example, right now we know that 60% of African Americans and Latinos live in communities where you have toxic-waste sites. Now that’s a fact. But how do I get that to be a lived experience inside a work of art? That’s the challenge as a writer and as an art-maker. How do you get the piece of art to enact a discussion that feels plausible inside your own living room? Right now I’m working on a play that draws from “Citizen.” The real challenge is how do you bring the kinds of conversations around race that happen at 7 o’clock over the dinner table onto the stage? So that when you go to the theater to see it, you know you’ve had that conversation.
So that there’s a kind of recognition.
There has to be recognition. One has to step into the moment as a lived experience. Even if the circumstances seem foreign, the experience needs to connect as a known realm on the emotional level.
Adapted by Stephen Sachs and directed by Shirley Jo Finney, The Fountain Theatre’s acclaimed 2015 stage adaptation of Citizen: An American Lyric was heralded Critic’s Choice in the LA Times, and won the Stage Raw Award for Best Stage Adaptation.
Carolyn Kellogg lives in Los Angeles and is an award-winning LA Times staff writer who covers books and authors and publishing. This post originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Jenny O’Hara and Nick Ullett in “Bakersfield Mist” at the Fountain Theatre
It has travelled around the world and it is now coming home. Just in time for the holidays.
Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs, the Fountain’s smash hit comedy that went on to see productions around the world including London’s West End, will return to the Fountain for a limited 4-week engagement beginning Nov. 19. Sachs will again direct, with Jenny O’Hara (Transparent, The Mindy Project) and Nick Ullett(As the World Turns) reprising the roles they created.
Inspired by true events, Bakersfield Mist is the story of Maude Gutman, an unemployed, chain-smoking ex-bartender living in a run-down California trailer park, who believes the painting she bought in a thrift store for $3 is really an undiscovered masterpiece worth millions. When stuffy New York art expert Lionel Percy arrives to evaluate the work, the result is a fiery and often hilarious debate over class, truth, value and the meaning of art.
“Stephen’s play has enjoyed success around the country and the world, so when Jenny and Nick became available, we jumped at the chance to bring it back,” says producer Simon Levy. “We live in such stressful times, and this play offers the perfect antidote — it’s very funny, yet also thought-provoking. Just in time for the holidays.”
Bakersfield Mist premiered at the Fountain in June, 2011, garnering glowing notices including a “Critic’s Choice” review in the Los Angeles Times which exclaimed “It’s exhilarating in the extreme when a world premiere play strikes rich on every conceivable level.” The production was hailed a “Go!” in the LA Weekly and a “Critic’s Pick” in Backstage. It played to sold-out houses for more than six months, rivaling only Sachs’ own Central Avenue as the most successful world premiere of a new play in the Fountain’s 26-year history. Bakersfield Mist opened on London’s West End starring Kathleen Turner and Ian McDiarmid for a 3-month run.Vanity Fair called Sachs’ play “Not to be missed… tackles large creative questions with well-timed zingers,” The Times of London found it to be “thoroughly entertaining… put a smile on my face and kept my brain buzzing for a good while afterward,” The New York Times labeled it “clever… a battle of wits,” and it received the 2012 Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play. In the U.S., Bakersfield Mist has been produced by Orlando Shakespeare Theater in Florida and in an extended run at the Olney Theatre in Maryland, where it is Helen Hayes Award-recommended and was lauded “5 Stars… provocative, fast-paced and cleverly funny” by DCMetro. The play is currently running in Chicago in a Jeff Award-recommended production at the Timeline Theatre which has been praised as “Highly Recommended” by the Chicago Sun-Times and “the perfect evening of theatre” by Chicago Theatre Review. Bakersfield Mist is now being produced in regional theaters across the country; it has been translated into other languages and is being performed around the world, including in Iceland, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Scotland, Australia and Canada.
Set design for Bakersfield Mist is by Jeffrey McLaughlin; sound design is by Peter Bayne; props and set dressing are by Terri Roberts; and the fight director is Edgar Landa. The production stage manager is Emily Lehrer; associate producer is James Bennett; and Simon Levy and Deborah Lawlor produce for the Fountain Theatre.
Stephen Sachs
Stephen Sachs’ other plays include Dream Catcher, Citizen: An American Lyric (adapted from the internationally acclaimed book by Claudia Rankine), Heart Song (Fountain Theatre, Florida Stage), Cyrano (LA Drama Critics Circle Award, Best Adaptation), Miss Julie: Freedom Summer (Fountain Theatre, Vancouver Playhouse, Canadian Stage Company, LA Drama Critics Circle award and LA Weekly award nomination for Best Adaptation), Gilgamesh (Theatre @ Boston Court), Open Window (Pasadena Playhouse, Media Access Award for Excellence), Central Avenue (PEN USA Literary Award finalist, Back Stage Garland award, Best Play), Sweet Nothing in My Ear(PEN USA Literary Award finalist, Media Access award, NEA grant award), Mother’s Day, The Golden Gate (Best Play, Drama-Logue) and The Baron in the Trees. He wrote the teleplay for Sweet Nothing in My Ear for Hallmark Hall of Fame which aired on CBS starring Marlee Matlin and Jeff Daniels. Sachs co-founded The Fountain Theatre with Deborah Lawlor in 1990.
by Terri Roberts
Kitchens are often referred to as the heart of a home, and the café is the gathering place of the Fountain Theatre. The room where we all come together to share meals, to talk, to take meetings and to rest. The stage downstairs is the soul of the Fountain. But the café, I believe, is its ever-beating, ever-welcoming, wide-open heart.
