LA WEEKLY’S NEW REVIEW GO DEMENTIA
Photo by Ed Krieger Anyone who survived the deadly HIV plague time of the ’80s, when the best and brightest of the arts community was virtually wiped out by the disease, can’t help but be moved by the pathos of playwright Evelina Fernández’s AIDS melodrama. And while the urgency of the play might have diminished somewhat in the intervening years of antiretroviral successes, director José Luis Valenzuela’s re-staging... Read More
VIDEO: Erik Patterson gets interviewed about ‘SICK’
In this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes, Back Stage’s Jenelle Riley talks to award-winning playwright Erik Patterson about his new play “Sick.” Patterson recently won the WGA Award for “Another Cinderella Story,” starring Selena Gomez and Jane Lynch of “Glee.” Here, he discusses his new play, becoming a songwriter by accident, and hypochondria. via Backstage Read More
LA Times’ Culture Monster Theater review: ‘The Emperor’s Last Performance’ at Los Angeles Theatre Centre
An unjustly forgotten chapter in American theatrical and racial history is the raison d’être of “The Emperor’s Last Performance,” which ends its limited Los Angeles Theatre Center run on Sunday. This respectable Robey Theatre Company staging of Melvin Ishmael Johnson’s drama about the first star of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones” merges the techniques of stage fantasia and social document. Once... Read More
A Word With the Emperor
Robey Theatre Production Kicks Off LATC Spring Season by Ryan Vaillancourt Published: Friday, March 26, 2010 4:42 PM PDT DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – The central conflict in the Robey Theatre Company’s The Emperor’s Last Performance revolves around a racial slur, a word whose use is as controversial now as it was during the 1920s, when the world premiere is set. Against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, the play centers on African-American... Read More
REVIEW: Robey Theatre Company, Scarecrow Press illuminate theatre history
Paul Robeson is well remembered today for his performance as the self-appointed monarch of a Caribbean island in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.” What’s been largely forgotten is that it was the first important dramatic role for a black actor on Broadway—and that the actor who created the part was not Robeson but a man named Charles Gilpin. “The Emperor’s Last Performance” by Melvin Ishmael Johnson, now in a limited world premiere... Read More
