SO LONG SEPTEMBER 2016

September 29, 2016

I am a nostalgic.  Plain and simple..  I think of the past and moments that are important to me and there they are.  Seeing a terrific Punch and Judy at the Complex last week..  Richmond Shepard's cool investment retains the rag tag and thread bare feeling of store front theatre is a good reference.  He's still around at the age of 87, reportedly living in New York.  I don't know if the little row of theaters on LA's now official Theatre Row still belong to him, but what he did there is a credit to the craft of mime and acting and producing seat of the pants theatre.  A good thing. I did hear that he performed at the Taper one time for an audience of blind people.  Hmmm.

I was thinking, however, about early days in LA and The Company Theatre on Robertson between Pico and Olympic and the amazing work done there.  Being on the fringes of that.. the periphery, really.. I recalled that by its very nature, that space was an environment for theatre.. Entering the tiny room from Robertson Boulevard through a little foyer you became ... in a way.. a part of the play.  The walls were all used redwood stained with boiled linseed oil by whomever was around under the guidance of a technical genius: Russell Pyle.. who designed and created sets and turned the room into whatever the play required.  It was dark and wooden and alive. LA Times theatre critic, Dan Sullivan, once said that we did it on a dollar ninety eight and a book of Green Stamps.  (Remember Green Stamps??)

The Company Theatre's ground breaking shows like The James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theatre, The Emergence and ultimately, The Hashish Club were literally conceived and born in that wooden room.  In memory I pause. I can smell the wood.. 
I remember the workshops with artistic director Steven Kent on Saturday mornings with trust exercises and yoga disguised as warm ups.  Blind walks and, wow! Fritzi Winnick .. a new kid.. comfortable in her own skin in the middle of the floor.  Theatre Games from Spolin and some we made up ourselves.. to get away from the pretense of acting.  To get to the stuff lurking deeper.. deep within.  Abandoning fears or embracing them.  It was an environment for art.  You had to be there. 

 Thanks, Rugg.  Thanks for everything... 

September 29, 2016

michaelsheehan

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