"Thank you so much for putting out this great resource! I just saw the hot air balloon festival and am over the moon happy about it!
Thanks & have a GREAT weekend:-)" - Ann
"Eye Spy LA is the greatest events calendar for LA. Period. Not only do we always list our Spirited Woman events in it and have pulled great results - but it is my own weekly "whats-going-on" bible, and I personally don't make a plan before checking the listings." - Nancy Mills Founder, Spirited Woman
"I so look forward to this [newsletter] every Friday. Thank you" - Icetea3
"Thank you for writing wonderful editions of Eye Spy LA. Every Fri. I look forward to open my e-mail. It comes so handy to know about places or events that my family and I can attend on the weekends. Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and safe holiday season!!!!" - Patricia Arias
|
|
|
|
 |
“BAD BOBBI BOLINGO & THE DINOSAUR CAVE" AND “AMELIA LEARNS TO FLY” AT EDGEFEST’S FUTURE PROJECT
By Mark Share
|
The 18 day Edge of the World Festival included four plays for children, grouped as the “Future Project,” designed to bring kids to the theater and show them that theater has meaning in their lives. The first part of the equation is problematic, because kids don’t get to the theater alone, so there must be some appeal to the grownups who pay (well, these performances were free), drive, and sit through the shows with them. The second part of the equation is even more problematic, because there’s no reason to suppose that kids are any more interested in having their entertainment weighed down with “meaning” than grownups are.
So, bringing three kids of various ages with me, I attended two of the shows. Bobbi Bolingo, created by the Towne Street Theatre, tells of a naughty girl who dreams that dinosaurs will eat her unless she stops being rude to her parents and physically hurting other kids etc. She awakes with a new-found sense of personal responsibility. The author has proclaimed that this show may prevent kids from becoming teen killers. Hmm. These are both low expectations of kids and high expectations of art. The actors, who hammed it up, kept the kids in the audience smiling and entertained. But this crude book of virtues with its message of behave or be eaten made little impression. Certainly, not as much of an impression on my test audience as the contemporaneous revival of Annie at the Pantages, with its musical story of the moppet rising from the bottom to the top, the very sort of entertainment that Future Project is trying to supplant with its “meaning.”
The second show, created by the MET Theatre, tells the entire life story of aviatrix Amelia Earhart in less than an hour, chronologically. The play was inspired by the statue of Earhart at the North Hollywood Public Library at the corner of Magnolia and Tujunga created by Ernest Shelton. I am a big fan of the sculpture, surrounded by a circle of propellers standing on end, as I spent much time at the house on Ben Avenue when I was kid while Shelton created it out of fiberglass (it has since been recast in bronze). I recommend taking kids to see the sculpture and then visiting the library. The play itself is probably not as educational or fun. Basically, a diluted play for adults, it reaches its heights in dramatizing Earhart’s transatlantic flights, and its low when the actor playing her father makes a maudlin confession – to the audience – that he was a drunk (the kids initially laughed thinking it was a joke), and virtually and misguidedly ignores her final Icarus-like flight around the globe during which she tragically and mysteriously disappeared, and became an immortal celebrity. I suppose that the author thought that dramatizing the last doomed trip would undermine the message that kids can do anything; there’s the message sinking the art again.
|
| |
 |
Follow Eye Spy LA
on TWITTER
TELL YOUR FRIENDS
|
| |
|
ART THIS WEEK IN L.A.
|
|
|
|
|