SEX, LOVE, DEATH AND LEON RUSSOM

December 1st, 2017

Featured, LGBTQIA+, News & Opinion, Theater, Visual Arts

Stephen Fife

Writer, Non-Registered Critics

Deep Red Face by Alison van Pelt

BOY by Michael Lindsay-Hogg

SHANE GUFFOGG’S GROUP EXHIBITION: 

PORTRAITURE

Portraiture curated by Shane Guffogg, featuring artwork by Don Bachardy, Xander Berkeley, Jeff Britton, Laura Hipke, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Doro Hofmann, Deborah Martin, Ed Ruscha, Paul Ruscha, Vonn Sumner, Alison Van Pelt as well as Guffogg himself, opened on November 11, 2017, at Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. ​ It closes on December 22.

Art. It can be seen, felt, and heard. It can tickle our senses. It can be jarring, challenging our ideas of beauty. Art can be exhilarating, giving us the key to the universe.  What was the purpose of art throughout the ages and what is it now? It is a reflection of who we are, like a 2-way mirror, and depending on what side your standing, defines what you see. My name is Shane Guffogg, and I am an artist. Join me as I look at and try to define this elusive thing called Art.   –  SHANE GUFFOGG

LOST ICON #2 by Doro Hoffman

WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? by Laura Hipke

I highly recommend this exhibition, which features so much strong work, it will restore your faith in contemporary painting.  And it’s free!  Definitely worth the drive. – Steve F

JOIN THEM FOR THEIR FIRST SATURDAY ART WALK AND ART RECEPTION 

Saturday, December 2, 2017,

from 6 PM – 10 PM

Orange County Center

for Contemporary Art 

117 North Sycamore Street, Santa Ana, California 92701

 

ROTTERDAM by John Brittain, Directed by Michael A. Shepperd

Ashley Romans and Miranda Wynne

The critics have weighed in on Rotterdam, and they are unanimous in their praise.  All I can say is that it is well-deserved, both for the play and for Michael A Shepperd’s winning production.  The play is simply a breakthrough in dealing with issues of gender and sexual identity.  (It is not concerned with racial identity, even though one of the two major characters is a person of color.  It works here, though I wonder if it would if the play took place in Richmond VA rather than Rotterdam.)  While it will be described as a “transgender play,” the truth is, it is simply a play about people struggling with difficult situations – flawed human beings trying their best to find happiness. The play does a wonderful job of giving us the feeling of real life, in which people have no idea how things are going to turn out and can’t understand why it’s so difficult.  I loved this absence of melodrama.  Michael Shepperd and the actors make it all flow.

THE SECRET IN THE WINGS by Mary Zimmerman, Directed by Joseph V. Calarco

Audrey Flegel, Leslie Murphy and Kate Pelensky (Photo: John Klopping)

In the last few years, I have seen Leon Russom play King Lear, the patriarch in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, and as French Stewart’s bff in Padraic Duffy’s Past Time – all deeply-felt performances that stayed with me long after the curtains came down. In Mary Zimmerman’s enigmatic and haunting Secret in the Wings, Leon plays an ogre named Leon Russom who is asked by deeply self-absorbed parents to babysit their terrified teenage daughter, who is certain that Leon is going to eat her.  And when they’ve been left alone, that seems entirely possible. Instead he starts telling her stories – very grim fairy tales that go the heart of human darkness: brutality, incest, cannibalism, war,  In one story, a princess declares that no man can make her laugh. Her father the King offers her hand in marriage to anyone who can.  But if they fail, watch out.  A procession of stand-up comics try their best, but the princess’s funnybone proves very difficult to locate.  But in another story, there is the possibility of redemption – something that the play offers us too.  In the end, Leon Russom (the ogre) shows us that we are all under a spell, and that if we can just break through, there is love and forgiveness on the other side.  This production is lovingly staged by Joseph Calarco, with a great “attic” set by JR Bruce, beautifully lit by Brandon Baruch, with evocative sound design by Calarco and costumes/masks by Kumie Asai.  The actors are fully-committed to the surreal world they find themselves in, and that they draw the audience into.  And then there is Leon Russom, very much one of a kind.

Steve is a 5-tool writer (plays, screenplays, novels, poetry, journalism) who has had 11 books published, 10 plays produced, and has written for the New York Times “Arts & Leisure”, Village Voice, New Republic, and many others. He is one of the few people on the planet who can lay claim to spending time with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sandy Meisner, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, as well as so many other extraordinary people who refused to color inside the lines. He is always on the lookout for the original and the incisive.

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