LOS ANGELES (March 28, 2017) — L.A.’s award-winning Australian Theatre Company is inviting submissions of full-length plays to be presented by a professional director and cast as part of its 2017 Summer Reading Series, scheduled to take place this June at the Zephyr Theatre. This year’s theme is “United on Stage,” a celebration of inclusivity and diversity that reflects the cultural melting pot that is both America and Australia today.

ATC welcomes new and previously produced works by both established and emerging writers of any nationality. Although an Australian voice should be present in each piece, that voice could be represented by the writer, a character, the location or an overarching theme.

The Summer Reading Series is part of ATC’s development process for future productions. Previous themes have included “Stage to Screen” (great plays that have inspired films) and “Works by Women” (plays by Australian female writers presented on the U.S. stage for the first time). Last season’s main stage productions of Speaking In Tongues and Ruben Guthrie were both developed in the reading series.

This annual community event is also a way for ATC to connect with local and international writers, actors, and other theater practitioners, and to develop new audiences – all while enjoying some great Australian wine, courtesy of Penfolds. The readings will take place every Monday in June at 7 p.m at the Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Avenue, and are presented by the Australian Consulate General of Los Angeles. Admission is always free.

ATC was established in 2014 by founding members Nick Hardcastle, Nate Jones, Jackie Diamond and Josh Thorburn. Critically acclaimed productions have included Holding the Man, Speaking in Tongues and Ruben Guthrie. A truly collaborative company, ATC continues to harness the rich breadth of Australian talent in Los Angeles along with the finest American practitioners, creating a meaningful cultural exchange.

For more information and to submit a play for consideration, contact literary manager Leah Patterson at literary@australiantheatrecompany.org.

On Veteran’s Day, the American Legion Hollywood Post 43, Liberty Theater presented the world premiere of Everything In Between, in their Historic Cultural Monument Building at 2035 N. Highland Avenue.

The story deals with four generations of vets, brought together by chance, collaborate to help a young man returning home from Afghanistan. “Lance Porter” is haunted by the experiences that followed him back, and changed life as knew it. When his search for solace leads him to another bar, the cynical patrons threaten to lead him further down the rabbit hole.

“I have always had a story in my head about different generations of Veterans, from all branches of the military, coming together to help one another heal. It’s about the human condition that we all share and the specific condition that veterans share, along with the hope that things are somehow going to get better,” explains REBECCA STAHL; Playwright/MD

The play’s director, JOHN DiFUSCO is the recipient of a New York Drama Desk Award as well as a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, LA Weekly, NAACP Theatre, Drama-Logue, Robby, and Valley Theatre League Award. He began his professional career at the Odyssey Theatre with credits such as Peer Gynt, The Kid, The Caucasion Chalk Circle, The Balcony, and Mother Courage.

John created and directed the landmark Vietnam play Tracers, which premiered at OTE. He directed the New York Premiere at The Public Theater, where it was published as one of “The Ten Best of 85/86.” He has toured extensively and internationally with Tracers, which continues to be produced around the world. Locally, he has directed numerous plays including Hair, White People, Avenue X, Joan and the Zulus, Just A Song at Twilight, Will Strip for Food, Ali, and Rounds. John received the USAF Commendation Medal for Meritorious Service in Vietnam.

The American Legion was formed in 1919 to give all veterans a place to congregate together in fellowship as well as memorial. The Hollywood post raised funds with the help of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Ida Lupino Clark Gable, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, and the Marx Brothers who attended their boxing matches along side blue-collar patrons. The building described as “military in character and a dignified solution to the problem of combining a memorial and a clubhouse,” by the Los Angeles Times was opened on July 4, 1929.

“We came back from Vietnam alone. The term PTSD was developed from our experience and this often created barriers between us and our fathers and uncles who had served in WWII. We were labeled drug addicts, losers, and crybabies. Rebecca Stahl captures today’s Vet World where these gaps are non-existent. This is what attracted me to the play. In spite of any personal emotional baggage, older Veterans seeing a need and taking action,” says director John DiFusco; Vietnam Veteran

Produced by the community veterans’ organization, Hollywood Post 43 of the American Legion, Liberty Theater. The cast, crew, and design team includes U.S. military veterans.

The ensemble includes; Jaimyon Parker, Karl Risinger, J, Kenneth Campbell, Rachel Boller, CampbellDe Silva, Caron Strong, Tania Verafield, Fred Hirz and Johnny D.

Everything In Between runs 8pm Fridays and Saturdays, and 3pm on Sundays through December 4, 2016 (no performance on November 25th).

Hollywood American Legion Post 43, Liberty Theater at 2035 N. Highland Avenue, Hollywood, CA. Tickets $25 (Military and veterans $10).

Free parking onsite. For information and reservations: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2709880

by Peter Foldy

On October 28th this year, 18 days ago, the FBI rescued 82 children from a ring of sex traffickers in Columbus, Ohio. Stories like this, while not uncommon in the news, seem to quickly slip from public consciousness. There is a pervading opinion that this is not something that happens in the United States. While we all agree that human trafficking is appalling, we do not see it as a problem in our suburbs. After all, it’s 2016.

Many think this is a problem in South Asia, Thailand or the Philippines, where sex tourism is a major industry. We may know that is a problem in certain disreputable massage parlors in Amsterdam or the bars in Belarus. JULIA VERDIN’S haunting film, LOST GIRLS, paints a bleak picture of underage sex slaves here in the United States and reminds us that human trafficking is also an American problem.

In Verdin’s film we meet a young girl, “Marisol,” who is lured from her home in a quiet California suburb and tricked into befriending her eventual captors. She is put in a cage, given drugs to numb her, and then sold to countless men, some old enough to be her father or grandfather.

How could this happen in a first world country and a major city like LA? It’s mainly about the money. Human trafficking is a lucrative business. As Verdin states, “these criminals can sell a gram of coke, or heroin, or a gun once, they can sell a young girl thousands and thousands of times.”

According to statistics, sex trafficking is most prevalent in California, Texas and Florida. It has become “society’s most pervasive crisis” according to UNICEF. By 2020 they expect sex trafficking to overtake drugs and weapons in magnitude.

“Lost Girls” could not have come at a better time. “The recruiters are getting more aggressive, now sending people into schools and targeting malls and places where kids hang out” Verdin tells us. “I think people have this perception that it is a third world problem and it’s really not. London, New York and LA are three of the larger cities where this goes on. What’s changed in sex trafficking business is that they are not just going after kids who have run away from home. Kids are  also being targeted in their own homes or online.”

“When filming a story that deals with sexual abuse,” says Verdin, “it’s vital to balance voyeurism and subtlety. A filmmaker must avoid making prostitution titillating; she must avoid contributing to the already enormous feat of teen girls and girlish qualities in adult women. It’s the filmmaker’s duty to look the issue in the eyes. She must not gloss over the issue and try to make sexual abuse family-friendly.”

In “Lost Girls” Verdin balances the subject delicately and deftly, making scenes that would normally border on gratuitous, nuanced. She understands the need to open a serious conversation about this issue without exploiting it, a pitfall many films have teetered on the brink of.

Instead, Julia Verdin delivers a film that’s 23.50 minutes of tension, tossing every scene at us, unblinking and moving along right before we put our hands over our eyes.

We need more films like this to remind us of important issues such as this to spread awareness and prompt action

“Lost Girls” is currently playing the film festival circuit and can next be seen at The Culver City Film Festival Dec 3rd-9th.

InterACT Theatre Company will stage the award-winning, provocative comedy, OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY, at the Pico Playhouse, beginning October 21st.

Dealing with hostile takeovers and the inner workings of corporate America, the play was written by Jerry Sterner who got the idea for the story while working the night-shift for the New York Transit Authority where he managed to write seven plays during the nearly six years he spent working in the booth.

Director, Oliver Muirhead has taken on the controversy that comes with perennial conversations about corporate takeovers. He is working with two casts to tell this compelling story. The questions are analogous to those presented during every financial crisis since Capitalism began, but Muirhead’s challenge is to stay true to the characters and to both sides of the story that Sterner set out to tell.

Unlike the terms of Blockbuster going at Hollywood Entertainment or Comcast buying Dreamworks Animation, when New England Wire and Cable is threatened by “Larry the Liquidator,” audiences can inspect the moral aspects of the deal so that they are able to take home both sides of the questions being raised. Written in the late 1980’s, this piece rings just as true today. Oliver Muirhead offers a directors perspective on juggling all of those elements.

HR: What was it about this script that sucked you into wanting to direct it? Are you still glad that you took on this job?

Oliver: It’s a great story and a fascinating message, but it was the lives of the characters that made me want to direct the play. The story involves the fate of a whole town and it presents the debate of whether or not it is right to try to hold back change. This electoral season forces us to see how the evolution of the American economy has created winners and losers, and this play brilliantly asks how we feel about that.

Am I still glad I took on the job? That’s a cruel question for any director to answer one week before opening. But yes, and that’s because working with such talented actors is always a pleasure.

HR: Do you think that good directing comes from good instincts, or is it something that you can learn?

Oliver: Like most jobs, even good directing comes from good instincts…and then you realize how much you have to learn. I guess it’s like the term “practicing medicine,” you’d hope your doctor would have it down by now. But there’s always stuff to learn.

HR: What are your biggest challenges in directing this piece?

Oliver: Too many talented cast members: they get other gigs, they have teaching jobs, and some even have real lives! The scheduling of rehearsals in L.A.‘s intimate theatre scene has always been a huge challenge. All credit goes to Daniel James Clark, our producer, for juggling the actor’s times and conflicts to keep it working in the most efficient way so that we can keep moving forward.

HR: How do you think audiences will relate to the story, and what will stay with them from the experience of having seen this play?

Oliver: It’s what’s happening in the economy right now. The play was written in the 1980’s but the message is even more topical today. The populist rebellions in the U.S and around the world are protests from the victims of progress. Can we stop progress? Should we try to mitigate the damage that comes with economic change? Capitalism is like fire: it warms us but it can badly burn us as well.

HR: Your film credits, like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and 2 Broke Girls show that you have a sense of humor. Do you think that humor is one of your strengths as a director?

Oliver: A sense of humor is essential in life, and not just in directing. Without a sense of humor I’d be strapped in a straitjacket or washing down the Prozac with a tumbler of Jack.

HR: What’s your biggest weakness as a director?

Oliver: Weakness? That’s a sly question. Well, following on from your last question I’d say sometimes I take things a bit too seriously. Lest we forget, it’s a play…we should be playing, and having fun so that we can better entertain people. A play is not a lesson or a lecture. You can go to school for that. Remember, theatre is cheaper and only takes a couple of hours. Another weakness of mine, “I’m a lousy mind reader.” That’s a quote from OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. If only I could read minds…

HR: Anything else that you want readers to know about you, this play…or anything?

Oliver: Well, I hope that readers will come and see the play twice…it’s double cast. They will have a wonderfully different experience both times. Other than that, vote. This show is running at the perfect time to make us all think about the important choices we get to weigh in on. Men and women died for our right to vote. Exercise it. Exercise is good for all of us, right? Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Other People’s Money opens at 8pm on Friday, October 21st and runs on Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm through November 20, 2016.

The Pico Playhouse is located at 10508 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90064.

Tickets are $32 (Senior & Students $27).

For more information and reservations: 818-765-8732 or online http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2588643

April 1, 2016

Rolling Stone magazine conducted a poll and among their readers and came up with the 10 Worst Movies of 2015.

We agree with all on the list with the exception of “13 Hours.”

See what you think.

Check out the rolling stone article HERE.