Roaring Nightlife: See the LA Zoo in a Different Light

Rediscovering the LA Zoo with other grownups is a rare treat!  After all, the zoos are places where children go to see animals.  Roaring Nights seamlessly converts the sun-drenched kettlecorn and plush souvenir safari into a fun, comfortable night habitat for adults, which still has kettle corn and gift shops.  A friend I ran into at the event commented that she was genuinely surprised this was the same place.   

Roaring Nights is essentially a party with exotic animals, and it drew a big enough crowd to feel lively and popular.  The event is laid out like an archipelago, featuring centers of activity carefully scattered just out of sight of one another all across the sprawling campus.  They seemed to pop up out of the darkness as I wandered between islands of art and food and music.  The distributed layout created welcome quieter spaces to relax between the busy attractions.  It was also a treat to walk around the LA Zoo’s expansive asphalt paths without the usual midday heat.  Attendees are a relatively even mix of all ages from recent high school grads to couples with grey hair, with a healthy population of attractive twenty-somethings.  

The “animal artistry paint party,” a series of tables with paper and paint for making postcard-sized artworks just inside the gate was pretty quiet when I arrived but built up a crowd by the end of the night.  At the next island in, zoo personnel in their khaki best have a variety of smaller animals for people to interact with.   I stopped by mini-presentations on an armadillo, two snakes, which I got to touch, and an adorable hedgehog.   The larger of two music venues featured live rock music at authentic rock concert volume which drew a dense and enthusiastic crowd.  It is also net to the carousel, which runs all night for $3 per rider.  The DJ and dance floor on the opposite side of the campus had a mellower atmosphere.  Food was provided by popular food trucks, arranged into several mini food-courts. The zoo also provides surprisingly thorough, if expensive bars in all the food areas.  Daytime zoo-lovers, fear not, the kettle corn stand is open.

Parking is free and easy, even if you’re a little fashionably late.  There’s a very fast security gate to walk through and wristbands to identify the over-21s.  I got carded! Try to wander to the big outdoor exhibts while there is still some light, as none of the enclosures are lighted, and many of the larger mammals do not come out at night.  You are probably not going to see a lion at Roaring Nights.  The gorillas don’t stay out past 8:00.  Once it does get dark, the reptile houses are a good bet for animal viewing.  

Zoo volunteers carry little flashlights, which they use to point out animals at night.  I’m not sure how I feel about shining a flashlight into an animal’s habitat, but it is a potentially useful accessory.  On the other hand, there’s also a special sort of pleasure in working to find a little moving shape in the dark, and knowing that you and you alone found the outline of a Koala climbing up his tree.  The elephants stay up late, and their white tusks are particularly striking in the darkness.  The animals are different at night – some are asleep, of course, but the ones who stay up for the party seem genuinely intrigued by the unaccustomed throngs of nighttime visitors.  And the grownups are different too, more willing to ooh and ahh at the razor jaws of a false gharial.  A couple highlights for my group included standing in front of a dark, empty enclosure, when someone’s camera flash drew out a little herd of inquisitive Zebras, and a paca which was so excited by our presence that it ran circles around its cage for its rapidly growing audience.   

Upcoming Roaring Nights at the LA Zoo, July 24 and August 21, 7-11pm.  18+ only.  Tickets at http://www.lazoo.org/roaringnights/

--Matt Share (mattshare.eyespyla@gmail.com)

You'd Like It Better If They Tried Harder - review by Mark Share

Shakespeare's As You Like It is one of the five plays in summer rotation at Topanga Canyon's Theatricum Botanicum, and the best thing about the experience is the outdoor theater as the setting for the young lovers to run around the forest with the massive oak tree on which Orlando pins his love notes.  The production is a revival of a forgettable one this troupe did years ago, which muddles everything by putting a post-Civil War façade on this Elizabethan romance.  How about setting Breakfast at Tiffany's in immediate post-WWII Germany; that would increase the comedy and romance, right?  Instead of what could be a fast-paced romp without an intermission, the production is dragged out, actually just stops dead, to present performances of "authentic" nineteenth century songs.  It's as excruciating as it sounds.

The other big problem is nepotism and the aging of the company.  It was once considered revolutionary to have a woman in her 30's play Rosalind, who is a beautiful teen (cross-dressing as Ganymede) and witty, eventual match for Orlando.  This production stars the founders' mid-30's daughter Willow Geer (who also starred years ago in this group's prior production), but pretending as a teen rather than making a point of her age, all dotingly directed by her mother Ellen Geer, who laughed throughout the performance when no one else did.  Willow Geer was not even born during the lifetime of the theater's namesake, Will Geer; why in this city of performers is Willow Geer starring again as Rosalind?  It's time for this "non-profit" to turn itself over to new performers and directors outside the hereditary descendants of the founders (it's depressingly rear-guard considering the communist leanings of the founders), and to try a little harder, no matter how forgiving the lovely setting.

The official photo pretty much says it all.

As You Like It at the Theatricum Botanicum through September 26, 2015..  www.theatricum.com  (310) 455-2322

Summer Outdoor Entertainment 2015

Summer in L.A. is all about the experience and not so much about the money. Grab your friends and a cooler, a blanket, and a picnic. You'll find plenty of summer events and low cost al fresco entertainment all over town. Levitt Pavilions - free concerts during the summer in Pasadena and Los Angeles  FREE CONCERTS: Some of the best things in summer are free. Look around you're own neighborhood. You'll find free concerts, film screenings and theatre in parks, shopping centers, museums, and other nooks and crannies that have a patch of grass or some asphalt to setup a stage and some seating in...

The World’s a Stage at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga by M.R. Hunter

If all the world's a stage, then Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum must be a sliver of utopia. Nestled in the verdant canyons of Topanga, the outdoor theater run by three generations of Will Geer's immediate family members has been offering a respite from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for over 40 years. Their annual repertory season includes the fan-favorite "A Midsummer Night's Dream" along with another of Shakespeare's plays and staged classics as well as contemporary plays and experimental work in their 99-seat intimate stage area, all surrounded by trees, gardens and a sense of otherworldliness by its natural environs.

Not Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing by Mark Share

 

Theatricum Botanicum's summer 2014 series revives Shakespeare's battle-of-the-sexes comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, which is receiving renewed attention following Joss Whedon's black-and-white movie version last year, starring his usual actors and filmed in a setting that looks like it could be a casual reading at his own house. Apparently, Whedon and friends enjoy an evening of reading a Shakespeare play together, something easier to do probably if one's friends are actors--I've tried this with a group of lawyers with mixed results--and this is a good, undemanding choice of play, for Theatricum too, which company is mostly about the camaraderie of a long-running troupe and the pleasant setting under the oaks.

The story is about an older gentleman (Robertson Dean perfectly embodying the vain, aging Benedick) who swears he will never marry, and a younger, sharp-tongued woman (Susan Angelo fine as Beatrice) who has made the same pronouncement. Their friends successfully conspire to bring them together. In contrast, a very young couple falls in love at first sight (the comic and clever Jackie Kiikvee and Colin Simon), but are thwarted by false rumors of her infidelity. The rumors are dispelled, and both couples are--plot spoiler--married at the end!

Our group, ages eleven to it's-impolite-to-state, all had a great time and could follow the story, including a teen who had never seen a Shakespeare play before. And yes, it's like old times to see the familiar players and magical setting.

Much Ado runs through September 28, 2014 at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. 310-455-3723. www.theatricum.com www.facebook.com/theatricum

 

 

No Age Punk Band Curates the Getty's Friday Flight 7/18

 

 

Friday Flights is a collaboration between the Getty and a featured musician or cultural tastemaker who creates a specially curated evening inspired by an exhibition on view at the Museum. The third flight this summer is inspired by The Scandalous Art of James Ensor and will be hosted by No Age, an experimental punk band that emerged from Los Angeles skate culture and DIY venues and now collaborates with contemporary artists on alternative performance concepts.
 
The series takes its inspiration from the format of a tasting flight, where several flavors, perhaps of wine or beer, or in this case art, can be sampled and compared. Each host is asked to invite friends and collaborators to develop the evening's program, bringing together a network of Los Angeles-based musicians, visual artists, and more for a vibrant evening of sounds and sights. 

Ford Amphitheatre: Restored & Ready for Summer Shows by M.R. Hunter

Nestled in the Cahuenga Pass just off the 101 Freeway (across from the Hollywood Bowl), the John Anson Ford Theatres complex boasts a 1,196-seat amphitheatre in its verdant environs and an intimate, 87-seat indoor theater, deceptively obscured when viewed from the street by the foliage and the design which incorporates the architecture into the natural scenery. But for the eye-catching marquee overlooking the parking lot on Cahuenga Blvd., locals are not always aware of what or where the theatres are, let alone how much history is contained up in the hills. It's an interesting dilemma, one that lends further charm and otherworldliness to the grounds upon entering.

At almost a century old, the amphitheatre was first built in 1920 as a humble wooden stage. Christine Wetherill Stevenson, a writer and heiress of the Pittsburgh Paint Company purchased the land as the site for where The Pilgrimage Play would be performed until 1964. Erected in 1923, in honor of Miss Stevenson is the 32-foot-high cross which glows at night like a beacon and serves as a curious landmark between the boundary of Hollywood and Universal City.

Long Live the Queen: Ellen Geer as “Lear” by M.R. Hunter

Shakespeare's women are not shy about donning on a codpiece when necessary, but gender-reversals can bode uneasy misgivings and critical doubt from the outset as to how successful the sex-switcheroo might pan out. The title character of King Lear is not one so easily redressed given the patriarchal overtures and the blustery folly of a man steeped in ego and arrogance.

Having seen both Harry Groener and Dakin Matthews in the preeminent Antaeus production 4 years ago, I was a bit skeptical about this version starring the incomparable Ellen Geer as Lear. I didn't go charging up the hill to see it on opening weekend. It took awhile to mull the idea over. Queen Lear? I'm no purist, yet whenever gender trumps the integrity of a story, let alone a title character, it's been my experience that usually the idea is about provocation rather than insight.

I was wrong.