Whether you are young at heart or a hard-hearted youngster, say goodbye to your old expectations of children's theater and let us incite your imagination with our brand of All Ages entertainment.
This feature story by Muffy Marracco was originally posted at Echo Park Patch.
Shakespeare’s plays fall into two categories: comedies and tragedies. The former typically ends with a marriage – the latter ends with a death. So how then do you adapt the tragedies in a fun way for an all ages show? L’Enfant Terrible has the answer. This local theater company is staging their adaptations of four different Shakespeare classics during their Fun Family Festival.
The festival runs throughout June and offers enjoyable adaptations intended for everyone. Adapted by Angela Berliner, the plays “frame these stories as being about families and emotions,” as their web site says. Gone are the tragic endings and bloody outcomes. Hamlet is no longer the prince of Denmark – he is now the “prince of puddles.” King Lear is set in the California Gold Rush. Macbeth fears monsters under the bed. And Titus Andronicus now features dueling circus clowns. Justing Zsebe, the director of the pieces, wants the plays to be “as universal as possible.” They are intended for all ages to enjoy, and though there are references to the original Shakespeare, L’Enfant Terrible “take as many liberties as we want,” he says.
Producer Seth Compton says that L’Enfant Terrible wants “theater that connects with the neighborhood.” The company has found a performing home at the Bootleg Theater at 2220 Beverly Boulevard. The space offers live music and performance. The Fun Family Festival will run on weekend days in June. There are two shows on Saturday and one on Sunday. You can purchase a special Quarto four-pack to see all the shows for just $40 for adults and $20 for kids. L’Enfant Terrible supports itself through ticket sales, grants and donations, which are all important because this company makes sure to pay their players a union wage.
The Echo Park community, says Compton, has been supportive with ad buys and other donations. The neighborhood is also “very diverse,” notes Zsebe, which is something that the company values and hopes to honor with their work. L’Enfant Terrible hopes to inspire and connect with their audience. They offer free workshops on Sunday afternoons after the show. Saturday afternoon theatergoers can get a “peek behind the curtain,” says Compton. And those who show up for the early show on Saturday in their pajamas get a discount.
Zsebe says that the shows are intended for everyone – from “grandparents to parents to kids or yourself.” The company is “nimble” and “ready to tour,” says Compton, so get your fill of the Fun Family Festival while you can. For more information, visit their web site at lenfantterrible.org.
What is your favorite Shakespeare play?
To see the original post click here or go to echopark.patch.com
Our set for King O’Leary is constructed with much more attention for design and craftsmanship than many of the actual buildings built during the California Gold Rush. Scenic designer François-Pierre Couture and set builder Brian Ludmer came to the theater today and brought us Boomtown!
In 1848 gold was discovered in California. Six years later the non-native population had exploded by 20 times! “Boom towns” popped up across the Golden State. This rapid growth resulted in poorly constructed houses, mob rule, vigilante justice and considerable squalor. Conditions for miners were hard. They lived in log cabins and tents and worked in all kinds of weather suffering incredible hardships.
In our story of King O’Leary, Boomtown is the name of the town where the miners mine and the streets are paved with gold. We based the character of King O’Leary on the highly eccentric and slightly loony Emperor Norton. He was a real person who lived in San Francisco and called himself the “Emperor of the United States and the Protector of Mexico.” Of course, he wasn’t actually an Emperor but some people would humor him and treat him with honor and reverence. He even issued money in his name and some shop owners would accept it as currency just to be nice.
It would be right-nice of you to bring your currency on down to the Bootleg Theater this Saturday, June 4th, at high noon (12 o’clock). Above you’ll see a sketch by François-Pierre of what it will look like when it’s all finished. Below you can see what we have so far. Click here for a full calendar of the Fun Family Festival (of Tragedy) running through July 31.
Meet Brian Kimmet the princely puddle maker in Hamlet, Prince of Puddles. You can also see him as Macbeth in Macbeth and the Monster and Eddie Bastino of Bastardistan in King O’Leary – all part of the Fun Family Festival of Tragedy.
What’s behind your best work?
A phenomenal ensemble and a genius director.
Name three characteristics of every creative person you have met.
Sensitive, expressive and crazy
What would you put in a time capsule if you were to open it 50 years from now on 2061?
A Twinkie. I hear they’ve got an incredible shelf life.
What’s your favorite word or letter?
Until an age I’m ashamed to admit, I thought LMNO was one letter. Cause when you sing the alphabet song, those four kind of all run together! So that’s my favorite.
What’s your favorite music of all time?
All time?! Jeez Louise! My grandpa playing the piano. He was a jazz pianist in the 30′s and even at 96 years old he could still tickle the ivories with the best of them.
What are you working on right now?
I am thrilled to be working with L’Enfant Terrible on the Fun Family Festival of Tragedy. I also host the show ‘The Morning After’ on Hulu.com. There’s a new 5-minute episode every weekday covering everything you missed from the night before in TV & pop culture. It’s short, sweet and super fun.
One of our long term goals is to develop a theater arts curriculum. We’re using the Fun Family Festival of Tragedy as an entry point for audiences to explore our theater style.
In addition to enjoying Shakespeare’s hilarious tragedies, you can also L’ET Discovery Happen. (Get it? L’ Enfant Terrible = L’ET )
Every Sunday in June, we’ll have a FREE theater workshop after the 12pm performance. On opening weekend we have a Theater Play Date for kids exploring movement, space, and sound. We already have 30 kids signed up! Buying tickets in advance helps us plan fun activities like this.
Another way to L’ET Discovery Happen is by joining cast and crew on a backstage tour. Every Saturday after the 2PM performance we’ll escort audiences to peek behind the curtain, experience the life of the actor, take in the view from the stage, place props in their proper place and watch us put all the toys away. So come see King O’Leary on Opening Day – Saturday June 4 at 2PM – and stick around for the FREE tour after the show.
It is going to be a great family activity in Los Angeles. L’Enfant Terrible and the Bootleg theater are presenting a series of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies: King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Titus.
For the whole Family – Those people in your life you have to do things with. They can be related to you or not. This is an event to come together and bring friends along too!
All in a Festival – It is a whole series. Usually theaters will present one play at a time. We’re doing four at once in the hopes that you come to the theater again and again. You have to buy tickets for each show seperately. But if you’re seeing more than one, we recommend buying a Fun Family Festival Pass.
Tragedies?! – Yes, we know. In tragedies the characters usually die. But we frame these stories as being about families and emotions. The characters struggle and have fears and face hardships.
But don’t worry. We promise to bring it all back to the beginning- the Fun part. We guarantee they will be fun. These vibrant and outrageous plays are filled with joy and love.
L’Enfant Terrible of the Month: Fred M. Rodgers; educator, minister, songwriter and television host. Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the US. He won a Peabody Award as well as several Emmys. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and one of his sweaters is in the Smithsonian.
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood began airing in 1968 and ran for 895 episodes. The year after it’s first broadcast, Fred M. Rogers appeared before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications. He was there to try to dissuade the Senate from significantly cutting the funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (Hmmm, sounds familiar…) During his testimony he read the lyrics to one of the songs he wrote called “What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel.” What was the response? The chairman of the subcommittee, who was at first awkward and stand-offish, casually waived his hand and exclaimed “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars.”
What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…
And nothing you do seems very right?
What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?
It’s great to be able to stop
When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:
I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish.
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a lady
And a boy can be someday a man.
Last month Justin Zsebe, director and founding member of L’Enfant Terrible, brought Louisiana a bit of the L’ET flair. It all started last winter when he wrote and directed Unbearably Lo_ely, a mash-up of the writings of Tennessee Williams, in Lafayette, Louisiana. This winter his collaboration continued. Through an ongoing partnership with the Acadiana Center for the Arts and local theater company Acting Up in Acadiana, Justin spent a week in the other LA.
Acting workshops were held for local students ranging from third grade to high school seniors. Educators, administrators, artists, and curious members of the community were then invited to participate in professional development sessions that focused on practical and proven techniques for teaching in the arts and teaching through the arts. Amy Waguespak from Acting Up In Acadiana reports “The students LOVED working with Justin. The core thing that students and teachers walk away with is an awakening to the beauty and power of theatrical storytelling by connecting very personal emotions and responses to something bigger than them: ensemble, audience, history, and literature.” You can peep the pictures by clicking here.
Someday we hope to introduce Lafayette to L’Enfant. In the meantime we are planning our next work for Southern California’s LA.
Student responses:
“I love how you broke all of us out of our shells. I wish everyday learning could be this fun.” –Desiree
“I liked how you made everyone come out of their comfort zones. At school you don’t really get to see how people really are when they are being goofy. No one wants to get teased, so they don’t put themselves out there at all. You made that go away for a while.” –Emily
L’Enfant Terrible of the Month
A very merry 3 year old conducting to the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Watch the whole thing. Hat tip to Mr. Farley (and over 2 million other viewers) for turning us onto this gem of a video. Apparently the boy’s family is not extremely musical but he does take violin lessons and listens to Beethoven. No official sponsorship from Gap yet.
L’Enfant Terrible literary translates from French as the terrible child but is an expression used to describe “a child who embarrasses his elders by untimely remarks” as well as an “unusually successful person who is strikingly unorthodox, innovative, and/or avant-garde.”
Here are some of the best comments:
“Could Beethoven have imagined what kind of joy he could inspire in a 3 year old boy?”
-TheThingInItself
“This is really exciting to watch. I’m studying comp and conducting in graduate school and I have colleagues who can’t do some of this.” -TheRealmsOfGold
“Great imagination, which is communicated with the body very clear and expressive. I am inspired to move. Thank you for sharing. ” -konradszykonrad
“Ha! I’m hiding any trace of this video from my board of directors! (I’m trying to keep my job people!)”
-Anthony Parnther, Orange County Symphony
Founding Artistic Director and Playwright Angela Berliner is having a reading of her play MOSQUITO BITES this Saturday with the Ensemble Studio Theater new works festival fESTivity LA! While she is the imaginative force behind L’Enfant Terrible All Ages theater, this one is for Adults Only so leave the 12 and under folk at home.
MOSQUITO BITES is the story of Jack Lee whose 12-year-old daughter Adele was kidnapped from their home 10 years previously. The story takes place on the day he finds out what happened to her.
Mosquito Bites
A Play Reading Written and Directed by Angela Berliner
1 Day Only
Saturday November 6th at 3pm
For more information about Ensemble Studio Theater LA, The Atwater Village Theater, or fESTivity click here.
Click here for directions.
Or go to www.ensemblestudiotheatrela.org
This review by Tony Frankel was originally posted at Stage and Cinema.
Once in a great while, a play will have me floating off the ground as if I had just been licked by God; a play that makes me feel better for having been alive; it encompasses great writing, acting, direction, and a triumphant technical team. Examples this past year are Cousin Bette at Antaeus, The Browning Version at Pacific Resident Theatre, and Four Places at Theatre/Theater.
Now comes along a 50-minute miracle, a L’Enfant Terrible Production of Hamlet, Prince of Puddles. What, you say? A children’s show? No. This is (gulp, how do I say this without sounding saccharine-y?) for the whole family. In fact, we were there sans kids and had a walloping-good time. This inventive, brilliant production is what we wish Disney would design when they promote family viewing (but they turn out Tinker Bell rip-offs for teenage girls instead).
Not only were the children present at the Bootleg Theater squealing with delight at the antics of Hamlet (who tended to cry a lot and even peed in his pants), but so were the adults. It’s basically a synopsis of Hamlet’s emotionally draining situation, focusing on girlfriend Ophelia, her dad Polonius, Hamlet’s mom Gertrude, uncle/dad Claudius, and real dad/ghost. I never remember feeling so empathetic to Hamlet’s plight.
The hilarious script is by L’Enfant Terrible founder Angela Berliner, who also plays Ophelia. Modern dialogue and rap are interspersed with the Bard’s famous lines, but Berliner is only interested in the meat of the story. Hamlet is just an awkward teenager who would rather play baseball and hang out with his TWILIGHT-loving girlfriend, Ophelia. Hamlet is so sad when his dad dies, and mom is so sad that she doesn’t realize the King’s brother is a bad man and a liar, so she marries him. This makes Hamlet even sadder. Hamlet knew that he must avenge his father’s death, but he was just a kid and didn’t know what to do. Long story short (literally), Hamlet takes vengeance, but at what cost? Who else gets hurt by his vengeance? And, according to the synopsis, was there anyone left to feed the cat?
The amazing thing is that everyone who dies in the original Hamlet falls down dead in this one, too! (Actually, they disappear through a trap in the floor). It’s a glorious achievement when Shakespeare can be introduced to kids in a way that makes them interested in theatre, magic, imagination, and maybe finding better ways to deal with their sadness.
Wait, who the hell am I kidding? I myself picked up Hamlet and started reading it again – AND [all caps] thought about the times in my life when I should have let my anger go.
But all of these things happened to me while I laughed! I was magnificently entertained. I wanted the show to go on all night. Could they make this an event that the world could see? Right now, the goal is theatre that everyone can afford (the top ticket price is $9.99!) and this troupe wants to take it to the schools.
For L’Enfant Terrible is interested in one thing: creating a group of future theatre lovers and artists. Their goal is to make children’s theatre just as subversive, intelligent and memorable as the best new work being produced today for the grown-ups. Check.
Director Justin Zsebe is wildly imaginative and original. It is impossible that this experience is a fluke. Major shrieks of delight go to set designer Francois-Pierre Couture (the moveable toy-box theatre used in this performance can be broken down in half an hour!), and to Ann Closs Farley for those adorable costumes.
The cast includes Nathan Kornelis, Natasha Midgley, and Nicol Razon. You rock, dudes! And to the very wet Hamlet, Brian Kimmet: what divine god of the theatre transported you before me? Your performance shone with radiant love and light. Too corny? Well, you make me want to be a better theatregoer and a better artist. I’m throwing rose petals in your direction.
Thank you, everyone.
tonyfrankel @ stageandcinema.com
To see the original post click here or go to www.stageandcinema.com/
Our set for King O’Leary is constructed with much more attention for design and craftsmanship than many of the actual buildings built during the California Gold Rush. Scenic designer François-Pierre Couture and set builder Brian Ludmer came to the theater today and brought us Boomtown!
” -konradszykonrad
Now comes along a 50-minute miracle, a L’Enfant Terrible Production of Hamlet, Prince of Puddles. What, you say? A children’s show? No. This is (gulp, how do I say this without sounding saccharine-y?) for the whole family. In fact, we were there sans kids and had a walloping-good time. This inventive, brilliant production is what we wish Disney would design when they promote family viewing (but they turn out Tinker Bell rip-offs for teenage girls instead).
the adults. It’s basically a synopsis of Hamlet’s emotionally draining situation, focusing on girlfriend Ophelia, her dad Polonius, Hamlet’s mom Gertrude, uncle/dad Claudius, and real dad/ghost. I never remember feeling so empathetic to Hamlet’s plight.
girlfriend, Ophelia. Hamlet is so sad when his dad dies, and mom is so sad that she doesn’t realize the King’s brother is a bad man and a liar, so she marries him. This makes Hamlet even sadder. Hamlet knew that he must avenge his father’s death, but he was just a kid and didn’t know what to do. Long story short (literally), Hamlet takes vengeance, but at what cost? Who else gets hurt by his vengeance? And, according to the synopsis, was there anyone left to feed the cat?
It’s a glorious achievement when Shakespeare can be introduced to kids in a way that makes them interested in theatre, magic, imagination, and maybe finding better ways to deal with their sadness.
that the world could see? Right now, the goal is theatre that everyone can afford (the top ticket price is $9.99!) and this troupe wants to take it to the schools.