Rude Guerrilla Theater Company to exit in September but will spawn two successors

The Rude Guerrilla Theater Company in Santa Ana will bow out in September after a 12-year run -- but its final curtain will mark new beginnings for two troupes expected to spring from the parent company that has earned critical plaudits as the Southern California theater perhaps least inhibited about staging sex and gore while exploring some of the darkest crannies of the human condition.

Founding artistic director Dave Barton's embrace of the 1990s British "in-yer-face" school of drama yielded the hard edge that became Rude Guerrilla's trademark, but the company's seasons always had room for plays that didn't put audiences through a sensory wringer -- among them a recent staging of "Our Town" and the two current shows, Paula Vogel's "Baltimore Waltz" and "Love Song" by John Kolvenbach.

Barton said Monday that in an amicable parting, he and fellow members Bryan Jennings and Dawn Hess will lead the extremist wing of Rude Guerrilla off to further guerrilla-theater adventures in a new location under the banner Monkey Wrench Collective. Others will remain in the current downtown location, which seats about 60, under a new company name, with Shannon Lee Blas as artistic director.

"I'm very excited," Barton says. "Even in this economy, there's still a desire for this dark, provocative work. We'll fill that vacuum." Barton said the deep slump in real estate prices should help him and Jennings buy a space seating about 60, which would double as a screening room for avant-garde films. The company aims to be nonprofit, like Rude Guerrilla; possible locations include Brea in Orange County, and Long Beach and La Mirada on the L.A. County side of the border.

Blas, a Rude Guerrilla member since 2005, says that she too loves adventurous theater but that the pressure of what Barton said is a $3,000-a-month rent and utilities bill means the new company may have to temper confrontational material with plays that have a broader appeal. "If we could pay our bills we could stick to the provocative, edgy thing and perhaps Dave wouldn't have felt the need to move on," Blas said.

In other words, after September, the plays at 202 N. Broadway may not require alerts such as the one that accompanies the Rude Guerrilla website's description of the company's final show, Barton's Aug. 21-Sept. 26 staging of Thomas Middleton's 1608 drama, "The Revenger's Tragedy:" "WARNING: Contains nudity, sex and lots and lots of blood. Not for children!"

Blas, who majored in acting at UC Irvine and is a first-year graduate student in a theater management/business administration program at Cal State Long Beach,  said the first show under the aegis of the new, still-unnamed company will be an outside group's October production of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize winning drama, "Wit," about a dying literature professor.

Barton said the Monkey Wrench Collective will open in the fall with a blast from Rude Guerrilla's past, a staging of Englishman Mark Ravenhill's classically in-yer-face drama, "Shopping and F----," that will have an open-ended run. After that, he says, there are a plethora of titles he'd like to tackle, along with plans to premiere "Snuff," a low-budget film he's shot with Rude Guerrilla actors about the downward spiral of a man who loses his lover to AIDS.

Rude Guerrilla's website will be maintained as an archive of the company's work since 1997.

-- Mike Boehm

Photos: Director Dave Barton on the set of his 2002 staging of Sarah Kane's "Cleansed" at the Rude Guerrilla Theater (top); soldier Ryan Harris stands astride Bryan Jennings as a fallen journalist in Rude Guerrilla's 2004 production of Kane's "Blasted."

Photo Credits: Barton by Christine Cotter/Los Angeles Times; "Blasted" by Jay Fraley/Rude Guerrilla Theater Company.

Comments

[Kane Anderson]

A sad day for the theater world but still great hope for some amazing future work.

[Sonja Berggren]

So glad to hear that Rude G will continue in its original mission with Dave and with the new company starting in October. Panndora Productions is proud and delighted to be presenting "Wit" this October with the new company.
www.panndoraproductions.com

[Tom Kelly]

Ah....so sad to see the end (just as I had so recently discovered RGT)...but hpe springs eternal in new forms. Good luck to all. But please....first Opera Pacific, and now this? At least you folks are surviving in a new form....Congratulations.

This sounds like a case of an artistic director running away from his company's problems instead of finding a way to strengthen what exists. Leaving Rude Guerilla to found Rude Guerrilla the sequel? Something's amiss.

Sounds more like the usual "artistic differences" than anyone running away from anything. He started it. He should have the right to shut it down. Bravo to him for not being mediocre.

[Theodore Zarabi]

Hello

The “underground/storefront” theater community in Orange County is a pretty small world and of course even smaller in numbers are individuals who claim to approach theater from an anarchists tradition. It would be an honest assessment to call Dave Barton its leader. Truly Rude Guerilla leaving is a tragedy. But really Dave’s departure is honestly refreshing.

Does reality live up to his hype? I would say no way! His theater has never lived up to any anarchist ideals.

Evidence: The past 8 years we have lived under George W. Bush and where has Rude Guerrilla been? Has his theater been at the fore front of the Guerrilla theater movement? No, he hasn’t even lived up to his name. No protest/guerrilla theater project was ever done during his time. Not a single show ever dealt directly with policy issues surrounding globalization, free trade or worker’s movements. He has refused to work in a “collective” fashion with other theaters in the community outside of inviting a clown troupe and a for profit acting class at his space never mind trying to reach out to established anarchist groups like “food not bombs” or any politically anarchist organizations. His major artistic push has been to promote Gay rights and last I heard Gay rights is not the whole of the anarchist movement nor its core focus. Doing shows with male and female nudity for your own artistic bent is not radical, it’s just plain exploitive. And to top it off he has quite openly refuses to service his community. His theater is in Santa Ana and he refuses to do Latino/a work, no outreach efforts what so ever. An anarchist who believes in “High Art” is a joke and an Artistic Director who blames his “collective” for not keeping a high standard of work is even funnier.

So what is Dave Barton but an Elitist, someone who is a recent blog found on his myspace page believes that artists ie he should be the moral elite of the country. Sounds like he wants to be the Vanguard of the proletariat and you know who believes in that right, Carl Marx and V.I. Lennin hardly examples of any Anarchist ideals.

And to top it off someone who would abandon his theater and refuse to leave its organization and name is just plain fascist. Come on he needs a lesson in Post Modernism 101, the art/organization belongs to the people not him as an individual that is the most un-anarchistic thing ever!

[Dawn Hess]

Being a founder of the theater 12 years ago I believed in the dream that drove us. To do theater that had a message or statement. The form was live actors; the art was to express the written work to deliver the message. The outcome was the hope when the patron left the theater they would talk about what they saw, to provoke a discussion about what was seen. Feedback was good and bad, but this is what theater is all about. What did you or your friend sitting next to you get out of the show, well that is based on who you are. Was Dave an elitist I would say not in the terms of how the theater was run. There were three of us, Michelle Fontenot, Dave Barton and myself Dawn Hess who put up the money and built the theater space. We paid for the rights and voted and in the early days read all the plays that were under consideration. We had people protest. We had our bomb threat for doing a play not everyone agreed with. But in the end to do a piece of work for the sole expectation of making news is not what we were about. We the sitting board find in the current times needing to do more plays to pay the rent. We like other theaters that want to stay open are forced to do art that is appealing to a wider spectrum of the population. The person who wrote the response to the article must not know there is no free ride in theater. The work that has been done in the Rude G has kept us from being able to get any grants or funding! Getting theaters to work together, most of US are worried about funding the next show and keeping the lights on. We gave 10% of our profits to a charity at the end of the shows until OC Arts told us if we ever wanted to get a grant we could not do this practice. OPS we did it anyway if the show made a profit. So no grants!! So while you may have a problem with Dave Barton for who he is, I will say this to you now if it was not for his dream there would not have been a RUDE G for you to express your thoughts. We have been for the last 12 years professing the right to express one’s ideas as you did in the paper.
So if you have an idea and want to express it be proud enough to sign your work. WE HAVE for the last 12 years!!!!
Dawn Hess, co founder of the RUDE G. Theater

[Theadore Zarabi]

First off, Rude Guerrilla is great. Maybe the greatest in Orange County history. That has never been in contention. In fact that has been my argument, that's what makes your decision to dismantle it a tragedy and ironic that it's destroyer is calling me out.

Have you groomed a new leader, have you trained the next generation, have you built an self sustaining organization, NO! (12 Years why not? I guess you didn't have enough time.)

But why are you Dave's apologist? It almost sounds like you have battered wives syndrome.

"It's a tradition Jennings, Hess and Barton plan to continue ("monkey wrenching," Barton said, "is an anarchist term")."

Oh, that's why I forgot.
Thanks for the disclosure.

And it's not me bashing the theater its Dave.

"He also began to see a slide in quality level that began roughly three years ago, when the company moved from its original corner location to its present digs next door."

Way to portray the new team in a good light.

Next time address the issue and the issue is that you don't know what Anarchism is. I have medicine in my cabinet but I don't call my house a pharmacy.

Art/Organization belongs to the people why are you shelving it, in effect taking it away?

Publicly answer that!!!!!

No pride in your own legacy? Or the worst, an ego that feels nobody else can live up to your ideals. Or even worse a fear that when you leave they will do it better than you.

And again do you need a lesson in what makes the internet great? Anonymity in this case is Democratizing! Oh ya you wouldn't know anything about that anymore because that's what real Anarchists believe a belief you held only in the "early days".

I am so sorry because I know this is a Rude Awakening, not tactful or constructive. The left fighting the left. Not in the spirit of Obama, not positive or expressing the esprit of the phrase Si Se Puede.

[Dave Barton]

First off, it’s clear that you don’t really understand what Rude Guerrilla’s mission was. Rude Guerrilla is not an anarchist theater and it never was. In fact, one could reasonably argue that the theater isn’t even that leftist, if you base it on the individual politics of its individual members.

If RG had been an anarchist theater, we would have: 1) Never raised our ticket prices above the original $10. (We did). 2) We would not have embraced the government’s501c3 status non-profit, allowing donations to be written off. (We did). 3) It would have been a collective with every company member doing the exact same amount of work. (It wasn’t.) 4) We wouldn’t have had a Board. (We do). 5) It would have been owned and operated by every member of the Company. (It wasn’t).6) We wouldn’t have done musicals, except maybe “The Cradle Will Rock”. (We did musicals and not the latter.)
The problem here is that you’re confusing my personal politics with the theater’s mission. That confusion makes a lot of sense, when we also look at how off-base you are in your various “facts”:

{The past 8 years we have lived under George W. Bush and where has Rude Guerrilla been? Has his theater been at the fore front of the Guerrilla theater movement? No, he hasn’t even lived up to his name. No protest/guerrilla theater project was ever done during his time.}

There is no current “guerrilla theater movement”.
A simple glance through our archives would indicate that you’ve either never been to our space, been their infrequently enough to not “get” us or know our history and are just trying to pull a Karl Rove and deny any evidence contraryto your argument. Rude Guerrilla did indeed participate in several “guerrilla theater” projects, including Lysistrata Project, several theater fund-raisers for Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), as well as (pre-Bush) a ....Santa Ana street.... protest against the School of the ....Americas....with members of a local religious community. That’s only the most obvious and more than any other local storefront theater.....

{Not a single show ever dealt directly with policy issues surrounding globalization, free trade or worker’s movements.}

Why limit reactions to just these primarily economic concerns? Any anarchist worth their salt is concerned with more than just those three issues, though Rude Guerrilla has indeed tackled them to some degree or other.

A brief list of just some of the most overtly political subjects Rude Guerrilla has tackled over the years: The corporate assault on women, gay-bashing in the mid-west, a person’s right to die with dignity, homelessness, the arrogance of power, the tie between capitalism and addiction, a woman’s right to choose, immigration, US support of South American dictatorships, health care, mental illness, patriarchy, the dehumanization of individuals under fascism, power relationships in gender roles, the death penalty, religious fundamentalism, the commodification of war, the failure of alternative political structures, the plight of transsexuals, alcoholism, the failure of the justice system, Microsoft’s corporate hegemony, the damage war causes to veterans, Hollywood’s exploitation of violence, racism, the sexual war between men and women, George Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the Taliban, women’s involvement interrorist activity, stalking, the Oklahoma bombing, the silencing of protest during the early Bush years, child molestation, political oppression, torture,consumerism, AIDS, war desertion, the collapse of the social welfare network.
So much for “Where was Rude Guerrilla?”
Right here.
For 12 years.
Where the hell were you?

{He has refused to work in a “collective” fashion with other theaters in the community outside of inviting a clown troupe and a for profit acting class at his space never mind trying to reach out to established anarchist groups like “food not bombs” or any politically anarchist organizations.}

This isn’t accurate, either. Artists that were not members of our company that we’ve booked or done co-op shows with: Tim Miller (twice), Arthur Hanket, playwright Jordan Young, OCPAC, Alex Luu, Cal Arts Women and Company, playwrights Todd Kulczyk and Kristina Leach, Army Brat Productions, Rogue Artists Ensemble, Clownzilla (twice and a third coming), Cal State Fullerton and Garage Theater Company, not to mention lights donated, props and costumes, flats and boxes given to Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble and other artists over the years. We’ve donated more and done more co-operative ventures than any other local storefront.
It is true that I never reached out to “food not bombs” via Rude Guerrilla, though I met several of them in the early days of the theater and helped them hand out meals to homeless people as a member of the Catholic Worker. This also, of course, goes both ways. They never approached me, either. If they do, I’m there for them.

{His major artistic push has been to promote Gay rights and last I heard Gay rights is not the whole of the anarchist movement nor its core focus.}

Queer plays are a small percentage of the shows that we’ve done over the years, but I’m very proud of them. We’ve produced more than any other local storefront.

{Doing shows with male and female nudity for your own artistic bent is not radical, it’s just plain exploitive.}

If that’s all the shows were about, I’d be the first to agree with you. But I defy you to name a single one where that was the case. If you’re accusing me of exploitation—the usual knee-jerk attack from people that willfully misrepresent what I do—back it up, pal. Otherwise you’re just like every other ignorant prude. And, yes, nudity is radical in the proper context

{And to top it off he has quite openly refuses to service his community. His theater is in ....Santa Ana....and he refuses to do Latino/a work, no outreach efforts what so ever.}

I’ve already talked about our support and friendship with Breath of Fire. And we’ve never refused to do Latino/a work or failed to reach out: We produced “Kiss of the Spiderwoman” set in a Central American prison, done a bilingual production of a Tennessee Williams play, translated subtitles into Spanish on a Clownzilla show and blind-cast Latino/a actors in our shows.

As for supporting the community: We’ve done fundraisers for dozens of organizations, from the Red Cross to battered women’s shelters to The Catholic Worker to local artists suffering from cancer to MoveOn.org, shelters for the mentally ill and homeless youth. We did a load more than you’re obviously aware of and I would have loved to do even more than we did, but the political straight-jacket of the 501c3 and restrictions placed on us by local arts organizations who began refusing us grants because of our charitable work did us in.

I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ve given away more money to charity and aid organizations that any other storefront. So you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

{An anarchist who believes in “High Art” is a joke and an Artistic Director who blames his “collective” for not keeping a high standard of work is even funnier.}

I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “High Art.”
There’s good art and bad art. That’s it.
I never blamed my “collective” for the decline in standard of work—first because RG isn’t one and secondly because it wouldn’t be factually correct. The vicious circle of chasing after money and never having enough it—and the eventual mainstreaming that creates—is the culprit. It started when we moved spaces, had to come up with more money for repairs than we had—and at this point several needed repairs are still un-finished. I aided and abetted it by allowing work that didn’t fully represent our mission statement. So no one is to “blame” except me.

{So what is Dave Barton but a White Gay Elitist? And but that I don’t mean anything nefariously I literally mean that he is Caucasian, he is someone who enjoys sex with member of the same sex and he is an Elitist, someone who is a recent blog found on his myspace page believes that artists ie he should be the moral elite of the country. Sounds like he wants to be the Vanguard of the proletariat and you know who believes in that right, Carl Marx and V.I. Lennin hardly examples of any Anarchist ideals.}

Yeah, I’m white and male, but don’t have much control over that.
My sexual orientation is an open/boring book, though I don’t use the term gay to describe myself.

I have to call bs on your “moral elite” comment. I never said that. It’s a quote from a small theater company operating despite repressive government interference in ....Belarus.....They were talking about how artists should be political and that they can provide a moral conscience to a country. Time has proven time and time again that artists can help and heal and guide their society, because what is art but a mirror held up to society?
No one mentioned anything elite. Shame on you for willfully misquoting them.

I fail to see how the dictionary definition of “elitist” in any way shape or form describes me: “The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.”
Please enlighten me.

{And to top it off someone who would abandon his theater and refuse to leave its organization and name is just plain fascist. Come on he needs a lesson in Post Modernism 101, the art/organization belongs to the people not him as an individual that is the most un-anarchistic thing ever! }

This is beyond laughable. Quoting Wikipedia: “…the word fascist is intended to mean "oppressive", "intolerant","chauvinist", "genocidal", "dictatorial","racist", or "aggressive" – all concepts that are at least loosely inspired by the ideology of actual fascism.” Before you accuse someone of something, you may want to consider taking the time to look in the dictionary, so you don’t end up looking like a reactionary prat.

Having said all this, if you’re not just some poseur hiding behind a pseudonym, but truly looking to reconcile anarchist belief with anarchist action, I’d love to meet with you and talk strategy. My email is Rudegrrlla@aol.com and you already know my name. Introduce yourself, let’s meet and make things happen.

[Dr. Lois]

Dave, you are a very talented writer and forceful activist. "Casting pearls before swine" has a long history of valuable treasures getting lost on garbage. I know you will create the "voice in the wilderness" for Orange County with your new company that you have for 12 years with RGT.

Lois

[Michael Fox]

Thanks, Dave, for 12 years of revolutionary theatre, produced with untiring commitment to the power of live performance to change the world one show at a time.

[Alexander Price]

To Mr. Zarabi--

In regards to your comment about training the next generation, I would like to point out that Dave Barton has trained a new generation of art activists and young artists. If you had any idea of the history of the company, you would be well aware of that fact. Not only are those who have done work at Rude Guerrilla still working on challenging projects, they are given that chance at a young age.

I, for one, began such work at Rude Guerrilla at age 19, two years ago, and plan on continuing that work with Monkey Wrench Collective. I challenge you to research before casting stones, as each of your arguments fail to hold water.

[Chris Taylor]

As a volunteer in the begining, I want to say thank you to all who encouraged me. I helped scrub, gather used stages from a local college, basically doing what was needed by volunteers when this theaters journey began. I feel I learned from Dave and Dawn not to judge peolpe before getting to know them, a lesson in life not always found, but now kept close at heart. Brook and myself (Catholic workers 1998) both were homeless men who through the course of finding our paths, were blessed with being a part of this wonderfull theater. Brook now lives in Wahington D.C. and works in politics, I own a host of websites and work for a large corporation in management. In all honesty, more than plays on stage was going on in the master scheme of life in this tallented group. Your hope was our hope, thanks for being you !

[kerja keras adalah energi kita]

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[skripsi akuntansi]

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