Theater review: 'Scarcity' by needtheater

Meet America's future: A boy, 16, is in a gifted program, making excellent grades. His sister, 11, shows signs of being even smarter. These kids can be whatever they want to be.

Or so we'd like to think.

In demonstrating why they can't, Lucy Thurber presents a heart-wrenching portrait of a much too large segment of the population. Her play "Scarcity," given its premiere by New York's Atlantic Theater Company in 2007, is a harrowing yet miraculously tender account of promise thwarted by poverty in myriad forms -- economic,  emotional, social and many others as well. The play arrives in Los Angeles in a crackling presentation by the rambunctious young company known as needtheater.

Bridget Shergalis portrays the girl with such stinging intelligence that she brings renewed meaning to that old adjective "whip-smart." Jarrett Sleeper, as the boy, is sweetly dutiful, especially toward Shergalis, even as despair drives him toward an anguishing act of abandonment.

Berlin Wall segments arrive in Los Angeles

You could drive to 5900 Wilshire to see segments of the real Berlin Wall, which have been donated to Culver City's Wende Museum of the Cold War and will be part of the museum's Wall Project, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Or you could rely on Culture Monster for a first glimpse of the segments being installed after dark Thursday (photo above)  in time for a little ceremony Friday hosted by museum founder Justinian Jampol, City Councilman Tom LaBonge and Wolfgang Drautz, Los Angeles consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany.

Together the 10 sections (40 feet) of the original Berlin Wall represent the largest chunk of the original wall outside Germany.  They can be viewed free through Nov. 14, as an adjunct to the symbolic recreation and fall of the Berlin Wall that will take place across Wilshire Boulevard on Sunday, Nov. 8, from 11 p.m. to midnight.

-- Diane Haithman

Photos: Segments of the original Berlin Wall installed at 5900 Wilshire. Credit: Michael B. Whalen

Related stories:

Bone up on Berlin Wall history with iMinds

Wall Project to close Wilshire Boulevard at midnight instead of afternoon

The writing's on the wall in Berlin

Bone up on Berlin Wall history with iMinds

Los Angeles is among the many cities that plan to go all out on Nov. 9 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- in fact, L.A.'s Wall Project, spearheaded by Culver City's Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, is believed to be the most ambitious such project outside Germany.

And iMinds wants you to be prepared: The company, which provides "eight-minute MP3 knowledge grabs" on a variety of subjects, is now offering a six-track Berlin Wall Collection so you listeners can "pepper their dinner party banter with interesting factoids" about the wall. Included on the subject list: Rise of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, Crossing the Berlin Wall and German Reunification.

Olivia Wood, founder and managing director of iMinds, tells Culture Monster: "The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is one of the most significant events in recent world history that most of us were able to witness on television, but I'm sure many people would like to learn more about the rise of the wall, the wider context of global relations at the time and the wall's eventual demolition.  This is where iMinds comes in. Our bite-size knowledge grabs are the perfect way to get up to speed on general knowledge topics on-the-go or in your home."

Not to be outdone, Culture Monster would like to offer its own Berlin Wall cocktail-party factoid: Did you know that in Berlin the anniversary will be commemorated with a symbolic wall made entirely of giant dominos, which will -- as dominos tend to do -- fall at the appropriate moment?  Read more about that project in this article from Der Spiegel.

-- Diane Haithman

Photo: Oversize "dominos" stand in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The elements will fall during the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the inner German border to symbolize the fall of the Berlin Wall. The dominos were created by pupils from Berlin and international artists. Credit: Tim Brakemeier / European Pressphoto Agency.

Celebration will mark 50 years since Watts Towers won a tug of war for survival

With apologies to the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," here’s some theme music  for Saturday’s half-centenary celebration at the Watts Towers of a remarkable moment in L.A. lore: the 1959 rescue of Simon Rodia’s triple-spired folk art masterpiece.

It was fifty years ago today/And they couldn’t make the Towers sway!

But that came as no surprise to N.J. (Bud) Goldstone, a hero of that long-ago showdown between community activists who cherished the world-renowned sculptures that are now a National Historic Landmark, and city officials who were eager to tear them down as a purported safety hazard in danger of collapsing in gale-force winds.

Goldstone was a young aeronautical engineer who would go on to work on both the Apollo mission and the space shuttle program, including tests of the Apollo command module and one of its booster assemblies. But he remembers the test he devised to prove that the Watts Towers could withstand an 80-mph wind as “the most complicated test I ever did.”

Rodia had worked on the three mast-like spires of the towers, and the surrounding, ship-shaped sculptural fantasyland he dubbed “Nuestro Pueblo,” from 1921 to 1954. With his solitary work completed, he gave the property to a neighbor and went to live out the rest of his days in Northern California. Within a year the small house he’d lived in had been destroyed by fire, and by 1957, city building officials had condemned the towers as an unstable safety hazard.

*NEA chairman answers GOP concerns that his agency has a partisan agenda

Striking a polite, conciliatory note while asserting that there's nothing rotten in the state of the agency he's led for less than two months, National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman responded today to Senate Republicans' request for information about a controversial Aug.10 teleconference that led to the demotion, then resignation, of Yosi Sergant, the NEA's rookie director of communications.

Apart from Sergant's participation in the conference call, "I am unaware of the use of any taxpayer dollars for the...conference call or related activity," Landesman said in his letter to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. Enzi and his nine fellow Republican committee members last week wrote to Landesman, asking that he respond by today to their concerns, including whether NEA funds were being used to advance the Obama administration's legislative agenda on healthcare and other issues.

"This isolated incident, undertaken without agency approval and prior to my tenure, should in no way tarnish" the NEA's achievements and worth to the American public,  wrote Landesman, whose letter was made available to Culture Monster by Enzi's committee staff.

Landesman's response reiterated what he said in a previous written statement on the matter: that Sergant, a former L.A. public relations man who had helped organize and promote artist Shepard Fairey's pro-Obama poster campaign during the 2008 election, had used "inappropriate" language during the teleconference, but did not overstep any of the legal prohibitions against on-the-job politicking by federal employees.

Wall Project to close Wilshire Boulevard at midnight instead of afternoon

Instead of blocking traffic on busy Wilshire Boulevard for three afternoon hours on Sunday, Nov. 8, the Wende Museum Wall Project's public art installation "The Wall Across Wilshire" -- commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- will instead be temporarily constructed across Wilshire near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art shortly before midnight on Nov. 8, and will be symbolically toppled at midnight by artists who will paint on the symbolic wall.

Justinian Jampol, president and founder of the Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, said Monday that a second part of the Wall Project -- "The Wall Along Wilshire," which will stand in front of the 5900 Wilshire Building from Oct. 17-Nov. 14 -- will now be constructed of 10 newly-acquired segments of the real Berlin Wall instead of newly-fabricated replicas. Included in the installation will be an original Berlin Wall border tower, donated along with the wall segments by a Berlin resident, Thomas Goerner, who owns the property on which the segments stood.

"The Wall Along Wilshire"  will be painted by artists Kent Twitchell and Thierry Noir, with a section of reserved to be painted by the public. The painted segments will become part of the Wende Museum collection.

Michelle Obama tells international audience why the arts matter

Michelle Obama hosted a concert this morning at the Pittsburgh Creative & Performing Arts School for its students and the spouses of international leaders deliberating at the G-20 economic summit.  She gave an 11-minute address about the arts as a prelude to performances by guests Sara Bareilles, Yo-Yo Ma and Trisha Yearwood. Here are  excerpts from her speech, from a transcript issued by the White House:

“We believe strongly that the arts aren't somehow an 'extra’ part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life. It is through our music, our literature, our art, drama and dance that we tell the story of our past and we express our hopes for the future. Our artists challenge our assumptions in ways that many cannot and do not. They expand our understandings, and push us to view our world in new and very unexpected ways….. 

"It's through this constant exchange -- this process of taking and giving, this process of borrowing and creating -- that we learn from each other and we inspire each other.  It is a form of diplomacy in which we can all take part….

“[T]oday ... we're presenting the gifts of these wonderful American artists to our friends from all around the world. And these artists are passing on the gift of their magnificent example to these young people who are here today, studying in this school -- showing them that if they dream big enough, and work hard enough, and believe in themselves, that they can do and achieve some uncommon things in their lifetime….

10 more GOP senators demand answers from the NEA about teleconference

Ten Republican senators have written to National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman, expressing concern that the Obama administration may have violated federal law by trying to use the agency for political purposes -- something the White House and NEA have denied.

The charges stem from an Aug. 10 teleconference in which the NEA's communications director urged members of the arts community to help Obama's efforts to spur volunteer community service.

Yosi Sergant was subsequently demoted by Landesman, and resigned Thursday. It was accepted effective immediately, an NEA spokeswoman said, adding that Sergant left voluntarily because he thought "he felt he was becoming a distraction for the agency."

Sergant, a former Los Angeles publicist, supported Obama's presidential bid and worked closely with artist Shepard Fairey on his independent "Obama Hope" poster campaign.

At the White House, the special counsel's offfice issued a memo to "White House staff and...agency and department heads," urging all hands to avoid "even the appearance of politicization" during "public outreach efforts" like the teleconference. The White House previously had issued a statement of regret about the incident.

Patrick Courrielche, a former employee of Sergant's with his own Los Angeles marketing company, was part of the group phone call and later posted a recording and transcript.  Writing on the Big Hollywood blog, Courrielche said the teleconference was improper political organizing on behalf of the president's legislative agenda. Courrielche also shared his concerns, and parts of the recording, on Glenn Beck's Fox News program.

Tavis Smiley brings touring blockbuster on African American history to L.A.

Conceived by Tavis Smiley, a sweeping historical and cultural survey of the black American experience called “America I Am: The African American Imprint” will arrive in L.A. on Oct. 30 for a 5½-month run at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, it was announced today.

Smiley, who hosts talk shows on public radio and television, said the idea took hold early in 2007, after he took part in events surrounding the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony, the first permanent British outpost in America — and the arrival point for its first African slaves. It got him thinking about the sweep of American history, and how he’d never seen an exhibition that showed how African Americans were not just a part of it, but at its core from the start.

Smiley enlisted Arts and Exhibitions International, the company that produced the King Tut ancient Egyptian blockbuster that had impressed him when he saw it at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and recruited a team of curatorial experts. The guiding concept, he says, is to answer a question black activist W.E.B. Du Bois posed more than 100 years ago: “Would America have been America without her Negro people?”

The exhibition numbers nearly 300 artifacts, including a re-creation, with actual furnishings, of the cell where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” and the fingerprints that police in another Alabama city, Montgomery, took from Rosa Parks upon booking her for refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955.

NEA chairman explains communications director's demotion

"Loose lips sink ships" was a watchword in the U.S. Navy during World War II. In today's culture wars, what got scuttled was a former Los Angeles publicist's brief tenure as communications director of the National Endowment for the Arts, although he remains on the federal arts-grant agency's communications staff.

Rocco Landesman, the new NEA chairman, issued a written explanation today "to clarify the issues" surrounding an Aug. 10 conference call in which Yosi Sergant, representing the NEA, invited representatives from the arts world to get involved in President Obama's United We Serve volunteerism initiative. The teleconference got blogged about as an attempt to enlist artists on behalf of the White House's agenda, prompting Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to issue an open letter to the president expressing alarm over the politicization of the NEA, and suggesting that "this episode appears to merit congressional hearings and sustained oversight."

Landesman's statement reiterated the NEA's previous response that the purpose of the teleconference was supposed to be to inform the arts community of opportunities to take part in volunteerism programs, and "not a means to promote any legislative agenda."