Frederique Michel and Charles Duncombe

NEWS…Just as Santa Monica-based City Garage is getting acclimated in its new residence within a 16,000-square-feet gallery, Track 16 at Bergamot Station, managing director Charles Duncombe and artistic director Frederique Michel learn the building is due for demolition to make way for the expanding Metro Expo Line. “This probably won’t happen for another year, but we certainly can’t make long-range plans,” says Duncombe.  Both Bergamot master lease holder Wayne Blank and Track 16 leaser, former TV scripter/producer Tom Patchett, are working to make sure City Garage has a future home.  Meanwhile, the company has two productions on stage:  Moliere’s Sganarelle and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, both helmed by Michel…What does one of Southern California’s leading ensembles do when it leaves a longtime home in Glendale for brand spanking new digs in Pasadena?  Hold a garage sale. A Noise Within (ANW) says farewell to Glendale with a huge sale of in-house goodies on Saturday, August 13, 9 am to 2 pm, in its current location on Brand Boulevard.  The sale, designed literally to “get rid of it all,” features huge discounts on scenery, props, costumes, wigs, furniture, lighting and lighting equipment, curtains, fabric, seating and more, proceeds to support ANW’s capital campaign. “We’re letting go of some of our best possessions, with three large floors full of treasures,” says Henry Echeverria, ANW’s production manager.  “Bargain hunters will find everything from furniture pieces used in past productions and classic prop knick-knacks to racks filled with elegant vintage and everyday clothing for men, women, and children.” Bring cash.…Quickie theatrical fare – scripted, rehearsed and performed within a 24-hour period – is not new to local stages. Rogue Machine has its Around the Clock plays and Santa Monica-based Ruskin Group Theatre actually turns its LA Café Plays out from creation to closing in 13 hours.  But these are assemblages of short pieces with small casts, lasting no more than 10 minutes each. Valley Village-based Eclectic Company Theatre (ECT) is moving the concept up a huge notch. A group of ECT scripters and thesps will be creating, rehearsing and mounting one full-length play, from conception to execution, within 24 hours. Helmed by Taylor Ashbrook, One Day Play comes to fruition on Aug. 13…

Natasha Middleton

PREMIERES…The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA) Theaterfest is offering the American premiere of My Fairytale, based on the life and work of Hans Christian Andersen, helmed by Scott Schwartz, at the Marian Theatre in Santa Maria, Aug. 12-20 (as part of the ongoing 4^th Festival of New American Musicals) and then again at Solvang Festival Theater in conjunction with centennial celebrations in the Central Coast’s approximation of a Danish town. Wrought by Flemming Enevold (idea and concept), Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Philip LaZebnik (book), the show was first produced in 2005 in Denmark to celebrate the bi-centennial of Andersen’s birth….The aforementioned Eclectic Company Theatre returns to traditional production methods with the premiere of Preposterous, a dramedy scripted by Jason Britt, helmed by Taylor Ashbrook, following “the troubled love life of Allen and his close-knit group of friends as they struggle through the challenges of adulthood and human bonds,” opening Sep. 2…Over in Atwater Village Theatre, Ghost Road is preeming Stranger Things, “pitch-dark, grim, haunting, mysterious, foreboding and engaging for anyone who enjoys a deeply brooding mystery,” conceived and directed by Ronnie Clark, with original music by award-winning David O…Now in its 10^th season under artistic director Natasha Middleton, Media City Ballet is making its Ford Amphitheatre debut, Aug. 12, with the premiere of Axis Mundi:  A Global Multi-Cultural Celebration of Ballet Dance.” Principal dancers includes Tatiana A’Vermond, Annia Hidalgo (Ballet Nacional de Cuba), Enton Hoxha (Metropolitan Opera), Vardan Khachatryan (Israel National Ballet and Armenian Opera Ballet), Edgar Nikolyan (Vienna Staatsoper), Gabrielle Palmatier and guest artists, Antoinette Peloso (Metropolitan Opera) and Jesus Solorio (So You Think You Can Dance)…

QUICK TAKES…The premiere of Life on This Couch, scripted by Laura Richardson, helmed by Benjamin Burdick, opens this weekend (Aug. 5) at Open Fist in Hollywood…After five extensions, Ovation-recommended Caught, a comedic tale of “marriage, love and family values,” scripted by David L. Ray, helmed by Nick DeGruccio, is finally closing Aug. 7 at the Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood…Thesp John Goff has been traveling the Ernest Hemingway bio one-hander, The Leopard, through varied Southern California stages and it now lands at Hollywood’s Working Stage Theater on Sep. 9, helmed by T.J. Castronovo. Depicting the final ruminations of Hemingway before his death in July 1961, this was the final stagework of noted screenwriter/playwright Yabo Yablonsky (1931-2005)…Women in Theatre (WIT) has decided to holds its awards luncheon at the view-glorious Castaways Restaurant on Oct. 22.  Honorees are still TBA…

Cynthia Lewis Ferrell

THE THING IS…“Guatemala City 2007. The story starts at midnight when the jaguar screams like a woman.  I twist on my barstool in the Marriott, a place where white-gloved doormen open shiny brass doors.  Behind me, giant TVs flash sports.  In front, a strange parade: a small, dark Maya woman – middle-aged, matriarchal – strides with clenched jaw toward the exit. She doesn’t look back. Two youngsters, boy and girl in cheap clothes, stumble after, confused. Next, the kids’ mother?, maybe 30, and weeping. Behind them a white man pushes an empty, high-dollar stroller.  Last, a white woman, clutching a bundle and glowing like she’s seen heaven.  The baby she holds is dark. Matriarch flings wide the door, turns left to the sidewalk.  Family follows in ragged line.  The white couple with dark baby in arms turns right, into the gleaming lobby, and gone. 2007 Guatemala is a hotbed for illegal adoptions. Money! Fabulous!  And poverty-stricken women who sell their babies are called ‘kangaroos.’ I cannot escape it. Composed with 2010 Berlin Opera Prize winner [Peter Michael] “Mike” von der Nahmer, our opera is the haunted, rainforest tale of an impoverished girl:  A cat-and-mouse game of vicious gangs, patriarchal violence, and screams in the night. Cast with young professional voices, sung in English and supported by California International Theatre Festival, KUSC Radio, Pepperdine University, L.A. Opera League’s Bravo, and Academy for New Musical Theatre, the journey from barstool to here is astonishing.”  — Cynthia Lewis Ferrell, writer of El Canguro, a world-premiere young adult opera in English. It premieres Sep. 10 at KUSC AT&T Center Theater in downtown LA, in conjunction with the Third Annual California International Theatre Festival…

Morris Carnovsky

INSIDE LA STAGE HISTORY…In 1959, recent English major UCLA grad Dick Kitzrow, who found great success as editor of the school’s yearbook, as well as in UCLA’s student theater productions, has been drafted into the US Army. Through luck and great aptitude, he is assigned to the commanding general’s office at the Presidio of San Francisco, eventually taking over all promotional and publicity duties for this command post of the US Sixth Army. “I had excellent writing skills,” Kitzrow recalls. “The publicity stuff I just learned on the job.” Released in 1961, Kitzrow takes a job in the office of retired general Jimmy Doolittle in El Segundo. By 1963, Kitzrow returns to his alma mater, working for UCLA Extension, principally as publicist for the UCLA Theatre Group, led by John Houseman. Even though Kitzrow yearns to be on stage, he knows he has found his profession, that year promoting the Group’s productions of Seagull and Brecht on Brecht.  In 1964, Houseman decides to do King Lear, starring blacklisted actor Morris Carnovsky.  A Houseman protégé, Gordon Davidson is brought in as fight director. By now, there is active discussion at UCLA Extension about building a permanent state-of-the-art theater facility on campus. But that same year, Dorothy Chandler completes her Pavilion in downtown LA and casts a jaundiced glance westward at the possibility of a competing facility to her beloved Ahmanson and Mark Taper Forum. In 1965, Davidson replaces ever-traveling Houseman, staging The Deputy, followed by Candide in ‘66 (with Leonard Bernstein in attendance).  Kitzrow is not only pitching story ideas and soliciting reviews, he is interviewing artists and writing his own features, many of them picked up by the media, including the LA Times.  But when Davidson leaves that year to join the Center Theatre Group as artistic director, UCLA Extension loses interest in UCLA Theatre Group and any plans to build a facility.  Kitzrow turns down Davidson’s invitation to join him at CTG, instead joining Albert McLeery at troubled Pasadena Playhouse, hoping to finally get a chance to act as well as do promotion.  THE SAGA OF DICK KITZROW CONTINUES IN NEXT WEEK’S  INSIDER…

- The Julio Martinez-hosted ARTS IN REVIEW, broadcast Fridays  (2 to 2:30 pm) on KPFK (90.7FM), spotlights the best in live theater and cabaret in the Greater LA area. Upcoming on August 5, a spotlight on the outrageously original performance art/jazz ensemble, Nutty…