Brena Banda, Sam Golzari, Esperanza America Ibarra, Vicki Syal and Aaron Garcia in "The Vault: Unlocked" at LATC
Inspired by Eugene Ionesco’s absurdity, Edward Bond’s polemic structure, Fernando Arrabal’s innocent carnage and Brecht’s epic theater, I have always been drawn to theater directors and writers who valued the communal experience of the theater over the entertainment aspect. The idea that a group of individuals can be stuck in the same room for a period of time and experience a shared movement of thought that allows them to believe in the magic of life again — this is a visceral pursuit for me.
Aaron Garcia
In January of 2010, Fidel Gomez and I gathered a team of writers and performers and set out on a nine-week theatrical workshop, in which we assembled a new original multidisciplinary show every week. In doing so, we discovered a 72-hour workshop process that mixes devised theater, sketch writing, performance art, original music, and dance. At this time, we made no attempts to bring these pieces together in a cohesive narrative; they simply stood on their own in a tapestry of other distinct pieces.
The group of artists still standing after this nine-week workshop became the Vault Ensemble. Once the identity of the ensemble began to take form, we decided to utilize the monthly Art Walk audience as a means to test out new material and explore this format, which was new to all of us. In the fall of 2010 we had a four-week production at LATC, where we developed a 1930s style speakeasy as the vehicle for our show. This production was fun, but it didn’t yet exhibit the full range of our ensemble in terms of imagery and content.
Jasmine Orpilla, Fidel Gomez and Sam Golzari
As we continued developing a variety of pieces about global and local events, we realized that we had failed to address a story that was right outside our doors, the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles. In February of 2011, setting our sights solely on our immediate surroundings, it was quickly evident that the themes we would be investigating were planted deep in the collective subconscious of our generation. In order to engage our audiences on a heightened level, we knew we had to develop a modern theatrical language that was flexible enough to support a cartoon-like absurdity in one moment and the brutal reality of downtown the next.
Sam Golzari and Esperanza America Ibarra
In July of this year, once we had enough material to make a full show, we were led by Jose Luis Valenzuela, artistic director of the LATC and Latino Theater Company, through a four-day imagery workshop. We stripped all the scenes of their dialogue and presented them only through archetypes, stage images, movement, and music. This exercise allowed the heart of these pieces to stand alone, because we were forced to create metaphors for the themes we were investigating. Without superfluous words, the essential core of each piece stayed intact, while the intellectual, “heady” ideas melted away.
Once we boiled down our elements to their essential core, we set out to interweave them into a complete world, and for the first time, create a narrative, which runs throughout the show. The Vault: Unlocked is the result of this nine-month process.
The Vault: Unlocked. Created and performed by the Vault Ensemble. Directed by Aaron Garcia and Fidel Gomez. Musical director: Jasmine Orpilla. Produced by the Latino Theater Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center. Thur- Sat, 9 p.m. Through October 8. Tickets: $20. Students and seniors $15. Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., LA. Call 866-811-111 or visit www.thelatc.org.
Aaron Garcia is a theater director, producer, actor, and video editor. A Los Angeles native, he studied undergraduate theater directing at UCLA in ‘04 and acting at LACHSA in ‘00. He has directed Fando and Lis, Orison, Red Black and Ignorant, Human Cannon, and a bunch of others.
All The Vault: Unlocked production photos by Hector Cruz Salvador
