By Shari Barrett
After a highly successful run of the inaugural The Letters Project in 2024, for the past six months ArtsUP! LA’s Veterans Empowerment Theatre and Returning Soldiers Speak have been collecting, researching, and curating letters and correspondence written by military veterans to members of their family and friends which embody the hopes, fears, and observations of those deployed during wartime from the Revolutionary War to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Both groups believe in the transformative power of story which gives voice to veterans who have experienced war, as well as showing how the different wars affected and continue to affect their relationship to the military. The veteran playwrights, each with their own experience in the United States Armed Forces, bring authenticity and depth to the shared stories from their fellow veterans.
The playwrights include head playwright Lelani Squire with Cynthia Ridyard, Keith Dow, Will Sims, PG Pilliteri, Jeffrey Webster, and Richard DiSaito, who used the shared historical documents to write monologues and scenes for The Letters Project 2: Connections Beyond Time, an original theater piece produced by Bryan Caldwell and Leilani Square, and directed by Karl Risinger. Six performances of its world premiere take place Friday, June 19 through Sunday, June 28 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm at the Blue Door Theater, 9617 Venice Blvd. in Culver City, CA 90232.
Featured in the cast (in alphabetical order) are Maggie Borgen, Nicholas Cormier III, Chiara Gheller, William Duffy, Mason Kennerly, Chris Loverro, Rolphe Jay Miceus, Cyn Ridy, Jalen Travers, and Vince Wainwright. The technical team includes set builder Lanny Savoie and lighting designer Doug Gabrielle. Stage manager is Heather Saturday.
Through these live performances, audience members will witness a myriad of humanity which offer a new perspective and understanding about what it means to serve. There will be a short talkback with the playwrights, director, and cast members after each performance, giving patrons a chance to share their thoughts and ask questions.
The Letters Project 2: Connections Beyond Time general admission tickets are $20, available online at https://www.artsupla.org or at the box office starting a half hour prior to the performance. Runtime is two hours including an intermission and talk back, and is appropriate for all ages, with children under the age of 12 requiring an accompanying adult. All patrons regardless of age must have their own ticket.
The Blue Door Theater is located at 9617 Venice Blvd. in Culver City 90232, on the North side of Venice Boulevard between Cardiff and Watseka Ave. Parking is available at street meters and in the local neighborhood, but please read parking restrictions signs to avoid ticketing and/or towing. Two Culver City municipal pay lots are located at 3846 Cardiff Avenue and 3844 Watseka Avenue. The Culver City Metrolink train station is located at Venice Blvd. and Robertson Blvd., just a few blocks east of the theater.
This performance is made possible in part by the City of Culver City and its Cultural Affairs Commission, with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sigma Lens, and Amaran and Shure.
Nerve & Grace Theatricals in Association with The Victory Theatre Center presents Buyer & Cellar, the hit one-man comedy by Jonathan Tolins about what happens when Barbra Streisand builds a private shopping mall in her basement to store her many belongings and mementoes and hires a struggling actor to run it. Directed by Cate Caplin and starring Michael Mullen, the play runs through June 20 at the Victory Theatre in Burbank.
Buyer & Cellar is a comedy about celebrity, friendship, and the gap between the dream and the job. The mall is real. The rest is fiction – and funnier than any day job you’ve ever had in this wickedly absurd, comedic 37-page monologue about obsession, celebrity, and the price of proximity to someone who has everything. The main character is Alex Moore who breaks the fourth wall to let the audience know what the play is about from the very beginning, alerting us that while Streisand’s private shopping mall in the cellar under a barn on her Malibu property actually exists, everything else is a fabrication.
Blessed with an effervescent and flashy personality, this play is the perfect solo show for costume designer and actor Michael Mullen. From start to finish, his storytelling ability grabs your attention with both his softly commanding intensity and overwhelming ability to share emotional reactions from his very heart and soul. And without changing costume pieces, we are introduced to several distinct characters, each with his or her own unique physicality and vocal inflections, thanks to Mullen’s ability to morph between them and bring each fully realized individual to the stage.
But playwright Tolins has Alex tell the audience from the beginning he will not be doing Streisand impersonations, but will offer a suggestion of her through movement characteristics and attitude. And that Mullen does to perfection! We are also told that Alex is gay and has a male partner with whom he lives. During each of their conversations, Mullen brilliantly creates distinct personalities for the two men, with the more masculine Barry a wide-eyed Streisand fan while the poor Alex’s main goal in working for her is to earn enough money to pay his bills. To switch between characters, director Caplin has Mullen take a few steps forward and turn around to face where he was standing before, completely changing his physicality while making the quick character switch.
We also meet Sharon, Streisand’s fussy assistant who supervises Alex from the main house. And to bring her estate locations into perspective, photos taken by Streisand from her large, coffee table book My Passion for Design are shared. Mullen effectively takes us through the mall, miming invisible props, such as her favorite doll Fifi (which she negotiates buying from Alex in Bee’s Doll Shop) and getting her and husband James Brolin coffee frozen yogurt inside the Sweet Shoppe. Mullen cleverly brings each of those places out of the imaginary and into reality as he describes and mimes what he is seeing and doing there.
Originally set to run on June 4-14, due to ticket demand, two performances have been added on Saturday, June 20 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. with short talkbacks after each performance at The Victory Theatre Center, 3326 W. Victory Blvd. in Burbank 91505. General Admission tickets run $15 – $28, available at www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org, emailing TheVictoryBoxOffice@gmail.com, or calling (818) 841-5421. Street parking only, so arrive early and read signs carefully.
