One-man musical aims to spread
knowledge about foster care
Daily BruinPublished: January 28, 2010
LA Theatre Review:
Ahimsa Collective's "A Christmas Carol"
Livin' La Vida LA, CAPublished: December 15, 2009
Ahimsa Collective brings 'Epilogue'
tour to living rooms
Daily Bruin Published: October 23, 2009
Ahimsa Collective, Everybody Nose
Offer New Vision of Community Theatre
LA/OC Theatre ExaminerPublished: October 11, 2009
Theatre in YOUR Livingroom
NOHO Arts DistrictPublished: October 5, 2009
Community Pool: Collective Art Party
Bored LAPublished: August 30, 2009
One-man musical aims to spread
knowledge about foster care
January 28 , 2010
Daily Bruin
Lauren Schick
Patrick Burns lived with four foster families between the ages of 14 and 17. When he began attending UC Irvine and found he was one of only six students in the school who had been through the foster care system, he discovered just how rare his story was.
Now Burns is sharing his story in the form of a one-man musical, From Foster Care to Fabulous, presented by the Ahimsa Collective at The Improv Space beginning Jan. 30.
“I came up with the idea to do this a couple years ago because I was in college and I would always tell people stories about my life and people would be like, ‘That’s crazy, can you explain that?’ So I finally thought, ‘My experience, my life, is abnormal,’” said Burns, whose foster care experience included living on a ranch and living with a lesbian couple.
Negin Singh, Burns’ friend since college and also the director of the show, remembers hearing his stories at parties. But she continues to be surprised by his anecdotes.
“When [Patrick] and I rehearse, he’ll go over some line that is shocking to me and, for him, he’s just passing through. And I’m like, ‘Wait wait wait, no no no, you have to explain what that means,’ because for me, as somebody who doesn’t know what that is, that sounds crazy,” said Singh. “It’s been really cool to learn about the terms used ... and what it’s like to interview for parents and how crazy that must be, and the court process.”
For Burns, telling his story to people who aren’t familiar with the foster care system is very important even though, as he found,many children who lived in foster care want to forget about their experience and move forward.
“I really feel like, as young adults, we have a responsibility to help better this system for the next generation,” Burns said. “If I tell my story, then people will know more and they’ll want to learn more and there’ll be more questions and people will be motivated to change.”
The show aims to help spread knowledge about foster care in more ways than just a single run of the performance.
“The way I’ve directed it, and the way Pat’s written it, this show can get picked up and put pretty much anywhere,” Singh said. “We are hoping to take this show and put it in front of soon-to-be foster parents.”
Proceeds from the show will go toward a long-term project to bring art programming into the foster care system. Also, at Sunday shows, there will be a person from the foster care field to talk with the audience after the performance.
Burns and Singh hope that audience will include UCLA students. Their Westwood location is no mistake.
“We’re bringing the show right next to you,” Singh said. “I want [students] to see the show not only to be educated about foster care and the system, but also to know that there’s this company out there doing good, solid community work and it’s all about getting people involved.”
Liana Dillaway is one of those UCLA students who has already gotten involved. The third-year theater student is the stage manager for Burns’ show. She said she thinks it’s one that will appeal to her fellow Bruins.
“Even though it’s about a topic that’s heavy and serious, there’s a lot of humor in the show so it’s fun to see. ... I think it really can show a side of life that most students at UCLA probably haven’t been through and it can expand someone’s world view,” Dillaway said.
For Burns, his hopes for the audience go beyond just an understanding of his life and foster care experience.
“I would really like people to remember that not everyone’s life is the same,” Burns said. “The show is about the perseverance of the human spirit, it’s about race, it’s about class, it’s about community and it’s about family, and I’d love people to leave thinking that they have some new opinions.”
LA Theatre Review:
Ahimsa Collective's "A Christmas Carol"
December 15, 2009
Livin' La Vida LA, CA
It takes a lot to get me out to see a Christmas show. Though I do have a sweet tooth for eggnog and a mild Santa fetish, you’d be surprised to find I’m not particularly festive around the holidays. Thanks to the Ahimsa Collective though, I am now reconsidering approaching the holidays with cheer and…dare I say, gladness. What could make me take such a leap of faith to endeavor to allow joy into this final month of the year? Well friend, Ahimsa’s resident clown troupe Everybody Nose just closed one of the most exciting and delightful Christmas shows I have seen in so long: their own A Christmas Carol.
Together, this cast of nearly two dozen unique & fully developed clowns put up a production of that old Dickens classic and the audience watches from auditions to final curtain call. It’s a simple convention, but Everybody Nose quickly inserts such charm and whimsy into the formula that it feels sparkling new. Hats off to director Negin Singh for managing such a large group of rambunctious and energetic clowns and making it all seem effortlessly thrown together. The prop tracking alone had to be mind boggling.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being able to offer such a fresh take on such an old warhorse, but The Ahimsa Collectve succeeds gracefully. If you missed it, join me in hoping Ahimsa remounts this gem next Christmas!
Ahimsa Collective brings 'Epilogue'
tour to living rooms
October 23, 2009
Daily Bruin
Shelley Brown
For most, an evening at the theater means a pricey ticket in a far removed, if not grandiose location. One local theater company is working to change this perception by bringing live theater, quite literally, to your living room.
The Ahimsa Collective, which takes its name from the Sanskrit vow of peace, will be performing Epilogue (The Living Room Tour) until Nov. 7 in Los Angeles and Orange Country in 17 different living rooms.
Founded at UC Irvine, The Ahimsa Collective has been testing the boundaries of theater since its beginning. The group performs original theater pieces or experimental versions of classics in various nontraditional settings.
“We do all new work or very wild deconstructions of old work in unconventional spaces like parks, beaches, public bathrooms or, in this case, living rooms,” said Negin Singh, artistic director of Ahimsa and executive producer of Epilogue. "For instance, we will never put on a very classic version of My Fair Lady because you can find something like that at the Geffen. We want to do something that is uniquely us, and in that sense, we are underground theater."
Novelty aside, the main focus of Ahimsa is not simply to push theatrical boundaries but rather to make theater affordable and accessible – as affordable as $10 and as accessible as a living room in your community.
“We want to create an abundance of art so that price and proximity are never an issue – so that, if you want it, it is near and affordable,” said Jack De Sena, UCLA alumnus and director of Epilogue. “Give us your living room, and we will give you a play. There is no bureaucracy, no price tags, and we will leave your place a little more lively and open.”
Not surprisingly, the lack of a formal stage presents some challenges to executing a production, especially when the irregular size of various living rooms constantly changes the parameters of the space being used. However, De Sena feels the staging hurdles ultimately create a more authentic theater experience.
“It was a really cool challenge specifically in this setting. Directing for a living room has a lot of specific demands – making sure a show is adaptable and it can thrive, that you put it in a living room, and it feels like it should be there,” De Sena said.
Using only a three-person cast, Epilogue takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the three survivors are contemplating suicide. Implicit in the name, “Epilogue” presents their final conversations before their death. Written by playwright Matt Chester, Epilogue is an original piece written to fit the parameters of the living-room setting.
It was the intimate nature of the play, where the conversation of the actors becomes a close confessional with the audience, that drew De Sena to the project as his first directing gig.
“There is no hiding; the audience is at most five feet away from you, and it demands a really honest performance,” De Sena said. “The honesty was really appealing as a director because the actors had to really know their characters. They had to be even more thriving and alive.”
Because of the emotional intensity of the acting and the audience’s proximity to the actors, the play can be viewed as a risky theatrical endeavor.
“It can be intimidating at first to be so close to the audience. You notice a lot more when the audience isn’t engaging, it just kind of forces you to never let that happen,” said Colin O’Brien-Lux, a fourth-year theater student, who plays the role of Eric. “With this [kind of acting] it feels a little bit more subtle, and I think I tend to emote more subtly than other people do just naturally. It is cool to bring out this part of myself that tends to be ignored otherwise.”
More than just an opportunity for actors to hone their acting skills, the living room tour also creates an opportunity for audience members to socialize in a comfortable setting. Through this social interaction, Ahimsa members hope communities will form closer bonds, leading to more tolerant, peaceful human interaction.
“(Ahimsa) is about celebration. Our motto is ‘Every night is an opening night,’ since we are in a new space. We have wine and cheese and socialize before the show. It is really about getting to know your community and the possibilities within your community. It is a movement we are trying to emphasize. We want the community to see that and do their own living room tours,” Singh said.
While the piece may be divergent from more cheerful theater, and the setting unconventional at best, “Epilogue” seeks to do what all theater ultimately does – to inspire audience members in one way or another and bring them together through a common experience.
“For quite a sad play it really is an optimistic message. We want to inspire the idea that hope is very durable and should be very durable, and that there should be faith in humanity in general,” O’Brien-Lux said.
Ahimsa Collective, Everybody Nose
Offer New Vision of Community Theatre
October 11, 2009
LA/OC Theatre Examiner
Jordan Young
You dig theatre but you haven’t seen anything lately because it doesn’t speak to you …you’re afraid it’s a little too arty, or it will go over your head …and you can’t afford it anyway. I hear ya. Meet The Ahimsa Collective, a group of students and recent graduates—many from UC Irvine and UCLA—who question the limitations of theatre and strive to make art readily accessible.
The group produced their first show,Pterodactyls—Nicky Silver’s play about family, sex, AIDS and dinosaurs—on a budget of less than $200. They followed up with such efforts as Much Ado About Nothing, staged in a rock garden at UCI against a backdrop of renaissance music; more recently they did a deconstruction ofAgamemnon on the beach near Santa Monica Pier. “We believe that communities thrive through an abundance of art, so we’d like to come into your community, and produce a night of art with you,” says Ahimsa on their website.
They’re not kidding—they’ll bring their work right into your home. Epilogue, a new play by ensemble member Matthew Chester, presents “three people talking after the end of the world… a complex interpersonal drama/comedy exploring fear, hope, and the unknown.” The show began a tour of living rooms scattered around LA and OC this past weekend; it continues through October 30. Tickets are $5.
Ahimsa, which promotes non-violence through art, is two-faced; their resident clown troupe, Everybody Nose, appears to have more than a few tricks up their sleeve. Look for their version of A Christmas Carol this holiday season. Meanwhile, they’re offering a two-day clown workshop in Westwood November 14-15.
Theatre in YOUR Livingroom
October 5, 2009
NOHO Arts District
Epilogue is a new work by Matthew Chester, an emerging playwright and recent graduate of Skidmore College in New York. It is, simply put, three people talking after the end of the world. Un-simply, it is a complex interpersonal drama/comedy exploring fear, hope, and the unknown.
The Ahimsa Collective strives to make challenging art readily accessible. So we’re doing away with lots of middlemen and bringing our work directly to the audience. Right onto their couch.
We’ll be mounting a brand new play and touring it through actual living rooms all throughout Los Angeles. Art costs too much—too much for the artists, too much for the audience. We want to cut around theatre rental fees, expensive rights issues, ticket mark-up in the name of profit, and all the other little bureaucratic traps new theatre faces. We’re making this because we love the art and we love bringing people together around it. We’ll visit living rooms of various size, shape, and socio-economic standing, and reach a diverse sampling of the local population. We believe that communities thrive through an abundance of art, so we’ll be going directly into these local communities and starting a dialogue.
Since every night's show is in a new house, every night is opening night! We want to celebrate our generous hosts’ house by throwing an opening night reception for each show, a chance for all involved to share our passion for accessible theatre and to discuss an exciting original work. There’ll be wine, cheese, friends, family, community and theatre (or, living room, as it were). The tour will run throughout the entire month of October, with a total of fourteen performances. If this sounds daunting, fear not, the Ahimsa Collective has done this before
In early 2008, we brought Slow Through Eden, a new play by Aaron J. Sussman, through fourteen living rooms in Orange County, creating fourteen unique artistic experiences and reaching at least 300 audience members.
A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT:
This is a play about a few things, but it’s mostly about hope and despair, strength and weakness, need and want. It’s about how people will always find reasons to move forward, and reasons to give up. It’s about people discovering the limits of their resolve, if they have them. Everyone’s different, and to make matters worse, each person is different at different times. But if there’s one thing I hope you’ll come away with after seeing the play, it’s this: We are much stronger than we know.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:
Matthew Chester is a writer, actor, and tries to direct every five years or so. He is the playwright of Epilogue, written for the Ahimsa Collective’s The Living Room Tour, an original play being toured throughout Southern California in living rooms volunteered by friends of The Ahimsa Collective. He graduated from Skidmore College in 2008 with a B.A in English and a minor in Theater. He wrote the book for Rufio: King of the Lost Boys, a musical spectacular, and his own play, Despite Everything, which he directed. He has acted in several Skidmore productions, a play in the New York Fringe Festival called On Air Off, and performs in the improv/sketch troupe The Younger Statesmen. Matthew Chester blogs at Rockstar Sunset Feelings.
Community Pool: Collective Art Party
August 30, 2009
Bored LA
Community Pool is one of those fantastic events, where the community comes together to share a great time for a great cause. Tonight, if you’re looking for a humanitarian effort to motivate you to leave air conditioning and queen-sized beds on a smokey Sunday evening, head down to Venice to celebrate proximity with The Ahimsa Collective – a performing arts organization devoted to spreading non-violence through art. A music/art based event in Los Angeles? But, of course!
There will be music from The Voodoo Fix, Andrew Heringer, Magza C. Creature, and BaulPointPen. People will be funny, including the handsome Younger Statesmen improv group and Carly Nykanen. There will be clowns (I’m sorry if i just scared anyone by writing the word “clowns”), a DJ, and a visual installation game. I don’t know what a visual installation game is, but I can take some guesses. I bet it’s pretty dope.
Just in case the above isn’t enough stimulation for our humdrum minds, there will also be tarot card readers, live art, energy consulting (?), lego’s, trivia, video games, and massages. I like all of these things. This is fantastic.
