Nearly all of the shows in Radar L.A. have packed up their costumes and carted away their props, but theatergoers with a taste for adventure are still vibrating from the upsurge in voltage.
After a relatively sleepy summer, the theater scene was jolted back to life in September by a barrage of exciting productions, 18 of them under the Radar L.A. banner.
Few cities in the world could rival the breadth, depth and, yes, audacity of performance offerings marching through town last month.
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My theatergoing began the day after Labor Day at the Getty Villa, with Travis Preston's graceful revival of Aeschylus' rarely performed "Prometheus Bound," and climaxed last week at UCLA's Freud Playhouse, where "Shun-kin," the mesmerizing collaboration between the London-based Complicite and Japan's Setagaya Public Theatre, concluded its run Sunday.
In between there was Roger Guenveur Smith's sensational solo show "Rodney King" which, at the Kirk Douglas, provided glimpses of the man whose life became a flash point for racial tensions.
The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA would have produced "Shun-kin" without Radar L.A. affiliation, just as Center Theatre Group was all set to present "Rodney King" in its DouglasPlus lineup of solo works. (The Getty, collaborating with the CalArts Center for New Performance, in association with Trans Arts, offered "Prometheus Bound" as an enhanced version of its annual outdoor offering.)
Yet the large umbrella of this international festival of contemporary performance, presented by REDCAT and California Institute of the Arts, in association with Center Theatre Group, not only created a significant cultural event but allowed us to better appreciate the breathtaking scope of this unorthodox theater town.
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Were the experimental works showcased in downtown venues last weekend obscured somewhat by the bigger-tent offerings happening on the other side of the city? Quite possibly. But this is only the second installment of the festival (a spinoff of New York's Under the Radar festival) and the curators are still refining their West Coast formula.
Radar L.A.'s 2011 inaugural was held in June, which may be a better month than September, when the fall season is in full swing and the crush of openings creates undue competition. With the superb "R II" at the Theatre @ Boston Court, "Humor Abuse" at the Mark Taper Forum and a flotilla of other critically acclaimed productions crying out for our attention, it was as if a counter-festival was going on, which is great for those who like to pick and choose but difficult for theater lovers who want to experience as much of the best work as possible.
My Radar sample included a mix of international and local companies that encouraged the consideration of L.A. artists in a global context. Theatre Movement Bazaar's "Track 3," the L.A. troupe's vaudevillian take on Chekhov's "Three Sisters," thrived in this atmosphere, demonstrating to all lucky enough to catch this sprightly and sensitive riff at Los Angeles Theatre Center that its ensemble members are as disciplined and fearlessly original as any of the casts visiting from abroad.
In this category, I would single out for commendation the superb actors in Timbre 4's "Tercer Cuerpo," a fascinatingly desultory piece from Argentina in which office workers engaged in their daily routine are scrutinized under an existential lens. Part soap opera, part surreal meditation on loneliness and alienation, this production at Los Angeles Theatre Center worked in large measure because of the performers' earthiness, which grounded the bizarre fluidity of Claudio Tolcachir's drama in stubborn flesh and blood.
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It was helpful for me to see on consecutive nights "Hospital," a collaboration between Los Angeles Poverty Department and the Netherlands' Wunderbaum at Tower Theater, and "El Año en Que Nací" ("The Year I Was Born"), a piece at Los Angeles Theatre Center by a Chilean group under the direction of Argentine Lola Arias, who had previously staged a version of the work with actors in her home country.
Both "Hospital" and "El Año" are communally constructed yet infused with foreign perspective. And both are as concerned with the therapeutic value of the work for their performers as they are with raising the consciousness of their audiences.
Indeed, it's hard to separate these facets, because the politics of these productions are intrinsic to the creative process that brought them into existence. "Hospital," which examines the harsh economic realities of healthcare in the U.S., and "El Año," which investigates the harrowing family memories of 11 Chilean performers born during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, don't just mine the personal experiences of their collectives. They make us privy to the challenges of transforming this private material into public art.
"Hospital," which uses the medical history of Los Angeles Poverty Department founding artistic director John Malpede to tell a larger story, doesn't bring much new to a debate that has brought paralysis to Congress. But the union of this skid row collective with this Dutch troupe — as unlikely a pairing as you'll see — internationalizes the terrors of a free-market healthcare system.
"El año" is no doubt a more charged experience in Chile, where this history is still partly buried and traumatizing to discuss. Theatrically, the piece rambles, and like "Hospital" it occasionally gropes for theatrical effects that are cumbersome to set up. Yet the playful commitment of the ensemble carries the day.
The value of these works lies beyond their artistic refinement. One of the great joys of participating in Radar L.A. is the holiday it offers from the consumer mentality of theatergoing. ("You Should Have Stayed Home, Morons," the title of a piece by Rodrigo García staged in various downtown locales by Colombian director Manuel Orjuela, loudly brought this lesson home.) Let's hope the festival finds a way to become an annual sport.
charles.mcnulty@latimes.com
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