2006/ Pageant of the 4 Seasons, a 99 Only Modern Something
visit orpheancircus.com for extensive 99 Cent Only Show info.
Costumes by Ann Closs-Farley and her fabulous West Coast Design Posse

Review: it must be said that the star of the show is again the outrageously whimsical Garland Award-winning costuming by Ann Closs-Farley and her crew, resplendent with bathmat corsets, overskirts fashioned from laundry baskets, dangling votive candleholder earrings, and tablecloth gowns accessorized by tap-on closet lights. This year’s chapter of 99-Cent goofiness should be another sell-out, a new Los Angeles holiday tradition certainly worth celebrating.

“Don’t try to make sense of Ken Roht’s holiday spectaculars. Just let the images wash over you as he conjures abstract dance dramas in costumes brilliantly assembled from items at 99 Cents Only Stores.”

Ken Roht’s annual 99¢ Only shows suggest a demented blend of low-budget Ziegfeld Follies, an earth-bound Cirque du Soleil and the kind of performance neighborhood kids put on in somebody’s garage…

A team of Los Angeles’ most creative designers to whip up western glamour out of pool toys, plastic tablecloths, kitchen utensils and anything else that can be found on a shelf at the 99Cent Only Stores!!

BOOTLEG THEATRE & GANG OF TWO
AN ORPHEAN CIRCUS PRODUCTION
WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY: Ken Rhot
MUSIC BY: Marc Jackson, O-Lan Jones, Curtis Heard & Ken Roht
VOCAL ARRANGEMENTS BY: Curtis Heard
COSTUME DESIGN: Ann Closs-Farley w/Anthony Garcia, Barbara Lempel, Robert Prior, Kirk Wilson, Steve Roche, Audrey Eisner, Cynthia Herteg, Suzanne Scott, Andy Dobson, Mark Crowell, Miguel Montalvo, and many many more….
SET DESIGN: Karen Steward
LIGHTING DESIGN: John Eckert
VIDEO DESIGN: Jeremiah Thies w/ Jeff Teeter
SOUND DESIGN: Adam Phelan
MUSIC DIRECTOR: Graham Jackson
STAGE MANAGER: Russell Boast
PRODUCER: Jessica Hanna
CAST: Greg Ainsworth, Don Allen, Sissy Boyd, Joe Fria, Deonne Geib, Shannon Ggem, Jessica Hanna, Jamison John Hebert, Graham Jackson, Angela Kang, Kristen–Lee Kelly, Jennifer Li, Ruby McCollister, Brandon Roht, Cody Roht, Ian Rotundo, Raul Clayton Staggs, Ryan Templeton, Jessica Vanrossem, Lola Ward, Will Watkins and Jabez Zuniga

Best of 99 Cent Only Dance Extravaganzas

“I’ve become a 99¢ Only Stores junkie. My morning trip coincides with my first corner cup of coffee. I shuffle cup in hand, bed-haired and crusty eyed, down each aisle, not looking for the bargain, necessarily, but looking for the opportunities. My best and worst moment happened right there in the store when I decided that all of this stuff needed to decorate a holiday dance show of mine.
So, for weeks I had to finish my coffee before embarking on my explorations of the store so that I could have both hands free to fit plastic baskets on my head, marvel at the many design possibilities of a 99¢ bra, bounce every item that just might return to me from the floor (some didn’t… I had to buy them… only a dollar!) and calculate just how many pleated skirts could be extracted from one vinyl, floral table cloth. My god, it’s endless.
“I called the 99¢ Only Stores headquarters in the City of Commerce and they received their new disciple with open arms. I was given a grand golf cart tour of their giant warehouse, bulging with a billion do-dads. I was ushered past the door to door salespeople attempting to unload another 5000 light bulbs and was gifted with a bounty of 99¢ Only shirts, thousands of 99¢ Only stickers, three hundred dollars worth of 99¢ Only money, two huge ‘Coming Soon’ banners and a 99¢ Only beach ball… with all their blessings to make a fabulous holiday show. And that’s what we’ve done.”

-Ken Rhot (Writer, Director, and Choreographer 99 Cent Only Shows)

Route 99: Orange Star Dinner Show
For the 4th year in a row Ken Roht, surrealist impresario, returns to the Evidence Room with a new 99 Cent Only musical! Once again Ken creates a brand new musical extravaganza of plastic and fun. This time setting the festivities in a Wyoming dinner theater. Come on down and enjoy Orange Star’s hospitality and delicious home cookin’. Again, John Ballinger is co-composer (with Roht) and arranger. Ann Closs-Farley and Keith Mitchell are back to head a team of Los Angeles’ most creative designers to whip up western glamour out of pool toys, plastic tablecloths, kitchen utensils and anything else that can be found on a shelf at the 99Cent Only Stores!! This year’s talented cast includes returnees from 99Cents Shows past and new players to add spice to what we’re serving up.
Come see Michael Bonnabel, Sissy Boyd, Alex Brown, Tad Conoghour, Patty Cornell, Shannon Hart Cleary, Ann Closs Farley, Joe Fria, Liz Guilliams, Jamie Hebert, Graham Jackson, Colleen Kane, Angela Kang, Beth Mack, Laural Meade, Jennifer Moyse, Ian Rotundo, Don Oscar Smith, Kat Meyer Smith, Raul Staggs, Ryan Templeton, Kirk Wilson, Jabez Zuniga and Michael Dunn as Orange Star.

Peace Squad Goes 99, The Greatest 99¢ Only Story Ever Told…EVER!
Fun for the whole family until the Bogeymen take over.
Then, anything can happen in the Hall of Hollow Mirrors!

Splendor: A 99 Only Stores Wonderama
“How to describe Ken Roht’s new dance/design extravaganza, “Splendor: A 99 Cents Only Stores Wonderama”? Well, if Busby Berkeley had dropped acid while watching “The Powerpuff Girls” … or if Howard Crabtree and Pina Bausch staged a discount retail trade show … or if Cirque du Soleil and the Smurfs staged an avant-garde “Nutcracker” at a strip mall…”

When Swan Lake premiered in 1877, it lasted 33 performances. Satie’s Parade was nearly booed off the stage in 1917–and patrons who didn’t walk out hurled things at the musicians. Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch spent the first years of their careers watching theatres evacuate whenever their outrageous/courageous works debuted. For L.A.’s own resident auteur Ken Roht, opening a new show is met with a different response: His cast heaves things at the audience before anyone has a chance to retaliate. Watching this expanded second-annual holiday all-singing, all-dancing visual carnival–featuring a unique cast of 30 wearing costumes and carrying props created exclusively with items from 99-Cent Only stores–is akin to experiencing a living hallucination. Luckily the chimeras crowding Roht’s delightfully demented mind are interpreted by some of the most talented counterculture artisans in L.A. and vicinity, a dream assemblage ready to try anything their mentor asks them to do. This is because Roht creates without concern for any pre-established rules, this year incorporating a narrative history of the 99-Cent Only Stores’ achievements with a wonderfully bizarre Flash Gordon-like storyline concerning the androgynous Golden Boy, whose worship provokes battles between the Frenchies and the Crusties fought with oven mitts and plastic dip trays. Notable amid the uniformly gifted cast, Kirk Wilson offers an effete, snarling Ming the Merciless, tooling around in a tinseled golf cart, and Don Oscar Smith is Q, a huckster who recites a recurring barrage of details chronicling the chain store’s phenomenal success, augmented by a few ultra-cool Blues Brothers moves. Ann Closs-Farley wins hearts as a fiery Latin showgirl, tossing an unending supply of hard candy to the crowd, as does Beth Mack as a 99-Cent Only junkie resorting to a 12-step group in her moment of consumer crisis. Fourteen-year-old Chris Ibenhard makes an auspicious L.A. stage debut as the endearing Golden Boy, hitting the rafters with a final bluesy solo that belies both his age and his stature. Featuring original music by John Ballinger, inventive scenic design by Keith Mitchell featuring Sun detergent boxes as its anchor, and unbelievably fanciful costumes by Closs-Farley, Barbara Lempel, and Anthony Garcia that are themselves works of folk art, Splendor is like a Cirque du Soleil spectacular on a $500 budget. Does all this suggest that one day Roht could be up there alongside Tchaikovsky, Satie, and the others? You bet. As were those other groundbreaking geniuses, Roht is a poetic madman–and Angelenos get to take this annual one-of-a-kind Fellini-meets Dr. Seuss holiday journey right along with him.

— Travis Michael Holder
99¢ Only Store
Press Review

The 99¢ Only Store World of Bargain Entertainment Dance Extravaganza

When Ken Roht looks at Mylar thong underwear, he sees an exotic headdress. In Roht’s mind, an inexpensive bucket can become a hat augmented by colorful feather-duster plumes (a bargain at 99¢ apiece). For the award-winning choreographer, the 99¢ Only Store is a treasure-trove of mundane objects with endless possibilities—even toilet brushes can become whimsical puppets. Roht is a self-described “99¢ Only Store junkie” who now wants to take his obsession public. The result is The 99¢ Only Store World of Bargain Entertainment Dance Extravaganza, a new work conceived, choreographed and directed by Roht. With a cast of nearly 30, the performance focuses on joy, excess and American consumerism. Although conspicuous consumption is one of the underlying themes, this isn’t a show about corporate bad guys. Roht says that Bargain Entertainment in no way mocks the 99¢ Only Store chain: The company is co-sponsoring the piece. Bargain Entertainment features dance vignettes showcasing the pleasures of abundance—99¢ Only—style. In addition to movement pieces, the performance features music, puppets, spoken-word excerpts from corporate reports and actors riding around the stage on shopping carts. The music is by John Ballinger, with an additional song—”99¢ Only Rap”—by John Zalewski and Erik Patterson. O-Lan Jones and Laural Meade are among the musical performers, and dance artists include Sissy Boyd, Tamar Fortgang and Scarlett Rouge. Aside from a few foundation garments, all of the costumes created by Ann Closs-Farley, Rebecca Heron, Robert Prior and Kirk Wilson are made from products sold at 99¢ Only Stores; likewise with Keith Mitchell’s set design. Playwright Peter Nieves has supplied some additional text. Asked whether Bargain Entertainment is a seasonal performance, Roht says, “It’s a holiday show, but there’s nothing Christmas-y about it,” adding, “It’s more like a peace rally. There’s even a dancer named Peace [Harambe].”…

— Sandra Ross

Dressed to the 99s

By Diane Haithman
November 29, 2005

A day with costume designer Ann Closs-Farley lends new meaning to the phrase “holiday shopping.”

Closs-Farley has worked with just about every small theater in town. But when the holidays roll around, ruffly muffin cups and coffee filters, clear packing tape, plastic fruit, rubber rafts, paper tablecloths and shower accessories are just a few of her favorite things.

For the last four seasons, Closs-Farley, 34, has designed the costumes for the “99 Cents Only Holiday Extravaganza” at the Evidence Room, affectionately known to company members as “The 99.”

For the most part, all costumes for the show are created with items from the 99 Cents Only Stores, a chain of enticing shopping palaces in which any item, no matter how fabulous, can be yours for less than a dollar.

Growing up on a farm in Arizona, Closs-Farley was No. 9 in a family of 14 children. “I had no identity whatsoever,” she recalls. “We used to have a count-off when I was a kid: ‘One?’ ‘Here.’ ‘Two?’ ‘Here.’ ‘Three?’ ‘Here’

“Growing up with seven other sisters, I always chopped up my clothes and made them new because there was no way

Ken Roht, who writes, directs and choreographs the show, says the idea for the family-oriented musicals was conceived during strolls through the 99 Cents Only aisles, sipping his morning coffee. “I wanted to do a holiday show, but I didn’t want to make a conventional one. I saw plastic bowls and plates and plungers; I just kept seeing such theatrical possibility.”

At the 99 Cents Only Store at Sunset Boulevard and Maltman Avenue in Silver Lake, Closs-Farley sees it too – although she moves so fast through the 99 Cents Only aisles it’s hard to imagine how she manages to focus. Her shopping motto: “If you can’t get it in 20 minutes, you should probably leave.”

Closs-Farley is embarking on one of the many budget shopping sprees for this year’s show, a western extravaganza called “Route 99: The Orange Star Dinner Show,” opening Saturday at the Evidence Room theater, near downtown Los Angeles.

This will be the first 99 Cents show to have both regular seating ($15) and an admission that includes dinner ($25), prepared beforehand by Michael Dunn, who plays Orange Star – not only a carrot-topped lovely but right handy ‘round the kitchen too. In real life, Dunn is a chef and one of the show’s producers.

Closs-Farley – a 2004 Drama Critics Circle Award winner who has distinguished herself as costume designer for productions at the Actors’ Gang Theatre, Long Beach Opera, the Coronet Theater and others – could probably control a heftier costume budget elsewhere. She is, after all, the creator of the costume for Miss New Mexico, Petrola Da Border, for the 2005 “Best in Drag” AIDS fundraiser at the Wilshire Ebell Theater.

But there’s no escaping destiny: No. 9 had to move on to “The 99.” Daughters Violet, 5, and Ruby, 3, offer costume critiques, and her husband, Keythe Farley, co-writer of the musical “Bat Boy,” performed in the early “99 Cents Only” shows and remains unfailingly supportive. “We met as dance partners in a musical in Japan. How weird is that?” Closs-Farley says.

For the first couple of years, Closs-Farley designed and made all the costumes herself and also appeared in the show. But last year’s mega-production included 56 actors and more that 280 costume pieces, so Closs-Farley and Roht gave basic guidelines and $50 each to nine of Closs-Farley’s designer friends and told them to “go play.” This year, with 20 actors and about 45 costume pieces, there is an ever-growing list of designers, including 7-year-old Isabelle Adams, who will get some guidance from her artist mom. The costume budget has been in the $1,000 range, and the average budget for an outfit is $10 to $15.

As she charges through the parking lot, Closs-Farley observes that each 99 Cents Only Store has its own character. The one at Sunset and Maltman is “pretty relaxed, but it has everything – I always find golden goods there, and the Normandie store. The one in Pasadena, off Colorado? Wow.”

Only the wigs are purchased elsewhere, from ersatz-hair maven Eun Ja “Ellen” You at Hollywood Wig on Hollywood Boulevard, who has supported Closs-Farley’s wig habit for more than a decade and remains unfazed by the requests for hairpieces in electric blue and traffic-cone orange.

But right now, it’s the 99 Cents Only Store, and green is the color as Closs-Farley races through the immaculate aisles for materials for the costume for Green Clover – named, like several other characters, after the shapes of those Styrofoam-textured mini-marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal.

“What we use most is tablecloths and all the plastic goods,” she says, busily collecting contact paper, zip ties, swim goggles and hula skirts. “Silverware becomes corsets or fans; straws can become corsets because they are nice and sturdy. We use a lot of dust mops, Hula Hoop skirts

The tablecloths serve as fabric for dresses, shirts and pants. Along the way Closs-Farley has learned that sweat destroys the paper and plastic items, so now the clothing is lined with clear packing tape – not exactly breathable, but durable.

It usually takes about eight hours to “build” a costume. But the next afternoon, at her studio in borrowed space on the second floor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard, Closs-Farley proudly announces that it took her only three hours to turn burly actor Jabez Zuniga into the dainty, breathless Green Clover – oh-so-feminine except for the husky, hairy legs peeking out from beneath his skirt.

Green Christmas tree balls and tiny green stars decorate the dress, trimmed with muffin cup ruffles, pipe cleaners and colorful tufts from the grass skirts purchased the day before.

Jabez also wears a candy necklace, and curls of green ribbon decorate the fluffy green Afro, courtesy of Hollywood Wig. A green felt game table cover becomes a fashionable Las Vegas-themed cape. To finish off the outfit, Closs-Farley kneels to cover Jabez’s black-and-white sneakers with green plastic tape.

“It’s the best Christmas fun – it’s like Christmas morning,” Closs-Farley says. “When the curtain goes up, kids go crazy. It’s like a wonderland.”

Observes Greg Reiner, managing director of the Actors’ Gang: “She’s a genius. She knows how to take a 99 Cents Only Stores budget and make it look like a million bucks.”

Corporate leaders of 99 Cents Only Stores, which has 227 stores in four states, are enthusiastic sponsors, donating goods and even arranging to have one of their delivery trucks outside the Evidence Room during performances as a free billboard.

“The first year, we thought they were pulling our chain,” says Chief Executive Eric Schiffer, who dislikes his title because, at 99 Cents Only Stores, “the customer is really the CEO.” “But we played along, and they were for real. We’re happy to keep doing it – I don’t know of another public company that has a relationship like this. Last year they had a 99 Cent Rap, rapping about ramen noodles and tinfoil

But he expressed some disappointment that that 99 Cents Only Stores food will not be used for the dinner. “That would be even funnier.”

*

‘99 Cents Only Holiday Extravaganza’

Where: Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Opens Saturday; 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays

Ends: Dec. 18

Price: $15, show only; $25, show plus dinner

Contact: (213) 381-7118

Here’s the L.A. Weekly article, with a picture of me playing the hoochie mama:

Costume designer Ann Closs-Farley is in the basement of the Evidence Room theater holding up a little orphan “Annie dress,” as she calls it, made from bright-red plastic tablecloths reinforced on either side by clear, glossy packing tape. With a sweet Peter Pan collar made from coffee filters, the 3-foot-tall dress is so stiff it nearly stands up by itself.

“Packing tape is a major part of these costumes. We have a thousand-dollar budget from the theater, and half of that goes to tape,” says Closs-Farley, who this year will oversee the design and construction of all 89 costumes for Ken Roht’s annual musical Christmas pageant, “Route 99”: Orange Star Dinner Show.

The way the light bounces off the tape makes each actor look like a present, Closs-Farley says. [Each costume] has to be sealed on both sides,” she explains. “The first year we discovered if you don’t [tape] the back, the cast’s sweat dissolves the tablecloths.”

Closs-Farley, an award-winning 10-year veteran of the Evidence Room — and a 12-year veteran of the Actors’ Gang — has been designing the costumes for Roht’s 99-cent-store extravaganza for the past four years.

What originally began as an ambitious one-woman affair has now ballooned into a 17-person costume team, which this year includes: Mark Crowell, former personal hairdresser to tap legend Ann Miller; Audry Fisher of the Mark Taper Forum’s design team; Tina Zimmerman, a tow-truck company owner from Sunland who, after seeing last year’s show, begged to help out; and 7-year-old Isabelle Adams, daughter of Evidence Room owners Jason Adams and Alicia Hoge.

“It’s really becoming a community,” Closs-Farley says of her ever-expanding crew. “Once people start with ‘the 99’ they get addicted,” she winks, nodding toward Crowell, who is brushing out a black wig in the corner.

Made entirely from items purchased from, or donated by, the 99 Cents Only Stores chain, Closs-Farley’s Seussian costumes have such a witty sophistication, they seem like a new-millennial twist on Marcel Duchamp’s notions of ready-made or found art.

“The 99-cent store gave us a donation and that was worth quite a bit. I’m not quite sure how much — they gave us boxes and boxes of stuff. I have to say we have more money this year than ever before, and less people in the cast. I give each designer all their basics, like tablecloths and tape, and different elements that I think the character should have, and then I give them 25 bucks to play with.

“A package of combs and some tinsel goes a long way,” adds Closs-Farley, illustrating her point while pulling out a top hat from last year’s production. The costume prop is made from pink, white, and black plastic combs sealed in clear packing tape.