LA Stage Alliance announced the 2008 Ovation Award Nominees this week. Congrats to all. I’m lucky to be included a category of such amazingly talented designers. I’m honored. Congrats to my fellow nominees. Thank you for being such an important part of Los Angeles story telling. It’s a hard job. I’m grateful for you.
COSTUME DESIGN
Ann Closs-Farley
NORMAN’S ARK
John Anson Ford Theatre and DuHirst Music (US) Ltd.
Marcy Froehlich
BUS STOP
Rubicon Theatre Company
Marcy Froehlich
PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE
Rubicon Theatre Company
Shon Le Blanc
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Rubicon Theatre Company
Sharell Martin and Ambra Wakefield
JEKYLL & HYDE
FCLO Music Theatre
Paul Tazewell
RAY CHARLES LIVE – A NEW MUSICAL
Pasadena Playhouse
Naomi Yoshida
PIPPIN
East West Players
COSTUME DESIGN – INTIMATE THEATRE
Stephanie Kerley-Schwartz & Lauren Tyler
COMPLEAT FEMALE STAGE BEAUTY
Rogue Machine; Produced by John Perrin Flynn and Matthew Elkins
Gelareh Khalioun
AND NEITHER HAVE I WINGS TO FLY
Road Theatre Company
Scott A. Lane
PEST CONTROL – THE MUSICAL
Open at the Top Productions and Canum Entertainment
Shon Le Blanc
THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP HERE ANYMORE
Fountain Theatre; Produced by Ben Bradley and Diana Gibson
Nalia Sanders
THE PIANO LESSON
The Hayworth, Stagewalkers Productions and 444 Productions
A. Jeffrey Shoenberg
1776
Actors Co-op/Crossley Theatre
A. Jeffrey Shoenberg
TONIGHT AT 8:30 – PART II: COME THE WILD
The Antaeus Company
All summer folks have been asking me when I’m going to start teaching classes again, and I finally have an answer for you. September 15.
I’m going to be offering my Intro to Animation and Games class on six Monday nights (Sept 15- Oct 20) from 7-10pm, and my Creating ¡Kick Ass! Characters class on Wednesdays (Sept 17- Oct 22) at the same time. I keep class size to ten actors each, because smaller classes mean more chances to work, and because the studio won’t hold any more than that. So, let me know ASAP if you are interested in studying with me this fall.
Keythe is a voice director who has directed five seasons of the RUGRATS television series, and both seasons of AS TOLD BY GINGER for Nickelodeon. He is currently casting and directing voices for video games including TRANSFORMERS, GOD OF WAR (1, 2 and PSP), RESISTANCE: RETRIBUTION, AREA 51, SYPHON FILTER: LOGAN’S SHADOW and GHOST RECON 2 among others. Keythe is also the co-author of the Off Broadway hit “Bat Boy: The Musical.” Keythe has appeared as voice talent on AAHHH!!! REAL MONSTERS, RUGRATS, and in commercials for IBM, Toyota, Caesar’s Palace and National Geographic among others.
Intro to Voice Over for Animation and Games
A six-week intro to working in cartoons and games. Keythe works with you to assess your vocal range and personal style, and then gives you the tools to create characters that you can repeat consistently.
Week One- Keythe will spend some time getting to know what your long-term goals are, as well as what you hope to get out of the class, and then you will go into the booth and Keythe will lead you through an interview process with characters you create as you go. This will give him an idea of what your range and style are, and will help him choose characters for you to work on for the remainder of the class.
Week Two- During this class you’ll receive a packet with three characters personally selected for you. You’ll learn how to break down a script so that you are communicating the story clearly, and you’ll begin working with these characters developing sincere emotional states that are informed by the stakes present in the material.
Weeks Three and Four- More single character work. Keythe will work intensively with you to develop your ability to nail the material in two takes while deepening your states and stakes.
Week Five- Introduce scene work. You’ll begin working with other actors in the class on scenes from animated series and games.
Week Six- Depending on the interest of the class, you will either continue with scene work, or Keythe will invite you to present a showcase of your characters in action—a three to five minute presentation that you will write yourself.
Cost of the class is $425. A $200 deposit will hold your place in class and the balance is due on the first night. Send checks, payable to Keythe Farley to:
Kick Ass Voice Over
11936 Weddington St. #26
Valley Village, CA 91607
Creating ¡Kick Ass! Characters
This intensive is for students who have completed the Intro class, or similar studies with another teacher, and who are ready to develop a stable of clear, repeatable characters in order to create a demo or expand their repertoire. At the end of this six-week intensive, you will have created at least twenty original characters.
The class begins with an in-depth approach to creating memorable and durable characters that suit your personal strengths as a performer. Each following week, you will create five original characters and present them to the class. Keythe will work with you to hone the characters so that they are tailored both to your natural strengths and to the needs of the industry at large, and will provide scripts from animated series and video games that suit the characters you have created. The final class is a 2-3 minute presentation of your personal stable of characters.
Cost of the class is $425. A $200 deposit will hold your place in class and the balance is due on the first night. Send checks, payable to Keythe Farley to:
Kick Ass Voice Over
11936 Weddington St. #26
Valley Village, CA 91607
Hope to see you in class.
All the Best,
Keythe Farley
kickassvo@sbcglobal.net
310-590-7234
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].”…
2007 Santa Monica Arts Festival / Re:Fashion Workshop
Workshops — hands-on art for all ages (such as creating wearable fashions using recycled materials, led by critically acclaimed costumer Ann-Closs Farley)
Santa Monica Arts Festival 2008
This year’s Art Workshops focus on creating fantastic works using recycled and re-purposed materials. Families have an opportunity to create fabulous new fashions from recycled newspapers at the re:Fashion Workshop, Season 2 with award winning costume designer Ann Closs-Farley and then strut their earth friendly fashion down the re:Fashion Catwalk with a special appearance by Sweet P from Project Runway.
MOCA Family DAY
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1–3:30pm
moca grand avenue
What fabulous wearable sculptures can you create
with a grab bag of unusual materials? Get inspired
by the incredible innovations in Skin + Bones and
high-energy costume designer Ann Closs-Farley.
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