Agnes Magyari

Cloe Kromwell (as Terra), John Colella (as Miles, the Paul Giamatti role in the film), Jonathan Bray (as Jack, the Thomas Haden Church role), and Julia McIlvaine (as Maya, the Virginia Madsen role)

Rex Pickett's excitement has superseded his exhaustion during the final weeks of rehearsal for his new play Sideways, opening this weekend at Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica. Having adapted the play from his own novel, Pickett is busy making final tweaks to the script and participating in post-show talkbacks, not to mention developing a pilot for HBO. "It's exhilarating, and it's maddening at the same time," Pickett says.

Sideways originated as a semi-autobiographical novel chronicling two friends -- Miles and Jack -- on an existential adventure across the Santa Ynez wine country just before Jack ties the knot. Adapted into an acclaimed film by Alexander Payne in 2004, Sideways gave the valley's tourist industry a palpable boost and increased the profile of Pinot noir across the world. "The Sideways phenomenon, or brand, or whatever you'd want to call it, is huge," Pickett explains. "With the play, it gives fans of Sideways another way to experience it."

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Paul T. Bradley

Jessica Hanna's Moment of Triumph

"Everybody threw-fucking-down tonight," says an exhausted Jessica Hanna to her entourage.

Hanna ought to be exhausted -- she is, after all a champion. Just minutes before, she had bested a handful of other ladies in an over-the-top spectacle feat of strength -- and ok, some finesse -- in what was billed as L.A.'s first ever competitive ladies arm wrestling championship.

In the final, Hanna crushed Ladystache, who wore the shame of defeat on her fake facial hair while her conqueror raised an arm with Rosie the Riveter-level pride.

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Katie Gould

(Left to right) Terence McFarland, Alice Tuan, Steven Leigh Morris, Frances Baum Nicholson, Deidrie Henry and Don Shirley at L.A. Stage Alliance's recent arts criticism panel

On the heels of a panel discussion on arts criticism at KPCC's Crawford Family Forum last week, hosted by Los Angeles Stage Alliance, blogger Colin Mitchell of the website Bitter Lemons critiqued the critics by posing "the question nobody asked: How are theater critics going to remain relevant in a climate where their opinions simply mean less and less?"

Mitchell did praise critics as being vital as historians and contextualizers. But to support his assertion about the growing irrelevance of educated critics to the larger culture, he alluded to so many newspapers' decisions to ax veteran critics, citing the recent, infuriating exit from Back Stage of two highly respected senior local critics and editors, Dany Margolies and Les Spindle. He also noted the ascent of blog critics to fill the void left by the diminishing ranks of print media critics. "All I'm saying is they, the [remaining print] critics, better find a way to remain relevant to an audience that is slowly but surely leaving them in the dust."

Mitchell's Bitter Lemons site has been around four years now, aggregating stage reviews from print and online sources, serving as a community bulletin board and serving up hefty portions of commentary in a fearless, funny and unabashedly vainglorious manner. Anybody who can prompt serious discussion with such personal animation as Mitchell does provides a valuable service.

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Bill Raden

Opera experimentalist Yuval Sharon

A funny thing happened to Yuval Sharon on his way to a planned career as a film director. While studying at UC Berkeley, he decided to go to the opera. The production was Wozzeck by Alban Berg. To prepare, he listened to a recording at home and found his imagination fired by Berg's searing, atonal chromatic expressionism. Image after powerful image assailed him as he imagined the staging and what the performance would feel like sitting in the audience. Then he went to the opera house. Compared to his vision, the production seemed boring and bloodless, dispiritingly conventional.

The evening was an epiphany. Certainly such works deserved a better theatrical treatment than this. And he was just the man to do it.

Fast-forward to a recent, overcast morning at the Atwater Crossing complex, where Sharon stands in a raw warehouse he's transforming into the kind of opera house he imagined years before at Berkeley. It's no Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Crisscrossed by wooden ramps and dominated by seven towering, sculptural set pieces, it looks more like an art installation at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

In fact, it is the stage for the new experimental opera Sharon is directing as the inaugural production of the Industry, the avant opera company he formed this year with his partner, producer Laura Kay Swanson. Now in the final stretch of rehearsals, the production will be a world premiere of composer Anne LeBaron and librettist Douglas Kearney's Crescent City, which Sharon fell in love with when he was programming New York Opera's acclaimed new-works showcase VOX.

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Mark Baer, 2009

You might say that Fellowship! The Musical Parody of The Fellowship of the Ring has gone there and back again.

After originating at NoHo's El Portal Theatre in 2004 and winning L.A. Weekly Theater Awards for Best Comedy Ensemble and Best Musical of 2005, Fellowship! played to great acclaim in San Diego and at the 2010 New York Musical Theatre Festival. The musical has now returned to L.A.'s Steve Allen Theater, performing each Friday night through June 29, and its local fan base couldn't be happier.

Just ask Suzanne the "Button Lady" -- assistant teacher by day, Fellowship! superfan by night. Suzanne saw Fellowship! for the first time at the Met Theater in 2005. She has since created dozens of unique button designs with logos and quotes from the show.

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Mark Berndt

USC School of Dramatic Arts Dean Madeline Puzo

What's in a name? Would that which we call the USC School of Theatre by any other name smell as sweet?

Sweeter, apparently, or so it might seem from the announcement this week by the esteemed acting school that the institution will henceforth be officially known as the USC School of Dramatic Arts.

For a school that has produced a roster of distinguished, marquee alumni including Forest Whitaker, Deborah Ann Woll, Tate Donovan, Swoosie Kurtz, Kyra Sedgwick, Eric Stoltz and LeVar Burton, the rechristening immediately raised the question of what connotations the phrase "dramatic arts" might encompass that the word "theater" (or "theatre," as the school spelled it) didn't already cover?

An outside observer might point out the similarity between the name switch and that of its richer and more famous sister school of film, which changed its name from the School of Cinema-Television to the School of Cinematic Arts in 2006 and five months later received a whopping $175 million endowment from director George Lucas (class of '67). Cynics from the region's struggling stage community might sadly shake their heads at what might be implied by the ominously literal elimination of the word "theater."

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Haruko Tanaka

Joe Seely and Jasmine Orpilla in promo photo for See What Love the Father Has for Us

God and Jesus have a sex scene in act two of See What Love the Father Has Given Us, artist Asher Hartman's three-act trip into the weirdness of the Holy Trinity, currently at Machine Project in Echo Park. This scene plays out on top of a table that an audience of no more than twelve sits around.

Depending on where you're seated, the action might be uncomfortable, but it's not especially explicit. While there are tangled embraces, charged caresses and some crawling and mounting, no clothes come off, and the encounter ends abruptly when God, a taut, petite dark-haired girl, pulls away from the ganglier, milder Christ. "You would put your tongue in your own father's mouth?" she says with some disgust.

The table Father and Son are on is in a makeshift box-store break room. Both actors wear red Circuit City shirts with khakis, and they make sure their boss, Smoke, who channels the Holy Spirit when not chastising employees or pitching electronics, will not interrupt before they let things get heated.

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Tim Norris

A sacrifice to the gods

Blending droll wit and broad farce, sketch-comedy troupe Lost Moon Radio hosted the 33rd annual L.A. Weekly Theater Awards Monday night in a taut show at Avalon in Hollywood, handing out more than 30 awards in less than two hours.

The "Lawees" honor the best stage work in theaters of 99 seats or less during the previous calendar year, 2011. The awards are selected by a committee consisting mainly of L.A. Weekly theater reviewers.

Under Lauren Ludwig's direction, the company themed the event as the first-ever theater awards in Athens, circa 450 B.C. -- the Lawees being named after "Laweenius -- muse of self-congratulation," as one presenter put it.

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John P. Flynn

Small Engine Repair

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​L.A. Weekly 's 33rd annual theater awards took place tonight at the Avalon in Hollywood, honoring the best work on our small stages from 2011, as judged by our theater critics. Small Engine Repair presented by Rogue Machine at Theatre/Theater won production of the year, while Re-Animator The Musical, House of Gold and Way to Heaven were also among the winners. Here's the full list of nominations, with the winners in bold:
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Star Foreman

This week is our annual theater issue, which looks at ensemble-created work -- work that's not written by a playwright typing alone on a computer but created during collaborative rehearsals involving an entire company of actors and directors.

The issue includes an essay from our head theater critic Steven Leigh Morris on the overall phenomenon, plus profiles of three companies who embody this kind of work -- Poor Dog Group, Theatre Movement Bazaar and the Troubadours -- written by Bill Raden and Rebecca Haithcoat. Rebecca also wrote about the chaotic travels of a theater company, charting how Poor Dog over the last year and a half has been constantly racing back and forth from one festival or conference to another.

And, finally, online only is a slideshow from Star Foreman's photo shoot for the issue (note that it's a little racy, and thus not safe for work).

The issue is in honor of our annual L.A. Weekly Theater Awards, which takes place on Monday, April 2.

In our outtakes from the issue, two people involved with these companies talked about the most horrifying moments they've experienced during the process:

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