1984 at The Actors’ Gang

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw When George Orwell wrote 1984, he was responding to the totalitarian movements that swept Germany and Russia under Hitler and Stalin respectively. Published in 1949, the book was intended as a caution to those who mistakenly kept faith in the promise of Soviet communism.Read more… Now running through December 7

THE DOUBLE V at the Matrix Theatre

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw So entrenched was systemic racism in the U.S. in the early 1940s that patriotic African-Americans were turned away when they sought to fight for their country at the onset of World War II. Directed by Michael Arabian at the Matrix Theater, Carole Eglash-Kosoff’s play dramatizes the historical effort to allow … Read more

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY at the Fountain Theatre

Jonas Schwartz – BroadwayWorld BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY, which makes its Los Angeles debut at The Fountain Theatre, is a hard-hitting drama about wanderers, those unattached, ungrounded people who lack the support to make smart choices, but still deserve grace and hope. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2015, the play features all that … Read more

THE ABUELAS at Antaeus Theater Company at the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw The Abuelas is the second play by Stephanie Alison Walker to address the tragedy of Los Desaparecidos — Argentinian citizens who opposed the military junta that governed the country between 1976 and 1983 and who fell prey to the right-wing death squads that kidnapped, tortured and murdered thousands.Read more… Margaret Gray … Read more

GEM OF THE OCEAN at A Noise Within

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Gem of the Ocean, August Wilson’s play about sin, salvation and the power of the supernatural, takes place in 1904, a mere four decades following the end of the Civil War. Written near the close of his career (it was his next-to-the-last play, preceding his final work, Radio Golf), it serves … Read more

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN at Boston Court Pasadena

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Americans live in a culture which values the new, the shiny, the unimpaired. If a plate or cup chips, most of us throw it away. In Japan, it’s a different story. A Japanese philosophy, wabi-sab, teaches that worn or imperfect objects may have great value.Kintsugi, the repairing of broken pottery, … Read more

LAS MUJERES DEL MAR – Playwrights Arena at Atwater Village Theatre

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Part memory play, part social drama, Janine Salinas Schoenberg’s Las Mujeres Del Mar(Women of the Sea) tells the story of three generations of Mexican-American women who strive to love and support each other despite their past wounds and resentments. A world premiere mounted at Playwrights’ Arena, it’s skillfully directed by Diane … Read more

DEADLY at Sacred Fools Theater Company

Rob Stevens – Haines His Way Herman Webster Mudgett AKA Dr. Henry Howard Holmes AKA H.H. Holmes is a name little known today. Holmes was one of the first and most prolific serial killers in American history.Read more… Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Numerous books have been written about H. H. Holmes, a 19thcentury serial … Read more

THE HEAL at Getty Villa

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Everyone is wounded — that’s the overarching theme of The Heal, writer/director Aaron Posner’s ironical, imaginative play about living with pain and choosing to do the right thing even if you’re unclear just what that thing might be. Those three words reprise over and over in composer/performer Cliff Eberhardt’s opening song, … Read more

DRIVING WILDE at Theatre of NOTE

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde’s title character makes a Faustian pact to preserve his beauty at the price of his soul, transitioning, in the course of the narrative, from a naïve, guilt-free youth to a cruel and vicious narcissist. The book speaks to the vanity of vanity itself, … Read more