When movie stars are sick of the industry – and want to position themselves as Real Actors – they abandon Hollywood and head to the east coast, becoming stars on Broadway instead. To tread the boards is a symbol of status: proof that you can raw-dog performance in one breathless, terrifying take, with no opportunity to do it again.
It’s not so easy to flex that muscle in L.A. Theatre and film have sat at odds with each other in the city. When the artist duo Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff set foot inside The Blank Theater, the 49-seat space on Santa Monica Boulevard that had shut down during the pandemic, they were only expecting to use the space as a movie set. But it stuck with them. A little jaded by the scene in their previous home of Berlin, they transformed the space into what it is now: the New Theater Hollywood, one of the rare impulsive and experimental places for stage productions in the city.
At the end of November, after spending 2024 programming work that brought stars like Lily McMenamy and Mykki Blanco into its orbit, Henkel and Pitegoff invited Stephanie LaCava to craft an original work. A journalist and novelist, LaCava had made a short film in 2022, but hadn’t yet made a work for the stage. She turned to cinema for inspiration, recreating vignettes of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s religious cinematic marvel The Gospel According to St Matthew, and the more modest La Ricotta, to craft what she called Two American Scenes.
For one night only, LaCava, Henkel and Pitegoff gathered a collection of artists – mostly non-actors, i-D cover star Kaia Gerber aside – to perform the piece, with a striking kind of commitment. Collier Schorr and Bella Newman danced together; Iceage frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sang. Instead of rejecting its acidic style of drama, Los Angeles’ art and film cognoscenti have embraced what New Theater Hollywood are doing. The back-to-back performances of Two American Scenes sold out; a five-show run from anarchic comedian Casey Jane Ellison has sold out too.
Reflecting on Two American Scenes, Henkel and Pitegoff dive into the process of creating the performance, as well as Los Angeles’ obsession with fame, and how that can be channeled into making interesting work.
Hollywood seems like an antithetical space to good theatre.
Theatre in L.A. is not taken seriously. For actors here, it’s like going to the gym – training themselves for the real performance, which is a film set. But post-Covid, post-[SAG-AFTRA] strike, the film industry is fried. So little is getting made, and what is getting made is generally safe and bland. So there is a great restlessness in the city, a desire to make things in a meaningful and more direct way, and theatre, or at least our theatre, does that. It’s the richest city in the world in terms of performers and storytellers, so it definitely feels like theatre, when done right, works here.
“Everyone in L.A. is a performer. It’s grotesque and amazing”
Most people become disillusioned by a city like Los Angeles. What do you find inspiring about it?
Everyone here is a performer. It’s grotesque and amazing. The gasoline of the town is the desire for fame, so it adds this instant heat to any moment of performance. After many years of living in Berlin and being swallowed by German theatre, which is its own contained universe, we were struck at what this city is able to produce — so for now, it is keeping us illusioned.
Can you tell me how Two American Scenes, and the casting of significant cultural figures (mostly non- actors) that performed it, summarised the ethos of the space?
We come from an art background so we’ve always been interested in keeping things complicated. We often invite people who have never worked in theatre – artists, musicians, non-actors. We think it makes the stage feel closer to life. Part of Stephanie LaCava’s dark magic is her ability to cast, and she put together a really insane ensemble. Every person in that play was a sight of obsession. At its best, New Theater Hollywood can act as a glue between worlds. It creates something bigger than the singular. It’s hard to control. It’s hard to pinpoint. But it’s highly effective live.
Who in the cast surprised you?
Collier Schorr came into the table read with a really clear idea about how she would hook Bella Newman in the mouth with her finger during the dance scene, and it was such a sharp and correct vision. Elias Rønnenfelt has his own gravity when playing, and he played the song over and over in rehearsal without ever waning. The girls, Kaia Gerber, Anahid Neressian, Bella Newman and Alyssa Reader were so focused and united; they built their own world in the attic where they had to climb up the trap door’s steps and wait for their cue in the mess of cables and props. Tess Sahara’s acting was metallic and cutting. What was most surprising was the depth of questioning that each cast member brought. It was sort of wild how into it everyone got. It felt like a very brief but mind-altering cult.
What bores you about the theatre world?
When it’s too clean. Theatre should be exhilarating and mistakes make it relieving. It’s not the gloss of Netflix. It’s gross and human and that’s what’s hot about it.
What excites you about it?
Theatre can rearrange your brain in a way nothing else can. It creates an experience that’s different from the movies or art or performance, and sometimes you don’t know how it’s shifted your reality til days later. It also presents possible alternatives. Lived, human, other realities that exist for the space of the show, which is something we need right now.
Credits
Writer: Douglas Greenwood
Photography: Manon Lutanie