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Brown Appoints Eight to LA County Superior Court

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SACRAMENTO – On Dec. 5, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced the appointments of Deborah S. Brazil, Carl H. Moor, Connie R. Quinones, Armen Tamzarian, Sergio C. Tapia, Lee W. Tsao, Frank M. Tavelman and Joel Wallenstein to judgeships in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Brazil, 54, of Los Angeles, has been a deputy district attorney at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office since 1997, serving in multiple units including the Major Crimes Division, Hardcore Gang Division, Family Violence Division, Central Trial Unit 13, the Pasadena Juvenile Office, East Los Angeles Branch and the Malibu and Beverly Hills Area Offices. Brazil earned a juris doctor degree from SouthwesternLawSchool and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position on Dec. 13, 2012. Brazil is a Republican.

Moor, 52, of Los Angeles, has been a partner at Munger Tolles and Olson LLP since 2003, where he has worked since 2001. He served as an assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California from 2000 to 2001 and from 1994 to 1999. Moor was litigation counsel at the National Broadcasting Company Inc. in 2000 and an associate and public interest fellow at Hall and Phillips from 1989 to 1994. He was a law clerk for the Honorable Mariana R. Pfaelzer at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California from 1988 to 1989. Moor earned a juris doctor degree from YaleLawSchool and a bachelor of arts degree from SwarthmoreCollege. He fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Richard A. Adler. Moor is a Democrat.

Andrews Appoints MLK Peace Week Committee Members

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District 6 Councilman Dee Andrews appoints community advocate Alma Campos as the 2014 Peace Week Committee Chair and Belinda Perez as Peace Week Committee co-chairs.

In an effort to lift the consciousness of the community about Dr. King’s legacy and principles, Councilman Dee Andrews created Peace Week to promote more than a week of activities designed to unify the community. Among the week of events is the Annual Candlelight Peace March that brings the community together to promote the increase of peace throughout our neighborhoods.

Each year Councilman Andrews appoints community members to serve on the Peace Week Committee, as well as partnering with local organizations to assist with creating and producing the events. Alma Campos was selected as Peace Week chairwoman for her involvement in the community and Peace Week since its conception 7 years ago. She moved to Long Beach in 1996 after meeting her husband, Aroldo Campos. The mother of four children started servicing her community by volunteering. Alma and her husband are the founders of New Generations, a local nonprofit that serves the youth.

Andrews appointed the Peace Week co-chairwoman position to Belinda Perez. The mother of four children’s philanthropic endeavors include hosting frequent breakfast events for women of different backgrounds. In an attempt to help the growing community, she sponsors conferences for couples and youth and is involved in community programs including the Anti-Virus Program, Round Tables, and New Generation. She and her husband founded the Leadership Academy, the Academy for Entrepreneurs and other organizations for the community of Long Beach.

Rally for Child Safety

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Rep. Janice Hahn stood with striking Los Angeles County social workers, Dec. 6, at the Department of Children and Family Services headquarters in Los Angeles.

On Dec. 5, thousands of Los Angeles County Children’s Social Workerswent on strike at DCFS facilities across the southland, protesting the unfair labor practices.

Contract negotiations with the county came to a halt recently. The social workers are asking for the board of supervisors to:

  • Reduce social worker-to-child ratios
  • Hire and train more social workers
  • Accountfor child safety.

In the Heights

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By John Farrell, Curtain Call Writer

In the Heights,the Tony-winning musical about a mostly-Dominican neighborhood in New York’s Washington Heights, fits physically almost exactly into the Boyle Height’s neighborhood where it is running at Casa 0101 Theatre.

In the Heights is running as a joint production of Casa 0101 and Teatro Nuevos Horizontes.

Just down the street is the marketcita and beauty parlor that looks much like those featured on stage. Yet, the Spanish of the immigrants is different only in pronunciation from the mostly-Mexican immigrants in BoyleHeights.

The neighborhood is a lot quieter, though. No one breaks into song and dances with abandon on First Street — at least not as often.

Inside the Casa 0101 Theatre,In the Heightsalmost overpowers the theater space: the musical is large and powerful, filled with salsa rhythms provided by a four-piece ensemble led by Peter Kirkpatrick. The band is hidden behind the scenery and is, frankly, a little too loud, sometimes drowning out the singers so you can’t always figure out just what is happening in the story. But when the cast breaks into dance, you don’t care. Then the music fits the cast’s extraordinary exuberance. The production almost explodes from its small confines and you want to dance along. (Only foot tapping allowed.)

In the Heights, with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by Alegria Hudes, is directed effectively by Rigo Tejeda in the small Casa 0101 space. The production has minimal sets set back so there is plenty of room for the dancing. Music direction is by Andrew Orbison, with the very entertaining and athletic choreography by Daniel Lazareno De Dios and Tanya Possick.

The story is introduced by Usnavi DeLaVega (Michael Torrenueva) who raps the story of the neighborhood, from the car service across the street to the beauty parlor next to his own bodega. The neighborhood is made up of mostly immigrants from the Dominican Republic (Usnavi got his first name when his parents, on board ship, saw a U.S. Navy vessel as the first thing in the harbor.)

Daniella, the strikingly beautiful Vivian Lamolli, is his love interest and works at the beauty parlor next door, run by Vanessa, the curvaceous Valeria Maldanado. Across the stage (and street) is where Kevin Rosario works, managing a limousine service and making money for his daughter, Nina (Veronica Rosa), who is away across the country studying at Stanford. Abuela Claudia (Anastasia Silva) lives nearby and Benny (James Oronoz) the young black man who works with Kevin.

When Nina arrives back home, having dropped out of school, the whole neighborhood is shocked. She was the success story for everyone and is no longer. When she hooks up with Benny her father is furious. And, when the neighborhood is rocked by a power outage and a riot, things begin to change, not all for the better.

There is an up-beat ending, provided by a winning lottery ticket, but you can ignore that if you want to. What matters is the singing and dancing, and Tejeda has an electric cast, powerful singers for the most part (with body mikes) and all talented young dancers. The best moments are when the whole cast (there are 22 in all) dance, some in the body-challenging break-dance style, all of them in dynamic and thrilling salsa numbers, which are less than 20 feet from the small theater’s back rows.

You’ll want to dance along, but stay in your seat.

Tickets are $29, $25 for students, $19 for BoyleHeights residents with identification. Performances are Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 5 p.m. through December 22.

Details:(323) 263-7684;www.casa0101.org
Venue: Casa 0101 Theater
Location: 2102 E. First St., BoyleHeights

 

RIOTstage: Building a Theatrical Rock ‘n’ Roll Future in the LBC

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Photo: Josh Fischel, center, and the cast of “The Brit” (credit: Hadrian Suciu)

It was originally conceived solely as a theatre company. But founder Josh Fischel’s increasing immersion within Long Beach’s strong music scene led him to broaden RIOTstage’s mission. Still in its nascence, RIOTstage is now “an entertainment group on a mission to attract an eclectic new generation” through “high-quality, provocative, imaginative and eclectic concerts, theatre pieces, intimate evenings, and day-long festivals.”

This kind of thing costs money, of course, so RIOTstage’s first events are doubling as fundraisers to help set up RIOTstage’s first full-blown production: Tommy, slated for fall 2014.

RIOTstage’s inaugural event, “The Storyteller,” was a one-night-only affair last March. Featuring an impressive array of local music talent in ad hoc combinations performing narrative-centered material. Three hundred seats sold at $40 per ticket, with patrons walking away telling tales of wacky animal costumes and the full-blown rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” that closed the show. The demand for the sort of spectacle RIOTstage is serving up was evident.

This time around Fischel thought doubling up would be twice as nice. Thus comes “The Brit,” which takes over Long Beach’s EXPO Arts Center on December 13 and 14. Tix are down to $25 per seat for a show whose first act will feature songs by The Clash, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Queen, Kate Bush, Led Zeppelin, et al.—a mere prelude to the front-to-back run-through of Abbey Road that will happen after intermission.

There will also be a more elaborate visual component this time around, with video projections ranging from footage of punk riots and Beatlemania to psychedelic atmospherics to digital fish marionettes during “Octopus’s Garden” and animation that will bring to life the tale of “Mean Mr. Mustard”.

It’s all part of RIOTstage’s mission to “bring the ruckus” to theatre in Long Beach. And even though this is a city whose institutional support traditionally goes to mainstream work. Fischel thinks a shift in Long Beach’s power centers toward a younger, hipper demographic bodes well for what RIOTstage is offering.

“There is definitely an audience in this town that will love the diversity in our art and really connect to what we’re doing,” Fischel says. “There’s so many young, up-and-coming business owners that could really be drawn to RIOTstage and the desire to bring something that enriches Long Beach. We need to build a tradition where people trust that every time they see a RIOTstage gig, it will be entertaining, different and, like, really rock.”

Ellen Warkentine, a musical mainstay in Long Beach and one of RIOTstage’s musical directors, first worked with Fischel on “The Storyteller” and was mightily impressed with both Fischel’s vision and the talent he pulled together to realize it.

“The talent and the diverse musical background of the RIOTStage performers makes this group particularly unique and exciting,” she says. “Working with this group—and particularly with Josh—has been an incredible experience. Josh had specific visions for each song in ‘The Storyteller,’ staging scenes to bring out the theatricality in each song. He brings out the theatre in the rock and the rock in the theatre.”

Fischel’s journey to RIOTstage started out with a different destination in mind: Broadway. After attending United States International University on a theatre scholarship (he roomed with Emmy-winner Thorsten Kaye, with Jamie Foxx lodged upstairs (“He taught me how to play piano and sing falsetto,” Fischel says), he moved to NYC but quickly soured on pursuing a theatre career. He started a band and took film classes, which serendipitously led to his shooting live shows music videos for Sublime, who eventually hired him as their videographer for the 1995 Warped Tour.

Two years later Fischel found himself disillusioned with the corporate aspect of the music industry. A move to Long Beach followed, as did extensive touring (48 states, plus Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) with the band Bargain Music. Suddenly it was 10 years later, and Fischel—now married and on the far side of 40—wanted a different kind of life and wondered whether he could somehow align his various desires.

Fischel and his wife took trips to NYC and London. Ingesting a heavy dose of theatre along the way, he found himself longing for a taste of something outside of the status quo.

“Some of the plays were good, some not so much,” he recalls. “In London I wanted to see something unusual, [something] I’d never seen before. And I found this songwriter/puppeteer named Matthew Robins and his show Flyboy Is Alone Again This Christmas. It was mind-blowing.”

Fischel returned with two friends “who’d never seen a play in their lives” and says they were completely blown away.

“It started to make me think about how so many people who don’t go see theatre might if they knew there was stuff like this out there,” Fischel says. “They grow up seeing, you know, Oklahoma! in high school or something. I’m not dissing all that kind of thing. There’s a time and place for it. But it’s definitely not where my head’s at.”

Fischel reasons that even many of the people who can afford to cough up $150 a ticket for a Broadway show wouldn’t want to for the likes of Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera.

“But there’s so much out there,” he says. “If you present it in a different way, incorporating something that’s already too familiar to them—like rock and roll—then maybe you bring a new audience to theatre. And it needs it, because theatre is dying. […] The idea behind RIOTstage is to create high-quality, at least semi-affordable theatrical entertainment that more people can relate to.”

Money, of course, is a harsh reality in the world of theatre, especially in a city where even established theatre companies say they cannot recoup their costs solely by way of ticket sales. Warkentine, the force behind recent live scores for The Artist and Nosferatu, knows a thing or two about the need to resort to outside fundraising.

“Last year I had the wild adventure of co-producing [the original musical] LOLPERA at the Hollywood and New York Fringe Festivals, and we couldn’t have done it without the support of the community at fundraisers,” she says. “In order to fully bring the RIOTStage vision to life, we need the support of ruckus-ready audiences.”

Fischel’s determination to pay his artists a fair wage while keeping ticket prices relatively low makes the math even trickier.

“I’ve been an artist for my entire life,” Fischel says, “[and] I’ve seen a lot of exploitation [of artists]. People I’ve worked for in the past [have said things like], ‘I know it’s eight weeks of your time, but we can only pay you $700. But it’s really a good part for you!’ You sign on, then you go to the cast party, and the producer’s living in a $5 million house!”

Not that anyone’s going to get rich from RIOTstage. But the draw for each performer is Fischel’s vision and the all-star lineup he’s assembled. Jon Zell, co-founder of the musical collaborative MOVE (featured at BuskerFest in August), typifies the talented mutual-admiration society that is RIOTstage.

“Ellen Warkentine was the one who invited me to audition [for ‘The Storyteller’], so I knew it would be a serious deal,” he says. “But when I heard about the other musicians who were there, I just really hoped I was going to make the grade. […] My experience working the RIOTstage has really been life-changing. Playing with so many amazing people has really pushed me professionally.”

“There’s a lot of untapped talent in Long Beach, a lot of people who just aren’t getting seen or heard,” says Fischel. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to create RIOTstage. […] Let’s face it: most artists are not good businessmen. I’m not saying I think I’m necessarily a good businessman, but I’m a good organizer and a good motivator. There is so much talent around here—it just needs to be harnessed. I’m not saying I’m necessarily the guy to do that, but I’m definitely going to be one of the guys.”

RIOTstage’s second production, “The Brit,” takes place at the EXPO Arts Center (4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach 90807) on December 13 and 14, 2013. To purchase tickets and to find out more about RIOTstage, go to riotstagelb.com.

[Note: The author has a small, non-compensated role in “The Brit.”]

ENTERTAINMENT

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Dec. 6
Origins
Enjoy Origins, a concert of multicultural and cross-generational dance, at 8 p.m. Dec. 6 and 7, at the University Theatre in Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Tickets are $15.
Details: (310) 243-3589; csudh.edu/theatre/tickets.htm
Venue: CSUDH
Location: 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson

Dec. 7
Cliff Wagner & The Old #7
Be part of an annual tradition with San Pedro’s own Cliff Wagner & The Old #7, delivering bluegrass and carols, at 8 p.m. Dec. 8, at the Grand Annex.
Details: www.grandvision.org/calendar-details.asp?id=519
Venue: Grand Annex
Location: 434 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Dec. 8
Esencia Flamenca
Esencia Flamenca presents “Con El Alma,” an annual recital, at 2 p.m. Dec. 8, at the Grand Annex.
Experience the lush and dramatic art of Spanish Flamenco dance with Esencia Flamenca’s winter recital.
Details: http://www.grandvision.org/calendar-details.asp?id=452
Venue: Grand Annex
Location: 434 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Gun Buyback

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Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that people will be able to turn in firearms — no questions asked — in exchange for up to $200 in Ralphs grocery cards, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dec. 14, at park and ride lot in Wilmington.

The amount exchanged per firearm will depend on its type — up to $200 for assault weapons as specified in the State of California and up to $100 for handguns, rifles, and shotguns. The Los Angeles Police Department Gun Unit will be on site to determine the types of firearms surrendered.

Venue: South Los Angeles LAPD Harbor Area Park and Ride Parking Lot
Location: 1300 W. Pacific Coast Highway, Wilmington

LB Couple Bound, Robbed

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A Long Beach couple was bound and assaulted with a pistol during a robbery Dec. 4, in their home on the 3100 block of Shadypark Drive in the east side of Long Beach.

Officials said the Long Beach Police Department was dispatched at about 12:30 p.m. that day, after a neighbor alerted police.

The suspect took off in a silver Toyota Corolla, after the neighbor, who did not disclose her name, saw the husband being assaulted in his backyard and ran into her home screaming.

Police found the couple, in their 50s, bleeding with injuries. The wife was bound with an electrical cord near the entrance of the home. Officials said the couple said the robbers barged in their home.

The witness said the suspects are two men and a woman.

The couple is being treated at a local hospital

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call (562) 570-7464.

LA Awarded Rockefeller Foundation Grant

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LOS ANGELES — On Dec. 4, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that Los Angeles has been selected by the Rockefeller Foundation to join its 100 Resilient Cities Network, which includes funding to implement a comprehensive resiliency plan.

“Being a member of the 100 Resilient Cities Network provides support and funding for our most basic needs: safety, sustainability, and disaster preparedness,” Garcetti said. “This grant will help our city prepare to withstand and recover from disasters while still maintaining essential functions.”

As part of the program, Garcetti will designate a city chief resilience officer to lead the city’s comprehensive resiliency strategy with the support of the 100 Resilient Cities network partners.

Los Angeles was one of almost 400 cities across six continents to apply for the 100 Resilient Cities Challenge, which will also provide Los Angeles with access to tools, technical support and a global network to share best practices on resiliency. Only 30 cities worldwide were selected as inaugural members of 100 Resilient Cities.

Details:http://100resilientcities.rockefellerfoundation.org

Long Beach Police Academy Graduation

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Long Beach — The Long Beach Police Department’s Academy graduates its 86 class, at 2 p.m. Dec. 5, at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center’s Terrance Theater.
Academy Class #86 is comprised of 40 LBPD and two Modesto police department recruits, who completed the 27-and-one-half basic academy. The prior Long Beach Police recruit class to graduated on April 8, 2009.