Kelly Stuart

Waitress, hostess, taxi dancer, temp. The minimum-wage jobs that Los Angeles has to offer may be nothing to write home about. But they're fodder for Kelly Stuart's weirdly wacky plays. A Valley girl by birth and an absurdist at heart, she has a knack for turning the existential comedy of low-pay L.A. into a poetry of the perverse. But stylish as her plays may often be, they never seem to lose touch with their source of inspiration. Nor, for that matter, does the playwright.

Lots of emotional weather, both sunny and harsh, has been breaking out at the Evidence Room during the run-up to Saturday's world premiere of "Mayhem," Kelly Stuart's drama about the weight of global politics landing on one very unhappy Los Angeles couple. And that's not counting what happens in the play itself.

Los Angeles doesn't lack first-rate theater artists, but it's seldom done an adequate job of supporting their work. Some of the most highly regarded stage artists in the country--from director Peter Sellars to playwright Jose Rivera--do in fact make their home here. Yet their new and most challenging efforts are typically seen elsewhere first, and sometimes never here at all. Many artists who live here feel that they get more respect and attention elsewhere.

Los Angeles doesn't lack first-rate theater artists, but it's seldom done an adequate job of supporting their work. Some of the most highly regarded stage artists in the country--from director Peter Sellars to playwright Jose Rivera--do in fact make their home here. Yet their new and most challenging efforts are typically seen elsewhere first, and sometimes never here at all. Many artists who live here feel that they get more respect and attention elsewhere.

Lots of emotional weather, both sunny and harsh, has been breaking out at the Evidence Room during the run-up to Saturday's world premiere of "Mayhem," Kelly Stuart's drama about the weight of global politics landing on one very unhappy Los Angeles couple. And that's not counting what happens in the play itself.

Megan Mullally, co-star of the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace," will star in Kelly Stuart's play "Mayhem" at the Evidence Room in Los Angeles, March 1-30. Set during the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles in 2000, "Mayhem" had been scheduled to open in May as part of the Taper, Too series at the Ivy Substation. But a playwriting workshop that Stuart will teach in Iowa conflicted with the Taper, Too dates. No one had yet been cast in the Taper, Too production.

The Mark Taper Forum's special "Pay What You Can" discount program is being offered for events in the Taper's New Theatre for Now today, May 25 and June 13. Today's presentation is a double bill of "Demonology" by Kelly Stuart and "The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite" by Quincy Long. "The Street of the Sun" by Jose Rivera will be performed May 25 and "Mules" by Winsome Pinnock will be performed June 13. All events are at 8 p.m.

Luis Alfaro Playwright-producer 2003 will be busy for Alfaro, 41, Mark Taper Forum's associate producer of new play development. He's taking over Taper, Too and the Taper's New Work Festival from the departing Robert Egan. Alfaro's own work will be produced: "Body of Faith" by Cornerstone Theater in February; "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner" at Taper, Too in April; "Borderlands" will be seen in Seattle and "Electricidad" in Tucson. "Straight as a Line" is a hit in Romania.

By Tuesday afternoon, Kiersten Carlin had been driving around Downey for two days in search of her father, a retired San Diego County sheriff's deputy who hadn't been seen in four years — until last week. Larry Everett Starks, 69, was living in Florida when he fell off his medication for schizophrenia and was evicted from his apartment. His sister filed a missing persons' report Dec. 15, 2007, with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, said Lt. Kelly Stuart, a representative of the department.

"You don't have to telegraph how sick you are," admonishes one of the characters in Kelly Stuart's "Shoot," at the Cast-at-the-Circle Theatre. Stuart might well have listened to this advice when she created the misfits of "Shoot." At first these people are darkly comic, in the same way an underground comic might be. But not many people read the same underground comic for more than an hour, and after a while the people of "Shoot" wear out their welcome.

Waitress, hostess, taxi dancer, temp. The minimum-wage jobs that Los Angeles has to offer may be nothing to write home about. But they're fodder for Kelly Stuart's weirdly wacky plays. A Valley girl by birth and an absurdist at heart, she has a knack for turning the existential comedy of low-pay L.A. into a poetry of the perverse. But stylish as her plays may often be, they never seem to lose touch with their source of inspiration. Nor, for that matter, does the playwright.

With its current performance series, "Fire in the Treasure House," Highways is providing a forum for artists to voice their concerns about the rifts between racial communities in Los Angeles and other cities. Curators Dan Kwong and Keith Antar Mason have brought together nearly 40 Asian-Pacific-American and African-American performers for the 13-evening series, which lasts until the end of the year. Friday and Saturday's double bill, titled "Fevers and Visions," featured L.A.

"How do you keep all those plays in your head?," non-critic friends will occasionally ask us critics. Easy: There's so much mediocrity, and so much worse, that the good work holds on in the memory bank, like anything that's rare. And there was good work in 1989, plus a few discomforting trends. Compared to 1988, the number of fine new plays plummetted during my Stage Beat rounds this year.