Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 24, 2016

B2

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, September 24, 2016 

On the Marquee: 

Notes from the Sierra MadrePlayhouse

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

Summer of the Big Bachi by 
Naomi Hirahara

In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai 
is just another Japanese-American 
gardener, his lawnmower blades clean 
and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. 
But while Mas keeps lawns neatly 
trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. 
His wife is dead. And his livelihood 
is falling into the hands of the men he 
once hired by the day. For Mas, a life 
of sin is catching up to him. And now 
bachi—the spirit of retribution—is .It 
begins when a stranger comes around, 
asking questions about a nurseryman 
who once lived in Hiroshima, a man 
known as Joji Haneda. By the end of 
the summer, Joji will be dead and Mas’s 
own life will be in danger. For while Mas 
was building a life on the edge of the 
American dream, he has kept powerful 
secrets: about three friends long ago, 
about two lives entwined, and about 
what really happened when the bomb 
fell on Hiroshima in August 1945.A 
spellbinding mystery played out from 
war-torn Japan to the rich tidewaters 
of L.A.’s multicultural landscape, this 
stunning debut novel weaves a powerful 
tale of family, loyalty, and the price of 
both survival and forgiveness.knocking 
on his door

Already Awake by Nathan Gill 

Nathan Gill is a rare voice in contemporary 
spirituality. Speaking with consistent 
clarity, he points out that all prescriptions 
for escape from the drama of separation 
instead serve as its reinforcement. 
Compiled from transcripts of one-to-
one dialogues and group meetings, the 
talks featured in Already Awake present 
the essential message of non-duality in a 
profound yet straightforward way. Also 
included by way of an introduction to the 
main text, is a revised version of Nathan’s 
first book, Clarity.

American Pastoral: American 
Trilogy by Philip Roth 

As the American century draws to an 
uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a 
novel of unqualified greatness that is 
an elegy for all our century’s promises 
of prosperity, civic order, and domestic 
bliss. Roth’s protagonist is Swede Levov, 
a legendary athlete at his Newark high 
school, who grows up in the booming 
postwar years to marry a former Miss 
New Jersey, inherit his father’s glove 
factory, and move into a stone house 
in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. 
And then one day in 1968, Swede’s 
beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede’s adored daughter, Merry, 
has grown from a loving, quick-witted 
girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a 
teenager capable of an outlandishly 
savage act of political terrorism. And 
overnight Swede is wrenched out of 
the longed-for American pastoral and 
into the indigenous American berserk. 
Compulsively readable, propelled by 
sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for 
its characters, this is Roth’s masterpiece.
Soon to be a major motion picture


25 SCENIE AWARD RECOGNITIONS!

By Artistic Director, Christian Lebano

Steven Stanley, a reviewer for Stage Scene LA, one 
of the biggest fans of LA theater, AND a wonderful 
supporter of the work we are doing at SMP just 
announced his Scenie Awards this week and SMP 
has been recognized with 25 of them for three 
different productions! One of the highest counts of 
all the small theaters in Los Angeles. I am so proud 
of the work that we are doing AND so glad that it 
is being noted. Steven divides his picks into two 
categories – Best and Outstanding of the year. The 
Best list being much smaller than the Outstanding. 
The Intimate designation means smaller theater 
as opposed to the big ones like CTG or Pasadena 
Playhouse. The Best category doesn’t make the 
distinction between the bigger or smaller theaters.

 Best Production of the Year: Glass Menagerie 
(making it one of his top ten picks of plays)

 Sound Designer of the Year: Jeff Gardner 
(Menagerie) & Crickett Myers (Spelling Bee)

 All the following are in the Outstanding 
Category:

 Play (intimate): Deathtrap

 Musical (intimate): Putnam County Spelling 
Bee

 Director Multiple: Christian Lebano (Menagerie 
& Deathtrap)

 Director Musical: Robert Marra (Spelling Bee)

 Musical Direction: Joe Lawrence (Spelling Bee)

 Actor Drama: Christian Durso (Menagerie)

 Actress Drama: Katherine James (Menagerie)

 Supp Actor Drama: Ross Philips (Menagerie)

 Supp Actress Drama: Andrea Muller 
(Menagerie) 

 Supp Actor Musical: Stanton Kane Morales 
(Spelling Bee)

 Supp Actress Musical: Cristina Gerla (Spelling 
Bee)

 Ensemble Play: Deathtrap

 Ensemble Musical: Spelling Bee

 Production Design: Menagerie & Deathtrap

 Lights: Pablo Santiago (Menagerie)

 Costumes: Vicki Conrad (Deathtrap) & Jeffrey 
Schoenberg (Spelling Bee)

 Choreography: Cate Caplin (Menagerie)

 Props: Erin Walley (Deathtrap)

 Fight Choreography: Ken Mercx (Deathtrap)

 Scenic Artist: Orlando de la Paz

 As always we do it for you – our SMP family 
– whose support and loyalty mean so much to us 
and for whom we hope we bring pleasure and joy 
and moving experiences in the theater. Please let 
me know how you think we are doing. Reach me 
at ArtisticDirector@SierraMadrePlayhouse.org 
For tickets please call Mary in the box office at 
626.355.4318


All Things By Jeff Brown

SOME WORDS BY RUPERT SPIRA

We are the open, empty, allowing presence of 
Awareness, in which the objects of the body, 
mind and world appear and disappear, with 
which they are known and, ultimately, out of 
which they are made. Just notice that and be 
that, knowingly.

 Just as a screen is intimately one with all images 
and, at the same time, free of them, so our true 
nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all 
experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently 
free of them.

 Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows 
no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it 
seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is 
intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, 
pure love.

 All experience is illuminated, or made 
knowable, by the light of pure Knowing. This 
Knowing pervades all thoughts, feelings, 
sensations and perceptions, irrespective of their 
particular characteristics. We are this transparent, 
unchanging Knowing.

 To invest one’s identity and security in 
something that appears, moves, changes and 
disappears is the cause of unhappiness.

 In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, 
I am nothing; in love, I am everything.

When everything that can be let go of is let go of, 
what remains is what we desire above all else.

Be still and know that I am God! Psalm 46:10

FREE EVENT! SIERRA MADRE PLAYHOUSE PRESENTS 
THE QUALITY OF LIFE ON OCTOBER 3RD

 Please note new date.

 For the eighth entry in its Off The Page series of 
monthly staged readings, Sierra Madre Playhouse 
will present The Quality of Life.

 From award-winning writer Jane Anderson (The 
Baby Dance, Looking for Normal) comes this 
”magnetic work of theater” (The San Francisco 
Chronicle) filled with compassion, honesty and 
humor. Dinah and Bill, a devout, church-going 
couple from the Midwest are struggling to keep 
their lives intact after the loss of their daughter. 
Dinah is compelled to reconnect with her left-
leaning cousins in Northern California who’re 
going through their own trials. Jeannette and 
Neil have lost their home to a wildfire and Neil 
has been battling illness. However they seem to 
have accepted their situation with astounding 
good humor, living in a yurt on their burn site 
and celebrating life with hits of pot and glasses of 
good red wine. Bill and Dinah are both moved and 
perplexed by their cousins’ remarkable equanimity. 
Still, the two couples are headed for a clash.

 “Remarkable and completely 
engrossing.”---TheaterMania

 Gary Lee Reed directs a cast that includes Joe 
Colligan, D.J. Harner, Bonnie Bailey Reed and 
Gary Lee Reed.

 Off The Page series curator: Debra J. Harner. 
Sierra Madre Playhouse artistic director: Christian 
Lebano. Managing director: Estelle Campbell.

 Monday, October 3, 2016 at 7:00 p.m.

Admission to The Quality of Life is free. Donations 
are accepted. Reservations are not required.

 Website: www.sierramadreplayhouse.org . 
Phone: (626) 355-4318.

 

 Sierra Madre Playhouse is located at 87 W. Sierra 
Madre, Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024. This is just 
east of Pasadena. There is ample free parking behind 
the theatre.


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com