When you work in theatre in Los Angeles, you sometimes get to meet people you grew up watching on TV. Betty Garrett, who died yesterday at the age of 91, was someone I saw on “All in the Family” and “Laverne & Shirley” when I was a kid. Before that, she was better known as a leading lady starring alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. I didn’t know Betty well, but she was such a visible part of the Los Angeles theatre community for so long that I think some of us assumed she would always be here; at least, I made that assumption. I remember once going to some bizarre theatre thing outdoors at Griffith Park and sitting on the lawn — near Betty Garrett and near Marion Ross. She was one of the presenters and an awardee for an awards show I did (and now I find I’m sadly fuzzy on the details), and I saw her many times at Theatre West, where she was a founder and a performer, and elsewhere around town. What I remember most about her is her sense of fun and optimism. Ninety-one years is a good long time to live, and it seems she lived it well, but I’m sad that we won’t get to run into her any more in our theatres.

Here’s a montage that the fine people at Theatre West put together last year, in honor of Betty Garrett’s 90th birthday.

For one day only, Saturday March 5th, my esteemed playwright pal Trey Nichols and I are offering “The One-Day New Play Playwriting Workshop” at a theatre in Hollywood. It’s a fundraiser for Moving Arts, the theatre we’ve been associated with since… well, almost since before the dawn of the modern age of drama. (Which in our case would be the early 1990’s.) Here’s more info.

In just one day, we’ll cover a lot of ground about writing plays that scintillate, you’ll get to do plenty of loose and fun playwriting on the spot, and you’ll leave with the makings of a short play — which will be read by really good actors we’re going to personally shanghai into doing this.

Should you sign up to come do this? Hell yes. We’re serving breakfast and lunch, you’ll hear your pages read by professional actors,  we’ve got 20 years’ experience teaching playwriting, and we’ll do our best not to be boring. (And it’s for a good cause:  the event benefits a theatre donated 100% to doing new plays by emerging playwrights.) Never written a play before? Give us the day, and we’ll change that for you. Written plenty of plays, but ready for something different? We can handle that too. Just bring your laptop. And yes, Angelenos:  There is plenty of free parking. Here’s everything you need to know.

We’d love to have you, and we’ve got only 20 slots.  Here’s where to sign up.

This Sunday at the much-loved (and rightly so) Steve Allen Theatre:  The Club Foot Orchestra plays live accompaniment to two silent-film masterpieces:  Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.” and the classic German Expressionist tale “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

About 15 years ago, I saw The Club Foot Orchestra perform their own score to that very same Keaton film — my favorite Keaton film, the one of which I have a framed poster facing me right this very minute — and they were fantastic. It was great, enormous fun, and I bought their CD. They also played alongside some “Felix the Cat” shorts — just as they promise to do this Sunday. I haven’t heard their score to “Caligari” — but I will on Sunday. I snapped up four tickets the moment this was announced. If you’d like to do the same, here’s the link.

The Los Angeles times provides a roundup of the critical response to the Spider-man musical. Let’s just say that the Sinister Six never presented Spidey with this much of a problem. I’d still like to see it. Maybe just so I could say that I saw it. Because I’m starting to doubt that it’s going anywhere else.

It looks like the major critics have abandoned waiting for “opening night” — whenever that will be — of  the musical “Spider-man:  Turn Off the Dark,” and are now running reviews. Their calculation, no doubt, is this:  The show is doing major box-office business, it’s big talk in theatre circles, and it’s essentially being reviewed daily on the internet by people who’ve seen it. So yet again, old media and its old way of doing business is responding too slowly to new dynamics.

So the “professional” reviews are in, and they are punishing.  The LA Times’ Charles McNulty calls it “a teetering colossus,”  a “frenetic Broadway jumble,”and “an artistic form of megalomania.” In his review for the New York Times, Ben Brantley shares his paper’s decision making process in going ahead with a review, before swooping in for the first strike:

But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement. You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair.

Of the many effects in the show, he adds:  “But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store.”

To me, two things are worth noting from these reviews:

1. What he and McNulty are describing is spectacle. Whether or not one subscribes to Aristotle, it’s good to bear in mind that he ranked spectacle low on the level of artistic achievement. Story is important for a reason. Even the elementally simple “Waiting for Godot” has  a story — and a good one. And I can personally testify that Spider-Man has featured prominently in any number of good stories for the past 50 years.
2. The character on the right in the photo above is Hammerhead. Hammerhead is bar none the lamest Spider-Man villain, even lamer than Stiltman (who, really, is a Daredevil villain). Stiltman is just a guy on, well, stilts. Hammerhead is just a guy with a steel plate in his head. I once met a guy with a steel plate in his head; it didn’t give him superhuman abilities, it just protected what was left of his brain. He was almost as dumb as Hammerhead. I didn’t realize that Hammerhead was in the Spider-Man musical; seeing him there alerts me to just how misbegotten this show must be, and makes me wonder how much better the show might have been had they hired any one of the writers who’ve written all those solid comic-book stories to at least consult on this.

Friends of mine are producing the LA premiere of Neil LaBute’s “The Mercy Seat.” I’m looking forward to it, because these friends of mine are really really talented and always put on a good show.

Here’s more information, in a way.

I was just asked to serve as a judge again this year for the PEN USA literary awards. This is my second time, and it’s again an honor. I’ll be toting around new plays through the summer and reading them and scribbling feedback. Last time I did this, I got to hang out with Larry Gelbart for a little while at the awards ceremony; that in itself made it worthwhile.

And I was just booked again into the Great Plains Theatre Conference this May-June in Omaha. This will be my fourth year serving as a judge or feedbackmeister or whatever they call it, as well as a workshop leader. GPTC is one of the very best playwriting retreats in the nation, one I’m proud to be associated with. I’ve made many good friends there, seen many good plays, and have even written a couple of them on the spot while I’ve been there. (One of which was produced last year.) Talk about environments — it’s a terrific environment to go to with a play.

I just came across this interview with my friend and former student, playwright Stephanie Alison Walker. (I knew her when she was just plain Stephanie Walker. In fact, I knew her before that, when she was Stephanie Weinert. But now she’s Stephanie Alison Walker. Such are the ways of writers.)

The focus of this interview is on Stephanie’s writing environment — her desk, her setup, the inspirational collage nearby, etc. I found this very interesting. For many years, my writing was done in a separate home office. But for probably the past five years or more, my preferred writing environment has been outside.  Outside with my laptop, a glass of wine or something stronger, and a cigar. It was said that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote anywhere, even on the platforms of train stations with his wife and kids in tow as they awaited the train. I’ve done that too, writing anywhere, but whether or not I can write anywhere, editing is done best without disturbance.

The notable thing lacking, for me, in this discussion of Stephanie’s writing environment is sound. I write to music, usually the more raucous or dissonant or bizarrely twisted the better, but it depends upon the mood of the play. (And yes, the mood of the music informs the mood of the play.) You know that really harsh Nirvana album that most people didn’t like? That’s the one I wrote a play to. But I’ve also written to Glenn Gould (a favorite) and Erik Satie.

And where am I writing this now? From the desk in my office, before delving into a fully scheduled day. I’m looking forward to working on my new play the next couple of days while I’m out of town. And, maybe, outside.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve seen a number of one-man shows. And I’ve directed several. It’s a lot harder than it looks — usually for the audience. My advice for actors considering writing and performing in a one-man show:  Unless you’re the man known as Dame Edna, you probably shouldn’t try it. Read this piece from The Onion and know this:  In my experience, everything they mock is all too true.

Many people know Wallace Shawn as the little self-described genius in “The Princess Bride” who keeps exclaiming that the continuing success of his nemesis is “Inconceivable!” I hope Mr. Shawn is getting a nice royalty from that movie, because he will never outlive that line, no matter how many times he voices a CGI toy dinosaur in Pixar films.

Others among us know Wallace Shawn as America’s most brilliant living playwright.  Which is why I, and other “eggheads of a certain theatrical stripe,” to quote the LA Times’ Charles McNulty, will be going to UCLA Live tonight night to hear Mr. Shawn read from his work and share his pointed views on the state of things.