TICKETS AND SCALP

The westside of Los Angeles is the home of faceless faces rendered ragged by too many cut-rate plastic surgeons. Far from lamentable I see these mutant physiognomies as beautifully variable real-life grotesqueries. Like the portraits of Francis Bacon these transmogrified visages carry with them deep histories of physical pain and mental distortion. I’ve toyed with going under the knife myself with the hopeful assumption that with my tweaked features I could experience a shift in my character as well. While my boyfriend would welcome the latter the former runs the risk of making him seem even older by comparison.

Which brings me to the subject of May-December relationships.

In a recent study by the private Melednoff Foundation, marriages where the age difference between the spouses exceeds 10 years have a 75% greater success rate than the typical 3 year gap. Well, I’ve been to that rodeo before and I’m afraid to say I’m among the accursed 25%.

My current beau who shall remain nameless due to his inconvenient marital status is a somewhat famous stage actor from the UK. We see each other every other week either in LA or in London. As an avowed rationalist I put great faith in statistics and scientific probability and am therefore certain that if X leaves his wife (who is actually 2 years his senior) and marries me we will be tied in bliss till eternity.

All the photographs of us together are safely stashed away in a vault. I did manage to dash off this sketch while X was in makeup awaiting his entrance as Mephistopheles in the West End.

I actually made him look a bit younger than he is.

Portrait of X, conté on paper, Dahlia Danton 2013

Passionate and Convulsive

One of the great things about New York City is the vibrant and dynamic theater world of Off-Off Broadway. But one of the truly exciting wonders of this terrific metropolis is the untidy, eccentric and often hermetic universe of Off-Off-Off Broadway. It was in one of those far-flung marginal venues that I recently witnessed something that even the visionary inventor of The Theater of Cruelty, Antonin Artaud would not have anticipated.

at the theater

Winter Concert by the Estonian-American feminist public intellectual, Orestia Shestov is an inspired work of art. Loosely configured around the Völuspá or The Prophecy of Völva, Shestov’s new work is a tragic, voluptuary, sado-sexual urban legend that follows the three protagonists, Edo, Brigitte and Bruce, through a purgatorial cesspool of dissipation, redemption and ultimately, hopeless recidivism.

The piece is graphic and brash and clearly not for the faint of heart. I wouldn’t recommend taking your parents or using it as a venue for a first date. It challenges all convention and comically transgresses all norms of Judeo-Christian morality.

The sets, by the young New York painter, Linnart Jem, are exquisite precisely for their complete lack of subtlety. The music, which is live, is provided by the Brooklyn based punk/polka band Pierś.

There are two performances a week: Wednesdays at 8 PM and Saturdays at 7. The theater, a converted matzo factory is called The Elder von Musil Center for the Performing Arts and is located on Harrison Aveneue in University Heights.

It closes at the end of the month and I highly, highly recommend it.