UPCOMING
TWO AMERICAN SCENES
STEPHANIE LACAVA
Sunday, November 24
6PM & 9PM – BOTH SHOWS SOLD OUT
Two shows, one night only
Based on Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Starring
TESS SAHARA as Mary
JIMMY LUX FOX as Jack
With
ARTA GEE
KAIA GERBER
WILLIAM KEIHN
MAX LAWTON
MANON LUTANIE
CIAN MCCOURT BELLA NEWMAN
ANAHID NERSESSIAN
ALYSSA REEDER
COLLIER SCHORR
SPEEDY
and
ELIAS RØNNENFELT as L'Angelo del Signore
IT'S MY SISTER
Starring and written by
CASEY JANE ELLISON
Directed by
JOS HOWARD DEMME
Wednesday, December 4, 8PM
Thursday, December 5, 8PM
Friday, December 6, 8PM
Saturday, December 7, 8PM
​
$25/$35 – Seating is limited.
Eavesdrop on their first conversation in years…
Have you ever had the perverse privilege of eavesdropping on a neighbor’s phone call? Did you love it? Ear pressed against the wall, learning their preferred position, their nastiest retort, the worst thing that has ever happened to them... If you lust after the fourth wall and revel in the twisted greed of knowing without having to tip your hand, then come see It’s My Sister. Overhear both sides of the inconceivable story of two sisters who haven’t spoken in years.
Ellison plays a woman who gets a phone call from her sister and miraculously, she also plays the sister. It’s My Sister is a comedy about blame, blood relation and blatant homosexuality.
Costumes
ZOE LATTA
Movement Coach
MILES BRENNINKMEIJER
CASEY JANE ELLISON is a comedian and director, pregnant with projects, including and aside from the one she is currently birthing at New Theater Hollywood. Born, raised and still living in Hollywood, her work and her voice have always been influenced by TV and the sun-bleached goth experience that is growing up in the disturbing city. Ellison will occasionally pop up in villainous roles in TV and film. She is currently developing an animated series with Starburns Industries and Tessa Thompson’s company, Viva Maude. Her debut short film, Sylvia, starring John Early and Heather Jewett, will premiere in 2025.
JOS HOWARD DEMME is a director, writer, and producer, based in New York City. He's the director and producer of Submission: An Opera Buffa, with Marc Platt Productions. Collaborators include artists and filmmakers Owen Smith Clarke, Carlos Lopez Estrada, Theda Hammel, Daniel Hymanson, and Aria Dean. Jos is thrilled to be here for New Theater Hollywood's inaugural year.
PAST
PSALM'S TRUST (VOL 2)
NOVEMBER 1, 2 & 3, 2024
Written by, directed by, and starring
KLEIN
With Bee-be Smith
​
PSALM’S TRUST (VOL 2) is a sitcom-in-progress nestled within a soap opera.
Our protagonist, Blessing is in her late 20s
A youtuber.
122 subscribers.
and she has a big secret
but this truth gets quickly sidelined from the soap opera of her own life as family secrets, alarming accusations, news tv cycles, comedy breaks, and new algorithmic characters are introduced, and she becomes a tertiary character in her own story. The narrative explores marginalization, loss of agency, humor, silencing and noise within popular media to slowly unpack the echo system that drowns out our protagonist and many others.
PSALM'S TRUST was originally developed at a 2022 residency at Sant'Andrea de Scaphis, Rome. The play is guided by Klein’s past work on British TV shows, including children's television programming and reality game shows as a runner, then transcriber, researcher, and logger. In 2011, she was nominated for a Digital Emmy for her uncredited contribution as a youth consultant to the Channel 4 TV show Battlefront.
PERSONAL INVENTORY: THE PLAY
OCTOBER 16, 17 & 18, 2024
Written by, directed by, and starring
KALENA YIAUEKI
​
Kalena had been lied to her entire life. In Personal Inventory, Kalena Yiaueki deconstructs her life story, from the chaotic 70’s obsession with Native American culture, to family deception leveled by the reality of big spit data (23andMe), all set to the uneasy hum of society’s obsession with scrutinizing identity. Kalena Yiaueki plays herself in this double helix one-woman-show of self narrativizing and generational trauma.
HAIRCUT
OCTOBER 3, 4 & 5, 2024
​
A play adapted and directed by
DAVID LOUIS ZUCKERMAN
​
From an original screeplay by
REBECCA HAZLEWOOD
& DAVID LOUIS ZUCKERMAN
With Sharmita Bhattacharya, Claire Kniaz, Christina Catherine Martinez, Clément Métayer and Max Pitegoff
​​
Drake is in over his head. On the set of a bloated feature film in India, the former music video director is spiraling, wondering if he has the touch to pull off a complicated colonial drama. Mira, an English born Indian actress, gets tangled in Drake’s clusterfuck of identity politics and ambition. Asked to chop off her long hair after script rewrites, Mira is left to grapple with what honesty on camera really means, and why it even matters.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 21
LIVE IN CONCERT:
LA TIMPA
MK VELSORF / GRACE DASHNAW
​
New Theater Hollywood’s concert series, organized by MK Velsorf, begins September 21 with LA Timpa and MK Velsorf/Grace Dashnaw.
London-based LA Timpa’s latest release, Time of Marcker (2024), is an ongoing practice between improvisation and song. In the current live set, Time of Marcker is continuously being written and rehearsed, featuring live sampling and electro-acoustic guitar with dominant bassline phrasings.
MK Velsorf and Grace Dashnaw will perform a set of instrumental collage pieces for amplified cello, electric guitar and sampler, hinting at both modern classical, ambient, funk, jazz and noise.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 7PM
​Skylight Books and New Theater Hollywood present the launch of Calla Henkel's new heartbreak thriller, Scrap, published by Overlook Press.
With a reading and a conversation between Calla Henkel and Martine Syms.
MORE INFORMATION
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 7PM
Semiotext(e) and New Theater Hollywood present the launch of Jeanne Graff's new book, Total Freedom, with contributions by Amy Yao, Juliana Huxtable, Sergei Tcherepnin, Gaia Vincensini, and Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff.
With support from Pro Helvetia.
​
“When she woke up in Lebanon, Juliana looked at the sun straight for a minute, that’s the only moment you can do that, you wake up and look at the sun and it’s good for your eyes. Kembra gave her new makeup, and she started painting her entire body again, like she has the weather on her face, wind on her lips and birds on her eyes, it’s nice to see far from here you can technically see the Empire State Building.” – Total Freedom, Jeanne Graff
“Graff’s texts hold at their core a contagious wonderment at the surreality of motifs and symbolic phenomena in the life she shared with her artist friends. Her observations and wide-eyed ruminations are woven into analogical vignettes constructed from time spent in wanderlust of those infected by it in equal share. A delight and a voice discovering ways to express its idiosyncrasies in a language both familiar and always anew.” – Juliana Huxtable
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 7PM
Karl Holmqvist will read from his new collection of 16 poems, OCEANS 24/7ELEVEN, written in Los Angeles in the last few months while on a residency at the MAK Center.
​
Looking at traffic, rich and poor, Hollywood myth making, the ocean, climate change forest fires earthquakes and more dumpster fire us political turnaround and global conflict the collection of poetry in all its free for all – a preview of the Open House coming up at MAK Center on Labor Day Weekend.
WHERE THE SOULS GO
Created by COLIN SELF & DIAMOND STINGILY
​JULY 10, 11 & 12, 2024
With Kahbia Sada, Colin Self, Bailey Stiles, Diamond Stingily and Frank Traynor
​
An encounter at Carriage Trade, a sleepy gay bar on Beverly Blvd. Dorothy finds herself at life’s crossroads and in the presence of three unsuspecting characters who are on their own search for something greater. Starring Diamond Stingily and Bailey Stiles along with puppets made by Colin Self, Where The Souls Go is a comical reverie and love letter to John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous.
THE DEATH OF A STAR
Created by JASMINE JOHNSON
JUNE 27, 28 & 30, 2024
Starring Victoria Davidoff, Deevious, Peggy Noonan, Ashley Hood, Jake August and Lauren 2Dope
​
Why are you here? There’s no format. What are we supposed to do, assess your interiority? That’s ridiculous. This is LA. I want to see you bleed. I want to see that look in your eye—that glint, that glimmer. That moment when you knew you made it. You want a star on the walk of fame? Get it. You want to be Jessica Lange? Show me. I thought you were a triple threat. EGOT. You ain’t got shit. You’ve got talent with no tact. In the battle of existence, talent is the punch; tact is the clever footwork. It doesn’t matter who said it; I’m repeating it. Of all the gin joints in all the world, you walked into New Theater Hollywood with no format. I don’t care who you are. If you want to fulfill the prophecy, listen carefully.
TV is a dying art. With no format you’ve got no show. Good luck!
​
—
Crossing the threshold between high and low takes immense courage. You could call THE DEATH OF A STAR a reality show, a play, or a tweaker telethon. We don’t give a fuck. See you there.
THE RANT
Performed by KARL HOLMQVIST
Live guitar by ARTO LINDSAY
Set design by KLARA LIDÉN
MAY 9 & 10, 2024
​
THE RANT. THE RANTIER RANT RANT RANT 2024. THE RIFF. FEEDBACK LOOKBACK LOOP. THE NO MORE NO MORE.
About ten years ago at New Theater in Berlin, we came up with THE RANT. We ranted and wrote out all the stuff rubbing us the wrong way. Or not. Totally made up as well as actual concerns with what was going on in the world were written on cue cards and performed by Karl Holmqvist with signature feedback guitar loops by Arto Lindsay and a backdrop of slowly spinning cardboard boxes by Klara Lidén with the words ON ON ON and NO NO NO written on them in pink spraypaint.
And now New Theater Hollywood… EQUAL PAY FOR EVERYONE EVERYONE@EREWHON W/O IT COSTING AN ARM AND A LEG #SUPERQUIETELECTRICVEHICLES #NOBORDERS #NOORDERS #PEACEONTHEPLANET #PERMANENTCEASEFIRENOW
Is it even possible to recreate THE RANT for 2024? Guess we’re about to find out.
RUBY MCCOLLISTER
HOLLYWOOD SOLDIER
APRIL 3, 4, 11, 12 & 13, 2024
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Ruby McCollister's newest comedic one woman show. Directed by Leah Hennessey
With music by Jack Kilmer & Leah Hennessey
LILY MCMENAMY
A HOLE IS A HOLE
MARCH 2 & 3, 2024
​
In the US premiere of a A HOLE IS A HOLE, Lily McMenamy presented the construction of a female performer as a metamorphosing and multiplying vessel. Inhabiting a swarm of personae, McMenamy asks us who is subject to our aesthetic and erotic drives, when the relations between artist and model, monster and maker, are thrown into the blender of one singular body.
Co-produced by London Performance Studios
Photos by Rob Kulisek
A NIGHT OF SPEECHES
JANUARY 20, 2024
​
A deconstructed gala commencing the first season of New Theater Hollywood. The night was framed by speeches, like a row of entrances. Doors. Windows. A nod to god. A commitment to form, and one woman shows. Vows. The electric bump of a spotlight. One bathroom. Set to a live soundtrack by Aase Nielsen & MK Velsorf.