Review: TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992 at DreamWrights Center For Community Arts

Written by playwright Anna Deavere Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 explores the actions, emotions, and reactions leading up to and revolving around the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The play, originally performed as a one-woman show, is comprised of a series of monologues based on interviews conducted with over 300 individuals. It first opened on Broadway in 1994 and found its way to the screen in 2000 on PBS. This verbatim play, directed by Cal Weary, takes the stage at DreamWrights Center for Community Arts January 28-February 5.

The studio theatre at DreamWrights is the perfect venue for this play. The intimate setting brings the stories to life in a visceral way. This production uses three projection screens to show images from actual news footage, movies, television shows, and commercials from 1991 and 1992. For those who remember this time period, the projections bring back memories, and for those who were not old enough or were not born yet, they help to set the scene for the various things that were going on in the world and in the United States at the time. The projections (designed by Justin Ayala), lighting (by Ashley Shaw) and sound (by Sergio Paul) are well designed to keep the focus on the words and emotions of the actors.

The cast of seven (plus costume designer Delia Pabon, who performs a couple of the monologues on the screen), take on multiple roles, ranging from witnesses to the beatings and riots, to members of the LA Police Commission, to family members of Rodney King, to scholars, to store owners and community residents, to members of the media, to politicians and gang members. Visually, they change character through changing costumes and using different areas of the stage for telling their stories. The cast features actors Manny Tellado, Missy Kiefer, Allen Gabriel, Michael Posner, Soji Otuyelu, Jasmine Graham, and Juliet Vargas. They all show wonderful versatility by changing their body language, posture, and way of speaking to suit each person they portray. The only issue with opening night was occasionally have difficulty hearing some of the monologues, particularly "Kinda Lonely" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night". While the show is rather long, the variety of characters portrayed, range of experiences shared, and intensity of emotions depicted holds the audience's attention.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is an important reminder that no matter how far our society has come in seeking justice and equality, there is still much work to be done. The point that the same things that happened in the riots of the 60s were happening again in the 90s is made several times throughout the show, and it's easy to see the parallels today as well. The cast and crew at DreamWrights deserve a round of applause for taking on this hard-hitting show, dealing with its difficult but important themes, and presenting an authentic and well-designed performance. You can find more information about tickets as well as a recorded Community Conversation about the show and its themes at www.dreamwrights.org.

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