Anzu Lawson

Santa Monica Playhouse has been a cultural treasure in the seaside community for 63 years. Now, the Playhouse is giving love back with its Eighth Annual Binge Free Festival, five weeks of free performances, workshops, and music in Santa Monica's ONLY fringe festival. The BFF's primary focus is on Santa Monica and Los Angeles-based artists, but there will be exciting international artists on view as well.

Anzu Lawson is gearing up to debut her second one-woman show, The Rub, inspired by her 30-minute single camera comedy pilot about her life as a stand-up comic who secretly pays her bills by being every Asian mother's worst nightmare... a masseuse. I first met Anzu when she was performing as Yoko Ono during the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival, a role she inhabits with her entire body, heart and soul. So it makes perfect sense that The Rub debuts on Yoko Ono’s 90th birthday on Saturday, February 18 at 8pm as part of Whitefire Theatre's Solofest 2023. Here's my interview with her about the show.

​​​​​​​Anzu Lawson gears up to debut and perform her 2nd One Woman Show The Rub inspired by her 30 minute single camera comedy pilot “The Rub” about her life as a stand-up comic who secretly pays her bills by being every Asian mother's worst nightmare… a masseuse.

With the current theatre world on hiatus, I have created a Spotlight Series of interviews with some of am the many talented artists who make our Los Angeles theatre community so exciting and vibrant thanks to their ongoing contribution to keeping the arts alive in the City of the Angels. And like all of us, how are they dealing with the abrupt end of productions in which they were involved? This Spotlight focuses on Anzu Lawson, an Asian-American Actress, Playwright, Stand-Up Comic, and Yoko Ono doppelganger who I first met during the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Al Pacino headlined the cast of a sold-out benefit staged reading of David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummer, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, in Beverly Hills, CA.  In collaboration with The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, the Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award-winning Pacino reprised the title role of Pavlo Hummel

Al Pacino (The Irishman, Scent of a Woman, The Godfather) will participate in a benefit staged reading of award-winning Vietnam veteran playwright David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummer, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, in collaboration with The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, on Sunday, March 8, 2020, 7 pm, in The Wallis' Bram Goldsmith Theater.

The Whitefire Theatre presents SOLOFEST 2020, the largest solo theater festival on the West Coast. Now in its 8th year, SOLOFEST 2020 brings 80 shows in 90 days celebrating solo artists from around the globe a?' each story-teller sharing their compelling and often unusual take on life. SOLOFEST 2020 will run January 4 a?' March 28.

Following successful 2019 engagements at the Whitefire Theatre and Santa Monica Playhouse, the acclaimed show Dear Yoko returns to the Whitefire Theatre for a single performance as part of the Whitefire's Solofest 2020. Anzu Lawson (who plays Ashley Kim on NBC's Chicago Med) is an Asian-American actress who grew up in Southern California in a broken family.

I was unaware of how Anzu's personal history inspired Ono's spirit to speak so directly to her until I was in the audience at her World Premiere solo show, DEAR YOKO, in which Anzu opened her heart and soul as she revealed how her personal history of non-acceptance as an Asian woman and her overwhelming depression was turned around when she discovered Ono as she studied her story and writings. During her 90-minute performance, directed by Jessica Lynn Johnson at the Whitefire Theatre, Anzu not only portrayed Ono with her signature dialect, hat and sunglasses, but also personal family members, rock musicians she met while touring as a singer/songwriter, agents and entertainment moguls who brought on the need for the #MeToo movement, and others who assisted her in turning her life around and accepting herself as the person she really was meant to be. And that road was never easy but so worth the journey.

Santa Monica Playhouse has been a cultural treasure in the seaside community for 60 years. Now, the Playhouse is giving love back with its Fourth Annual Binge Free Festival (BFF), a full month of free performances, workshops, readings, music and poetry in Santa Monica's ONLY fringe festival. The BFF's primary focus will be on Santa Monica and Los Angeles-based artists.

The month marks the start of my 7th year as a reviewer for Broadway World Los Angeles. With awards season in full bloom each January, many people ask me what my favorite shows were for the previous year. Since I see 3-5 shows per week, that is a difficult and time-consuming task for me to accomplish. But for 2018, I decided to go back through all the 188 reviews/articles I wrote for every show I saw and selected my top shows month-by-month. And what fun it was to go back and select one photo from each of the top 39 shows I selected.

DEAR JOHN, WHY YOKO? with music by Anzu Lawson and Joerg Stoeffel, book and lyrics by Anzu Lawson, tells the untold story of a love that changed the world and defined an era fraught with the same type of protests taking place now. It is my hope by sharing your story, we may all be lucky enough to live out our own dreams in a world where peace and love really exist between all people and war is dead. And we will have John Lennon and Yoko Ono to thank for that vision.

When the victim of high school bullying appears to start taking revenge on the clique that casts her out, a group of teens must face the sins of their past before their secrets tear them apart. In AT&T* Hello Lab's “Guilty Party”, the audience plays the role of detective to discover who is exposing everyone's secrets.

ANTON IN SHOW BUSINESS by Jane Martin is a satirical romp across the stage of American Theatre, that holds a hilarious mirror up to the live theatre entertainment from coast to coast. The story focuses on Holly (Gillian Shure), a wildly popular TV star, who needs to get theatrical street cred to be considered for film. On a whim she signs on to do Anton Chekov's "Three Sisters" in a small repertory theatre in Texas where she can hire directors and pull all the strings as the show's financial backer. The entire cast is portrayed by women in this ensemble piece that combines the depth of Chekov and the levity of a Bravo sitcom.

SLIGHTLY SANE PRODUCTIONS announce the opening of prolific award-winning and somewhat mysterious playwright Jane Martin's, ANTON IN SHOW BUSINESS, Directed by Nell Teare.  This satirical gem,  with a stellar cast opens at The Hudson MainStage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA.  Tickets: www.plays411.com/anton - Opening April 9th, 2016.  There will be one preview Friday, April 8th.

The World Premiere of ROCK & ROLL'S GREATEST LOVERS, with music by Anzu Lawson and Joerg Stoeffel, book and lyrics by Anzu Lawson, tells the Romeo and Juliet story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, two rebels from opposite ends of the world who stood together in the name of LOVE only to face every kind of hate and tribulation. The 60 minute production of selected songs from the play is directed by Nell Teare, presented at the Lillian Theater during the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

The WORLD PREMIERE of ROCK & ROLL'S GREATEST LOVERS, a new musical.

The controversial and sometimes tumultuous relationship between former Beatle John Lennon and avant-garde artist Yoko Ono is the focus of the new musical play "Rock & Roll's Greatest Lovers" opening at 3:45 p.m. June 7 at the Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way in Hollywood as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Inspired by John Lennon's controversial love for Yoko Ono, ROCK & ROLL'S GREATEST LOVERS tells the Romeo and Juliet story of two rebels from opposite ends of the world who stood together in the name of love only to face every kind of hate possible.

The WORLD PREMIERE of ROCK & ROLL'S GREATEST LOVERS, a new musical.