On Entertainment

UCSB’s Launch Pad program began in 2005 as a grand experiment to offer a high-tech lab for playwrights-in-residence, UCSB theater students, faculty, and guest artists to collaborate in developing a new play each year. The residency culminates in a fully realized Preview Production, when the play completes its journey from incubation to professional world premiere featuring a mix of student and professional actors. The brainchild of founding artistic director Risa Brainin, Launch Pad’s concept was unique in American theater, to have a fully realized production of a new play without the pressures of the commercial world. The play stays in previews throughout the run of the show, allowing the writer to continue revising as the piece evolves through performance.

Over the years, the program has branched out a bit, most recently also offering Launch Pad Pop-Ups, smaller versions of the annual production that run as staged readings of new projects that have much briefer rehearsal and development periods and are performed just once with scripts in hand. Montecito resident Cheri Steinkellner’s Prima Materia – the famed comedy writer’s new mother-daughter comedy “about death, love, memory and making garbage into gold” – was the most recent recipient of the treatment, with a reading just last January.

Now, in an effort to cope with COVID-19, Launch Pad is launching into another grand experiment, said Brainin, who was supposed to direct Fortunes, a new comedy play written by Dan Castellaneta and Deb Lacusta, as a staged reading in mid-March but was thwarted when UCSB canceled classes. Instead, the piece is zipping over to Zoom, where Brainin will direct Launch Pad’s first-ever virtual staged reading on Thursday, April 2.

“People across the country are streaming just about everything,” Brainin said on Monday. “I figured why not try doing it on Zoom and see what happens.”

Brainin said she made that decision partly because of a desire not to have to let go of diving into Fortunes, which was written by Castellaneta – best-known for portraying the voice of Homer Simpson for decades – and his wife and frequent writing partner Deb Lacusta.

“I’ve read a lot of their work, and been very interested in producing something, and I like this piece a lot,” Brainin explained. “What’s great about their writing is that there’s comedy but they’re also dealing with issues. That’s my favorite approach, to find comedy in tragedy and vice versa.” Fortunes features five people who have different connections, and a psychic who does readings upstairs in a little coffeehouse in Detroit, back in the 1980s.

“I just love the characters, this group of people who have a little history together,” Brainin said. “They’re all struggling with what was happening back then in that era with the recession. And that gives it another angle at this crazy moment when we’re all struggling.”

UCSB Theater professor Michael Bernard is joined by seven BFA acting program students – Sheila Correa, Harry Davis, Mateusz Kranz, Sara Neal, Harutun Simonian, Lana Spring, and Hailey Turner – in rounding out the cast that Brainin will have to direct only virtually, which seems like quite a task.

“I’m wondering myself how that’s going to work,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve auditioned actors over video and done a Zoom call back where I might give them some direction on a scene and have them redo it. But that’s oneon-one, not a whole ensemble.”

The tricky part, she said, is that the actors won’t be able to see each other as they work.

“You can’t see the other person’s eyes, or rather not see them eye-toeye. So the communication is a little cringed. But at least they can hear each other clearly – I hope – and see your face so they can tell what you’re trying to express.”

The upshot is that the experience at least for her and the actors is more like performing a radio play from a bygone era.

“You really have to listen to each other to try to make the timing and connections work.”

As for the audience? That’s another story. Brainin is still fiddling with the Zoom technology so that the event is a true conference call – albeit with the observers muted during the reading – rather than a one-way webinar. That’s because the writers still want to gauge the audience response and receive feedback as to how the play works, which, of course, is the original purpose of Launch Pad programs. So Brainin will be moderating a discussion and Q&A period after the reading ends.

“There might be two people on there, or 50 – who knows?” she said. “It really is a grand experiment.”

Even in advance of the first staged reading, however, Brainin is moving

Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than 10 years.

forward with an online version of the student showcase at the end of the semester, exchanging the in-person performances for a special 15th anniversary event. She reached out to all 29 of the playwrights whose work were produced over Launch Pad’s span inviting them to create a monolog or a scene, or both, that can be performed on the Zoom format.

“It doesn’t have to be set on Zoom itself, but you can’t have any compromises in adapting the play to a virtual reading. In other words, you can’t set two people in the same room, because you can’t actually do that on Zoom,” Brainin explained.

The playwrights were given the coronavirus-connected prompt of Alone Together, and 17 playwrights, including Steinkellner, are participating. Six student directors and all of the student actors as well as select faculty members and some actors from community will have a hand in producing the submissions on Zoom in June. Details have yet to be announced as logistics are still being worked out.

In the meantime, the COVID-created dash to streaming is affording an opportunity to catch Brainin’s most recent non-UCSB project: the Indiana Repertory Theater’s production of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Brainin directed the show, which ran for 16 performances before shutting down for sheltering in place. The company wanted to preserve the production and make it available to those who already bought tickets, so they filmed it as a four-camera shoot, Brainin said. Visit https://tickets. irtlive.com/4684/4686 to get access. How did it turn out? “I don’t know,” Brainin admitted. “I haven’t seen it myself, because it seems scary to see my work on film without having had anything to do with it.”

Hopefully Fortunes will prove more fortunate.

(Launch Pad’s stage reading of Fortunes takes place 7 pm on Thursday, April 2, at https://ucsb.zoom. us/j/181140604.)

Classical Corner Confronts Coronavirus The concerts everywhere are all canceled, at least for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, and on into the summer, but the classical music organizations are doing their level best to keep in touch and keep you entertained.

Camerata Pacifica might be lead

• The Voice of the Village • MONTECITO JOURNAL 51 ing the charge, as the chamber music ensemble is not only upgrading its online offerings of pre-existing pre-recorded concerts, several dozen in total, but Adrian Spence and associates are also offering some special curated events. The artistic director is building 60- to 75-minute programs from the Camerata video library to broadcast each Sunday. The Concert at Home event takes place at 10 am Sunday, April 5, on its YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/channel/ UC0oECgVms-HVED2tbLzYfkA) and will also be shown on Facebook Live (www.facebook.com/cameratasb) at 11.30 am.

Likewise, CAMA is hoping to defray disappointment from having to cancel concerts in this disconcerting time by offering a snippet of what might have been in the first of the gutted shows with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra with Lahav Shani as conductor and piano soloist. Members of the orchestra have put together a charming stayat-home video of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” they’re sharing on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXT60rbBVk&utm, which clocks in at just under four minutes, while Shani’s introduction to Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, which he would have played in March, offers a six-minute dive into the piece at www.youtube. com/watch?v=-KGHEjRDqxM&utm. Opera Santa Barbara is upping the ante as it continues its operations remotely, staying connected through free streaming programming, including webcasts of past OSB productions and other original recorded content. Follow OSB on Facebook (www.face book.com/operasantabarbara) to enjoy 5 pm Tuesday streams of Daniel Catan’s Il Postino (The Postman) on April 7, Robert Ward’s The Crucible on April 14, and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin on April 21, with more to come. The Ojai Music Festival just announced cancellation of its 2020 event originally slated for June, while also launching efforts to stay connected with the festival community via such opportunities as sharing Festival concert archives released on its Facebook channel (www.facebook. com/events/1508420499322253) and website (www.ojaifestival.org/stayconnected-and-reminisce-with-us). The “Tune in Tuesday” events take place weekly at 6 pm and each broadcast features a complete concert program complemented by program notes by Christopher Hailey.

The Santa Barbara Symphony is slightly behind the curve, but also plans to share free broadcasts of favorite performances from seasons past in addition to Spotify playlists, and moments with music and artistic director Nir Kabaretti, also over its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ SantaBarbaraSymphony) or online at www.thesymphony.org •MJ

Horsing Around doesn’t mean you can go sleep in a bed with someone after you get off American Airlines. We cannot play those games.

“I leave food on the doorstep... He’s happy to have me safe. We just take him dinner and we take him breakfast.”

Food for thought, indeed.

Peter Beuret waxes lyrical during corona crisis

Office, the San Ysidro Pharmacy, the Montecito Fire Department, Vons Pharmacy, and the American Riviera Bank, among others.

To help ensure the health and safety of the community, enhanced precautions are being taken including limited contact and the allowance of only one person at the truck at a time.

MONTECITO JOURNAL52 Pandemic Pentameter The elderly residents of Casa Dorinda, currently under lockdown because of the coronavirus, are waxing poetic!

Longtime resident Linda Beuret says residents are watching movies and participating in exercise classes on Casa TV, while food is delivered to the doors of cottages and rooms.

“Keeping six feet from anyone you pass is absolutely mandatory,” says Linda, who I see regularly at CAMA and SB Symphony performances.

One resident has also started an e-mail chain of poetry about the current situation.

Linda’s husband Peter has also joined in the effort, with his poem reading:

“There once was a living man called Ignatz Semmelweis.

His home was Vienna. His mind was precise.

He was a good surgeon and he wondered why

When surgeons did surgery the patients would die.

Then Ignatz thought up a most wonderful trick,

If you just washed your hands people wouldn’t get sick.

They thought he was crazy. They called him a nut.

But Ignatz turned out to be anything but.

Now a hundred years later, or just a bit more,

a global pandemic is outside our door.

We’re keeping our distance. We’re

scared half to death,

We’re washing our hands more than Lady MacBeth.

But thanks to old Ignatz, we’ll avoid the disease,

So let’s have a round of appease, if you please.

For keeping us healthy in our paradise:

Put your two hands together for old Semmelweis.”

Riskin it All

David Sigman delays polo season kickoff

The Santa Barbara Polo Club is delaying the start of its 109th season, which was scheduled to kick off on May 1, because of the coronavirus.

Instead, the hotly anticipated initial equestrian event, the Folded Hills Pope Challenge, has been rescheduled for May 15, with the 12-goal schedule continuing through July 5.

“The club is entirely at the mercy of the state of California and the coronavirus as much as anyone else,” says club manager David Sigman. “We will continue to monitor the situation and recognize some things are out of our control. In the horse world we are sometimes afflicted with outbreaks of infectious diseases such as strangles and EHV, so we are following a similar protocol in our decision making while the world is under quarantine.”

Long may they rein...

Vicki Riskin up for L.A. Times book award

Award-winning writer and producer Vicki Riskin, who wrote a delightful book about her parents, Oscar winning screenwriter Robert Riskin and King Kong actress Fay Wray, has been nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best biography, 2019.

The awards, which were scheduled to be announced later this month, have now been postponed until October because of the pandemic.

Vicki, 77, and her husband, multi Emmy award writer-producer David Rintels, are currently staying at their home in Martha’s Vineyard, where Keeping Their Distance Former TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, 66, is sleeping in separate houses from her longtime partner Stedman Graham, 69, at her Montecito estate.

Oprah, who contracted pneumonia late last year, has announced on Instagram that Stedman is currently in quarantine in their guesthouse after he became a higher coronavirus risk after taking a number of flights on business.

In the video Oprah, who has been with Stedman since 1986, told her 18.2 million Instagram followers: “Stedman is in the guest house. You all know I had CC late last year and you still hear the raspiness in my throat sometimes.

“And I just got off antibiotics last week and so Stedman was late to the party. He didn’t drive from Chicago until Thursday and he was speaking in St. Louis on Saturday, and he’s been on planes.”

Oprah added: “Social distancing

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” – Aristotle Live from Carp Carpinteria TV talk show host Conan O’Brien is broadcasting his popular TBS show from his home during the coronavirus pandemic.

He will be back on air via iPhones and Skype as of April, while his staff remain home.

“This will not be pretty, but feel free to laugh at our attempt,” he writes on Twitter.

Conan, 56, is the first TV host to try to remotely mount a full broadcast from his home.

“The quality of my work will not go down because technically that’s not possible,” he joked.

Just in Time Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry fled Australia after 24 hours in lockdown at a Sydney hotel.

The former Dos Pueblos High student, 35, abruptly cancelled all press interviews and caught a plane back to the U.S. to rejoin her British actor fiancé Orlando Bloom, who had also abruptly wrapped up filming of this new Amazon series Carnival Row in Prague, to meet President Trump’s new coronavirus travel restrictions.

Hunkering Down Montecito actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her TV producer husband Brad Falchuk are obviously taking the coronavirus warnings to heart.

The tony twosome were spotted at a farmers market in Los Angeles wearing large black face masks and blue disposable gloves.

“It’s time for nesting, reading, cleaning out closets, doing something you’ve always wanted to do (write a book, learn an instrument, learn to code online, draw or paint), going through photos, cooking and reconnecting on a deeper level with the people you love,” says the Oscar winner.

“We will get through this and I bet you our humanity will shine like never before.”

Positive thoughts...

Makes No Cents Former Montecito funnyman John Cleese is not exactly raking in the big bucks.

John, who rose to fame as a cast member with Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, has revealed a paltry royalty payment he received for narrating the film Winnie the Pooh, stating that one check totaled all of

The Board and staff of The Granada Theatre look forward to welcoming the Santa Barbara community back into the theater as soon as we are able to open our doors.

Richard Mineards displays meager check

20 cents.

John, 80, has taken to Twitter to blast the low payments he banked for his voice work on the 2011 Disney movie, which had a budget of $29 million and made just $49 million worldwide at the box office.

“In the difficult times the arrival of residuals boosts my morale. Today I received royalties from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. $0.20.” John also blasted the 2003 comedy series Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, writing: “Even better, I received $3.81.”

It reminds me of a check I received when I was a regular on ABC’s The View with Barbara Walters talking about the Royal Family. A longtime member of SAG-AFTRA, I received a royalty check of 27 cents from Disney, which I had framed with TV’s Big Bucks! underneath.

In the meantime, we wish safety and health to all our audience members and performing artists.

Nuptials Postponed Queen Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, 31, is reportedly planning to postpone her May 29 wedding to real estate developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 36, stepson of an old prep school classmate, the late Christopher Shale.

The ceremony in the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace, where Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840, will have an extremely limited guest list, given the new coronavirus rules introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Church of England.

Beatrice, the daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is now going to have the nuptials in 2021 after a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by the Queen was also cancelled. Stay tuned...

Kenny Rogers R.I.P. (photo by John Mathew Smith)

the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation gala with the late Mary Tyler Moore at the Waldorf Astoria in 1997.

Best known for hits including “Lucille,” “The Gambler,” and his duet “Islands in the Stream” with Dolly Parton, Rogers was a three-time Grammy winner, releasing 65 albums and selling more than 165 million records.

Sightings: Actor Jason Gedrick checking out the Three Pickles... Oscar winner Kevin Costner noshing at Oliver’s... Star Wars director George Lucas at Los Arroyos

Pip! Pip! – and be safe

We are grateful to the dedication and support of our world-class resident companies:

Rest in Peace, Kenny On a personal note, I mark the passing of singer Kenny Rogers at his home in Georgia at the age of 81.

Rogers, who was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, used to entertain at a number of charity events in New York where I last saw him at

• The Voice of the Village • MONTECITO JOURNAL 53 The Granada Theatre · 805.899.2222 · GranadaSB.org Readers with tips, sightings, and amusing items for Richard’s column should email him at richardmin eards@verizon.net or send invitations or other correspondence to the Journal. To reach Priscilla, e-mail her at pris cilla@santabarbaraseen.com or call 805-969-3301. •MJ