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PROFILE

Anthony Byrnes Host
Anthony Byrnes

host of 'Opening the Curtain'

Anthony Byrnes is a director, producer, educator, critic and arts administrator, based in Los Angeles, California. He has served as the founding Artistic Director of Burning Wheel & the Umbrella Company, a weekly columnist on KCRW, Director of Cultural Relations for the University of Southern California, and Associate Producer of New Play Development for Center Theatre Group.

Byrnes received an MFA from CalArts and currently teaches at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

FROM Anthony Byrnes

Sleeping with your son
Opening the Curtain

Sleeping with your son Remember that cool kid in high school?  The one with the awesome jacket and that effortless edge. He was something of a rebel: used nasty language in just the right way. Made it all look so easy.  Now remember that other kid who tried to copy him? Same jacket, same foul language but he couldn’t quite pull it off?

3 min, 16 sec Jan 14, 2019

Theatre for a New Year
Opening the Curtain

Theatre for a New Year New Year - new theatre!  Here’s my short list for the plays you shouldn’t miss this spring.

3 min, 15 sec Jan 07, 2019

Best of 2018, part 2
Opening the Curtain

Best of 2018, part 2 Last week I started looking back at the theatre in LA that made a difference in 2018.  This week I round out that list with the kind of work I hope fills theaters in 2019.

3 min, 46 sec Dec 31, 2018

Best of 2018, part 1
Opening the Curtain

Best of 2018, part 1 Looking back at the best shows from a year of theatre is always a little strange.  It’s not like KCRW’s list of best albums that you can instantly download and enjoy.  Theatre is ephemeral - you can’t stream it or hit rewind. So reflecting on a year’s productions is less a guide to what you should see, and more an evaluation of where we are as an audience - and maybe a hint of where we’re going.

3 min, 43 sec Dec 26, 2018

The challenge of time and space
Opening the Curtain

The challenge of time and space This last weekend Taylor Mac, the fabulous drag performer and all around theatre genius, returned to the Center of the Art of Performance at UCLA with a holiday show: “Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce”.

3 min, 29 sec Dec 17, 2018

A High Sugar "Nutcracker"
Opening the Curtain

A High Sugar "Nutcracker" I’m a sucker for theater in non-traditional spaces so when I heard about “The Nutcracker Suite” in a skyscraper downtown - even though it was ballet - I was in.

3 min, 17 sec Dec 10, 2018

Look for the helpers
Opening the Curtain

Look for the helpers “Come From Away”, the new show at the Ahmanson, is basically a feel-good musical about 9/11. If that sounds a little far-fetched, think of the advice to kids from Mr. Rogers: in the face of catastrophe, look to the helpers.

3 min, 28 sec Dec 03, 2018

A mean Lear
Opening the Curtain

A mean Lear There’s something so absurdly ambitious about Zombie Joe’s Underground production of “King Lear” - you really want it to work.

3 min, 27 sec Nov 26, 2018

Being a Ghost Story of Christmas
Opening the Curtain

Being a Ghost Story of Christmas When you enter the Geffen Playhouse for “A Christmas Carol” it feels like you may have entered a victorian funeral home.  The lights are dim, there’s a waft of fog blowing on stage and what appears to be a coffin surrounded by black floral arrangements. It’s spooky. It feels like you’re about to hear a ghost story.  Which you are.

4 min Nov 12, 2018

Midterm Elections and the theatre
Opening the Curtain

Midterm Elections and the theatre Anthony Byrnes speaks with Steve Chiotakis about theatre and the upcoming elections on All Things Considered.

4 min, 22 sec Nov 05, 2018

An absence of responsibility
Opening the Curtain

An absence of responsibility At first Eliza Clark’s play “Quack” feels like a thinly veiled take-down of a Dr. Oz-like TV doctor.

3 min, 31 sec Oct 29, 2018

A Lie to make you care
Opening the Curtain

A Lie to make you care Beyond the 6 Tony Awards and the record setting box office, what’s fascinating about the musical “Dear Evan Hansen” is how it gets an audience to care.

3 min, 19 sec Oct 22, 2018

Breaking free from Shakespeare's Ghetto
Opening the Curtain

Breaking free from Shakespeare's Ghetto What if “The Merchant of Venice” were told from Shylock’s daughter’s perspective? That’s the conceit behind Sarah Mantell’s play “Everything that never happened”.

3 min, 16 sec Oct 15, 2018

A blue Jello spit take of truth
Opening the Curtain

A blue Jello spit take of truth When’s the last time, in the theater, that you saw a really good, slow spit take?

3 min, 34 sec Oct 08, 2018

An argument for Dramaturgy
Opening the Curtain

An argument for Dramaturgy Watching Jose Rivera’s play “The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona” is a bit like flipping through the sketchbook of a talented artist who can’t figure out exactly how all those sketches turn into a big painting.

3 min, 29 sec Oct 01, 2018

The glory of subversion
Opening the Curtain

The glory of subversion Branden Jacobs-Jenkins plays aren’t quite what they seem on the surface. Or maybe a better way to say that is - they are everything they seem to be ... and more. Take his play “Appropriate” or “Appropriate” that played at the Taper in 2015.(That was a couple years ago but stick with me - because he’s doing something very similar now).

3 min, 32 sec Sep 24, 2018

Recommended

Two Republicans, Loretta Sanchez Vie for 3rd Supervisorial Seat
Orange County Line

Two Republicans, Loretta Sanchez Vie for 3rd Supervisorial Seat With the election of Supervisor Todd Spitzer to the Orange County District Attorney's office, three prominent OC politicians seem likely to run for the 3rd District, which goes from Yorba Linda to the north to Irvine in the South and extends into OC's canyon countries.

3 min, 49 sec Jan 14, 2019

Deborah Eisenberg: Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories
Bookworm

Deborah Eisenberg: Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories Again Deborah Eisenberg demonstrates herself as a masterful and electric writer, in her new collection of seven stories, Your Duck Is My Duck.

28 min, 28 sec Jan 17, 2019

Storage Wars
Martini Shot

Storage Wars This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I clean things out for the new year. Digitally, I mean, Clips and ideas and files from an extremely cluttered Dropbox, iCloud, and Evernote.

3 min, 32 sec Jan 16, 2019

HBM110: Big Numbers
Here Be Monsters

HBM110: Big Numbers Jeff explains why numbers are like telescopes.

26 min, 20 sec Jan 16, 2019

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