Thank you, New York!

Dance · Film · Theater
A big bravo to Manhattan, Mecca of the Arts, where I have been in residence since September — aka The Season! I joined the furious tour of the performing arts, hitting the ground running, while on a Fellowship from The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Forays to Lincoln Center, the Joyce Theater, Brooklyn ...

Discount tickets for Laemmle “Fiddler on the Roof” an arts·meme holiday “tradition”

Film
An alternative Christmas eve outing … We want to warmly invite readers of all holiday persuasions to join arts·meme‘s Debra Levine for the fun Christmas Eve Singalong Fiddler on the Roof at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 theater in Pasadena. For the second year, Debra has the honor of hosting the seven-year-running “tradition” on behalf of ...

Shtetl soul to rock citywide Laemmle Theatre “Fiddler” screenings 1

Dance · Film
On view here Jerome Robbins’s great “bottle dance” rising in a cloud of soulful Jewish peasant-dust at the wedding ‘banquet’ of Tzeitel and Motel. Apropos this brilliant dance number — for this dance critic the indelible imprint of director Norman Jewison’s surprisingly powerful visual recreation of the Eastern European world of the ‘shtetl’ Jews — ...

A six-year “tradition”: Laemmle Theatres “Fiddler” fest

Film · Music
We had a ball this holiday season when friends gathered last Tuesday night for Laemmle Theatre‘s sixth annual “Fiddler on the Roof” Sing-a-Long screening. For the first time, the venerable family-owned theater chain (in 2013, it  marks its 75th anniversary) rolled out the Christmas Eve event city-wide. Spreading from Santa Monica, by the sea, to ...

Forget your tsuris! Attend Laemmle Theatres’ “Fiddler” sing-a-long. 1

Film
For an “alternative” Christmas Eve, not restricted to the Jewishly oriented but for shower-stall-soloists of every persuasion, we have a suggestion. Try Laemmle Theatres’ sixth annual “anything goes” (and we’re not talking Cole Porter) “Fiddler on the Roof Sing-a-Long.” Belt out your holiday spirit — or your holiday angst — with your fellow meshuggenahs while ...

Jonathan Lynn rules comedy

Ideas & Opinion · Theater
“Laughter is the sound of recognition,” says the author of the book Comedy Rules, Jonathan Lynn. The veteran filmmaker, novelist, screenwriter, and director co-wrote, along with Sir Antony Jay, Yes, Prime Minister, the former hit BBC television series now restaged as theater at the Geffen Playhouse. “When people recognize the truth of something they have ...