riter-performer
Stephanie Satie has been an ESL teacher, which may partly explain her
bubbly personality and larger-than-life gestures that underscore her words.
Her one-woman show takes us inside a carpeted classroom, with a map of
the world on the upstage wall (set by Rick Friesen), in which Satie morphs
from herself into an array of students of various ages and genders from
nations such as Armenia, Russia, Uzbekistan and Iran. All are learning
the distinction between "to wish" and "to hope." The students unveil their
Old World traumas, mostly involving their commitments to family, while
Satie, of Polish-Jewish stock, confides the sense of her own family's
evaporation into lunacy and geographic distance. Satie's New World feminism
is as dogged as her students' tugs toward tradition. For instance, Satie
leads an Iranian woman to a family counselor after the woman reveals a
black eye. For her "interference," she is approached by the woman's seething
husband and chastised by school authorities. Satie recognizes that moral
compasses often go haywire in a melting pot. Her turn-on-a-dime impersonations
and dialects are as impressive as the force of her personality, in a saga
carefully shaped by director Anita Khanzadian. Multiculturalism is often
a buzz-word for what's really a single-culture event, but this is the
real thing. The evidence was in the American, Farsi, Russian and Armenian
conversations coming from the audience after the show.
Sweet
Lies Theater at the Bitter Truth Theater, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlywd.;
Sat., 8p.m.; Sun., 2p.m.; thru Aug. 2. (818) 755-7900.
riter-performer
Stephanie Satie has been an ESL teacher, which may partly explain her
bubbly personality and larger-than-life gestures that underscore her words.
Her one-woman show takes us inside a carpeted classroom, with a map of
the world on the upstage wall (set by Rick Friesen), in which Satie morphs
from herself into an array of students of various ages and genders from
nations such as Armenia, Russia, Uzbekistan and Iran. All are learning
the distinction between "to wish" and "to hope." The students unveil their
Old World traumas, mostly involving their commitments to family, while
Satie, of Polish-Jewish stock, confides the sense of her own family's
evaporation into lunacy and geographic distance. Satie's New World feminism
is as dogged as her students' tugs toward tradition. For instance, Satie
leads an Iranian woman to a family counselor after the woman reveals a
black eye. For her "interference," she is approached by the woman's seething
husband and chastised by school authorities. Satie recognizes that moral
compasses often go haywire in a melting pot. Her turn-on-a-dime impersonations
and dialects are as impressive as the force of her personality, in a saga
carefully shaped by director Anita Khanzadian. Multiculturalism is often
a buzz-word for what's really a single-culture event, but this is the
real thing. The evidence was in the American, Farsi, Russian and Armenian
conversations coming from the audience after the show.