Real in L.A.

Good things in L.A. sometimes happen in strange places.

Like Saturday night when I drove downtown to Skid Row. There, in the produce district, Inner City Arts has a serene campus of multiple buildings stocked with all manner of art-making materials. Since 1989, they’ve done what a lot of schools no longer do: provide a space for creativity to flourish.

But their theatre was simply the venue for an independent production from the Roots & Wings Project: “Tree of Fire.”

Three incarcerated women review/relive their lives and choices as the prison burns around them. Very powerful vignettes of exploitation, abuse, grief, and desperation–as well as sisterhood and mutuality.

Original script & music, superb acting on a bare-bones set, each woman contained within a small square of light projected onto the floor.

When a medical emergency forced one of the actors to drop out, playwright and producer Jesse Bliss Woods stepped in as a reader.

It was gratifying to finally see the fruits of so many years of labor. Here’s hoping there will be future productions.