Can a tormented land, fractured with hatred between its peoples still be called Land of Miracles? Photographer Wendy Sue Lamm explores this question in her book “From the Land of Miracles,”(Contrasto $30) and on Thursday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Lamm does not hide the wounds of the everyday reality born of conflict in her photo book, but reflects on the fragile balance between peace and war on the daily life of Israelis and Palestinians. In the 50 color photographs, she juxtaposes attacks and retaliations with delicate, bittersweet ironies. After years in Jerusalem photographing Israelis and Palestinians, Lamm has become one of the most sincere visual interpreters of the complex and complicated Arab-Israeli relationship. This book, with poetry by Arthur Miller and a short story by Emile Habiby, shows the deep beauty of a land where the true miracle may simply be to wake up every morning, and to live through every day. The book was also published in Italy and Sweden, where it was nominated for Best Photo Book 2005, at the Scandinavian Book Fair, and in the January/February issue of American Photo, it was named as one of “The Best Books of the Year.” Lamm, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, recalls that her first published image appeared in the Palisadian-Post in 1981 or 1982 when she was a Santa Monica High School student. “It was a photo of Buddy Ebsen playing at a blue grass festival,” she recalls. Since graduating from UC Berkeley in 1988, she has worked as a staff photographer at Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem, and at several other leading publications, including the Los Angeles Times, where her photographs of the Northridge earthquake were part of the coverage that earned the L.A. Times its 1994 Pulitzer for spot news. In 1998, she joined the Italian photo agency Contrasto, and is currently regularly commissioned to photograph in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. She was based since 1996 successively in Jerusalem, Paris and Stockholm, and recently returned to Los Angeles. She and her husband Esaias have a 2-year-old boy, Elia. “From The Land of Miracles” is Lamm’s attempt to show different perspectives on the Middle East crises. “I learned that it’s a very complicated situation, fractured,” she told the Palisadian-Post. “As a photographer, I see that a lot is being said about the place, but you have to see it to know what’s going on.” The book contains only two text segments, which Lamm felt best correspond to the way she felt. “I wanted to show different perspectives on it and I was always looking for other writings.” Lamm lived for two years in Jerusalem and later moved to Paris but continued to make trips back and forth to Ramallah. She said that she speaks neither Hebrew nor Arabic, because “if you’re working close in Palestinian areas, it’s best to speak English. They’re always testing you.” Her photographs are exhibited in the world’s leading museums, and are regularly seen in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Sophisticated Traveler, Newsweek, Geo, Der Spiegel and Elle. Her photographs of Israelis and Palestinians have received awards in the World Press Photo Awards and the National Press Photographers Pictures of the Year, among many others. In her next book “Grass,” Lamm explores the yearning of mankind to recreate our own Eden’which we have been missing ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of Paradise.

Theatre Palisades hosts the third annual evening of a benefit concert reading of a new play by Josh Greenfeld on Sunday, February 26 at 7:30 p.m. at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. In 2004 the play was “The Last Two Jews of Kabul” starring Paul Mazursky and Saul Rubinek, and last year it was “predicates” featuring Mazursky and Diane Manoff. The new play, “Fish Story,” produced by Bob Sharka and Andrew Frew, is a “two-hander”‘or two-character play’in which an aging terminally ill Jewish California schoolteacher/actor returns to his native Brooklyn neighborhood. The synagogue in which he was bar mitzvahed and mourned the death of his own parents is now a Gospel Tabernacle. And he almost immediately finds himself a victim of culture shock in an attempted mugging by a young African American. Their encounter takes the form of not only a tension-producing confrontation but also a meditation on changing values, seemingly enduring verities, and the fallacies and absurdities behind both. The result is a comedic and suspenseful questioning of life and death and reality and identity, before a highly dramatic denouement. Once more Mazursky, best known as the prize-winning director whose films include “Bob & Carol & Ted Alice,” “Harry and Tonto,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” and “Enemies,” but whose many acting credits through the years range from “Blackboard Jungle” through “A Star is Born” to “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” will hold down a leading role. Co-starring with him is Emilu Nelson, a film and TV actor. Originally from New Jersey, Nelson attended Syracuse University, where he played basketball. His film credits include a supporting role in “The Hard Easy,” the lead in “Thursday’s Child” and co-starring roles on the television series “JAG,” “Angel” and “City of Angels.” With the highly acclaimed production of “The Last Two Jews of Kabul” at the La Mama Theatre in New York three years ago, longtime Palisades resident Greenfeld returned to the theater as a writer after a career as a journalist, critic, novelist and screenwriter. He was nominated for an Academy Award along with Paul Mazursky for the screenplay of “Harry and Tonto,” the film for which Art Carney won the Oscar for the Best Actor; he also wrote the screenplay for “Oh God! Book Two” starring George Burns, and the teleplay “Lovey: Circle of Child Part II” starring Jane Alexander. His play “Clandestine on the Morning Line,” was produced Off-Broadway with Rosetta LeNoir and James Earl Jones in the starring roles. And “I Have a Dream,” starring Billy Dee Williams, after opening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington and touring the country, settled down for a run on Broadway. Perhaps Greenfeld is best known for his prize-winning “A Child Called Noah” trilogy about his brain-damaged son. This year’s performance honors the late Dorothy Knight, a longtime Palisadian and staunch peace activist. Proceeds from the evening ($10 suggested donation) will benefit Theatre Palisades, Friends of Film and Palisadians for Peace. For reservations, call Theatre Palisades at 454-1970.

When Sharon Waxman set out to write “Rebels on the Backlot,” a look at maverick Hollywood film directors of the 1990s, she armed herself with certain criteria in order to narrow her focus to six filmmakers. First, she pinpointed films she felt really marked the decade. “Twenty years from now, when your kid asks ‘What did the ’90s feel like?,’ you’ll say ‘Let’s watch ‘Being John Malkovich’ or ‘Pulp Fiction,'” says Waxman, who readily chose Spike Jonze and Quentin Tarantino, the respective directors, as leading members of the new radical pack. Also making the cut were Steven Soderbergh (“Traffic”), David Fincher (“Fight Club”), Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia”) and David O. Russell (“Three Kings”). “They all had to set new standards in filmmaking,” Waxman adds, referring to how this new generation boldly plays with form and narrative, shockingly juxtaposes violence and sex with humor and often employs fast music video-style cutting and editing. However, the overriding commonality is that all these groundbreaking movies were made by the major studios. “The whole idea was to show how these guys were being brought into the studios,” notes Waxman, who has covered the entertainment industry for the past 10 years, first as a reporter for the Washington Post and since 2003 as a correspondent for the New York Times. She came to Hollywood after nearly a decade of reporting abroad, covering European politics and culture and before that the Middle East. Waxman, a resident of Santa Monica where she lives with her husband and three children, will discuss and sign copies of “Rebels on the Backlot” (Harper Collins, 2005) at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 22. “I was going to write the book with or without them [the directors],” says Waxman, whose research did indeed include the cooperation of all six directors as well as interviews with more than 100 actors, producers and movie executives. The result is a book that weaves together in-depth, sometimes juicy portraits of each director and analysis of their films along with a behind-the-scenes look at how the bottom line-driven studio system came to embrace more artistically daring movies. In many ways, it all began with Tarantino’s 1994 “Pulp Fiction,” the first independent film to earn over $100 million, recasting conventional wisdom about what the public would pay to see. “It completely changed the way young filmmakers looked at what they could do,” Waxman notes. It also sent Hollywood’s major studios on the hunt for the next edgy auteur, with many setting up new divisions specifically for indie-style movies. Of all the directors, David Fincher, best known for the violent, nihilistic movie “Fight Club,” was the biggest surprise to Waxman, who didn’t expect to be charmed by the director’s keen sense of humor. “He was a complete cipher to me,” she says of her pre-interview impression. “He really doesn’t give interviews, so there’s very little out there about him. “All of them are really different, interesting and complicated guys,” she continues. “There are points of divergence and points in common.” One thing all share is their self-taught, non-film-school-degree status. “They were in a big hurry,” Waxman says. “They saw films in their heads they wanted to make and weren’t going to wait around.” The book delves deeply into each director’s life, dispelling such myths as Tarantino being a half-breed, white trash school dropout from Tennessee who miraculously emerged as the voice of his generation. “The reality is something far more subtle and complicated,” writes Waxman. “Quentin Tarantino was not raised in poverty, nor in a white trash environment, nor as a hillbilly.” She goes on to tell how, despite being from a broken home, Tarantino had a mother who was “unusually intelligent and ambitious” and did all she could to associate her son with an upper middle-class lifestyle. We learn how Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights,” about the rise and fall of a group of 1970’s porn stars, is rooted in the director’s own childhood growing up in the San Fernando Valley, where porn movie production was part of the landscape. “All the kids in the neighborhood knew that the white van that pulled up to a house down the street was shooting porn,” writes Waxman. Waxman vividly captures the tensions and dynamic of being on set with each director, devoting several pages to the feud that arose between director David O. Russell and his star, George Clooney, during the filming of “Three Kings,” with Clooney’s handwritten notes of discontent reproduced. According to Waxman, Hollywood is in a real state of flux, struggling with ways to adapt to shifting technology and distribution models which are not working in terms of the amount that needs to be spent to get people into the theaters. “It’s an interesting time to be observing the industry,” she says. “It’s this generation of people I wrote about who will need to sort out these issues of how people are going to consume entertainment.”

Actors’ Lounge program allows actors to explore their range and hone their craft before a live audience.

The crowd gathering outside the Greenway Court Theatre in the Fairfax District on a recent evening looks arty but unassuming. Except for a couple of women clad in 1930’s-style hats and skirts, most are casually dressed in jeans, quietly chatting in small groups. A sign on the marquee announces “Da’ Poetry Lounge” on Tuesday nights. But it’s Wednesday, and a guy behind the entrance gate peeks out to tell us he’ll let us in just as soon as the group on stage finishes a final run-through of their scene. Whether you’re acting in or watching the show at the Actors’ Lounge on the first Wednesday of every month, chances are you’ll get your buck’s worth. The evening of scenes and monologues is sort of an open-mike night for actors of all ages and at any level. But there is no shortage of talent; many of the performers in their late 20s/early 30s are experienced, working actors’in TV, film and Broadway’and others have produced albums, directed plays and independent films. On this particular evening, two actors open the program with a dramatic scene about a couple emotionally divided over the husband’s adultery. Their gripping performances and clear, convincing dialogue move a few audience members to sympathize out loud with the betrayed wife. Then, in a heated moment, the male actor says, in the style of Saturday Night Live, “Tonight, we will give it up for Actors’ Lounge,” and the crowd erupts in applause as DJ Blas plays Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” Before the next scene begins, the hosts lead the crowd of about 100 in a pre-show stretch followed by a clapping exercise they call the “Applause O’Meter,” which gradually raises the volume of the applause. Some audience members choose to sit in chairs on the sides of the stage, bringing them closer to the performers. Started about a year and a half ago by four local performers, the Actors’ Lounge celebrates artistic expression and community. The idea developed as an extension of Da’ Poetry Lounge, a weekly event at the theater featuring open-mike poetry and the spoken word. “The idea was similar’create a community environment where people don’t have to pay to put up art,” says Adam Schmalholz, a musician, poet and one of the founders of the Actors’ Lounge. “It’s a way to bridge the [entertainment] industry with the town, where people can come and not only be inspired to work with each other but also develop friendships.” Admission is actually $1 for performers and audience members, but that price is as good as free when you consider the crew working behind-the-scenes, including a house manager, stage manager, professional DJ and, of course, the theater space itself. The Greenway Court is located on the campus of Fairfax High School, on Fairfax one block south of Melrose. Hosted by Schmalholz and actor Justin Wade, the evening is divided into two hour-long segments, each with about 10 to 12 acts. As a rule, scenes run five minutes and monologues three minutes; there are usually only four monologues per night. The acts range from slapstick comedy to dramatic scenes about serious topics such as child abuse and suicide. No one will forget the tall, well dressed Chicago man who takes us to the verge of his own suicide. There is dead silence in the room as he holds his own finger to his head, leaving us with the haunting question “Will someone tell my father that I need him right now?” On the other side of this emotional evening, Schmalholz and Wade perform a scene from Stanley Tucci’s 1998 comedy “The Impostors,” incorporating costumes, props, music, lighting, special effects and stunts, including somersaults and a staged fight that they accomplish with great ease. Their imitation slapstick has the audience laughing and awestruck as the action unfolds’in slow motion’on stage. Creative and entertaining, the programming at the Actors’ Lounge is structured with a beginning, middle and end. But there are no strict guidelines for the actors, who are free to experiment during their allotted time on stage. “It’s like a gym for us,” says stage manager and actor Corey Curties. “This is a place where actors can act, versus waiting at home for your agent to call.” “You can be as prepared as you want,” says actress Ida Darvish, one of the founders of the Lounge. “There are people who come in and put on a show, and others who are just working something out.” While the organizers clearly have control over the sequence of monologues and scenes, staggering drama and comedy, they can never really predict how the collage of acts will play out. At one point, they invite audience members to participate in a situational improvisation’a comic yet racially conflicted setting of four men in an unemployment line on the day of the 1963 Martin Luther King March on Washington. DJ Blas and Omari Hardwick, a founding member of the Actors’ Lounge, join the volunteers on stage for this unexpectedly funny improvisation. “Sometimes you get talent that blows you away and sometimes you get people who are okay,” Schmalholz says, adding, “it gives people who aren’t experienced a chance to see if they like performing.” The group is quick to offer support when a fellow actor struggles with his lines. One guy restarts his monologue three times, but instead of boos, there are cheers of encouragement, and Wade jumps into a seat on stage to feed the actor his line from a book. Another actor stops, composed, mid-way through his monologue from “A Raisin in the Sun,” and starts over, explaining, “I want to have more fun with this.” “You become your own teacher,” says Schmalholz, who calls the Lounge the “anti-class,” explaining that it’s a safe place for actors to practice or hone their skills, compared to a classroom setting where they’re being judged by an instructor and peers. Darvish agrees. “You figure out what works and what doesn’t from the audience’s reaction, versus someone telling you.” In between acts, Tyler Clancey shows brief clips from offbeat movies or independent films to give the actors inspiration. JP Husky, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, assists Clancey as a technician. They also film the evening’s scenes, which actors can purchase after the show. Chicago native Sufe Bradshaw is a regular at the Actors’ Lounge, which she says provides her with a stability that is hard to find in Hollywood. This night she and a fellow actress team up to play prostitutes discussing their marriage prospects and dreams for a better life as they work a street corner. “I try to come as often as I can,” says Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, an entertainer who performs regularly at the Lounge with her homemade puppet, Lolly. “I felt like I had always been intimidated by actors, but here [at the Actors’ Lounge], I am so inspired.” She has a knack for transforming her voice into the high-pitched childlike tone of Lolly, who was eager to present the Valentine love badges she had innocently created using Maxi pads. “I think of an issue and I try to put it in the heart of a child,” says Carrara-Rudolph, who also performs on “Sesame Street.” Palisadians might recognize her because she sings at the annual Sweetheart Dance at the American Legion in Pacific Palisades. The fourth founding member of the Actors’ Lounge, Rosa Graziano, has moved back to New Jersey and is trying to start one in New York City. For more information, contact: theactorsloungela@yahoo.com