With neighborhoods beginning to fill up with new houses that look as if they’ve been plucked from Nantucket or the Zorro movie set, it’s refreshing to see the modernist attitude alive and ever evolving at Kanner Architects. President of the firm Stephen Kanner is his own best proponent of the simple, airy and open philosophy: the view that values materials and construction techniques as essential rather than relying on applied decoration. Kanner’s own Pacific Palisades house, completed four years ago on Almar, is a star in his portfolio and an inspiration for many clients. The house has been on no fewer than 10 modern tours, joining classic mid-century houses designed by the Eameses, Pierre Koenig and Richard Neutra, but retains a warmth that easily envelops a family. “I hear people say they love the Eames House, but that it feels cold,” Kanner notes. Indeed, the Eames House on Chautauqua evolved from a steel bridge concept and uses steel trusses, beams and columns complemented with glass and painted cement board panels. Kanner credits people’s response to his own house'”that it feels like a family house”‘to his firm’s celebration of materials, openness and sunlight. Inexpensive materials such as fiberboard, sheer wall plywood and concrete turn into beauties simply by adding a translucent lacquer finish or leaving the trowel tracks on the concrete floors. Color and texture reign. Stephen and his wife Cynthia and children Caroline, 10, and Charlotte, 4, are committed to living in a neighborhood. In fact, when it came time to build their house, they participated in a sort of musical chairs on Almar that resulted in relocating just a block away because they wanted to stay close to their neighbors. Their friends Brad and Celia Bernstein sold their home to Steve and Cynthia, and moved next door. Whereupon the Kanners tore down that house to build their new house. The lot, the size of a standard tennis court (60′ x 120’) is surrounded by five homes. So in thinking about the 3,200-sq.-ft. house, Kanner placed his highest priority on blurring the line between inside and outside. The main part of the house, running perpendicular to the street, incorporates a guest room, kitchen and living room on the ground level; the children’s bedrooms and bathrooms, and the master suite complete the upstairs. The entry hall on the ground level connects the main house with a two-story vertical wing. “The lot was like a dark pit, so I sited the house to the north side of the lot, with the patio to the south allowing for southern light to penetrate the house,” Kanner says. Sensitive to the standards of design in the Palisades, Kanner was careful not to overwhelm the neighborhood. “When we took the design to the Civic League, the key was not to present a monster house,” he says, pointing out the generous setback from the street, 7-ft. side yard setbacks, and situating the second story on the back of the house, away from the street. Overall, Kanner is pleased with the way the house has functioned for the family, but has moved away from some of the design elements that pay homage to Pop Art, notably in the use of “porthole” windows. “This house is not what I’d design again. It proved to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it was a compelling design inspired by the imagery I saw as I was growing up’Googie-style drive-ins and my dad’s Pop art paintings. But on the other hand, the architectural world didn’t embrace it in a serious way, and thought it a veneer approach to architecture.” The house certainly proved to be a dead end in terms of pushing the Kanner practice in a substantially serious direction. This month the firm’started by Kanner’s grandfather Herman in 1946 and directed by his father, Chuck, until his death in 1998’is making a momentous move out of Westwood, where it has been located for the past 28 years, to a bigger space in Santa Monica. In the last few years, Kanner says, the firm has really solidified its approaches to a client’s needs, and to the site, light, views, sustainability and materials. “Now we’re looking at sustainable and recycled materials such as plastics and woods; bamboo or recycled tires for flooring materials. The firm, now with a staff of 34 architects, is really rowing in a clear direction.” The firm designs a variety of projects including retail buildings, such as the more than 50 Puma stores throughout the world; multi-housing units, such as a low-income development at the corner of 26th and Santa Monica Boulevard; commercial buildings, such as the La Brea/Slauson United Oil station; and recreational facilities, such as the gym at Palisades Recreation Center. Besides overseeing Kanner Architects, Steve is board president of the American Institute of Architects and president of the A+D Museum. His aim with the AIA this year is extending outreach to the public. “The L. A. public is not fully aware of what architects really do,” Kanner says. Often when talking to architecture students, he says many of them don’t know what the AIA does. Students and non-architects may be AIA members and receive free admission to monthly committee events on topics like the environment, health care, interiors, international practice and urban design; discounts on admission to seminars and the summer home seminars tour; and a subscription to various architectural publications. The A+D Museum is dedicated to exposing student talent to the public. “There are 12 different architectural schools in Los Angeles, whose work we highlight each year in what used to be called the 2 x 8 exhibit (reflecting eight schools); two projects from each school,” Kanner says. The museum is currently planning to relocate from West Hollywood back downtown, where it started in 2001. “We’ve found a 13,000-sq.-ft. building on 8th and Flower where we hope to house both the museum and the AIA.” He is optimistic that both will be up and running for the national AIA convention to be held in L. A. next June. Kanner’s trio of professional involvements all intertwine to nourish the story of our material landscape, from imagination to concept to design.

By KAREN WILSON Palisadian-Post Contributor The road to Broadway stardom may be long, but one young Palisadian has already started the journey. Helene Yorke, 20, spent the summer making her professional acting debut as a member of the resident company at Music Theater of Wichita, which boasts one of the top summer stock programs for collegiate performers in the country. “It was awesome,” she says of the experience. “Best summer of my life.” For most people, Kansas isn’t the stuff of dreams. Then again, Yorke isn’t most people. Singing and dancing since age 3, she cut her teeth at Palisades Charter High School, performing leads in “Les Mis’rables” and “Crazy for You.” (Fellow students voted Yorke “Drama Queen” in the class polls.) After graduating in 2003, the honors student headed to the University of Michigan (UM), renowned for its top-notch theater program. In her first year at UM, Yorke was the only freshman cast in a featured role in the spring musical production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which she played a member of the Soul Trio, a Supremes-esque girl group. As a sophomore, she understudied the roles of Cassie and Val in “A Chorus Line,” another step up the speaking-parts food chain. After “Chorus” had finished its run, Yorke began weighing summer options. In theater circles, it is widely held that a “summer stock” experience’when amateur actors spend time in a professional environment’is an important step for collegians. “If you perform a show for school, it’s more about that educational process,” Yorke says. “Summer stock is a nice bridgeway before doing Broadway or a company residency.” With that decided, she set her sights on Wichita and St. Louis MUNY, two theater companies whose stock programs are highly regarded. Yorke’s first lesson on the ins and outs of professional acting came during the cattle call: “To stage actors, auditioning is a job.” And it’s tough’her St. Louis tryout called for Yorke to sing 16 bars of music in front of an audience comprised solely of her competition. (“During auditions, I don’t worry about what other people are doing… if you’re worried about other people, you’re not growing.”) She nailed it. “Nerves are the anticipation of failure,” Yorke says, “a pointless emotion.” Her unique audition arsenal included songs from the obscure, difficult-to-sing Broadway shows “Mack and Mabel” and “Flora, the Red Menace.” At the end of the process, Yorke was offered jobs at both Wichita and St. Louis MUNY. She took a road less traveled and turned down more prestigious St. Louis. “Wichita offered me the role of Val in ‘Chorus Line,’ and a chance to perform in all five of their summer shows,” she explains. “At MUNY, I would have only been able to appear in three musicals. I would’ve gotten my Actors’ Equity card there”‘all actors appearing with that company must be members of the stage actors’ Equity guild'”but then I would’ve been forced to turn professional, and I never would have been able to do summer stock. I want time to learn more [as a student] before I turn pro.” Out of Wichita’s 500 applicants, 350 were invited to audition, and from that group, just 22 were invited to Kansas. Yorke was “thrilled” to get the job. “What I love about theater is that it’s a constant learning process,” she adds. “Summer stock is a natural progression.” Yorke arrived in Wichita prepared to work: “We staged five musicals in 10 weeks.” She was featured in the ensembles of “Seussical,” based on the books of Dr. Seuss; “Aida,” adapted by Elton John from Verdi’s opera; Mary Hart’s “Once Upon a Mattress,” and composer Maury Yeston’s “Phantom.” And, of course, “Chorus Line,” directed by Kerry Casserly, a disciple of the late Bob Fosse who had also directed Yorke in the UM incarnation. “We’d rehearse each show for 10 days,” Yorke recalls. “And we performed for paying audiences Wednesdays through Sundays. Often, we’d practice an upcoming production all day, then go out and perform a different show at night.” She had no problem memorizing lines and dance routines, but Yorke found overlapping “hard…the nice thing about a long rehearsal period is that you develop a relationship with the show and characters. In Wichita, there was no chance to do this. It was an enormous amount of material in such a short time.” (The average Broadway show has a longer rehearsal period than Yorke’s entire tenure in Kansas.) Well-known actors flew in for each production, and Yorke shared the stage with theatrical heavyweights such as Darren Ritchie, late of Broadway’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” and Nancy Lemenager, recently of the Great White Way’s “Movin’ Out” and “Never Gonna Dance.” “I remember sitting in audiences and idolizing these actors. The biggest learning experience of the summer was seeing their processes, how they prepared,” says Yorke. Another eye-opener was audience reaction to “Chorus Line,” which contains frank discourse on sexuality. “My character’s solo song was called ‘Tits and Ass,'” Yorke says. “And we were in the Bible Belt! We cut swear words from the show, but there was still local outcry. And the part they were really complaining about was my character! It was interesting, to say the least.” Asked to describe an average Wichita rehearsal period, Yorke can hardly contain her excitement: “We’d spend two days dancing and stage blocking, and four or five days learning the music. Then sitzprobe [singing to full orchestral accompaniment for the first time], and a full dress rehearsal on Tuesday night, which was always a fiasco! On Wednesday afternoon, we’d fix stuff that had gone wrong during full dress, then on Wednesday night, we opened to paying audiences.” Those spectators often sold out the company’s 2,500-seat theater. “I was about to sing my solo in front of 2,500 people, and I was like, ‘Yeah. Okay,'” she says. “I thought, ‘I got here, and I’m gonna take the most I can from it.’ No nerves.” (For the record, the Wichita Eagle’s critic gave her “special kudos.”) The connections Yorke made with fellow actors will prove invaluable. Wichita alums include Tony award winner Kristin Chenoweth and nominee Kelli O’Hara. Her inner circle includes UM roommate Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who originated the role of JoJo in the original Broadway company of “Seussical.” “The guy playing JoJo in our production needed pointers,” Yorke recalls. “I was holding out the phone saying, ‘Do you want to talk to the original?'” Making the trek to see “Chorus Line,” meanwhile, were dad Rhos, who works in software; mom Andrea, a seller at Village Books, and Helene’s grandmother. Along with her younger brothers Sudsy and Lance, all are supportive of Yorke’s career’and her recent name change. “It was time for a stage name,” she says (her legal moniker is Helene Dyke). “Yorke is my great-grandmother’s maiden name. My grandma gave me permission.” Next up? Two more years at UM, and then’who knows?’Broadway. “My goal is to be happy doing what I love,” she says. “And to win a Tony.” Careful, Helene. You might just achieve both.

Theater Review

There’s something intriguing about a play that promises to simulate New York’s East River in one of the largest sets ever created for the Ahmanson, where you might get splashed as the characters cannonball into a six-ft.-deep orchestra pit filled with more than 10,000 gallons of water. And there’s something remarkable about experiencing the depth and height of James Noone’s richly textured “Dead End” set’four-story brick tenement buildings fitted with fire escapes, and juxtaposed with a marble Beaux Arts apartment complex. But as I sat in the front row of the Center Theatre Group’s revival production of Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 broadway hit, with a towel draped across my lap, the awe of the dramatic design quickly gave way to the baffling absence of a stimulating story and cohesive performances. By the first, early intermission, not much had happened at the wharf overlooking the East River except for a playful and energetic water show by the roughhousing Dead End Kids. Oh, and gangster Baby Face Martin (Jeremy Sisto), a former Dead End Kid, had returned to his old turf with the sentimental, albeit suspicious, look of a man seeking to reclaim something he lost. The gimpy gentle-looking guy sketching in the corner (also a former Dead End Kid) had yet to make the point of his character’s presence known. All of the main characters in “Dead End” have lost something’a mother, a childhood, an opportunity to escape the slums, a sense of hope. But while we sympathize with Tommy (Ricky Ullman), the leader of the Dead End Kids, whose boyish charm and honorable strength inspire his less fortunate and less brave friends, we don’t really understand or care about the pathetic Gimpty (Tom Everett Scott), an out-of-work architect who dreams of revitalizing the slum with a community housing project. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Kingsley (“Men in White”) was apparently “the first American dramatist to bring the mean streets of modern city life to the Broadway stage” by illuminating the devastating realities of the Depression, including the filthy living conditions of America’s poor and the common criminal fate of slum kids. When “Dead End” premiered on Broadway in the midst of the Depression, it earned one of the longest runs in Broadway history at the time, and had a profound social impact; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt saw the production three times and FDR subsequently created a commission on slum housing. Unfortunately, the play’s political message fails to grip us, even though the issues of poverty and class divisions are particularly relevant in Los Angeles, which has the highest recidivism rate in the country. Perhaps the problem is that we aren’t moved by the characters or their co-existence in the spectacular setting. The mother-son relationship between Baby Face Martin and Mrs. Martin (Joyce Van Patten) feels forced and hastily developed. And the unbelievable love affair between Gimpty and Kay (Sarah Hudnut) is even more unemotional. One relationship that does work is that of Tommy and his protective, thick-skinned sister Drina (Kathryn Hahn), who struggles with the responsibility of raising him. Hahn and Ullman establish a believeable relationship that helps develop their individual characters. We see where Tommy learns his values and we therefore believe in his sincerity when he faces a big decision that decides his fate. Drina seems to be the best role model for Tommy’better than the depressing Gimpty and Baby Face Martin, who represent two different “futures” for Dead End Kids. The other notable performance is that of Sisto (of “Six Feet Under”) who humanizes his stereotypical gangster character through his abrupt and awkward interactions with people, revealing some of his underlying pain. One of these exchanges is with his ex-flame Francey (Pamela Gray). In a well choreographed scene, Sisto and Gray momentarily reconnect as they move around the stage’just a few feet between them’and dance out the sorrows of their fates. The only problem is that this emotionally jarring scene feels disconnected from the rest of the play. As the inaugural production of the Center Theatre Group’s new artistic director Michael Ritchie, “Dead End” might send the wrong message to dedicated Music Center theatergoers, especially if the play truly is what Ritchie called “a personal calling card of my theatrical taste.” With a cast of 42 actors (including 14 students from the USC School of Theatre) and an elaborate set that’s earned more talk than the actual production, the show is startlingly empty in its meaning. And even if the production succeeds in entertaining an audience with its live “East River,” one has to wonder if that much water wouldn’t be better utilized somewhere else, like in water-deprived California. “Dead End,” directed by Nicholas Martin, runs through October 16 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tickets are $20 to $75. Contact: (213) 628-2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org.