Pity Party’s Sarah Levy Uses Art as Personal and Community Therapy

This article also published on Punks in Vegas, July 19, 2019.

Ahead of the band’s July 22 show in Las Vegas, the lead singer talks record release, mental health and giving back.

photo by Nick Riggs, Champion Heart Media

Pity Party is an emo pop-punk band from Oakland and its lead singer and front person is Sarah Levy. I know that because, on a whim, I went to a show they played at Cornish Pasty last year. And I remembered it because, aside from it being a roudy, grab-you-by-the-face kind of performance, Levy grounded the 18-and-over crowd in the middle of the show when she held up and distributed a zine she’d made about how to safely help victims of intimate partner and sexual violence—Not dwelling on the issue, but making space in public for a topic that our society too-often sweeps under the rug.

If I hadn’t seen that show, I might still not know who Pity Party is. Being “fiercely committed to DIY,” Pity Party’s three existing records have stayed out of the mainstream. But like a tree that falls in a forest, the band still makes a sound despite not being widely broadcast over the airwaves. Just last week they returned from touring the East Coast, Europe and Canada supporting California bands Bad Cop / Bad Cop and Dog Party.

4 of 5 members of Pity Party: Dustin Galecki (left), Sarah Levy, Michael Negrete, Bob Wyble, (Kayla Gonzalez not pictured), photo by Bailey Koeblin

“I think we’ve had 153 shows since October,” Levy told me over the phone ahead of Pity Party’s July 22 show at Starboard Tack, “I am so excited to come back to Vegas and meet everyone on the lineup!” Jack Evan Johnson and locals Tony Taylor and the Nova Babies and live show novice Tin Cup will share the stage, courtesy of Bad Moon Booking. I caught up with Levy about the band’s forthcoming record, self care on tour, and the new ways Pity Party is reaching out to their fans and the community.

What has Pity Party been up to lately?

We are in the final stages of mixing our next record [which] is sonically different [from what we have made before]. I kind of locked myself in a room for four hours a day for a month and wrote the record as a means of therapy for myself. It’s called Concrete and it’s a record that is really centered around the feelings experienced when going through emotional and sexual abuse. [It hopefully] will help other people feel less alone through that.

photo by Aretesophist Photography, aretesophist.com

Pity Party advocates for mental health and self-care practices. How do you maintain that while on tour?

The most helpful thing for me is practicing a routine and .. I have a little emergency fanny pack with me all the time. I have flash cards with grounding kits—things like safety statements, different physical and mental things I can do to center myself if I’m feeling emotionally volatile.

Sarah Levy’s self-care kit—tea, lavendar oils, grounding flash cards, photos of friends and family and an affirming message from one of her students

How do you collaborate with and give back to the community?

I think for this next record we’re going to collaborate with the Kintsugi Project here in the Bay Area that provides art therapy [and empowerment] for victims of sexual abuse. And we’ve been working with another organization called Survivor Alliance, which is a scholarship fund for survivors of sexual assault, to help them reclaim their lives and get out of dangerous situations. Last year we threw an event where we were able to donate about $1,200 to them and to the local LGBTQ center. So we’re thinking the album release party will benefit [Kintsugi and Survivor Alliance]. And we’re hoping to do a photo series with Kintsugi, to be the insert [for Pity Party’s new record].

photo by George Glass, Instagram @_georgeglass_

The release date for Pity Party’s forthcoming Concrete is to be determined. Their US tour with Bad Cop / Bad Cop and Dog Party will continue through August 2019. The band is on the lineup for 20th Street Block Party taking place in San Francisco this fall.

 

via Bad Moon Booking

Pity Party with Jack Evan Johnson, Tony Taylor and the Nova Babies and Tin Cup 

9:00 p.m. on Monday, July 22 at Starboard Tack in Las Vegas

facebook.com/badmoonbooking

therealpityparty.bandcamp.com

Tokimonsta on the Move

first published in Vegas Seven

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DJ/producer Jennifer Lee lays down new songs and fresh perspective on her way to Life Is Beautiful

Less than a week ago, Los Angeles–based DJ and producer Jennifer Lee—better known by her stage name, Tokimonsta—kicked off a tour promoting her fifth full-length album, Lune Rouge, to be released October 6. That tour includes a stop at Las Vegas’ very own Life Is Beautiful Music & Art Festival, as she plays the Fremont Stage on September 24.

photo by Nikko Lamere

Tokimonsta’s past collaborations with Gavin Turek, MNDR and Anderson .Paak have fueled the artist’s increasing popularity. That synergetic spirit lives on in her latest album, with tracks featuring veteran synthpop singer-songwriter MNDR and new names like Isaiah Rashad (of Top Dawg Entertainment), Yuna, Selah Sue and Io Echo. The collaborative effort harnessed inspiration from different corners of the globe to produce what Lee calls her most personal piece of work to date.

Lee was diagnosed with Moyamoya, a rare brain disease, at the end of 2015. After undergoing surgery, Lee struggled with aphasia—a complication from the surgery that caused her to lose her ability to understand language, speak and even make music. In a piece she wrote for Pitchfork about her struggle with the disease, she said, “Sadness allowed me to regain some clarity. I knew I had to overcome it.”

And Tokimonsta has wasted no time facing some of the toughest challenges she’s ever faced. Vegas Seven caught up with her to talk about the new album and seeing the beauty in life.

I saw on Instagram that you’ve taken to bouldering [rock climbing]. What got you into that?

I got into bouldering about two years ago. … I have these long lengths of time when I’m not at home; it’s just been hard to really progress and be a super strong climber-girl. But I have had more time over the summer. With this tour in particular, I actually brought my climbing shoes with me.

“Don’t Call (featuring Yuna)” was the first single off Lune Rouge. It sounds like it’s about heartbreak. Why did you choose to open with that one?

I lead with that because it was just one of the songs that resonated. … I really enjoyed the whole process of making it with [Yuna]. It’s interesting because when we were talking about it, we were … discussing things like people she’s had in her life who just kind of come out of nowhere. [People who are] trying to call to get you back and they never treat you quite right.

Did Yuna come over to the U.S. to record it? Or did you record with her in Malaysia?

In the very beginning I had a handful of instrumentals that I sent to her and she sort of recorded [over] some of them. … She’s back and forth a lot between Malaysia and L.A., and she does actually spend a decent amount of time in L.A. When we decided to meet in person … we actually worked on quite a few songs.

I think we both agreed with the songs that we were working on. [But] it felt like there was so much more potential—and it wasn’t that she didn’t do a good job or [that] she wasn’t capable. But I felt like it was me. [The] instrumentals that I had sent her—they were just lacking. Her vocals are just so amazing, and the song was so amazing that I just had to do something more with them.

So, [I changed “Don’t Call”] to a different instrumental. I took her a cappella, I took all instrumental away from that, and created a completely new song. It completely changed the mood. Maybe one day the original will come out, but it’s vastly different from how we originally had it.

It’s a real work in progress and I’m really proud of it because … [often] the music industry is very wasteful and no one tends to work on music. … It’s always been a plan for me to really bring out the potential of a song and to continue to work on it. … Music doesn’t deserve to be thrown away like that.

“Life is beautiful”—true or false?

If everything was beautiful all the time, what [would] beauty be? You need [the ugly] to appreciate the other. … I would say this from my own personal experiences. When you live through the ugly side of life, you really do see how beautiful and amazing it is.

Tokimonsta, Sunday, 5:35 p.m., Fremont Stage

Daniel Handler: Why Stories Are Important

The bestselling author and Las Vegas Book Festival speaker explores untouched topics in his latest works

San Francisco–based writer Daniel Handler has had an eventful 2017: His children’s novels A Series of Unfortunate Events (written under the pen name Lemony Snicket) were made into a Netflix series; he released his sixth novel, All the Dirty Parts; and his first play, Imaginary Comforts, or the Story of the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit, is on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre through November 19. Distinguished in the literary world for his trademark wit and humor, Handler pushes the conventions of expression and subject matter in his works for children, young adults and, more recently, theatergoers.

In advance of his keynote speech at the Las Vegas Book Festival on October 21 at Historic Fifth Street School, Handler talked with Vegas Seven about childhood innocence, teen sexuality and the importance of stories.

photo by Meredith Heur

What you have written for children and young adults seems to do the opposite of romanticizing childhood as innocent—whether through characterization or plot.

When I started writing [All The Dirty Parts], what I saw in terms of depictions of young male sexuality is usually a kind of bumbling, neurotic, comic person or a predatory monster. And, certainly, you see both those things in life and the world of literature. I thought there was a large swathe of sexuality that wasn’t being portrayed, because it’s not easy to have a judgment on; it’s quite slippery in terms of orientation, sometimes, and in terms of behavior. That [partly guided] me as I was telling Cole’s story. So I guess that turns that myth of innocence on its side. I don’t know if I would put it in terms of innocence, but rather in terms of something I haven’t seen much of in literature.

You often write about social outcasts. Do you identify with these types?

In adolescence and childhood, that’s a near-universal feeling. Even if you are the pet of the football team in high school or something, you’re often feeling very isolated and alienated. And I think if you’re a thoughtful person in this world, you’re going to find it very bewildering and off-putting. It’s interesting to me to have heroes who are like that. When you’re talking about adolescence, it’s important to remember that everyone is feeling that way—like they’re on the outside.

Young people have a language with themselves and among each other for how they experience sex. All the Dirty Parts approaches teen sexuality in an unconventional way and brings this language to life on the page. Being a part of this dialogue, do you have any comment on how sexuality is taught in schools?

There’s such a wide variety [of methods] of how sexuality is taught, so it’s difficult to generalize. In terms of talking about the emotional consequences of it, it’s hard to devise an education program that would do that. For people who are thinking honestly and hard about teen sexuality, I’d never want to denigrate their efforts.

I do think the chances, if you’re entering into romantic and sexual relationships in high school, the chances of not breaking each other’s hearts or not treating each other badly are pretty slim. You’re figuring it out. And I think try to, at least, couch it so that the ways in which you’re hurting each other are not physically dangerous and emotionally traumatic but just within the bounds of everyday high school adolescence.

You recently said in the San Francisco Chronicle of your new play, Imaginary Comforts: 

It’s about stories, and about the stories we tell ourselves that help us get through the day. And the way we hear stories and the way other people hear our stories, and about the misinterpretations and misunderstandings that happen when anyone is carrying around their own narrative. (San Francisco Chronicle)

How do we carry around stories? Can you explain that?

There are all kinds of ways. There are individual ways: When you’re becoming friends with someone, you’re going to tell them stories about your life that you’ve probably told before. You’ve probably told stories about things that have happened to you enough that they’re kind of polished and shaped, and you decided those to be important stories in terms of telling people about yourself and where you’re from and things like that.

We, as a society and as a nation, have a lot of narrative that we carry around at varying degrees of misunderstanding and pain. We’re just planning Thanksgiving at my household, and my son is super-interested in early American history—it doesn’t make you look kindly on Thanksgiving. [But] it’s important to have that story told as truthfully as possible. … To find a story in which we feel comfortable—[not] where we’re not stuffing ourselves with lies, but where we’re able to gather with family and feel a sense of gratitude—is common and important. Those boundaries and how we feel about that are important to people.

 

Daniel Handler in Conversation at Historic Fifth Street School, Oct. 21, 3–3:45 p.m., and LVBF After Dark Daniel Handler: All the Dirty Parts at Inspire Theater, 7:15–8 p.m., vegasvalleybookfestival.org

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This interview was originally published on vegasseven.com (October 2017)

Feminism and an Iranian Vampire Western

Nevada Women’s Film Festival features A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

courtesy Nevada Women’s Film Festival

Last weekend, the Nevada Women’s Film Festival was held at Springs Preserve with panels, a workshop, awards and an afterparty at Downtown’s Eclipse Theaters. The festival features films by and about women. In the third annual year, it had director Ana Lily Amirpour as guest speaker.

Shelia Vand plays Girl in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (photo IMDB.com)

Amirpour wrote and directed her debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night—a self-described Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western. The actors speak in Farsi with English subtitles. The title Girl (played by Sheila Vand) is actually a vampire vigilante who wears a chador—a nod to Dracula’s cape. The chador, an Iranian garment, provides a visual staple throughout the black-and-white film. These directorial decisions have paid off in several nominations and wins in US and international festivals. Amirpour is a woman who has made a big splash in an industry where male directors outnumber women nearly 5 to 1.

The aesthetics of her film rely heavily on Iranian culture—another thing underrepresented in Hollywood. The film plays on gender and cultural boundaries, and critics have picked up on that.

At the NWFF Q&A held March 25, I asked Amirpour how intentional these feminist and multicultural messages were:

I don’t entirely know how to answer that question, and I’ve been getting asked it for four years. I don’t really know what it means to be feminist, to tell you the truth. I’m not a person who subscribes to philosophies. I think a lot of things can be interpreted in a lot of ways. For me, personally, categorization in art is completely not useful. It becomes limiting. I think categorization is a natural thing that humans have on planet earth, to figure everything out. So, if the film becomes useful to groups of people in a certain way to understand and interpret and define, fucking mazel tov! Go crazy with it! —Ana Lily Amirpour

Being at a women’s film festival, her answer was disarming, yet refreshing. She rejected a label that has been attached to her by feminist media outlets and film critics in general. Some of the film’s themes lend themselves to feminist and multicultural interpretations. These political messages are not necessarily intended. More importantly, Amirpour they are a product of a creative mind and the interpretations that each individual takes to the screen.

NWFF aims to support fair representation of women in film, which comes in as many forms as there are women. To explain that, Amirpour revisited a reference from the film:

 

“It’s like that song, ‘Hello,’ by Lionel Richie. I fucking love that song. Do I know who he wrote it about? No. Do I need to? No; it’s mine, and mine alone. Because once a piece of art exists, it’s yours. You’re right … everybody’s right. It’s there for you, and it no longer is for me.” —Amirpour

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This story was originally published on vegasseven.com (March 30, 2017)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a Crowd Pleaser

Super Summer Theater’s take on the murder-mystery novel brings spectators close

The cast of Super Summer Theater’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Charles Dickens’ final and unfinished novel hits Super Summer Theatre. What’s more, The Mystery of Edwin Drood—Rupert Holmes’ 1985 whodunit musical—allows audiences to choose who the murderer is and create a unique ending for the play. Director Joe Hynes tells Vegas Seven about how he and the production deal with the twists and turns of this Tony Award-winning play.

This is a play within a play (The Mystery of Edwin Drood within the play that the audience creates). To what extent does this production keep Dickens’ famously sentimental, melodramatic voice?

The way Rupert Holmes wrote the piece, he’s used the framing device of a Victorian music hall company presenting the world premiere of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. When it’s the music hall device, it’s played very loose and almost vaudevillian. When it’s the Drood narrative, there is quite a bit of melodrama, complete with musical stingers when clues are being given or if a character is being less than reputable. Our production is really aiming at the theatrical experience of this piece and the joy an audience can have when they feel a part of the show as opposed to merely being spectators.

The biggest buzz around this production is the audience participation written into the play. Can you expand on how this production handles that? Do you practice multiple endings, or do the actors improvise?

One of the elements that makes this show so fun and unique for both audience and performer is that the audience essentially decides each character’s fate. Each performer goes out before the show and has an assigned “section” of the audience. These actors have been given the license to get their groups to cheer, chant and generally support that actor/character throughout the show. Depending on the crowd and how vocal they are, you will hear interactive shouts throughout the play, which is rather infectious. For example, when the villain is booed by his section, the rest of the audience joins in on the fun.

As for the voting, there are three options the audience gets to vote on. Two are by crowd reaction, like applause and cheers, and the third actually has our company go out and poll the audience. Depending on the choice, [you get a] varied degree of improvisation. Drood was the first time this contrivance had ever been explored in a musical.

Drood the musical offers more opportunity for comedy and more interaction between actors and the audience than a faithful novel adaptation could offer. Does the play-within-a-play element offer more intellectual comedy, such as satirizing Dickens and Victorian culture, or more theatrical flamboyance? How would you describe that effect?

I would definitely say we lean toward both satire and theatrical flamboyance. I have enlisted some of the finest performers in Las Vegas, many of whom have a strong background in improvisation. We lovingly rib not only the novel itself, but the whole theatrical  experience. There are “missed actor cues,” false song starts and, of course, the most important character that’s unseen, the audience. They decide the course of the last half hour of the show and they are essentially at the wheel. And they are loving it and tend to be a little mischievous in their decisions. Which is all part of the fun.

 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

September 22-24 at Spring Mountain Ranch

supersummertheatre.org

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This story first published on vegasseven.com (Sept. 19, 2016)