I first met Amy Ellenburger when I was writing about arts funding and Chalk Repertory Theatre, the theater company of which Ellenburger is a founding member.   (I later blogged about Chalk Repertory and their resident playwright Ruth McKee here at PANK.)

But I only recently learned about Ellenburger’s involvement with the nonprofit arts education group The Unusual Suspects.   The Unusual Suspects offers 10-week theater arts workshops to underserved youth ages 14-18, including those in foster care and the juvenile justice system.   A typical series is divided into two parts, writing and performance.   First the students write a play together as an ensemble then do a full production of the play.

The Unusual Suspects was founded seventeen years ago by actress Laura Leigh Hughes in response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots.   Now they focus much of their attention on combating the city’s intractable problem of gang violence.   Volunteers travel to juvenile justice facilities, treatment centers, probation camps, after-school programs, and community centers to do on-site theater training.

Ellenburger came to The Unusual Suspects as a teaching artist before moving into the office as communications coordinator.

“Theater benefits [the students] on so many different levels,” Ellenburger says.   “It’s an opportunity to participate and to have a voice that they don’t necessarily have outside [and] they are also learning some life skills.   We do a lot of improv and ensemble work, and for the kids it’s a way of building up social skills, responsibility, and especially courage, because performing is scary.   And of course it develops reading and writing skills.”

“We don’t tell them what to write, it’s all generated by the kids,” she says, and the students often write about serious issues like homosexuality, drug abuse, and immigration.   These student-written productions are then attended by family members, classmates, neighbors, even rival gang members.

“They’ve written this play for their community, for their parents, for their neighbors, for their schools.   And it gives the community a chance to reflect and to see what issues these kids are bringing up.”

I contacted one of these writers, a former Narbonne High School student and Unusual Suspects alumna and intern, Mandy Archuleta.   Archuleta proudly recounts that her group was the first to do a musical, “Life on the Offbeat,” necessitating that the Unusual Suspects add an additional summer songwriting workshop to their usual programming.

“I am so passionate about this program and believe that it is such a positive and productive program for youth to be able to be involved in,” she told me over email. “I have seen it not only keep my peers out of trouble, but get some young people that have already had felonies against them or been involved with gangs or drugs out of that lifestyle.”

Archuleta says, “This is a place where troubled young people can do a positive thing with their time and feel good about themselves. It really can change lives. It has done nothing but positive things for our community. Here we were able not only to learn acting skills, but life skills as well. We learn respect, patience, and teamwork. These skills that we take from The Unusual Suspects are productive lessons and tools we will need in the real world.

“The teaching artists are just the most wonderful, inspiring, and talented people ever. They are there for us in every way possible. Not only to help us create something, but with life issues as well. They made us feel so comfortable and we were able to get life advice from them as well. They were there for us in every way possible. I love this program. It is the best way to get young people to do something positive when most of their life isn’t positive at all.”

“It really is a blessing to be able to have a place like this for troubled youth to be able to go. It is the best kind of atmosphere inside this group. You feel so safe and welcomed, it’s unbelievable,” she says.   “You come in not knowing anyone and feeling a bit uneasy, and leave with more confidence and a new respect for yourself and  the world  around you. To me, that is the best kind of success any program can accomplish.”

Hilary Ward, another Chalk Rep founding member and Unusual Suspects teaching artist, says, “I got involved with the Unusual Suspects when a teaching artist recommended me for a staged reading.  I arrived thinking that I was doing a good deed, but quickly forgot that I was doing a ‘favor’ because I was so impressed with the work the participants had produced. Since then I’ve done several more readings and then eventually started working as a teaching artist at Camp David Gonzales in Calabasas. What I especially love about Unusual Suspects is that it really is all about the guys: their thoughts, their experiences, their voices, their choices.  They are given the opportunity to express themselves in a safe place and actually be kids again.”

The Unusual Suspects is always looking for donations, supplies, and volunteers, but one of the simplest and most enjoyable ways to help is just to sit in the audience.

Ellenburger says, “Come see a show — it’s the easiest the volunteer opportunity you will ever have in your life—it’s two hours of your time, you get there, see the show, and enjoy it, and cheer them on.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this Slate article, in which writer Tom Vanderbilt argues that in the movies not owning a car is shorthand for being a loser, a criminal, or a freak.

Growing up in L.A., public transportation was a major part of my life.   My mother did not have a driver’s license and I didn’t acquire one until I was 24.   (My mother later got her license at age 50 in the Bay Area.)   My father did the family’s driving, but there were times when our car was in the shop and then the whole family took mass transit.   I took the bus with my mother to kindergarten, walked with friends to elementary school, and later in high school got back on the bus to visit friends in places as distant as Pasadena and Santa Monica.

As an adult, I now have a car that I drive every day (though rarely more than five miles from home) and so I feel somewhat hypocritical extolling the virtues of not driving to other L.A. residents.   But as I prepare to move to a new neighborhood, I’ve been looking for those that are close to buses or the subway and walking distance from shops and restaurants.

The Slate article reminds us that in addition to addressing the major issues of public transportation, accessibility, and infrastructure that plague Los Angeles, there needs to be a cultural shift.   Not driving needs to start seeming normal, not a condition of last resort.   As long as we as a city consider public transportation as something fit only for the elderly, destitute, disabled, or others who have no other choice, anyone who simply chooses to take a bus or a train seems eccentric at best.

And yet, I know several perfectly “normal” people who do not drive, just as my mother did not.   So I thought it might be worthwhile to interview a few of them to see how they do it, and why, and to show others that living in L.A. without a car is not only possible, it can be preferable.

To start, I sent my friend Diane Meyer, a photographer, Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and normal car-less L.A. resident, a series of questions.

Q: How long have you lived in L.A. without a car?

A: I have been without a car in Los Angeles since January 2008. I came to L.A. in July of 2005 for a new job. I am originally from New Jersey, but had been living in Brooklyn for several years beforehand where I did not need a car.

Q: Where in L.A. do you live?   Did being car-free affect your choice of neighborhood?

A: I lived in the same apartment from July 2005 to February 2010 and so I chose my apartment when I did have a car and accessibility to mass transit was completely off my radar. I lived on Wilshire/Euclid in Santa Monica which (I think) is one of the most ideal places in the city to live without a car, but this was only by luck and coincidence. Even when I did drive, I preferred to walk whenever possible, and intentionally chose a very pedestrian-friendly neighborhood where I could walk to most errands. But, I didn’t realize until years later that I lived right on the Wilshire Rapid line—probably the best bus line in the city and within walking distance to every Santa Monica Big Blue Bus line and many city lines which either originate or terminate in the Promenade.

I recently moved to another apartment. I definitely wanted to stay in Santa Monica specifically because it is one of the most accessible places in L.A .to live without a car. I felt the only other neighborhoods that would be easy to live without a car were Downtown L.A., Koreatown, or Hollywood ,and all of those places were too far from my job. I also intentionally chose an apartment that was within walking distance to the bus line that goes to my job.

Q: Would you consider your non-ownership of a car “by choice”?

A: When I first got rid of my car it was a financial decision. I really felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck and I started cutting things from my budget, selling stuff on eBay, etc., and then I realized that between car insurance, lease payment, gas, maintenance, parking, etc., I was spending about $950 a month for a car—which is actually average for Angelenos.

I could have made other sacrifices instead of getting rid of my car—I could have moved to Westchester or Palms or cut other things out of my life, but I really didn’t like driving—I found traffic stressful, it felt alienating, I would drive around looking for street parking for what felt like eternity after getting home from work. But at that point, it felt more like something I was doing out of necessity.

Now I would say that it is by choice and if I really wanted to get another car I could. When I first got rid of my car, I thought it would be temporary—maybe four months or so to save money, but it was so much easier than I expected and had so many really clear benefits that I have no desire to get a car again any time soon. I have been car-less for 31 months now. If I had kept my car, I would have spent $29,500 on car expenses during those 31 months alone—which seems absolutely crazy to me. While not having a car can be inconvenient, I would rather have an extra $950 a month.

I also lost a lot of weight (almost 50 pounds) without making any other adjustments in my life or changing my diet. Not just from biking, but walking more, walking to and from the bus stop, etc.

It also wasn’t until I got rid of my car that I really started to love Los Angeles. Being on my bike or on the bus made me realize subtle transitions between neighborhoods, made me notice things I never noticed when driving past at higher speeds, I took more surface streets and understood how the city fit together, I interacted with people when taking the bus and it made me feel like I lived in a diverse and vibrant city. In NYC, I felt more like I was part of the city because I was surrounded by other people and even if I didn’t know them, we had this shared experience of being part of the city. I feel like it’s hard to get that sense in Los Angeles but even harder in a car.

I recently interviewed and photographed 100 car-less Angelenos and a graphic novelist named Joshua Dysart said something in the interview which I really agree with:

My whole foundational understanding of Los Angeles and how complex it is and even the degree to which we have to battle certain urban and social issues, is all because I take public transportation or ride my bicycle. I just don’t think it’s possible to feel empathy much less understand what the real plight of Los Angeles is when you are in your car. And it’s so much more complex and beautiful and doomed than the world could ever give us credit for. It’s funny, but almost one of the most empowering acts of activism you can do for Los Angeles and its future- if you love the city- is engage in public transportation.

In addition to the personal benefits, there is of course the environmental aspect. While I do occasionally ride as a passenger in cars, I’m glad that my environmental impact is drastically reduced by not having a car.

Q: How has not having a car affected your social life? What about your professional life?

A: The biggest impact on my social life is that if there are two different parties or events that I want to do on the same night, I usually have to choose one or the other whereas when I drove, I would have probably gone to both. This has changed recently as I usually go out socially with Jonas [her fiance] and he does drive. But, before when I lived alone, I would just choose one thing to do. During the week, I realized that I did more things actually because I could read or do stuff on the bus and therefore didn’t mind traffic as much. But I can pretty much get everywhere pretty easily—especially since I can put my bike on the bus and combine bus and biking to fill in the gaps. I’ve also rented cars to go to weddings or see friends in San Diego or Ventura.

When I first got rid of my car, I was worried about how it might impact my professional life. I was worried that my students and colleagues would think it was weird or incorrectly assume that I lost my license or something. However, I found everyone to be very supportive. People are often surprised, but very respectful of the decision. I think everyone recognizes the negative personal, social, environmental impacts of driving and can understand why someone wouldn’t want to have a car. Being car-less also gave me the idea to start photographing/interviewing other car-less people and creating that exhibition was a really positive experience. I also helped form a committee to try to bring a commuter incentive program to campus.

I was driving alone up Western Avenue in Los Angeles late at night.   I had been back from China for only a few weeks.   I was zoning out, letting my eyes slip into and out of focus across the befogged street lights, when I saw what I took at first to be a mirage: a Xinjiang barbecued meat stick vendor on the corner of Western and Melrose.   The vendor looked much as his compatriots had when I’d seen them last on the streets of Shanghai:   a wiry man with a soot-blackened face bent over a barbecue bolted to the frame of a wheeled cart, alternately fanning a row of lamb kebabs with a bamboo fan and seasoning them with a mixture of cumin, chile, and Sichuan pepper shaken out of what appeared to be a repurposed Kraft parmesan cheese canister.

My first thought was, someone should tell Jonathan Gold.

But then, I was pretty sure Jonathan Gold already knew.   In fact, Jonathan Gold—LA Weekly columnist, Los Angeles native, and the only food critic to have won a Pulitzer Prize—did know. Within a month of my sighting of the street vendor, Gold wrote a column in praise of Xinjiang barbecue, which he described as “one of the most compelling snacks in the world.”

Jonathan Gold is something of a local treasure.   In addition to his much-discussed LA Weekly column, Gold pops up regularly on KCRW, one of Los Angeles’ public radio stations.   His 2000 book, Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, has replaced the Thomas Guide as the city’s most indispensable backseat guidebook.

Gold’s columns set L.A. food enthusiasts off on a sort of scavenger hunt, racing out on a Friday night for far-flung places like Tarzana and Norwalk.   Gold introduced me to some of my favorite local restaurants, including Renu Nakorn, Yai, Csardas, Guelaguetza, China Islamic, and Mama’s Hot Tamales; and introduced the rest of the world to others I had already cherished, like Zankou Chicken, Chabelita’s, and Senor Fish, making them all a little more crowded (thanks a lot, Mr. Gold).

He’s a first-class storyteller, a passionate advocate for no-holds-barred eating, and a thoughtful writer, even if his occasional forays into adventurous eating (live octopus, bull’s penis) toe the line between broad-minded fearlessness and macho showmanship.   But the real reason Jonathan Gold is so popular may be that he tells us something we want to hear: we can enjoy the best of what L.A. has to offer for only the price of a pupusa.

Like all Los Angeles true believers, Gold delights in the unexpected find; in his case, in the extravagantly wonderful meals to be found in strip malls and on push carts.   He uncovers an L.A. that’s been busily existing all along, alongside the celebrity chefs and $200 tasting menus, a city of self-sufficient ethnic enclaves whose culinary successes are not trumpeted in any Michelin guides.

Gold was the subject of a recent New Yorker magazine profile by Dana Goodyear (subscription required).   In the profile, Gold expounds on his theory about what makes L.A.’s traditional foods (he eschews the word “ethnic”) so great.   He calls our city — “the anti-melting pot” — the home of true, undiluted regional cookery.”

“Unlike in New York,” Goodyear states, “where immigrants quickly broaden and assimilate their cooking styles to reflect the city’s collective idea of “Chinese food,” the insular nature of Los Angeles allows imported regional cuisines to remain intact, traceable almost to the restaurant owners’ villages of origin.”

(In the same article Goodyear also mentions what Gold dubs the “triple carom”: the Cajun seafood restaurant that caters to Chinese customers and is run by Vietnamese from Texas.”)

Having lived in China for more than two years, I can say with some authority that a trip to the San Gabriel Valley is the next best thing to a ticket on Air China.   Every detail of the hundreds of Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuan, and Hunan restaurants clustered along Valley Boulevard feels like the real thing: the tablecloths, the menus, the shrines, and most importantly, the food.   We make frequent trips to the “other” Valley for Vietnamese broken rice, dim sum, and Hong Kong-style seafood, and many of our destinations were first introduced to the wider world by Gold himself.   (Including the restaurant 818 recommended in Gold’s article on Xinjiang barbecue, where our limited Chinese proved handy indeed.)

This is real, good, cheap food.   And what is being done for Chinese and Vietnamese food in the San Gabriel Valley is being done elsewhere in the city for the best of Iran, El Salvador, Georgia, Ethiopia, Armenia, Korea, and Nicaragua.

What Gold is offering is a way to participate in the real life of the city, in parts of town that never make it onto “Entourage.”   Most people in Los Angeles will never dine at Spago or Melisse, just as most of us will never stumble out of Chateau Marmont and into a sea of flashbulbs.   Most of us wouldn’t want to.   But for the price of an entree at CUT, you and your friends can eat all the Xinjiang barbecue sticks you can handle, with beers besides.   Have an adventure, bring the kids, make some friends, order the penis.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about that article from New York Magazine.   This one, if you haven’t read it, but it’s likely you have.   It’s called “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting” and it’s about the daily drudgery of child-rearing (or at least one type of anxious middle-class child-rearing) as well as its ineffable rewards.

With respect to the author, Jennifer Senior, there’s not much new ground here — the article is more a synthesis of many pro- and anti-parenthood arguments I’ve heard and read elsewhere.   But clearly it struck a chord.   In the last week it’s been emailed, Twittered, linked on Facebook, shared on Reader, and otherwise passed on to me by more than a dozen of my friends, married and single, men and women, with and without children.   In fact I can think of no single link I’ve received so many times, or at least none that doesn’t involve Star Wars or the iPad.   Last night I sat down to coffee with my child-free friend Darcy and almost the first comment out of her mouth was, “Have you read that article–?” I cut her off.   “Yep,” I said. “I have.”

The article touches on so many aspects of contemporary parenting that I’m sure I’ll be mulling it over for some time to come, but one of the many lines that I keep coming back to is this one from psychologist Jean Twenge: “[Contemporary adults] become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.”

So how does this connect, however tenuously, with Los Angeles, this column’s ostensible topic? For me, it’s about choice.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, as I never tire of mentioning, though I spent some of my childhood in Tucson, Seattle, and San Diego.   Since graduating high school I have lived in ten dwellings in six cities on three continents and now at the age of thirty-one I am raising my daughter within walking distance of my old high school.   Frankly, it’s not the most imaginative choice.

I love Los Angeles for a lot of valid, well-thought-out reasons that I can explain at length (and will — try me).   I also love it for a lot of silly, sentimental reasons: the sad, scary mammoth statues in Hancock Park; that car wash on Sunset Boulevard where my dad would let me eat the complimentary sugar cubes.   And yet there are plenty of other places I’ve loved living, too, and plenty more I know I would have loved if I’d had the chance to live in them.

My husband and I are now in the process of buying our first house in L.A., a declaration that we’ll be staying here into the foreseeable future.   For more than two years we’ve debated, should we buy a house or should we continue renting? There are good arguments in favor of both, and the arguments keep changing as the economic landscape keeps changing.

Growing up, I never wanted to have children.   By my late twenties, I was highly ambivalent — absolutely dead-set against it one minute and excited about it the next.   The decision — the impossibility of making the decision — was exhausting and terrifying and led nowhere.   At last the choice came down to something like, “Oh, screw it, let’s just see what happens.”   It’s not the most well-reasoned argument in favor of forever altering your own future while engendering new human life, but it worked for me.

Many people know that they want to have children. Many other people know that they don’t—a choice they should be free to make without judgment or dismissal, without others telling them that they’ll regret it someday or that they’ll change their minds.   But many more people are like I was — they go back and forth and they just never know.

One thing about children is, you can decide whether or not to have them (you can, in fact, agonize over it for years), but you can’t decide on which child you get.   You’re just assigned one, boy or girl, calm or cranky, sick or well, and that one’s yours.   And Beatrice is not the baby I would have picked.   If I could have picked the baby I wanted, I would have picked a baby much like the one I was: calm, obedient, serious, somewhat timid and shy.   I would not have picked Beatrice: outgoing, independent, hyper-kinetic, reckless, and impulsive.   And yet, all those unasked-for qualities are now the things about her I love most.   So I’m glad no one asked me my dumb opinion.

It’s 105F in L.A. today as I type this.   This heat, in turn, breeds a disgusting profusion of hideous insects that skulk around the sidewalks and sewers after the sun goes down.   There are power outages and earthquakes and patrolling police helicopters droning all night through the febrile, filthy sky.   Like the modern parents who’d enjoyed fifteen years of evening cocktails and Sunday crosswords before trading it in for diapers and sippy cups, I’ve been other places, I know what I’m giving up.   But for me it’s not about making the perfect choices, it’s about just making choices and loving the life to which they lead.

This week’s edition of Literary Los Angeles is also a shameless plug for one of L.A.’s most versatile, energetic, creative, and necessary literary non-profits, 826LA.

826LA is the Southern California outlet of 826 National, an organization dedicated to helping students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills.   They — or rather, we, as I also volunteer — provide afterschool on-site tutoring at our sites in Echo Park and Venice, plus class field trips, writing workshops, and in-schools programs, all totally free of charge for kids and teachers. We have a lot of fun, and we send kids home with a real, actual newspaper, book, film, script, essay, or story they penned themselves.

There are eight 826 chapters around the country, and I sat down with L.A.’s Executive Director Joel Arquillos to talk about what makes the Los Angeles chapter unique.   Arquillos was a teacher at Galileo High School in San Francisco and 826’s first Teacher of the Month.   He joined 826 Valencia shortly after in San Francisco, then helped open the Boston chapter  before returning to San Francisco as Program Director of 826 National.   He transferred to Los Angeles two years ago.

“We all have the same mission, to work with underserved public schools,” Arquillos begins. “In Los Angeles those students are predominately Latino,” says the Spanish-speaking Arquillos, and English-language learning is a key part of their programming.

Why set up shop in Echo Park? I asked.

“There are twenty thousand young people living in the 90026 zipcode,” he says, “so we’re very close here to many, many schools, and it’s also an area where a lot of our volunteers happen to live.   We need a meeting place for volunteers and young people, and Echo Park offers both of those things . . . there’s nothing else like this in this neighborhood.   And 826 has a store-front model, too, so we rely on foot traffic to keep selling products, things like lost languages in a bottle or canned mammoth meat. There needs to be a touch of whimsy in this neighborhood for these things to work.”

The store-fronts to which he refers are revenue-generating emporiums like San Francisco’s Pirate Supply Store, The Bigfoot Research Institute of Greater Boston, or our own Time Travel Mart.

All 826 locations are known for their affiliations with notable authors and artists (including founders Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida), and Los Angeles’ proximity to the entertainment industry allows 826LA access to a tremendous pool of enthusiastic and influential talent.

“We are just so lucky to have these amazing artists and actors and musicians.   And those who are not able to volunteer during the school day can volunteer by performing for an event,” Arquillos says. Comedian Paul F. Tompkins, for example, hosts monthly Dead Author Readings (in keeping with the city’s time travel theme) at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, interviewing famous dead authors in the persona of H.G. Wells.

Unfortunately, working in Los Angeles also poses some unique challenges.

“The schools [we serve],” Arquillos says, “are really far-flung, and because of the city’s unique geography, it can be hard for volunteers to drive to these places.   That’s part of why we chose Echo Park, all the kids for the after-school tutoring sessions can walk here directly from school.   We go into schools all over Los Angeles: south L.A., east L.A– Now Los Angeles is cutting back funding for school buses, so we are concentrating on schools that can reach us by walking or public transit.   And we’re bringing our programs to more schools, to those who can’t reach us easily.   We go wherever we’re needed.”

Next month 826LA will be hosting a major fundraiser, the Spelling Bee for Cheaters, a competition between 826 volunteers, community members, and celebrities like Spike Jonze, John Krasinski, Judd Apatow, and Dianna Agron.   And — at last, here comes the pitch — you can donate! To my team, The Breakfast Presidents (hint, hint) or to any other team.

And to find out more about volunteering with 826 where you live, check out the National page.

L.A.’s Chalk Repertory Theatre has been one of my go-to choices for theater in Los Angeles ever since I saw their remarkable performance of “Three Sisters” last year.   After watching the original play “Full Disclosure” last month (starring founding member Amy Ellenberger), I tracked down playwright Ruth McKee (another founding company member) and gushed about her script until she agreed to be interviewed. We met late in the evening, after we’d both put our infants to bed, at a cozy all-night coffee shop in Sherman Oaks whose waiters boasted a level of beverage-refilling attentiveness bordering on the deranged.   We chatted about L.A. vs. New York, going to bed late vs. getting up early, and the pleasures and pains of doing theater in a film town.

Born in Ottawa, Ruth McKee lived in Bangladesh and Kenya before studying Dramatic Writing as an undergraduate at NYU.   She lived and worked in the New York theater scene before moving to California to get her MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego.   After she graduated, she and her husband, comic book writer and screenwriter Brian Vaughan, debated whether to return to New York or head up to L.A.

“We made a pro and con list for New York and for L.A., and all our pros for New York were about familiarity — we knew people there, we had friends — but we also wanted to push ourselves.”

So it was in L.A. that McKee became the Literary Manager for the Black Dahlia Theatre and a founding member of Chalk Rep, a company best known for their site-specific work.   Instead of maintaining a fixed theater space, Chalk puts on shows in nontraditional spaces like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (“Three Sisters”), or in the case of “Full Disclosure,” an extended riff on the psychic pull of real estate, empty private homes that are up for sale.

Though I usually try to avoid getting bogged down in the old New York vs. Los Angeles debate, I had to ask — what is the difference between theater there and theater here?

“When I first told people here that I had an MFA in playwriting, the most common response was “Why?” McKee laughs.   “Why do you write plays?”

Despite that, she found, “There are incredible opportunities for theater here because it’s not a theater town.   You get to make your own rules   . . . [and] there are so many incredibly talented people here just waiting and hoping to get a guest star role or to be in a commercial.   The most talented actors in the whole country are here and they’re waiting for someone to offer them a chance do Chekhov.   And that’s what we did.”

McKee adds, “What I’ve found is, actors want to act.   And a lot of what they’re doing in Hollywood may not be acting.   And of course, as an actor, you are very grateful for any opportunity, for modeling or commercial parts, but you also want to push yourself as an actor.”

More established film and television performers, too, often long for the opportunity to get back to live theater—actors like Ricardo Antonio Chavira (“Desperate Housewives”), a fellow graduate of McKee’s UC San Diego MFA Theater program who brought remarkable grace and gravity to the role of Vershinin in “Three Sisters.”

The fact remains, though, that L.A. will always be known more for television and movies than for the stage.

“You have to ask yourself, what does theater in a film town look like? Because you can’t compete with what film does,” she says, adding that she’s a film lover herself.   But no matter how gripping film and television can be, they do not take place in real time, not right out there in front of you, not happening an arm’s reach away.   That thrilling will-they-make-it? giddiness is part of what makes theater a unique — and uniquely harrowing — experience.   So McKee and Chalk Rep try to play to that strength, putting up small, intimate plays in small, interesting spaces.

“We’re doing plays that break down barriers between the artist and the audience.   We want it to be an immersive experience.”

Her husband has suggested taking a cue from the movie industry and billing the experience as “Theater in 3D.”

But Los Angeles has its limitations, too, McKee adds.   One thing L.A. does not have is Off-Broadway.

“There is no mid-size theater here,” McKee says.   Instead there are hundreds of 99-seat and fewer theaters, the equivalent of Off-Off, which run the range from community productions of stand-by musicals to highly-trained professionals creating cutting-edge new work.   And then there are mega-houses like the Geffen, the equivalent of Broadway.   But there’s not really anything in between.

“As a young theater professional, that in-between area is where you want to live.   In Los Angeles, there’s not a clear path.   There’s good work being done all over the city, but there’s no geographical center,” and so many theater professionals find themselves circulating around and around instead of moving forward with their careers.

So considering that, will McKee stay in L.A.?   She may.   For one thing, she likes the lifestyle.

“It’s a much better city to write in,” she says, joking that earlier closing hours and longer driving times mean “you have to go home; you don’t stay up late.   Then you get up in the morning and write. It’s a healthier environment; you get more sleep.”

More seriously, she adds, “My friends in New York are spending a lot of time playing the social game, or else just trying to make ends meet, and less time writing.”

Living in a more affordable city frees up a tremendous amount of time and energy for working.

“It’s much easier to make friends here,” she adds   “It’s like Sunny says in [“Full Disclosure”], this is a really transient place, but that also makes it really vibrant, and it makes people very open to meeting new people and accepting them into their community.   When I moved here, I knew hardly anyone and I met people really quickly.”

McKee concludes, “I think I really became an L.A. playwright after I had a play produced in New York [the play “Stray,” produced in the Cherry Lane Theatre’s Mentor Project].   That was a turning point for me. I realized I’m not missing any opportunities by being here.   My national presence is not at all diminished.”

Confirming what I’ve suspected all along: the best answer to “New York or Los Angeles?” is “Both.”

One of my favorite Los Angeles institutions is the after-movie Q&A.   Of course, question-and-answer periods following new releases and small screenings are not exclusive to Los Angeles but I’d hazard that in no other city do they feature so prominently in the cultural landscape (the after-movie Q&A also figures prominently in the screenplay I’m working on these days).   In other cities, I’ve found, Q&A sessions are usually reserved for either film festival up-and-comers or famous, established directors (the types of people one might reasonably be interested in hearing describe their process and methods).   As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, I heard Woody Allen, one of my childhood heroes, shrug and mumble his way through a quick session; later I listened to Christopher Nolan give a thoroughly entertaining disquisition on the joys of low-budget filmmaking.

What marks these people — not just Woody Allen and Christopher Nolan, but also the newly minted auteurs at small festivals around the country — is that they are passionate about their work, even when they are less than passionate about the contentious, fawning, inane, self-promoting, or just plain nonsensical questions put to them later.   And you are probably passionate about their work, too, or you wouldn’t be there.

In Los Angeles, though, a high concentration of both film geeks and below-the-line old-timers has led to a situation where nearly every Grindhouse festival or Jim Kelly revival ends in a Q&A with the director, the producer, the screenwriter, the lead actors, and often enough all of them together.

I used to feel more than a little embarrassed sitting through these after-movie sessions (though more embarrassed yet to get up and leave).   These men (it’s usually men) are old, gruff, and often of uncertain memory and temperament.   They all look a bit down on their luck.   What’s worse, the audience has usually gathered at least in part to make fun of the very work these people are now publically representing.   (The shifting sands of irony and genuine enjoyment are too complicated to sift here: suffice it to say that one tends to watch “Birdemic” with a slightly different mindset than “Ran.”)   It’s hard for me to titter at the over-the-top innuendo-laden dialogue of a teen slasher movie when I know the screenwriter who wrote it is sitting two rows ahead of me.

What I learned, though, is that these gruff old men in their straining short-sleeved button-downs are not precious about their work.   They are not sitting up there to share their vision; they’d rather reminisce about the fun they had shooting on a Manhattan street without a permit, or a few good recipes for cheap fake blood, or how drunk the key grip got every night on location in Mexico.   (At a recent Q&A I attended, the producer, screenwriter, and composer spent much of the talk comparing notes on how much they all hated the director, who had wisely absented himself from the screening.)

Invariably a super-film-geek will raise his hand and ask some incredibly specific question, something like, “Why did you decide to end the final confrontation scene with a dissolve?” And the director will cock his head and say something like, “You know, I made eight movies that year.   I don’t really remember.   I hardly even remember their names.”

The point is not that these guys don’t love what they do, that they don’t take pride in it, or that they’re hacks (though some are, and most of those would say so proudly).   The point is, it’s work, it’s their job, and their job is to make movies and not to sit around pontificating about them.   They’ve lived long lives supporting themselves doing the things they love, even if those things won’t ever earn them an Academy Award.   They know the point of the work is to work, and you don’t need to be too precious about it.   They don’t take themselves too seriously, and they don’t care if you laugh at some of the lines.

I was at a book party this week.   I didn’t know anyone well, but I recognized some names and faces, including the face of one man who looked so familiar I spent much of the evening wondering whether he was perhaps an old coworker or a friend’s husband only to have a blog post inform me the next day that he was an actor who had had a recurring role on a popular television show.   I spent a lot of time introducing myself again to people I had already met twice before.   I drifted around holding a hardcover copy of the fated book like a backstage pass, ready to produce it dutifully to anyone who demanded to know what I was doing there.

At one point I found myself in conversation with a very friendly, welcoming man whose own book came out last year.   I asked him how he knew the person whose book we were presently celebrating, and he said something like, “Well, there aren’t that many writers in L.A., after awhile you all know each other.”

I’ve felt that way, too.   And not only about L.A., my hometown.   There aren’t that many writers in California, it sometimes seems, or in the country, or on the internet.   I’m always surprised to find the number of “mutual friends” I share with other writers on Facebook.

Yet something about his comment rankled.   There aren’t that many writers in L.A.?   The more I thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.   There are, after all, almost 15 million people in our greater metropolitan area, and that’s not even counting the far-flung cities whose residents doggedly pretend that they live in L.A. even when they don’t.   (My apologies, but Anaheim is not Los Angeles.   It’s not even in the same county.)   In a city bigger than Paris and St. Petersburg combined, can it really be that all our writers look vaguely familiar, like someone who was once on that one T.V. show?

As a young writer, it’s easy to feel that way, too — that everyone knows each other and no one knows you.   That agents, publishers, and literary magazines are all combining to form a clique in some part of L.A., San Francisco, New York, Chicago — some place you aren’t going to be invited to.   But the truth is more complicated than that, and more hopeful.   You aren’t waiting to be let into a single group — you’re probably already in one, or in several.

There are, in fact, dozens of communities of writers in Los Angeles.   My friends who volunteer at 826 are not the people I find sharing stories at The Moth or reading poetry at Machine Project or Poetic Research Bureau or Farmlab.   My friends who write for the movie industry are not connected on Facebook to my friends who write for the stage, nor to my friends in MFA programs at USC or screenwriting classes at UCLA.   My friends who use the free wireless at Literati in Brentwood are not the same as the ones who use the wireless at Intelligentsia in Silver Lake, or Swork in Eagle Rock.   (And of these three, only the patrons of Literati enjoy valet parking.)

I’m not counting on this column on literary Los Angeles to bring these groups together, and frankly, I wouldn’t want it to.   One of the great strengths of L.A. is its complexity, its diversity, and its obsessive micro-regionalism, whether in food or in fiction.   But I do hope that an exploration of this city and the artistic and intellectual projects here will be of interest to people in L.A. and without, and a reminder that great things are happening here and everywhere, every day, and you’re invited.