A lot of people who live in Echo Park came originally from Mexico, or Cuba. A smaller but still significant portion came from Brooklyn. In fact, I moved here from Brooklyn (where I had lived for a couple of years). So did my neighbors a couple of doors away. The playwright-performer Heather Woodbury also came from Brooklyn, and in her most recent theater production, Tale of 2 Cities, she links the stories of Chavez Ravine with the New York borough.

Woodbury moved here in 1998. Before then she was an established figure in the New York experimental theater world, receiving commissions from the Public Theatre and PS1. In August, I began communicating with her by email: she wanted to check in with the Echo Park Historical Society (of which I am a board member) as she was doing a play that involved Echo Park history. A couple of days after we first spoke on the phone I was at a yard sale, and I overheard her, with her husband, talking about her play. So we met in person. She helped me carry some of my loot home.

In the meantime I had heard from my other neighbors that Woodbury had written and performed in a “living novel,” a theater piece that involved some one hundred characters, performed by Woodbury. It’s a well-known piece, and I love the idea of writing a novel via theater, as opposed to adapting a novel for the stage.

Woodbury’s most recent play is Tale of 2 Cities, and it runs as part of UCLA’s Live series from September 30 to October 8. Broken into two chapters, Tale of 2 Cities tells a story of the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. After its run at UCLA it moves to New York City.