Auditions in San Antonio: Miss Evers' Boys, Renaissance Guild, November 10

Found on-line:

Auditions for Miss Evers' Boys

by David Feldshuh

directed by Antoinette Winstead

Thursday, November 10, 6.30p.m., Carver Community Cultural Center,

226 N. Hackberry St., San Antonio 78202 (click for map)

Production Dates: February 10-26, 2012

In an effort to get medical help for Alabama tenant farmers, their nurse, Miss Evers, convinces them to join a government study to treat venereal disease. When the money runs out, Nurse Evers is faced with a difficult decision: to tell the men that they are no longer being treated and that they are now part of a research study to see what untreated syphilis will do to them, or follow the lead of the doctor she respects and the tenets of the nursing profession.

Nurse Evers follows the advice of her advisors, and with the understanding that the study can help thousands more, she does not tell the men they are no longer receiving medication. She does this with the assurance that as soon as medication becomes available, her men will be the first to receive it. But after fourteen years of caring for her patients as if they were family, when medication is finally available, it is denied to her study group. Nurse Evers, devastated at the news and starting to watch her men die, can no longer keep silent.

Shunned for her silence of fourteen years, Nurse Evers holds her head up and explains the reasons and emotions that kept her in the study and kept her caring for her men. Some of them forgive her, others do not, as Nurse Evers tries to put back a world broken by prejudice, disease, time and trust.

Needed are the following:

Eunice Evers, 28, (black female) a public-health nurse

Dr. Eugene Brodus, 40, (black male) Hospital Admin Head

Dr. John Douglas, 34, (white male) public health physician

Willie Johnson, 19, (black male) tenant farmer

Caleb Humphries, 25, (black male) tenant farmer

Hodman Bryan, 37, (black male) tenant farmer

Ben Washington, 57, (black male) tenant farmer

(Actors must be able to play ages listed, not necessarily be that age)

There will be cold readings. No other preparation needed.

To signup email ~ Paul Riddle, Jr. For full synopsis or more info click here or call (210) 656-0349

Images by Ron Abrams: Steel Magnolias, Renaissance Guild, San Antonio

Images by Abrams Photography for

Steel Magnolias

by Robert Harling

Directed by Antoinette Winstead

February 4-20, 2011

Friday & Saturday evening shows at 8:00 PM, Sunday matinees 4:00 pm

Little Carver Civic Center, 226 N. Hackberry, San Antonio, 78202 (click for map)

Tickets are $21 - Click here to purchase or call ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000

Discounts for Seniors, Military, and Students $17 ( ID required); SATCO and ATAC $16 ( ID required)

For more information contact (210) 656-0349 or visit www.therenaissanceguild.org

Click to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Steel Magnolias, Renaissance Guild, San Antonio, February 4 - 20

Found on-line:

Continues its 10th season with

Steel Magnolias

By Robert Harling
Directed by Antoinette Winstead

February 4-20, 2011

Friday & Saturday evening shows at 8:00 PM, Sunday matinees 4:00 pm

Little Carver Civic Center, 226 N. Hackberry, San Antonio, 78202 (click for map)

Tickets are $21 - Click here to purchase or call ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000

Discounts for Seniors, Military, and Students $17 ( ID required); SATCO and ATAC $16 ( ID required)

For more information contact (210) 656-0349 or visit www.therenaissanceguild.org

The story is set in a small-town beauty shop near New Orleans, and spans several years in the lives of the shop’s owner, Truvy, and some women who regularly gather there. The drama begins on the morning of Shelby’s wedding to Jackson and covers events over the next few years, including Shelby’sdecision to have a child despite her illness and the complications that follow. Filled with humor and heartbreak, these “Steel Magnolias” will make you laugh and cry as the realities of their lives unfold.

Read more and view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Renaissance Guild, San Antonio, February 5 - 21

San Antonio's Renaissance Guild has put a powerful interpretation of August Wilson's 1984 Ma Rainey's Black Bottom on the makeshift stage at the Little Carver Civic Center.

This is the only one of the ten plays in Wilson's "Pittsburgh cycle" depicting African-American lives across the twentieth century that is not, in fact, set in Pittsburgh. The locale is Sturdyvant's shabby recording studio in Chicago in the mid-1920's, where the impatient record distributor is waiting for the idolized blues singer Gerturde "Ma" Rainey to show up with her band for a session. Rainey's manager Irvin, a white man, reassures Sturdyvant but frets, worries and jumps about. Soon enough, we'll understand why.

Four session musicians show up on time, with no word from "Ma." Irvin packs them off with a song list and instructions to rehearse until "Ma" gets there.

The heart of this play is this four-man ensemble. They're familiar with one another, and like most performers, they're familiar with waiting. Slow Drag the bassist and Cutler the trombonist are there "just to play the music." Toledo the pianist, a man of ordinary intellect but with a passion for reading and ideas, is haunted by the white world's disregard for black folk. Trumpeter Levee has a disdainful attitude -- he has ambitions and wants to play the new jazz, "not this old stuff."

Wilson's dialog is rich, idiomatic and surprising. This company delivers it with conviction and superb realization of the characters. The audience on opening night hung on every word and there were audible gasps at particularly dramatic or unexpected turns in the musicians' exchanges with one another.

Arthur Bouier as the ambitious Levee is sharp and restless, a man on perpetual boil. He's the hero and victim of this piece, which is a modern modulation of the classic tragedy. Levee desires fiercely to achieve the breakthrough and release of a greater art, and he struggles angrily with other band members, with dismissive attitudes from his employer and the recording studio, and -- in a riveting monologue that's even harsher than that I remember from Wilson's script -- with God Himself. His ambition leads to overreaching and turns back on him in devastating fashion.

That's the through-line of this piece, but there is much more to it. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is full of humor and audacious attitude. Tamara Cline-Russell as "Ma" does eventually turn up and she's bigger than life. She commands everyone and she knows exactly how push the white men's buttons. If they want her voice in that recording machine, they had better by God give her stuttering nephew Sylvester the job of recording the intro, they'd better get her new automobile fixed, they'd better get rid of this intrusive policeman complaining about a fender bender, and they'd better understand that she is not -- NOT -- going to play those new-fangled arrangements that Levee has cajoled the studio to accept.

Director Antoinette Wilson and her talented company bring all of this to vivid life. We do get to hear Cline-Russell sing "Ma" Rainey's Black Bottom in a confident, bouncy version very similar to the original (available, by the way, on YouTube). The actors aren't musicians; they have to mime their to a recording played over the sound system, but that draws our attention only for a moment.

Kevin Majors as Toledo, Charles Riley as Slow Drag, and Michael Gray as Cutler create for us the world of those many now nameless working African American musicians in Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans and elsewhere who established a culture and a music that became all American. Clifford Ross as Sylvester the stuttering nephew and Shaundra Lamkin as coy, flirtatious niece Dussie Mae are funny, human and appealing. David Clingan as white businessman Sturdyvant and Steven Valdez as the jumpy manager Irvin give us vigorous portraits of decent white guys from another time, who have absolutely no clue and no access to the rich inner lives of the African American characters.

Recalling Cutler's pick-up prior to the music: "One. . . two . . . You know what to do. . . ," I can only agree. Antoinette Winstead and the Renaissance Guild know what to do with this material. They do it in style, in depth, and with exciting clarity, and they play it through February 21.

Upcoming: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson, Renaissance Guild at Carver Center, San Antonio, February 5 - 21

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, February 11

Found on line; poster received directly:

The Renaissance Guild, San Antonio
presents

August Wilson's
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

February 5-21, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 4 p.m.
Little Carver Civic Center, 226 N. Hackberry, San Antonio, 78202
Click here for directions
or call the Center at (210) 207-2234
Tickets are $21 at Ticketmaster on-line or at (800) 745-3000

In a Chicago based recording studio, Ma Rainey's band players, Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag, and Levee turn up to record a new album of her songs. As they wait for her to arrive they banter, tell stories, joke, philosophize and argue. As the play unfolds it becomes clear that the tension is between the young hot-headed trumpeter Levee who has dreams of having his own band and veteran players Cutler and Toledo.

By the time Ma Rainey does turn up in full regalia and entourage in tow the recording schedule is badly behind, throwing the white producers Sturdyvant and Irvin into more and more irate disarray. Ma's insistence that her stuttering nephew Sylvester should do the voice intro to the title song causes more havoc.

As the band waits for various technical problems to be resolved the conflict between Levee and Cutler reaches a boiling point.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Common Ground by Antoinette Winstead, ProArts Collective, April 3-5

An impressive cast brought San Antonio playwright Antoinette Winstead's Common Ground to the Boyd Vance theatre this past weekend, with the sponsorship of the Pro Arts Collective. LeVan Owens stands tall at the center of the piece, in the character of James Parker, a powerfully built man stiff legged from a rodeo accident long ago. He's a dutiful son enduring a deep, mute resentment.

Winstead sets the piece at a Christmas sometime in the early 70s, starting the action with the unexpected arrival home of younger brother Luke, an Air Force pilot back from Vietnam. Luke's wife Sara Beth and his six-year-old child Veronica have for some undefined period (years?) been living with the boys' mother, "Miss Ruth."

In program notes Winstead says that Common Ground is her attempt at addressing family dysfunction in all its dark and illustrious glory.

The situation depicted is plausible. The drama arises from tensions between the brothers and the enigmatic position in the family of Luke's wife Sara Beth. Six-year-old Ronnie is a lively and inquisitive child who worships Uncle James and initially distrusts the smooth, smiling stranger said to be her father. And "Miss Ruth," with a mother's sharp eyes and authority works hard to keep comity in the household with the best weapons she has at hand -- cooking, chores for everyone, good-natured grousing, and, when necessary, straight talk.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Common Ground by Antoinette Winstead, Proarts Collective at Vance Boyd Theatre, April 2 - 5

Information found on-line:

ProArts Collective will perform Common Ground by San Antonio playwright Antoinette F. Winstead at the Boyd Vance Theatre, April 2-5.

In a recent on-line article on San Antonio theatre, Winstead described the work: "Set in South Central Texas in 1968, Common Ground is a family saga about a man so set on revenge that he is willing to destroy his entire family to achieve it."

The play is about an African American ranching family, and delves into the fraught relationship between a former bronco rider and his younger brother.

NowPlayingAustin.com notes, "ProArts Collective first presented a stage reading of Common Ground as a part of the 2007 BAM Festival. Lisa Byrd, Executive Director, said, 'The response was so positive that we decided to fully produce the play as a world premiere.'"

The following profile of Winstead was published in connection with the The 14th Annual Last Frontier Theatre Conference, held in Alaska in June, 2006: