Capital T's Annual 'New Directions' Opportunity for a First-Time Professional Director, Application Deadline August 31, 2013

2014

Call for Promising Young Directors
 
When is the deadline?
August 31st 2013 at 11:59pm.

What is New Directions?
The New Directions program offers a young director with no professional credit the opportunity to direct a full-length play and bring a fresh new voice to Austin theatre while getting paid. The show will be fully produced by Capital T Theatre, and the director will have the opportunity to develop a piece of theatre that both reflects and contributes to the diversity of the Austin/Central Texas arts scene. As part of the New Directions program, Capital T is currently searching for a promising young director for the company's contribution to the Long Fringe of FronteraFest. The Austin American Statesman calls this festival the fringe theater event of the Southwest.

All applicants need to be available in the Austin area during the rehearsal and performance processes (early December through early February). The company currently has several exciting scripts under consideration for FronteraFest, but welcomes suggestions from applicants as well.

Plays must meet the following criteria:

• newer, edgy, and engaging full-length scripts (90 minutes or less);
• up to approximately 3-4 characters;
• minimal technical requirements;
• ability to be produced in six weeks or less.

Who can apply?
 
Anyone under 35 years of age who does not have a professional directing credit on their resume may apply. We consider any paid directing job a professional credit.
 
What do I need to do to apply?
 
To be considered for New Directions an applicant must submit a full theatrical resume and cover letter. The resume should include all theatrical credits. The cover letter should address why you are interested in being the next New Directions Director. It should also answer the question:"How can the New Directions program help you reach your next goal?". Forward the resume and cover letter to info@capitalT.org
 
What happens next?
 
After the deadline has passed, the resumes and letters of interest will be read by a committee who will then select up to 10 finalists to invite to formal interviews. At these interviews each candidate will be given the opportunity to share a visual portfolio as well as discuss plays that are being considered for production. After this first round of interviews 3 finalist are selected for final interviews. Final interviews will be conducted with the artistic director, past new directions directors, and company members.
 
Who are the past New Directions directors?

Most recently, Kelsey Kling directed the Austin premiere of GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES. This was Kelsey's first collaboration with Cap T. It was a critical and box office hit. The Austin Chronicle boasted “Kelsey Kling makes a distinguished directorial debut with Rajiv Joseph’s gem of a love story”.

In 2012 Scott Tipton was selected to have the honor of directing the United States premiere of Ella Hickson's PRECIOUS LITTLE TALENT. Scott said of the experience, "It is a great honor to be ‘entrusted’ with the responsibility of being one of the first individuals who introduces the playwrights story." This was the first time he had worked with Cap T. After directing PLT he has since relocated to the Houston area and continues to direct theatre.

In 2011 Gary Jaffe directed the smash hit SPIRITS TO ENFORCE by Mickle Maher. Not only gaining rare unanimous praise fromcritics and audiences alike, it was nominated and won the 2011 Austin Critics' Table Award for Best Drama. This was Gary's first time to work with Capital T. Gary was recently named Artistic Director for Tutto Theatre Company here in Austin.

In 2010 Derek Kolluri directed the critically acclaimed DYING CITY for Capital T. The show, which was the most well received of fronterafest longfringe, was given extended performances outside of the festival. Since directing for Capital T Derek has gone on to found The Sustainable Theatre Project. A new theatre company in Austin, STP plans to offer fresh, professional theatre to the Austin theatre community while maintaining the highest possible respect for the environment.

In 2009 Kelli Bland was selected as for our New Directions program to direct the US premiere of THE BIRD and THE BEE by Al Smith and Matt Hartley. This was her first time to work with Capital T. The plays THE BIRD and THE BEE were nominated for Outstanding production of a Drama by the Austin Critics Table Awards. The plays were also the highest attended theatrical event of FronteraFest 2009. Since directing for Capital T she went on to direct and produce the world premiere of the independent musical FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT at Salvage Vanguard Theatre and now collaborates with PAPER CHAIRS.

In 2008 John Carroll was selected for the New Directions program. It was his first time to work with Capital T. He directed the regional premiere of I GOOGLE MYSELF by Jason Shafer. The play earned great critical success in it fronterafest run and was subsequently remounted at Hyde Park Theatre in the summer of 2008 becoming the highest earning production of Capital T's at the time. John has gone on to found the Weird City Theatre Company, a company that produces re-envisioned classics and original works while merging a new audience with the traditional.

Zeus in Therapy by Douglass Stott Parker, Tutto Theatre at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, August 16 - 25, 2013

(Tutto Theatre)

by Michael Meigs

Tutto Theatre's Zeus in Therapy by the late UT classics professor Douglass Stott Parker is dazzling, and at times, as his brilliant wordplay coincides with the gesturing and capering of the astonishing Greek chorus, it is simply stunning.

'Stunning' is a word thrown about lightly in the casual talk of our day. But I mean it literally. The brilliance, complexity and sheer entertainment value of this staging and this cast is sufficient to blow your circuits, if you're trying to absorb everything this production is offering you.

Perhaps only literature geeks and poetry lovers stand in danger of that. You may be happy simply to settle back in your seat in the Rollins Theatre and ride with this lengthy evening on any of its several levels.

Set design by Chris Cox

Most of us have at least a rudimentary recall of Greek mythology, perhaps from storybooks in middle school. You can enjoy the revelation of the stories of this quirky, cranky bunch of deities: Zeus himself, the all-powerful principal god with that rampant lust; Hera his demanding wife and sister ("wifster"); the Titans who pre-dated the Greek gods and old Cronus, Zeus's father; trident-brandishing Neptune and hammer-swinging Hephaestus; Dionysus, god of wine, born from the thigh of Zeus; cup-bearer Ganymede; the incarnations of all the lovely maidens who gave Zeus's life its zest; and a vast additional number of mortals and immortals.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

ZEUS IN THERAPY by Douglass Stott Parker, Tutto Theatre at Rollins Theatre, Long Center, August 18 - 25, 2013

presents
Zeus in Therapy
by Douglass Stott Parker
directed by Gary Jaffe
August 16 - 25, 2013
Rollins Theatre, Long Center, 701 Riverside at South First, Austin, TX - click for map

Tutto Theatre Company proudly announces the world premiere of Zeus in Therapy, an original theatrical experience adapted from the unpublished poetry of Douglass Stott Parker by the company, and directed by Gary Jaffe. 

When a god has questions, you know those really big questions…life or death…slave or free…savagery or civilization…fair or cloudy…her or her sister…, where does he go? And will there be cashews?

A long-time Austin resident, Parker was an improvisational jazz trombonist, a renowned translator of ancient comedy, an explorer of fictitious landscapes, and a profess of ancient languages and creativity at UT-Austin. He is best known for his work in Greek and Roman comedy, particularly his translations of Aristophanes’ plays Lysistrata (1964), The Wasps (1962), and The Congresswomen (1967). His Lysistrata has had over two hundred productions and is currently the translation published in the Signet Classics series. His The Congresswomen (Ecclesiazusae) was among the Finalists for The National Book Award in the category of Translation in 1968.

In 1979, he began writing Zeus in Therapy, a cycle of 52 poems which imagines Zeus on the therapist’s couch. Parker did not ‘finish’ it, though he stopped writing in about 1993, and left it unpublished during his lifetime. Every new poem in the cycle was shared both on his office door and with his classes on a weekly basis for some 25 years. Parker’s poetry is whimsical and profound, cosmic and quotidian, thoughtful and irreverent, but always heartfelt and true. Our translation of Zeus in Therapy into a theatrical experience will bring the power of his words to an even larger audience.

In our adaptation, a diverse ensemble of eleven performers play Zeus, giving Parker’s words a dynamic range of expression. Beginning with the classic binary image of therapy: therapist in chair, patient on couch, we expand as Zeus’s fracturing mind becomes a multitude of bodies and voices. As Parker’s words reverberate, and as actors scramble about the stage to perform the various travails of his life, we come to understand that Zeus, just like the rest of us, finds himself overwhelmed by expectations. 

The production features the award-winning acting talents of Aaron D. Alexander, Karen Alvarado, John Austin, Suzanne Balling, Joe Hartman, Court Hoang, Chris Humphrey, Annamarie Kasper, Julie Linnard, Nathan Osburn, and Justin Scalise; with Scenic Design by Justin Cox; Lighting Design by Natalie George; Costume and Hair & Make-Up Design by Austin M. Rausch; Choreography by Lynn Raridon; Video Design by Kakii Keenan; and Music by Chris Humphrey & Court Hoang.

Zeus in Therapy runs August 16th through 25th at the Rollins Studio Theater in The Long Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets available via The Long Center for the Performing Arts.

In the last six years, Tutto’s seven most recent productions: The Twelfth Labor (Summer 2012), The Alien Baby Play (Winter 2012), The Dudleys!: A Family Game (Spring 2011), I Witness (Summer 2010), Murder Ballad Murder Mystery (Fall 2009), Black Snow (Summer 2009), and Ophelia (Fall 2008) together have collected 64 nominations, garnered 27 awards, and appeared on 11 annual top listings from local media.


Founded in 2002, Tutto Theatre Company set out to elevate cross-disciplinary communication in the Austin artistic community. In 2008, we fused to our original purpose the artistic ambition to enhance, imaginatively, the expanding arts community in Austin. Imagination is the engine of the impossible, and ours is an Impossible Theatre. Embracing the theatre—a realm where impossibilities interpenetrate—we access the deeper meaning that lies beneath human experience. We create a space to carve into the unexpected, to dissect its viscera, and to lay bare its provocative sinews in ever more impossible ways. Ours is a theatre of dreams and of fantasies, of memory and of nostalgia, of desire and of disorientation, of imagination and of contradiction, an arena where the mundane grapples with the sublime. Thus, we commit tutto (everything) to the exploration of new forms and of new works that inscribe their fearful symmetries and incalculable geometries within our hearts, minds, and bodies.


We feel a profound responsibility both to new and timeless theatre. Our work, therefore, consists in: (1) producing experiences of high-quality both small and large; (2) developing new work and production opportunities for up-and-coming playwrights; and (3) helping our community to nurture its place as a world-class arts destination, providing local educational opportunities, and bringing artists from around the world to develop their work in our city. Thus we defy the grim reality of theatre making in the 21st century, declaring: Everything is possible in this our Impossible Theatre!

This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Kickstarter Appeal for The Priceless Slave by J.M. Meyer, Cohen New Works Festival, University of Texas, March 25 - 29, 2013

Kickstarter Appeal from playwright Johnny Meyer and director Gary Jaffe, March 15, aiming to raise $2000 by April 7.

 Click Kickstarter logo to go to donation page.

The Priceless Slave

 

by J.M. Meyer

directed by Gary Jaffe

This is a true story. The events depicted in this play took place in Northern Louisiana from 1842 to 1856. Telling this story cannot atone for the sin of American slavery, for nothing can atone for the sin of slavery in a "free" country: a state has no soul, and therefore can never find forgiveness. Instead, the play seeks to help prevent slavery's reoccurrence.  

THE PRICELESS SLAVE is a chronicle of human obligations. Four human members of antebellum society exist in the shadow of a wider social system: here, in the shadows, they built their lives. Each character has the opportunity to fight against that social system, but in doing so they attack their own way of life, and trivialize their own hard-earned morsels of dignity.

Welcome to the world of The Priceless Slave, where forgotten stories return to life, and challenge the moral values of both our past and present. Written by J. M. Meyer, and directed by Gary Jaffe, THE PRICELESS SLAVE challenges the status quo to uphold the true meaning of “freedom.”

In the world of THE PRICELESS SLAVE, five characters represent the struggles seen in this antebellum society. Their descriptions and the synopsis are given below, beneath the video.

ALEXIS CLÉREL is an older English woman who married young, but her much older American husband died quickly and left her far less money than expected. Paulina is Alexis' friend and sometime benefactor, despite significant differences in age and background. Paulina and Alexis live vicariously through each other, and take this living very seriously, so much so that when one makes a move, the other feels some ownership of the act. Alexis believes it is important for Paulina to uphold her end of the friendship by becoming an established, respectable matron.

GEORGE PAYSINGER is a middle-aged architect and foreman owned by Senator John Hamter. James Gilmer has convinced Paysinger that his destiny is to help pull Northern Louisiana out of the frontier and into civilization. Paysinger's proudest moment thus far was the construction of Orchard Place Plantation. He might be an anti-hero.

PAULINA DEGRAFFENRIED GILMER is the wealthiest landowner in Northern Louisiana. She approaches thirty years of age, and is married to James Blair Gilmer, whom she will divorce in 1856. She is the widow of James Pickett, one of the seven founders of Shreveport, Louisiana; her first marriage is the primary source of her wealth. Pickett dies in 1842, one year prior to her marriage to James Gilmer. Paulina has three children from her first marriage; she will outlive all three. The play takes place in her home, Orchard Place Plantation.

THOMAS JEFFERSON is the third president of the United States of America, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the play's only centenarian. As president, he oversaw the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France.

SALLY GILMER SPYKER is the young wife of Leonidas Spyker, and younger sister of James Gilmer. At the beginning of the play, she visits her sister-in-law, Paulina, for the first time. Sally just married Leonidas in New Orleans, and does not know that Paulina and Leonidas shared a brief relationship. Sally is not as naïve or simple as anyone would like, including herself; she understands the protective benefits of socialization and group-think.

SYNOPSIS   When Paulina DeGraffenried and George Paysinger receive word of James Gilmer's incriminating social indiscretion, each separately considers fleeing the constraints of their own social positions: Paysinger leaves; Paulina does not. Paulina panics at Paysinger's absence, and forfeits her James' trust to maintain her social status in wider society. James' sister, Sally Gilmer, discovers that Paysinger has been hiding beneath the porch of Orchard Plantation, the antebellum home he built with his own hands. Paulina recognizes that her forfeiture of her husband's trust places her children at risk, and she decides to abandon her marriage altogether.

In the world of The Priceless Slave, everyone is needed. To make this play be the best it can be, we not only need the talent and discipline of our cast and crew, but we also need you. By contributing to this world, you become a part of it.

You make The Priceless Slave come to life.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Although sponsorship from the University of Texas Co-op has provided a generous budget allowance for our project in the Cohen New Works Festival, that budget only covers costs such as prop construction, script printing, and other basic supplies. We think it's essential that go out of our way to provide some form of compensation for the artists devoting hundreds of hours of labor to our show. Our Kickstarter campaign will allow us to reimburse our artists for all the incidental expenses associated with constructing a piece of theater.

About the credentials of the writer and thee director [with links to AustinLiveTheatre.com reviews]:

Johnny Meyer: (Writer) His last play, AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS, drew on his experiences as a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and explored the conflict between 21st century warfare and American values; the play received the 2010 Mitchell Award, and became the first stage-play to make the long-list for the United Kingdom's Dylan Thomas Prize.

Gary Jaffe: (Director) His professional work includes Spirits to Enforce (winner of the 2011 Critic's Table Award for Outstanding Drama) with Capital T Theatre, The Dudley's: A Family Game by Leegrid Stevens with Tutto Theatre Company (winner of eight 2011 B. Iden Payne Awards, including: Best Production of a Comedy and Best Director), The Alien Baby Play by Nicholas Walker Herbert (Tutto); his own play Love in Pine (LATCo); and The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens (Tutto).

Risks and challenges Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

The Priceless Slave is on a tight schedule with a limited amount of time until opening day on Monday March 25th. Fortunately, we have a bright and collaborative team of young professionals working hard to make this production a success. Working under pressure causes the entire team to stay on task and fulfill their duties to the utmost diligence.

Successfully crowd-funding our play through Kickstarter remains our most significant challenge, but we can meet that goal with your help! Luckily, the deadline to donate will occur after the final performance ends, so there is ample time to support our work with a small (or large) financial contribution!

As The Priceless Slave team stated in our video, we need YOUR support. This production will be the best it can be if you help us achieve our goals! Please come see our show, and please support our work in any way you can! Thank you!

PRICELESS SLAVE by J.M. Meyer, UT New Works, March 25 - 30, 2013

(University of Texas theatres, Winship Drama Bldg. (WIN), near 23rd St. and San Jacinto, Austin)

and the New Works program present


 


(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions tomorrow, Saturday, February 16 for Zeus in Therapy, Tutto Theatre, Austin

Posted on Facebook by Tutto Theatre, Austin:

We're holding auditions tomorrow (Saturday, February 16) for our August production ZEUS IN THERAPY and have some slots available! If you're interested in auditioning and/or want more information, contact our artistic director at gary.s.jaffe@gmail.com.

We're holding auditions tomorrow for our August production ZEUS IN THERAPY and have some slots available! If you're interested in auditioning and/or want more information, contact our artistic director at gary.s.jaffe@gmail.com.

The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens, Tutto Theatre at MacTheatre black box, August 10 - September 1

(www.tuttotheatre.org)

by Michael Meigs

If you arrive at the MacTheatre Black Box with happy memories of Leegrid Stevens' The Dudleys as staged last year by Tutto Theatre -- winner of eight of Austin's B. Iden Payne theatre awards -- you may well be disconcerted. The Twelfth Labor, behind its enigmatic title, is as far from the hectic world of 8-bit video games as, say, Eugene O'Neil or William Faulkner.

Tutto has mounted a gorgeously moody, intellectually challenging piece, comprised of Steven's four-part suite in the stark isolation of a farmhouse somewhere out on an alien landscape of the mind. Designer Ia Ensterä again creates a wrap-around environment in weathered wood, a falling-down barn and a two-story farmhouse.

Erin Treadway, Rebecca Robinson (image: Kimberley Meade)

Stevens' script is densely conceptual, a virtual Cirque de Soleil of intellectual performance, but the story is much less complicated than his working and reworking of it. This Idaho farm family lives in harsh rural deprivation in 1949.

Rebecca Robinson plays Esther the grim matriarch, trying to hold together her own existence and those of the four variously handicapped or rebellious children of the family. The father of this beleaguered family disappeared into Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in the Pacific eight years before and has never returned.

The program lists the labors of Hercules, the last of which is his wrestling with Cerberus, the monster guarding the Underworld. But there's no obvious or easy parallel here -- in fact, pattern-makers might find that with the absent father, a couple of suitors, and the strong matriarch could track the late passages of the Odyssey just as well; the father does eventually return.

Cleo the oldest daughter is severely dyslexic and mentally handicapped -- an earnest, striving young woman old before her time, bewildered by language that twists and turns on her mind the way a live snake might. In this role Erin Treadway delivers a performance that will break your heart, first to last, certainly one of the year's most impressive dramatic performances.

(Click 'to read continuation and view performance photos at www.AustinLiveTheatre.com)

Upcoming: The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens, Tutto Theatre and MacTheatre, August 10 - September 1

Tutto Theatre presents

in Co-Production with MACtheatre

The Full-Stage Premiere of

The Twelfth Labor

 

 

 

By Leegrid Stevens

(Click for AUTHOR BIO)

Directed by Gary Jaffe

10 August – 1 September 2012

WEEK 1—Friday and Saturday
WEEK 2—Thursday through Saturday
WEEKS 3 & 4—Wednesday through Saturday

All Performances are at 7:30 p.m.

The Laboratory Theater, McCallum Fine Arts Academy, 5600 Sunshine Drive, Austin, TX 78756

Thursdays – Saturdays: $15 General Admission
(GACA/Senior/Student: $12 & Priority Seating: $25)

LIMITED SEATING, Reserve Yours TODAY.

Wednesdays are Pay-What-You-CAN
Name Your Own Price w/ Donation
of Non-Perishable Canned Food Item(s) to benefit
Hope Food Pantry at Trinity United Methodist Church
[Price without donation is $12]

Featuring the award-winning artistic contributions of actors: Helen Allen, Wray Crawford, Trey Deason, Chris Humphrey, Skip Johnson, Content Love Knowles, Megan Minto, Rebecca Robinson, Erin Treadway, Fred Winkler, and introducing Annamarie Kasper; the set design of Ia Ensterä; the lighting design of Natalie George; the costume design of Benjamin Taylor Ridgway; and the hair and make up design of Austin M. Rausch.

Leegrid Stevens’ evocative new play, The Twelfth Labor, is epic, utilizing the myth of The Twelve Labors of Hercules to explore the inner workings of a hardscrabble World War II era family in Idaho. We follow a single day in the life of an Idaho farm family, October 15, 1949, as seen through the uniquely damaged mind of the family's eldest daughter, Cleo. Through her fragmented memories, often prophetic dreams, and swirling language, we come to understand the price she and her family have paid for a little dignity, as they await the return of their long absent father, lost somewhere in the war, half a world away.

In addition to the myth of Hercules, The Twelfth Labor draws upon the popular culture (music, literature, and film) of Cleo’s childhood, which frames and colors her experience of the real world—an outer shell of Realism surrounds an inner-shell of Surrealism, which together generate what The Des Moines Register (speaking of the second workshop production) called an “[…] elemental magnetism […]” which pulls the audience in and keeps them thinking of the play days and even weeks after.

Upcoming: The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stephens, Tutto Theatre, August, 2012

Tutto Theatre Company & McCallum Fine Arts Academy are proud to announce

THE TWELFTH LABOR

written by Leegrid Stevens, directed by Gary Jaffe.

Featuring the acting talents of Helen Allen, Travis Dean, Chris Humphrey, Skip Johnson, Tyler Jones, Annamarie Kasper, Content Love Knowles, Megan Minto, Rebecca Robinson, Erin Treadway, and Frederic Winkler.

Also Featuring: Set Design of IA ENSTERÄ; the Lighting Design of Natalie George; the Costume Design of Benjamin Taylor Ridgway.

---COMING AUGUST 2012 ---

www.TuttoTheatre.org

— with Content Love Knowles, Skip Johnson, Tyler Jones and 17 others.

Love in Pine by Gary Jaffe, Last Act Theatre Company at Broken Neck, February 16 - March 3

by Michael Meigs

Gary Jaffe's Love in Pine is a coming-of-age story, a coming-out story and a fable with a tree spirit and ghosts, all this with multiple realities and time periods anchored in the fictitious town of Pine, Texas at a time of conflagrations. This is unmistakably Bastrop, at about the time that Jaffe left Yale Drama School to return to his hometown of Austin. One wonders uneasily how much of this is auto-therapy, considering that a central character is seen job hunting on the east coast and then returning via some magical transport to the Texas that she holds in disdain.

Just now as I put the header on this piece, my fingers of their own volition typed Love in Pain instead of Love in Pine. That was a Freudian slip, not a an effort to be snide. There is a lot of pain in all of these characters and they work over the past obsessively as those big flames draw nearer.

Jaffe denies names to them. His characters have generic appellations both on the program card and as they speak of one another: Sister, Girl, Teacher, Boy and Tree. I found that precious and a bit off-putting, particularly given the closeness of their relations -- two sisters, a couple destined never to make it to the big prom, a trusted high school teacher (all right, I'll waive my objection in the case of the tree spirit).

The central obsessive incident is clearly depicted on the poster: on their way to their high school prom, with arrangements in place for post-dance coitus, the couple crashes against a huge pine tree -- ironically, the same one in which they carved their joined initials when they were thirteen years old. Just as Sister and Teacher had done when they were the same age, some years before that.

[image: Last Act Theatre Company]

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Alien Baby Play by by Nicholas Walker Herbert, Tutto Theatre for Frontera Fest, January 20 - February 5

Bethany appeared first to the Austin public and to friends of Tutto Theatre in the warm and supporting setting of a private home in Westlake, last weekend. About twenty persons gathered in a living room comfortably furnished with artwork, masks and handicraft from across the world. Bethany was pleased to see all these friends at her "mom's house," hurried about, offered us cookies, disappeared momentarily and then came back, rubbing the arc of her belly from time to time and taking a moment to decorate it with a Post-It™ note: "Alien on board."

There was no fourth wall in this staging and in fact there were no walls at all, unless you count those enclosing the house. Kathleen Fletcher as the massively pregnant Bethany was hyped, self-hypnotized, eager to talk and to please. She told us that she was fifteen months pregnant with her alien baby, ready to deliver at any moment and confidently expecting the arrival of her lover at any moment. She invited questions, and one or another of us in the gathering hazarded a carefully neutral inquiry. Eventually someone asked how she knew, exactly, that the being in her womb was an alien, and Bethany eagerly shared her impressions of that late night alone when she found herself in the presence of the unknown, telepathically and corporally uniting with a being emanating an incomprehensible but perfectly understandable speech.

I thought momentarily of asking our hostess if this was an "illegal alien" but I refrained. That would have been rude, almost disbelieving, and Bethany was so eager to please us and to share her transformation. Kathleen the actress behind those owlish spectacles and beneath all that additional volume would certainly have responded with grace and probably with wit.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Love in Pine by Gary Jaffe, Last Act Theatre Company at Broken Neck, February 23- March 3

Found on-line:

presents

Love in Pine

written and directed by Gary Jaffe

February 23 - March 3, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Broken Neck, 4701 Red Bluff Road (off E. Cesar Chavez below Springdale Rd - click for map)

Admission $15 - one night's proceeds will be donated to Bastrop Fire Relief

Love was in the air on prom night in the town of Pine, TX, but Boy and Girl didn’t make it to the dance – a fatal head-on collision with a pine tree trapped their souls inside the tree itself. Two years later, the lonely town Librarian and Girl’s guilt-racked Sister try to find them a different ending to prom night, but how exactly does one change the past? And how can they stop the wildfire scorching its way through the county? And why does the Tree herself want to keep them there? A heartbreaking, supernatural twist on the traditional American prom night story, Love in Pine is a bold, poetic, relevant new play by local writer/director Gary Jaffe set in the pine woods of central Texas, where trees talk, prom lasts forever, and love, for better or worse, is love.

Last Act Theatre Company website Last Act Theatre Company on Facebook

Auditions for The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens, Tutto Theatre, January 7 and 8

Invitation to Audition for The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens

directed by Gary Jaffe

(A World Premiere from the author of The Dudleys!: A Family Game)*

Scheduled for August, 2012

AUDITIONS are Saturday, January 7th & Sunday, January 8th by appointment only - Callbacks Saturday, January 14th. To set up a brief audition time email daniel@danielbrock.com.

We're looking for men and women between the ages of 18 and 50 for a multitude of roles.

The Twelfth Labor follows a single day, October 15, 1949, filtered through the warped and damaged mind of an Idaho farm girl. Through her memories, dreams, and swirling language, we come to understand the price she and her family have paid for a little dignity, as they await the return of their long absent father, lost somewhere in the war, half a world away.

The production will run 4 weeks at McCallum Fine Arts Academy, from August 9th – September 1st. Rehearsals will begin in June. The Twelfth Labor will be directed by Tutto Theatre Company's Artistic Director, Gary Jaffe.

WHAT TO PREPARE? We will provide you with scenes and monologues from the play at least one week prior to auditions. Please select your two favorites and prepare them. We may ask you to perform others, but we only expect two to be "prepared." Be ready to make choices and take direction.

Please also bring two copies of your headshot and resume, and--if available--send digital versions to daniel@danielbrock.com when scheduling your audition time slot.

*Tutto's May 2011 production garnered eight awards in the 37th Annual B. Iden Payne Awards this fall.

Tutto Theatre Company is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) arts organization in Austin, Texas, and is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.

Upcoming: The Alien Baby Play, Tutto Theatre at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, January 20 - February 5

Found on-line:

presents the world premiere of

The Alien Baby Play

by Nicholas Walker Herbert

directed by Gary Jaffe

Preview Performances:

Friday, 20 January 2012, 8:00p.m.
Saturday, 21 January 2012, 8:00p.m.
Sunday, 22 January 2012, 8:00p.m.

A Private Residence in Westlake* Preview Performances: $10
SEATING is LIMITED, Reserve Your Seats TODAY.
*Location sent out upon ticket purchase/reservation.
Tickets Available via TuttoTheatre.org

FronteraFest Long Fringe Performances:

Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 7:00p.m.; Saturday, 28 January 2012, 1:00p.m.; Sunday, 29 January 2012, 8:45p.m.Sunday, 5 February 2012, 7:15p.m.; all at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road (click for map)

FronteraFest Long Fringe Performances: $10
Tickets Available via FronteraFest.org

Featuring the return of Austin's own, Kathleen Fletcher.

Bethany is 15 months pregnant with an alien baby, and she's invited you to the birth! Kathleen Fletcher returns to Austin for the world premiere of Nicholas Walker Herbert's The Alien Baby Play, an interactive theatrical experience which will leave you clutching your womb with joy and terror. Presented as part of the FronteraFest Long Fringe 2012.

Click to view bios of director Gary Jaffe, Pam Fletcher Friday, Daniel Brock, Matthew Ervin, and producers David Robinson and Pidge Smith

Upcoming: Leda's Swan by Leegrid Stevens, staged reading at Blue Theatre's New Plays series, December 14

Received directly

NEW PLAYS SERIES -- BLUE THEATRE

Bringing New Plays to the Austin Stage!

On-going, Monthly Staged Readings of New Works of Theatre by Emerging New Playwrights.

(2011 December Series)

Leda's Swan

Written by Leegrid Stevens

Directed by Gary Jaffe

Wednesday, December 14 at 7:30p.m.

A former quasi-polygamist, Res, is dying from cancer in an abandoned wing of a run-down hospital. Reviled by all around him, he is left to die alone. He refuses, however, and remains alive, outlasting doctors’ estimates by several months. With this backdrop, one of his former loves, Sylvia, his proclaimed favorite, visits him against her better judgment.

ARTISTS' BIOS: Leegrid Stevens' (Steven Gridley) was named as one of the "People of the Year" by nytheatre.com: "Indisputably one of the smartest and most innovative young playwright/directors working in New York's Indie theatre scene. Gary Jaffe is an ‘8’ B. Iden Payne Award Winner 2011, Austin Critics' Table Award Winner 2011 and B. Sewall Cup Recipient 2010, for academic achievement and creative potential -- Yale University.

ABOUT US: The Blue Theatre New Plays Series gives emerging playwrights the opportunity to work with professional actors and a director in the production of a staged reading and to experience the effect of their new play on a live audience. Followed by Talk-backs with actors, director, audience and the playwright, if available. Open to the public. Free to Attend with a reception to follow.

For a Complete Schedule of Plays Presented in our Series and/or Playwright Submissions, Visit Us at www.BlueTheatre.org/New-Plays-Series.

THE BLUE THEATRE, 916 Springdale Road, Austin, TX 78702

Showtime Hotline: 512.684.3220 | Email: info@BlueTheatre.org

Arts Reporting: Westlake Picayune Profiles Gary Jaffe, November 17

Found on-line:

All the world’s a stage

Thursday, November 17, 2011 - Esther Robards-Forbes

Life is a lot like an improvisational comedy sketch, and theater director Gary Jaffe follows the old improv rule of “say yes, and…”

At 23, this young Yale graduate and theater studies major is living the dream: He’s making theater and getting paid to do it.

“In improv games, you take the premise you’re given, and you say ‘yes,’ but you also say ‘and,’ ” Jaffe said. “You take what you’re given, and you add something to it.”

That attitude has served him very well, so far. While many of his peers are waiting tables in New York to pay the bills and snatching a few hours a week to work on their love of theater, Jaffe decided to take a more unconventional path to theater success.

By day, he is a theater teacher at Westlake High School, where he graduated in 2006, and by night he is the artistic director for Tutto Theatre Company in Austin.

Jaffe, a fast-talking and exuberant man with wit and wisdom that belies his age, realized that he belonged in the director’s chair early in his theater career.

Read more at the Westlake Picayune . . . .

Auditions for Love in Pine by Gary Jaffe, Last Act Theatre Company, November 18 - 19

Found on-line:

Auditions for Love in Pine by Gary Jaffe

Friday evening, November 18 and Saturday morning, November 19
Austin Creative Alliance, 901 Tillery Street (click for map)

Love was in the air on prom night in the town of Pine, TX, but Boy and Girl didn’t make it to the dance – a fatal head-on collision with a pine tree trapped their souls inside the tree itself. Two years later, the lonely town Librarian and Girl’s guilt-racked Sister try to find them a different ending to prom night, but how exactly does one change the past? And how can they stop the wildfire scorching its way through the county? And why does the Tree herself want to keep them there? A heartbreaking, supernatural twist on the traditional American prom night story, Love in Pine is a bold, poetic, relevant new play by local writer/director Gary Jaffe set in the pine woods of central Texas, where trees talk, the prom lasts forever, and love, for better or worse, is love.

CHARACTERS

TREE – Female, age 20 – 40. Born a human woman, she was trapped inside a pine tree during the Civil War, when she hanged herself from its branches to spite her father. Now the resident spirit of the tree, she harbors the young souls of the teenage couple who hit her with their car on prom night. Like nature itself, her mood can swiftly shift from gentle and benevolent to vicious and destructive, especially when it’s drought season and there are wildfires nearby…

LIBRARIAN – Male, age 25ish. Gay-ish. Driven by a sense of responsibility and heavy feelings of guilt, he has worked tirelessly for two years to free the Boy and the Girl from the Tree. He was unusually close to them and they looked up to him as a brother and a mentor, culminating in their visiting his house on the way to prom night, where things happened which are not easily forgiven…

GIRL – Female, age 18. Was smart, sensible and put-together before she drove herself and her date, Boy, into a tree on prom night. Now, she’s a twisted knot of resentment and suspicion, and she has every right to be…

BOY – Male, age 18. Sort of a puppy dog, loves everything and everyone, and is willing to try everything. Or at least he was, before the accident. His needs are always immediate and he doesn’t necessarily think before he acts…

SISTER – Female, age 25ish. The semi-estranged older sister of Girl and old sort-of flame of Librarian. After she finished school up north, she stayed, cutting herself off from her old life in Pine, TX, a separation only exacerbated by the death of her sister. But now there’s a wildfire cutting across the county, and her sister’s soul in danger, so what’s a guilt-ridden sibling to do…?

To schedule an audition time, please contact Gary Jaffe at gary.s.jaffe@gmail.com

Blue Theatre New Plays: Spencer Driggers and Leegrid Stevens, May 9 and 16

Received directly from the Blue Theatre:

The Blue Theatre is at 916 Springdale Road (click for map).

Upcoming: The Dudleys, Tutto Theatre at the Blue Theatre, May 6 - 22

Found on-line:

Tutto Theatre presents
The Full-Stage Premiere of
The Dudleys!: A Family Game

by Leegrid Stevens
directed by Gary Jaffe
6 – 22 May 2011
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 8:00 p.m., Sundays, 7:00 p.m.
The BLUE Theatre, 916 Springdale Road (click for map)
Fridays and Saturdays: $15 General Admission
(GACA/Senior/Student: $12 & Priority Seating: $20)
Wednesdays & Thursdays are Pay-What-You-CAN
Name Your Own Price w/ Donation of Non-Perishable Canned Food Item(s) to benefit Hope Food Pantry at Trinity United Methodist Church [Price without donation is $12]

Featuring the artistic contributions of Actors: Alex Cogburn, Katie Dahm, Robert Deike, Spencer Driggers, Braden Hunt, Jenny Keto, Rachel McGinnis, Blake Smith, David Meissner, and Erin Treadway; Set Designer: Chase Staggs; Lighting Designer: Natalie George

Original ChipTune Music Composed and Performed Live by: Steven Gridley.

This evocative, new play translates the adolescent memories of a young man into a malfunctioning 8-bit video game, the kind he used to play as a child. A life-size video game onstage provides the setting in which the characters must score points and overcome obstacles as they navigate their way through the dangers of their own family. The Dudleys! features original video and a live 8-bit band of Atari's, Gameboy's, and Commodore 64's performing original chiptune songs, a new genre of electronic music in which old video game consoles are hacked and reprogrammed as synthesizers. The Dudleys! pits the two dimensional side-scrolling world of fun and happy endings up against the confusion and aimlessness of real life.

Click to view the play's website

Spirits to Enforce, Capital T Theatre at FronteraFest LF, January 19-30 and February 10 - 12

With 12 superheroes on stage, who ya gonna call? I picked over the suite of portraits at Capital T Theatre's website and I was seriously tempted by blonde Jenny Gravenstein as The Page with the come-hither eyes, particularly since Capital T is using her for one of its promo posters.

That would be a sexist indulgence in fantasy, though, so I settled on Austin newcomer Jay Fraley, who mans the central slot at the phone bank as Emory (secret identity: Ariel; yes, that Ariel, and a hint as to just why these impoverished superheroes, victorious so recently against Dr. Cannibal and his hoardes, are trying to raise donations so that they can put on a theatrical production of The Tempest).

Besides, Fraley has more than a passing resemblance to playwright Mickle Maher of Chicago's Theatre Oobleck. And when the super-rubber hits the road, Ariel's performance in the theatre before a crowd including Dr. Cannibal as chief theatre critic is a self-confessed disaster. Judging from the rest of this speedy, hectic, amusing play, that's just the sort of joke that Maher would play on himself.

Capital T's first-time director Gary Jaffe puts all superheroes on stage, all the time. They hardly move from their stations at the telethon table, except for LaTasha Stephens as The Bad Map, but the psychic energy sizzles. Jaffe has assembled a cast that is its own microcosm of valiant Austin actor-heroes, all of them in their 20's and 30's, most of them familiar and welcome to theatre junkies. They mirror pretty well the very demographic that Capital T has courted so successfully over the past couple of years: energetic folk who are smart, self-referential, creative and a touch arrogant.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .