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

Upcoming: Post-Oedipus, The Getalong Gang at the Blue Theatre, March 25 - April 11

UPDATE: Review by Cleve Wiese for Austinist.com, April 15

UPDATE: Review by Barry Pineo for the Austin Chronicle, April 8

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com/austin, April 2

UPDATE: Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman "Seeing Things" blog, March 29

UPDATE: Austin Creative Alliance interviews Jenny Gravenstein, Nicole Portwood and Stephen Cruz about Post-Oedipus, March 29 (audio, 11 min 20 sec)

UPDATE: Bastion Carboni interview Spencer Driggers for Austinist.com, March 26

Received directly:

The Blue Theatre and the Getalong Gang Performance Group
present

POST-OEDIPUS
a play by Steven Gridley

March 25 – April 11
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
The Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road
Tickets: $15 at www.post-oedipus.eventbrite.com

The BLUE Theatre and Getalong Gang Performance Group present the Austin premiere of Post-Oedipus, a radical re-working of Euripides' play The Phoenician Women. Post-Oedipus chronicles the tumultuous events of Oedipus' family after his fall, using warped time, musical interjections, chaotic revelries, and intolerable silences to unravel the mental state of a family after disaster. At once a stunning family drama and a jaunt into the absurd, Post-Oedipus will delight and challenge audiences.

Coming off their most recent project, the Austin Critics’ Table-nominated Arthuriosis: A Metal Opera, the Getalong Gang’s Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor join forces to direct and choreograph this memorable production. Designed by Stephen Pruitt and featuring Jenny Gravenstein (Critics’ Table winner and B. Iden Payne nominee), Nicole Portwood, Seth Thomas, Steve Cruz, Michelle Turner, Helyn Rain Messenger, and James Brownlee.

About the BLUE Theatre The BLUE Theatre is a versatile artist-operated performance space on Austin's east side. Post-Oedipus marks the first collaboratively-produced performance by the BLUE and the Getalong Gang.

About the Getalong Gang Performance Group Named one of “10 companies that are charging up Austin theatre" by the Austin Chronicle, the Getalong Gang Performance Group strives to challenge the hearts and minds of its audience and show them a great night out, as well. Husband and wife team Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor have been melding their respective disciplines (theatre, dance) since 2006 to form an unique, genre-defying brand of performance that's been recognized multiple times by the Austin Critics’ Table, B. Iden Payne awards, and Chronicle best-of lists in 2008 and 2009. Critically acclaimed and award-winning productions like Arthuriosis, Dolly Would and Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera have helped to cement the Getalong Gang’s reputation for bringing the unexpected to Austin stages.

Lonestar, A Popcorn Throwing Rock Country Musical, Vestige Group at United States Art Authority, November 4 - 21

Wow, guys, this was a mess.

Melodrama meets country rock band and invites beer drinkers to interrupt the whole thing at will with popcorn, catcalls, and even, on one particularly wild night, someone's shoe thrown from the audience.

Dr. Dave my retired college professor friend and I paid for the Wednesday night VIP seats, only there weren't any. We were kindly removed from the high table next to the stage, which turned out to be the location for those long-legged cowgirls, but there was still time to nab our front row seats. We did get our complimentary beer glasses with logo and the two beer tickets each, so we had little cause to complain on that account.

Let's look at a couple of the key elements.

Melodrama: a theatrical art form performed in small towns, church halls, saloons and theatres across the country, particularly but not exclusively in the 19th century. Typically, a simple story with a beleaguered, right-thinking young hero, a virginal heroine with heart of gold regularly threatened by a black-hearted villain with loss of her maidenhead, loss of the family farm, and loss of everything else of value. The playing style is broad. The characters are stereotypes. Frequently, the actors turn to address the audience in character, exaggerating emotions with a complicit wink. Everyone knows that Virtue Will Triumph.

Country Rock: Amplified, very loud guitar-based up-tempo music, featuring a full and active drum set and perhaps an amplified fiddle. Thrumming base guitar is a must. Words and lyrics appear to be optional, because you cannot hear them over the roar of the music, anyway.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Falling by Dan Solomon, a staged reading, November 21

Received directly:

Falling

a staged reading of a new play by Dan Solomon
with Jennymarie Jemison and Spencer Driggers

When Jessica went to bed on the night of September 10th, 2001, she wasn't sure that she and her husband Adam would be together by the end of the year. By 10:30 the next morning, that question seemed to be rendered irrelevant - he worked on the 95th floor of the North Tower.

Three years later, getting an answer has only become more important, but that leaves her with an even more pressing question: How much is she ready to learn about what was happening with Adam before the towers fell?

12 noon, Saturday, November 21st
Dougherty Arts Center
1110 Barton Springs Rd (map)
free admission

No One Else Will Ever Love You by Katherine Craft, private residences, August 28 - September 12

Offering a play in someone's house or apartment breaks down some of the conventions of theatre. There's more of a sense of risk for all concerned -- players, audience and host.

In most theatrical events the audience is anonymous, a collection of shapes outside the brightly lit playing space. And most of them like it that way. The front row never fills up first. Maybe there's a latent worry about sitting within grasp of the actors.

No One Else Will Ever Love You is theatre up close, in the living room instead of in the reassurance of a formal theatre setting. The cast uses a different living space each weekend.

I was wandering around condominiums on East 33rd street last Friday evening with an address on a slip of paper. I must have been pretty obvious when I walked behind the building into the parking lot. "Looking for the play?" asked a neighbor as he was pulling out of his parking slot. "It's over there, behind that wall."

I walked back around to the front. No sign. It was dark outside the ground floor apartment. But through the window I could see a few persons standing in the living room. I knocked, asked, and was admitted.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: No One Else Will Ever Love You by Katherine Craft, private location, August 28 - September 12

UPDATE: ALT review of September 8

UPDATE: Actor Bastion Carboni interviews director Dan Solomon on Austinist.com, 8/28

Received directly and explored on-line:

No One Else Will Ever Love You

by Katherine Craft
Directed by Dan Solomon
Starring JennyMarie Jemison, Spencer Driggers, Karina Dominguez, and Bastion Carboni.

Rick and Jen are back in the country after their honeymoon, and they've invited Rick's best friend Nora, along with her boyfriend Charlie, over for dinner. As they open their fifth bottle of wine, Rick and Charlie both struggle with their desire to dominate the room - and more importantly, Nora. Staged in the living rooms of local volunteers, this one-act play about the chess matches that some men play for power over the women in their lives, and the subsequent effort to be no one's pawn, presents a visceral and immediate theatrical experience.

August 28 and 29,September 4 and 5,September 11 and 12
All performances are at 8pm.

All tickets are $10 and available online at www.nooneelsewilleverloveyou.com. Venue addresses will be given after ticket purchase. All venues are centrally located in Austin.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Gorilla Man, Vestige Group at the Creekside Lounge, 606 E. 7th Street, Decembet 4 - 20

Gorilla Man plays in a hang-loose theatre space Thursdays through Saturdays. The guys at the Creekside Lounge are more used to your typical 6th & 7th street music scene than to the romping of thespians, but they were good natured about hosting the show.

I arrived right at the posted time of 7:30 a.m., and I went directly into the bar. They directed me to the apparently unheated space next door, where some twenty folding chairs were set up in front of a bandstand. Director Susie Gidseg welcomed me aboard, and I joined the mostly college age crowd gathering there. The bartender eventually showed up and amicably sold me a Real Ale for just $2.50, so I was ready to go. I even took off my wool cap and later in the evening I unzipped my leather jacket.

The 3-person band led by Henna Chou showed up promptly, wearing white shirts, suspenders and fedoras, along with narrator Spencer Driggers. They launched into the impossibly nutty musical story of Billy, the 14-year-old boy who discovers that puberty for him means waking up with abundant fur growing on his hands and other parts of his body. “Mom! What’s going on??”

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .