The Flu Season by Will Eno, Oh Dragon Theatre Company at Grayduck Gallery, November 7 - 16, 2013

by Michael Meigs

 
Oh Dragon Theatre Company's choice of the Grayduck Gallery just off south First Street as the venue to stage Will Eno's The Flu Season is appropriate. The white walls, open space, and angled positioning of the seats for the audience create a stark setting for a stark play. In his odd little fable of anomie, set in a mental clinic, Will Eno tells a story that could squeeze our hearts if only he didn't keep relentlessly undercutting our reactions.

Ky Cleveland, Nicholaus Weindel (photo: Oh Dragon)

This institution is a holding space with the mission of assisting fragile souls to put their pieces back together. Newly admitted 'Man' (Nicholaus Weindel) is interviewed by the Doctor (Ky Cleveland) and newly admitted 'Woman' is brought on board by the Nurse (Victoria Jackson). Each caretaker is garrulous and self-absorbed; each admittee seems stunned. We learn a lot about the staff members, almost all of it irrelevant to the central question suggested by the structure: why are these two here at all?

Rounding out the cast are the Prologue (Kendra Pérez) and the Epilogue (Ben Howell) -- although neither exercises the announced function. They comment throughout the play. Pérez has a reassuringly pert demeanor that's balanced by Howell's arch, cynical responses. Playwright Eno uses 'Epilogue' in a deliberately 'meta' approach. Epilogue's voice seems to be that of the playwright, drawing attention to the conventions of the drama and insistently questioning the value of his own creation.

Kendra Perez (photo: Oh Dragon Theatre)

In a 2009 review of an earlier production of this script by Austin Community College, I acknowledged that I found it 'aggravating,' Southern dialect for 'deliberately provocative,' but I admired the language and the images Eno used in this deliberately mundane setting.

Both in its title and in the cycle of its action, The Flu Season suggests the eternal predictability of human existence. Strangers meet, bond, become intimate, quarrel, separate, die; seen from the outside, those intensely personal stories are reduced to clinical histories. We watch two couples here. The young wounded grasp feebly for feeling and their placid elders bumble about and bond in routine and mediocrity. In fact, there's a third couple: Prologue and Epilogue stand at conventional literary remove from the story, disputing one another's declarations without directly addressing one another, like a couple long married with never a meeting of the minds.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Tragedy: A Tragedy by Will Eno, Hyde Park Theatre, September 12 - October 12, 2013

by Jess Helmke

Much To Say About Nothing

The sun has set. The theatre is quiet. And a play begins. Just another normal Thursday night in the Austin Hyde Park neighborhood.

But maybe it’s more than that, suggests playwright Will Eno. His play Tragedy: a Tragedy is now running at Hyde Park Theatre, engaging audiences with ironic perceptions of mundane, everyday life. Eno’s repetitious cyclone of humor entertains the audience with threads of thematic action, roccoco rythmic storytelling, glimmers of conflict, lyric poetics, and the occasional element of surprise.

The mere fact that Will Eno uses television as his theatrical setting is unexpected. The play of gives us four main characters: Frank the anchor, John the weatherman, Constance the elated and naive reporter, and Michael the global reporter . Tragedy begins as a straightforward newscast, typical in speech pattern and line delivery, butr a little disappointing since there seems to be a lack of events to report. Characters speak directly to the audience as if we were sitting in the comfort of own homes, and their stage business is humorously appropriate with index fingers to the eapieces and sips of coffee by the anchor. I totally bought it.

The power and versatiity of the tool of theatre is exploited in most of Will Eno’s work, and the comedy Tragedy: a Tragedy is no different. Its discussions about darkness remind us of a bare stage. Its painful nostalgic childhood stories almost make us nervous all over again. And the play’s still, quiet moments lie glimmering like the stars. Begging observers to think. To try. To understand. To comment. To DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING in this existential awareness report from Action 7 News.

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

Video: Tragedy: A Tragedy by Will Eno, Hyde Park Theatre, September 12 - October 12, 2013

Video by Eric Graham for the



        presentation of

September 12 - October 12, 2013
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.
Hyde Park Theatre 511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe - click for map
Will the sun rise again? It's looking unlikely, but no worries: our crack news team is on the story.  Featuring Nathan Brockett, Michael Ferstenfeld, Molly Karrasch, Benjamin Summers, and Ken Webster. Directed by Ken Webster.


Click to buy tickets via BuyPlayTix ($20 general admission, students/seniors/Austin Creative Alliance $18)

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Theatre Feature: 'Golden Age of the Playwright' by John Demers, artsandculturetx.com

From a new on-line magazine aiming to cover all major metropolitan areas in Texas:





Playwrights Given a Big Voice on Texas Stages


by John Demers August 29, 2013


For lovers of Shakespeare and Molière, Ibsen and Chekhov, Miller and Williams, declaring our time a new Golden Age of the playwright might seem delusional, or at best, a flourish of hyperbole from some theater’s marketing department. But if you ask the artistic directors of some of the most respected ensembles in Texas, they’ll assure you such claims are hardly ridiculous.


“This is absolutely true,” offers Ken Webster of Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, one of the Texas companies that has enjoyed the greatest success staging new works by playwrights like Will Eno, Martin McDonagh and Annie Baker. “The proof is in the great work being put out by playwrights. The last eight years have been a glorious time for artistic directors in search of great new plays.”


Though no one announced the start of an official golden age eight years ago, the signs have certainly been there in front of audiences across the state, especially in Austin, Houston and Dallas. For one thing, printed show programs have granted more and more space to the man or woman who created the plays, in addition to the men and women directing or performing in them. For another, plays are increasingly marketed and seasons are increasingly built around new works by this or that playwright with a following in New York or Los Angeles, here in Texas, or of course, in all of the above.


“Golden Age of the playwright? Bring it on!” responds Houston’s Philip Lehl, a veteran actor with Broadway credits who, with his actor-wife Kim Tobin, has founded not one but two innovative stage troupes. “The theater is becoming one of the few places where audiences can have a communal experience. As TV and movie audiences splinter and head to the Internet, people wanting to gather around a fire with the tribe to hear stories that shape their lives, head back to the theater. The playwright, of course, benefits from this and becomes what he was at the beginning: the high priest – the great tribal storyteller.”

On any given evening, if you go looking for this “great tribal storyteller,” mathematics dictates that you’ll find him (or her!) more often on small stages, among the less-known, more militantly-thoughtful actors, rather than in the major houses as nothing is more likely to fill lots of seats than the safe, the established, the predictable. And that would hardly be the realm of most playwrights attracting attention these days.Today the deepest, darkest visions of human existence – delivered with a laugh as well as a groan – are making their way onto Texas stages: Not because everyone embraces the message of the play, but because more and more of us embrace the playwright.

In Austin, for instance, Hyde Park has produced three plays by McDonagh (The Pillowman in 2007, The Lonesome West in 2008 and A Behanding in Spokane in 2011), along with three by Annie Baker (Body Awareness and Circle Mirror Transformation in 2010, plus The Aliens in 2012). Eno, certainly a darling everywhere, has found a special place at Hyde Park, thanks to his Thom Pain (produced twice in 2007 and again in 2013), along with his Middletown in 2012.
“We are the sort of Off-Broadway of Austin,” says Webster. “The fact that we have such a small seating capacity allows us to bring Austin audiences the work of new playwrights the audience might not be familiar with yet. We think it is important that Austin audiences have the opportunity to see these new works.”

Read more at artsandculturetx.com . . . .

TRAGEDY: A TRAGEDY by Will Eno, Hyde Park Theatre, September 12 - October 12

[511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe - click for map ]



presents

Will the sun rise again? It's looking unlikely, but no worries: our crack news team is on the story.

"A charming display of witty satire in the face of Armageddon. . . . this 75-minute play serves as a big ol' poke in the eye to media in an age of geopolitical uncertainty, pending disaster, and a preoccupation with ratings." - Theatermania.

Starring Nathan Brockett, Michael Ferstenfeld, Molly Karrasch, Benjamin Summers, and Ken Webster. Directed by Ken Webster.

Click to buy tickets via BuyPlayTix ($20 general admission, students/seniors/Austin Creative Alliance $18)















(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Profile: Ken Webster and His House of Letters, Austin Statesman, July 6, 2013

Ken Webster and his house of letters

A story about theater, freedom, language … and the beauty of smallness

By Brad Buchholz, American-Statesman Staff

Ken Webster (photo: Jay Janner, Austin Statesman)

Ken Webster spends most of his days in a Hyde Park playhouse — theater space, daydream space, a creative hideaway, where he immerses himself in the beauty of language, the genius of playwright Harold Pinter, an ocean of baseball trivia, the art of a well-placed comma. It is a serious place. It is a silly place. And for Webster: It is a place of independence.


“This is my second home,” says Webster, the 55-year-old executive director of Austin’s literary-minded Hyde Park Theatre and one of the most well-known actors and directors in the city. “It’s not just a place I work; it’s a place where I hang out, where I see friends. I met my wife (the actress and author Katherine Catmull) here. It’s been a big part of my life for 30 years.”

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Click to go to this article at www.mystatesman.com

Video Preview: Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno, featuring Ken Webster, Hyde Park Theatre, July 11 - August 3, 2013

Eric Graham's video preview of the



    presentation of

written by Will Eno and performed by Ken Webster
July 11 - August 3, 2013

11 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe - click for map

 
Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY (7529). The show runs at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, July 11 - August 3, 2013. Every Thursday is Pay What You Can Night. For the first three weeks (July 11-27) Friday and Saturday tickets are $20 ($18 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members). For the final weekend (August 1-3) tickets are $22 ($20 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members). Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY (7529) for reservations.

Thom Pain is hilarious, curious, heartbreaking, astonishing. The New York Times called playwright Will Eno "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation."

An encore of the one-man piece that won raves from Austin critics and audiences in 2007 (Click to read the review of December 14, 2007 by Avimaan Syam in the Austin Chronicle). The play the New York Times called "astonishing in its impact" returns in an award-winning performance by HPT Artistic Director Ken Webster. The Austin Critics' Table named Ken Webster Outstanding Lead Actor for his 2007 performance in this role, and the show was nominated for Outstanding Production. 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions for The Flu Season by Will Eno, Oh Dragon Theatre Company, July 18, 2013

Oh Dragon Theatre Company auditions for Will Eno's The Flu Season, Austin, July 18th, 2013 from 6:30 pm to 10:0 0pm at The Space , 915 Manchaca Road, Austin, TX 78745.

Please send your audition request to ohdragontheatrecompany@gmail.com. *Please prepare a one minute monologue and be prepared to do cold readings from the script.
Characters: Prologue (Male or Female); Epilogue (Male or Female); Man (Male); Woman (Female); Doctor (Male); Nurse (Female)
Oh Dragon Theatre Company is pleased to announce auditions for the first show of their second season, The Flu Season by Will Eno. Directed by Carl Gonzales with assistant director Irene White, the show will debut in October 2013. A full season announcement will be made in August 2013.
Winner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut by an American playwright. "A love story goes bad (really bad), a play gets written in painful fits and starts, snow falls, it turns to slush. Maybe spring arrives. This is a play to remind us why sunsets make us sad, how nostalgia is like fog and why we live our lives as though we are in mourning for them. THE FLU SEASON is stingingly funny and really rather beautiful. Will Eno is an original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged, those who have suppressed their humanity to survive. It is vicious stuff, written in a language so deceptively innocent, so full of platitudes, that you don't realize it has cut you deep until you feel the warm seep of bloody despair." —Guardian (UK).

THOM PAIN (based on nothing) by Will Eno, with Ken Webster, Hyde Park Theatre, July 11 - August 3, 2013

[511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe - click for map ]

presents 
Thom Pain
(based on nothing)
written by Will Eno
 
performed by Ken Webster
July 11 - August 3, 2013
Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY (7529).

An encore of the one-man piece that won raves from Austin critics and audiences in 2007. The play the New York Times called "astonishing in its impact" returns in an award-winning performance by HPT Artistic Director Ken Webster.

The Austin Critics' Table named Ken Webster Outstanding Lead Actor for his 2007 performance in this role, and the show was nominated for Outstanding Production. The Austin Chronicle called Webster's performance "sensational . . . a certain economy of motion that I consistently see in great actors, wherein every step, smile, and hand gesture is made with a purpose."

Thom Pain is hilarious, curious, heartbreaking, astonishing. The New York Times called playwright Will Eno "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation."

The show runs at 8:00 PM on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, July 11 - August 3, 2013. Every Thursday is Pay What You Can Night. For the first three weeks (July 11-27) Friday and Saturday tickets are $20 ($18 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members). For the final weekend (August 1-3) tickets are $22 ($20 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members). Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY (7529) for reservations.

Hyde Park Theatre is located at 511 W. 43rd Street. Covered off-street parking for the patrons of HPT is available during performances in the lot at 4315 Guadalupe Street, just north of The Parlor. You can drive through The Parlor's parking lot to reach it. Evening HPT parking also available at Kenneth's Hair Salon, just south of HPT, and at the Hyde Park Church of Christ on the northeast corner of 43rd & Avenue B. We are grateful to them all for their generosity.

Follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

(*) THE FLU SEASON by Will Eno, Proxy Theatre, San Antonio, May 16 - June 1, 2013

(Performing at the overtime Theatre Center, 1203 Camden Street, San Antonio, 78215 - click for map)

presents


The Flu Season

by Will Eno
directed by Aaron Aguilar

May 16 - June 1
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Special byProxy events are: The Designer Reveal—May 13th, 8pm; Thought/Talk—May 25th, 10:00pm; and the Final Curtain Party—June 1st, 10pm.

Tickets are $10-15 for general admission; cash/check/credit/debit accepted at the door; reservations and tickets available online. Please visit proxytheatre.org or call 210-807-8646 for reservations or questions.

It may be spring in Texas, but it’s winter at Proxy
The Flu Season reminds us of the coldest times of in lives

Proxy Theatre continues its successful second season with The Flu Season, written by award-winning contemporary playwright Will Eno. Although the play will be opening in the Texas heat of May, the inhabitants of a psychiatric rehab are going through the winter of their lives. But love happens no matter the season.

The Flu Season will remind of you of the warmest and coldest times in your life. "The Flu Season takes place in both a hospital and a theater," said Aguilar, "It's a play about the love we feel for the art we create and for another person...and it's about how easy it is to screw up that love. We nurture, we toil, we invest, and yet somehow it still goes up in flames. And so what? We're not perfect. The Flu Season is an exciting new kind of theatre by Will Eno; it's certainly experimental, but like all his work it is still so tenderly, so passionately human."

Written in 2003, The Flu Season is the winner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut by an American playwright. Focusing on the narratives of a Man and Woman and their Doctor and Nurse, this play is a love story for today-- one that doesn't necessarily end well. Through Prologue and Epilogue the audience is enabled to view the hopeful beginnings and jaded hindsight of the writer, framing the characters in both the present and future.

Runs May 16th-June 1st at 8 pm at The Overtime Theater. Shows are Thursday-Saturday at 8pm. Tickets go on sale May 2nd. All events take place at the Overtime Theater at 1203 Camden St, SATX 78215. Free parking can be found on site.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions in San Antonio for The Flu Season by Will Eno, Proxy Theatre, March 16, 2013

Auditions for The Flu Season, Saturday, March 16, 2013, 12:00pm until 3:00pm
This production is the third of Proxy's second season, The Leper Colony, a season concerning those who society has labeled dangerously contagious or generally unwanted. It will be directed by Artistic Director, Aaron Aguilar, director of Red Light Winter, End Days, and most recently, Mike Greenberg's short play, Max & Maggie, as part of Northwest Vista's Black Boxer Shorts.
Will Eno's The Flu Season is the beautiful tale of two psych ward patients who want to love each other, but struggle to figure out how. Plus the story of their doctor and a nurse who in turn harbor love for each other. Plus two narrators, Prologue and Epilogue, who try their best to objective storytellers. The language of the play is richly poetic, each character is filled with complex emotion and desire, and there are no minor roles.


ABOUT THE AUDITIONS:
-Preliminary auditions will be held Saturday, March 16th from 12pm-3pm.
-Please prepare one or two 90 second (only!) monologues. Contemporary monologues preferred.
-Although we'll accept walk-ins, we highly suggest emailing aaron@proxytheatre.org to make an appoitment!
-Callbacks will be held the following day, Sunday, March 17th from 5pm-8pm
-Even if you can't make it, you can help us spread the word!


CHARACTERS:
Prologue: A narrator, male
Epilogue: A narrator, male
Man: Intelligent, somewhat scrappy, late twenties or so
Woman: Intelligent, somewhat delicate, late twenties or so
Doctor: Male, doctoral, dignified though somewhat distracted, fifties or so
Nurse: Female, maternal, also dignified though somewhat distracted, early fifties or so

Opening this Week in Austin: September 17 - 23, 2012

Opening This Week

in the Austin - (*) San Antonio region

September 17 - 23, 2012

Click images for additional information

Click HERE for a list of productions continuing on stage

Hill Country Community Theatre near Marble Falls, 10/20-30

Austin High School, 9/20 and 21

(*) 2012-2013 Theatre Season, Proxy Theatre, San Antonio

Announced at the Proxy Theatre website:

 

 

 

in San Antonio

Season Two - The Leper Colony

at the Overtime Theatre Complex, 1203 Camden Street, San Antonio

End Days

by Deborah Zoe-Laufer

directed by Artistic Director Aaron Aguilar

November 1 - 17, Thursdays - Saturdays

Waiting for Lefty

by Clifford Odets

directed by Company Member Chelsea Taylor

Flu Season

by Will Eno

directed by Guest Director Seth Larson

Bethlehem

by Octavio Solis

directed by Company Member Samantha Granberg

Dates for all shows will be announced shortly!

Upcoming: Middletown by Will Eno, Hyde Park Theatre, September 20 - October 18

MIDDLETOWN by Will Eno, Hyde Park Theatre, September 20 - October 18

directed by Ken Webster September 20 - October 20, 2012
Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY (7529).

A hilarious, moving, Our Town-inspired take on 21st century life from Will Eno, author of HPT's award-winning production of Thom Pain (based on nothing). The New York Times praised the play's "screwball lyricism. . . delicate, moving and wry."

The HPT production is directed by Ken Webster and stars Marc Balester, Emily Erington, Molly Fonseca, Tom Green, Jessica Hughes, Dane Krager, Rebecca Robinson, Benjamin Summers, Katy Taylor, Mical Trejo, and Ken Webster.

The show runs at 8:00 PM on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, September 20 - October 20, 2012. Every Thursday is Pay What You Can Night; Friday, and Saturday tickets are $20 ($18 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members), except for the final weekend (October 18-20), when ticket are $22 ($20 for students, seniors, military, and Austin Creative Alliance members). Purchase tickets online or call 479-PLAY.

Hyde Park Theatre is located at 511 W. 43rd Street. Covered off-street parking for the patrons of HPT is available in the lot at 4315 Guadalupe Street, just north of The Parlor. You can drive through The Parlor's parking lot to reach it. Evening HPT parking also available at Kenneth's Hair Salon, just south of HPT, and at the Hyde Park Church of Christ on the northeast corner of 43rd & Avenue B. We are grateful to them all for their generosity.

(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions for Tigers Be Still and for Middletown, Hyde Park Theatre, April 7

Hyde Park Theatre will hold auditions for Tigers Be Still by Kim Rosenstock (June-July) and Middletown by Will Eno on Saturday April 7. For more information, or to set up an appointment email Ken Webster at hydeparktheatre@gmail.com

From City Theatre, Pittsburgh, where Tigers Be Still is about to open: "Depression has never been funnier! Sherry’s art therapy degree didn’t launch her dream career, so she moved back into her childhood bedroom. Her mom won’t come downstairs. Her sister won’t leave the couch. Her very first patient won’t stick around for a session. Her boss brings a rifle to work. And an escaped tiger roams the streets … but Sherry’s life is looking up. Variety commends Rosenstock’s “clever comic dialogue in a voice that is too smart to be cute.”

From coolcleveland.com: "Middletown is Will Eno’s deeply moving and funny new play exploring the universe of a small American town. Mary Swanson just moved to Middletown, eager to start a family and enjoy the neighborly bonds a small town promises. But when Mary befriends resident John Dodge, she is quick to discover that below Middletown’s unflinchingly honest exterior lies something much more complex. Middletown is a wry, human portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious."

First Horton Foote prizes go to Lyn Nottage and Will Eno

From playbill.com via ArtsJournal.com:

Lynne Nottage's Ruined and Will Eno's Middletown Named First Recipients of Horton Foote Prizes

By Andrew Gans
30 Aug 2010

Winners of the newly established Horton Foote Prizes, named in honor of the late legendary writer, were announced Aug. 30.

Presented biennially "to award excellence in American Theater," the first winners include Lynne Nottage's Ruined for Outstanding New American Play and Will Eno's Middletown for Promising New American Play.

Nottage and Eno will be honored at a private reception Sept. 20 at The Players in New York City. Each playwright will be presented with $15,000 and a limited edition of Keith Carter's photograph of Horton Foote.

As contenders for Outstanding New American Play and Promising New American Play, Nottage and Eno were nominated by Manhattan Theatre Club and Vineyard Theatre, respectively.

Read more at playbill.com . . . .

Link to HortonFootePrize.com . . . . (as of August 31, announcement has not yet been posted)