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Received at the Zach Theatre:
Currently included in Zach Theatre programs is this offer of $5 discounts on tickets to the nearly concurrent productions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, staged in traditional fashion at UT April 2 - 11 and in a modern adaptation by Zach Theatre April 15- May 23 with Marc Pouhé.Use the coupon code "stage manager" at either box office.Click on the image to view a larger version (1 MB in .jpg format)
Director Bridget Farias and the EmilyAnn Theatre crew in Wimberley are running The Elephant Man Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for four weekends in January and February, an intrepid undertaking for a community-based arts group in a town with a population of only about 4,000. More impressive than their raw courage in taking on a tough script and slow-motion tragedy is the fact that they carry it out with grace and depth. The company creates a protected time and space in which we can muse about arbitrary fate, human connection and our responsibility for one another.Audiences may be familiar with the story, based on historical fact as recorded by Dr. Frederick Treves, the physician who took in the disfigured young Joseph Carey Merrick. Writing many years after the events, Treves recalled his patient as "John Merrick," the name used by Bernard Pomerance for the Tony-nominated play in 1979. David Lynch made the movie in 1980 with Anthony Hopkins as Treves, John Hurt as Merrick, John Gielgud as chief physician Carr Gomm and Ann Bancroft as the actress Madge Kendal.I haven't seen that version, though, and I encourage you simply to ignore it. Farias has assembled a capable and convincing cast for this quiet morality play, and they make the story their own.Carl Galante as Treves and Patrick Byers as Merrick establish the key link and relationship in the story. Galante, playing the physician and man of science, is a protector and ultimately a father figure of conflicted emotions. Byers as the patiently suffering, attentive and sweet-tempered Merrick becomes a mirror to his visitors, once they learn to look past his disfigurement.Read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Found on-line:
presents as part of its
"Whole Mind" Common ExperienceArcadia
by Tom Stoppard
directed by Richard Sodders
February 16-20 at 7:30 p.m., February 21 at 2 p.m.
$10 general admission, $7 for students
Considered by many to be Tom Stoppard’s finest play, Arcadia is a mix of comedy, drama, and literary detective story as it bounces between two different time periods. The alternating scenes allow the audience to see what actually happened in the early 1800s versus the modern-day scholars' attempts to interpret the events.
Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Received directly and followed up on-line:
present at the One World Theatre
Ferdinand the Bull
based on the book by Munro Leaf
Saturday, February 20, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
The Hudson Vagabond Puppets presents Ferdinand the Bull, the gentle tale of a big, strong peace loving bull who would rather smell the flowers than fight- much to the annoyance of the proud bullfighter! This narrated ballet, told with delightful larger-than-life characters and captivating masked dancers, brings a message of non-violence that is as joyful for the eyes as it is the soul.
Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .
Found on-line:White Tie Ball
by Martin Zimmerman
directed by Steve Moulds
February 12, 13 at 8p.m. and February 13, 14 at 2 p.m.
UT Lab Theatre
Born to a mestiza mother who illegally immigrated from Mexico and a white father from the United States, Edward looks just like his mother and Beto just like his father. And despite the two of them being raised by their mother in an impoverished Latino neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona, Edward works his way through law school to become an Arizona County Attorney. Beto, however, falls in with a Latino gang and is convicted of armed robbery at age nineteen.
At the start of the play, Beto has recently been paroled from prison, Edward has recently been elected to office, and the bond between the two brothers is the strongest it has been in years, largely due to Edward's tireless efforts to help re-build Beto's life. But when Alberto Jimenez, one of Beto's former friends from his gang, kills an on-duty Latina police officer as she breaks into his home without identifying herself, Edward has to prosecute the case. The decisions Edward faces about what charges to pursue put both his career and his relationship with his brother in jeopardy.
Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Is it only coincidence that Austin theatre is staging a rolling centenary celebration of George Bernard Shaw? Not of his birth or death -- we'd have to wait another forty or so years for either of those, since the man lived well into his 90's --but of his plays exploring matrimony.In late 2008 Different Stages gave us a twinkling production of Shaw's 1908 comedy Getting Married and now Austin Playhouse is offering Misalliance, first staged in 1910. Despite their talky amusements, in the canon of Shaw's 63 full-length dramas they are relatively unknown. You can browse the length of the shelves at Half-Price Books or consult the catalog at the Austin Public Library, and neither will appear.So we have all the more reason to thank Austin stages for blowing the dust off GBS's mischievous social commentary. Getting Married looked at the dilemmas and disadvantages for the Edwardian chattering classes of the marriage contract; Misalliance pushes the boundries a bit further, as the rascally Fabian looks at the delusions of romantic love, the practicalities of extramarital liaisons, advocating a degree of female sexual liberation that must have left those proper Edwardians agog. Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Found on -line:
Trinity University San Antonio presents
Blood Wedding
A drama by Federico García Lorca
directed by Susanna Morrow
February 19 - 21 and 24 - 27
curtains at 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sunday, 7 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday
Stieren Theatre, Ruth Taylor Theatre Building, Trinity University, San Antonio
[design and image by slgdesign@satx.rr.com, 2010, all rights reserved]
In the searing heat of the Spanish summer, a bride prepares for her wedding - and so begins this bilingual poetic masterpiece by García Lorca, translated by Langston Hughes, isbased on a true story of love, lust and betrayal. The wedding celebration turns fatal when the bride abandons her new husband to escape with his sworn enemy, her childhood sweetheart. Inspired by the traditions of flamenco, Blood Wedding uses song, dance, and poetry to conjure the emotional ferocity of blind love and long-held hate. García Lorca, one of Spain's greatest poets of the twentieth century and a victim of the Spanish civil war, evokes the spectacle of human passion through sophisticated symbolism and surrealist imagery, elevating this true love story to a stirring tragedy of fate.
Ticket prices are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $5 for students. For more information or to make reservations, telephone210-999-8515 or stop by the theater box office Monday through Friday between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. or one hour prior to each performance. Advance reservations are strongly suggested.
Read more and view design at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Currently included in Zach Theatre programs is this offer of $5 discounts on tickets to the nearly concurrent productions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, staged in traditional fashion at UT April 2 - 11 and in a modern adaptation by Zach Theatre April 15- May 23 with Marc Pouhé.
