Images by Kimberley Mead: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrew Productions at the Rollins Theatre, November 10 - 27

Images by Kimberley Mead, received directly:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, 2011
Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

Click to view additional images by Kimberley Mead at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrewd Productions at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, November 10 - 27

Received directly:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, 2011
Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

Based on the oldest play in the western world, The Suppliants by Aeschylus, Mee's modern take is at once an unflinching look at the themes of justice and revenge, and an ode to the enduring power of love.

Robert Faires directs this tulle covered, rice throwing, dangerous confection of a play. Big Love features some of Austin's finest theatrical talent, including Aaron Alexander, Lana Dieterich, Shannon Grounds, Anne Hulsman, Rob Matney, Nathan Osburn, Michael Slefinger, Andrea Smith, Rommel Sulit and Julianna Elizabeth Wright with lighting design by Patrick Anthony, set by Ia Enstara, costumes by Pam Friday, choreography by Toby Minor and sound by Buzz Moran.

Presented by special arrangement with International Creative Management, Inc.

Upcoming: Uncle Vanya, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Off-Center, June 23 - July 2

Received directly:

presents

Anton Chekhov’s

Uncle Vanya

directed by Graham Schmidt

June 16th - July 2nd

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m., Monday, June 27 at 8 p.m.

at the Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street (click for map)

Chekhov's meditation on hope and environmental stewardship speaks with increasing urgency a century after its first performance.

Tickets available at breakingstring.com/tickets and 512-784-1465

General Admission: $15 - 25, Sliding scale;

Monday, July 27th is a Pay-What-You-Will Industry Night

Student rush tickets released 10 minutes before curtain for all performances: $10

Breaking String revisits the Russian canon with a production of Chekhov’s 1899 masterpiece, Uncle Vanya. Ironically sub-titled “Scenes From Country Life,” the play chronicle a climactic moment of rural Russian life. Uncle Vanya is about finding meaning, hope, and conservation in a life that seems to promise little. Chekhov revised his early play Wood Demon (1889) into the triumphant Uncle Vanya.

Uncle Vanya’s theme of ecology speaks to the world's ever-more urgent discussions of conservation and sustainability. Chekhov's insight that the fate of humankind is tied to the fate of the environment now seems prophetic: "In all of you there’s a demon of destruction. You spare neither forests, nor women, nor one another…." (Yelena speaking to Vanya)

Breaking String’s Uncle Vanya features direction and an original translation by Graham Schmidt. The ensemble cast of actors includes Robert Deike, Emily Everidge, Liz Fisher, Harvey Guion, Anne Hulsman, Chris Humphrey, Robert Matney, and Matt Radford. The production also features sound design by Adam Hilton, scenic design by Ia Layadi, costume design by Julia Howze, and lighting design by Steven Shirey.

This is the fourth work for which Breaking String Theater has commissioned an original translation from resident translator Graham Schmidt. Of the practice Schmidt observed, “It is integral to our process, our identity, and is a reflection of our desire for direct contact with Chekhov's words, tailored for this moment and for our work.”

BREAKING STRING THEATER is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a non-profit organization. Breaking String presents drama important to Russian history and exposes Austin audiences developing Russian theater. We seek to connect people across time and culture. Our mission is threefold: We create excellent productions of Russian traditional and avant-garde plays; we provide artists with a creative, respectful and professional work environment; we pursue collaboration with Russian theater artists through our partnerships with the Center for International Theatre Development’s Philip Arnoult, and Moscow-based critic/translator John Freedman.

The Carpetbagger's Children by Horton Foote, Different Stages, March 19 - April 10

The Carpetbagger's Children, staged in 2005, was the penultimate of the Texas playwright's dramas, the next-to-the-last of from 40 (according to Wikipedia) to more than 60 (according to the New York Times). Like many of his dramas, it is set in the mythical town of Harrison, Texas, based on his birthplace Wharton, a crossroads southwest of Houston. Foote's final play was, aptly enough, a reworking of his earlier Dividing The Estate. He died last year at the age of 92. With Foote's previous consent, the Austin-based Marchbanks Foundation has established a $30,000 prize to recognize new American plays of exceptional quality, to be awarded every other year.

Well and good, one might say, and it's appropriate that Norman Blumensaadt and Different Stages should honor the playwright. Robert Faires pointed out last January in the Austin Chronicle the incongruity that this staging is only the fourth time in the past 20 years that Austin has seen a production of Foote's work.

That means I've seen half of them. As it happened, while traveling through Austin in 1998, well before imagining our own migration to this town, my daughter and I attended Don Toner's production of The Young Man from Atlanta at the State Theatre. That work, and the fact that a mainstream Austin theatre would do an elegant and deeply felt production of it, lingered in my memory. They shaped my perception of Central Texas and of Austin.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .

Upcoming: The Carpetbaggers' Children by Horton Foote, Different Stages at Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, March 19 - April 10

Click for ALT review, March 25

UPDATE: Review by Robert Faires for the Austin Chronicle, March 25

Related: Robert Faires' 1750-word profile of Horton Foote for the Austin Chronicle, March 10 (mentioning this production in a footnote below the text)

Found on-line:






presents

The Carpetbagger's Children
by Horton Foote
directed by Norman Blumensaadt
March 19 - April 10
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Austin Playhouse, Larry L. King Stage, Penn Field
3601 S. Congress Ave. (map)
Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30

"I believe very deeply in the human spirit,
and I have a sense of awe about it
because I don't know how people carry on.
I've known people that the world has thrown everything at
to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit.
And yet something about them retains a dignity.
They face life and they don't ask quarters."
Horton Foote, NY Times Magazine, 1986.

Different Stages continues its 2009 2010 season with The Carpetbagger’s Children by Horton Foote, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winning author of plays and screenplays such as The Trip to Bountiful, Tender Mercies and To Kill A Mockingbird.

In funny, moving, engaging monologues, three sisters spin the tale of their family and an era. Their father, the eponymous carpetbagger, was a former Union soldier who used his post as county treasurer and tax collector to amass a Texas plantation of twenty thousand acres. Preserving that plantation through the vicissitudes of their lives becomes a central issue for his daughters. It’s all about family secrets, tribal memories, sibling rivalry, and how change stalks our lives.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Skin of Our Teeth), The Carpetbagger’s Children features Jennifer Underwood (Miss Witherspoon), Anne Hulsman (The Long Now) and Kathy Rose Center (Shakespeare’s Husbands and Wives).

For tickets and information call AusTix at 512 474-8497.

The Long Now by Beth Burns, Shrewd Productions at the Blue Theatre, May 21 - June 13

Beth Burns' The Long Now opens with the charmingly simple concept stressed in its marketing:

Tish Reilly has a very special friend – Time. Tish can go back to any place where a good memory remains and enter it, reliving the moments that please her.

We meet the winsome Tish, played by Shannon Grounds, at her dead end job of alphabetizing and filing folders beginning with the letter "F." Maybe this is an insurance company; maybe it's another bureaucracy.

Her boss Tom is a limp self-important macho dolt. Her female co-worker Sherrie laughs at Larry and at the absurdity of their assignments. Good sport Sherrie, played by Anne Hulsman, is always pressing Tish to come along for a girls' lunch or a girls' night of drinking. No wonder our Tish is a dreamer, escaping into reveries reaching all the way back to the warm, safe world of elementary school. Tish goes out to fetch coffee for the office,calls up her friend Time.

Tish receives Time's permission to transform into her tiny self, back when Mom was her best friend, and at school a cute boy named Larry was paying delighted attention to her.

So far, this could be a whimsical children's play, except for some of boss Tom's coarse har-har language and coworker Sherrie's raucous talk. Nothing too serious is going on. Work is hell, but we all knew that, and the cardboard comic figures make it palatable. There's a cute joke about misfiling the "Pf" names (such as "Pfluger") among the "F" names. We're ready to settle in and enjoy the education and vicissitudes of Tish.

But what about that figure of Time? The puppet figure is visible only to Tish and to us. Time speaks in the eerie voice furnished by T. Lynn Mikeska, patronizing but barely inflected.

We are not in Muppet land here. Time appears as a stark flat articulated figure moving on any of the several screens ranged across the set. Time appears in different sizes and faces, including one tiny face that in a spine-chilling moment simply dissolves to a gray haze.


Click to read more on AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .