The Aliens by Annie Baker, Hyde Park Theatre, March 22 - April 21

The Aliens by young play writing genius Annie Baker is a dazzling, offbeat oratorio of inarticulate thought and emotion.

Out back of a Vermont coffee shop there's a dingy employee break area. K.J. and Jasper, guys from nowhere of consequence, have appropriated it as their own hang-out space, like a couple of raccoons nesting under a deck.

K.J. sits motionless much of the time, lost in vague thought, surfacing from time to time to renew contact. Jude Hickey makes him courteous, rounded as a sloth, interested when focused, entirely comfortable in this little world bounded by chain link fence, trash cans and weather-stained brick walls. Joey Hood as Jasper is edgy energy burning in silence at the warped and weather beaten wooden picnic table planted on an unforgiving surface of glittering gravel.

Discovering them there is Evan, the slack jawed, empty headed part-time employee of the coffee shop. He never tells them what he does, but his consternation at finding them out there makes it pretty clear that he's a bus boy, not a barista. Just about any comment addressed to Evan filters into his brain, totters on the brink of consciousness, rebounds and then settles, stimulating the inevitable response: "Uh -- cool."

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Phineas and Messenger No. 4, Cambiare & Paper Moon Productions, February 17 - March 4, reviewed by David Glen Robinson

Posted at the Tutto Theatre blog, February 26, by David Glen Robinson:

These full-length plays were presented as a double feature (although one could choose to buy a ticket for a single play only), and this arrangement gave Dr. Dave a huge theatre night. Fortunately, the productions were spectacular and well-matched and left their audiences energized and satisfied. Unfortunately, these shows will soon be competing head-to-head for numerous awards in the upcoming award nominating and granting season—Dr. Dave predicts.

The 27 Would-Be Lives of Phineas Hamm is a full-production premiere of an original play by its director, Rachel Maginnis. The set, costumes and props have a nineteenth century European feel to them, inspecific as to place. Speaking accents were not used or attempted by the cast. The title character inherits a device from his inventor father, that, when used, kills him and reincarnates him in a new life. [. . .]

Messenger #4 hails from the classically obsessed imagination of Will Hollis Snider of Cambiare Productions. A literary agency has proprietary technology, which allows it to send the Messengers into every Classical and Elizabethan play—to manage their common literary devices of messengers coming on stage telling the characters and audiences what has just happened off stage. That way a playwright doesn’t actually have to stage the sea-battle of Actium or anything else enormous that wouldn’t fit onto the stage. Hilarity ensues. Messages to different plays get switched; technology goes haywire; and characters fall in love. Yes, this is farce comedy.

Read more at the Tutto Theatre blog . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Jigglewatt Jubilee, February 24, reviewed by David Glen Robinson

Posted at the Tutto Theatre blog, February 26, by David Glen Robinson:

I have been wanting to write this blog for a long time. I have been a fan of members of the Jigglewatts burlesque troupe since before they were Jigglewatts. They tour nationally now, and occasionally overseas, So tonight’s show (actually two performances--at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.) was somewhat of a rarefying opportunity to see them in Austin. So I reserved a VIP table and showed up at the venue with time to spare.

OK, stop You. I didn’t go to a strip show or to a “gentlemen’s club.” The Jigglewatts perform a new and rising form of alternative performance that I call New Burlesque. It borrows from your grandmother’s vaudeville burlesque, yes, but it also adds to that certain new forms such as rock music, an emphasis on costuming, acting, dance and social networking. The short intro is that in New Burlesque they never fall out of their pasties and G-strings, although there have been legendary accidents. More on New Burlesque later. You’ll have to dig up the legendary accidents for yourself.

Looking around the 29^th St. Ballroom I saw an alternative crowd of hipsters, street people, artists, retired go-go- girls, industrial workers, a few Goths (getting old and gray now), the leather crowd, in short, the demimonde. Jigglewatts aficionados all. The acreage of tattooed flesh was so great that it truly became urban camouflage. This is not mine, OK, I’ve heard it before, but it is certainly true. These are the people who have unfettered imaginations and are ruled by their dreams, not the boss’s punch-clock. They pay for having minds and talents by working behind retail counters and in repair shops their entire lives. Management does not like or promote them, and they scrape together a living in one postindustrial slough or another. Altogether they form a vast underground tribe.

Read more at the Tutto Theatre website. . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Woodwork by Hank Schwemmer, Paper Chairs, February 17 - March 4,reviewed by David Glen Robinson

Posted at the Tutto Theatre website, February 26, by David Glen Robinson:

Woodwork is another production taking place in a warehouse, this time the huge Delta Millworks factory at 5^th St. and Springdale Road in east Austin. Again I say “Aah, east Austin.” The place by its very existence gives the theatre world extremely rich settings and imagery, seemingly without end. The setting could not be more apt for presenting this dense, colorful and fantastically textured collection of six one-acts by Austin playwright Hank Schwemmer. The place was well-designed and prepared when the seating (no paper chairs) was set out around the space. I complimented scenic designer and director Lisa Laratta (one of four directors of these plays) that she had even designed in the sweet, aromatic wood fragrance that permeates the place. She said, “Yeah, that and the popcorn smell—it can’t be all one thing, you know.”

Click to read more at www.tuttotheatre.blogspot.com . . . .

Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti, Austin Playhouse, January 27 - February 26

by Catherine Dribb

Prepare For Takeoff! Austin Playhouse Is Flying Farce Class!

Boeing Boeing, or boing boing as the case may be, with actors bouncing all over the stage and in and out of doors, is a modern farce written by Marc Camoletti in the classic French style. Directed by Don Toner, it is running now until February 26 in the tent at Mueller that is Austin Playhouse’s temporary home.

Boeing Boeing is an uplifting tale of love, but not just because it features three airline stewardesses. Camoletti and British translator Beverly Cross were careful to balance the chauvinistic egoism that rules leading man Bernard’s carefully calculated love life with the Parisian mantra of love. There’s no Prufrock in Paris with Bernard who is played by David Stokey. His abundant confidence is communicated in the first scene as he records in his timetables when fiancée number one (the American) will leave (in just a few minutes) and return (on Monday).

Janet, is from the So-uth (yes, that’s two syllables) and Lara Toner does the character with her suitably Southern drawl and hair-do. Janet wants only the best of the best in life: a millionaire husband. Unbeknownst to Bernard, Janet matches him in her frivolous attitude toward marriage. She prefers practising kissing on the couch with Bernard’s old school pal Robert, just arrived in Paris, to monogamy or marriage.

Robert, played by Zach Thompson has accepted Bernard’s invitation to stay with him until he finds his own place. He quickly learns of his old school chum’s unique lifestyle. Juggling three airline stewardesses who will never run into each other thanks to that handy dandy airline log, sets Bernard, and now Robert who’s in on the secret, up for a big… well… farce.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Don't Go in the Hourse, FronteraFest Long Fringe, reviewed by Katherine Craft

Found on-line at

FRONTERAFEST

Dark waters: Dan Dietz's Lobster Boy creates theatrical magic at Frontera Fest

By Katherine Craft 02.02.12

Don’t Go In The House, now playing at FronteraFest, presents four one-person plays. One of them is the 2010 Heideman Award winning short by Dan Dietz, Lobster Boy, and the other three, Fear Itself, Dawn of the Drowsy and They're Coming to Get You! are by Lowell Bartholomee of the Rude Mechs. On the surface, the quartet of shows appear to be similar — all have a single white actor on stage, all are monologues, all project images onto an upstage screen and all use the same set piece — a wooden chest strapped to a dolly — in evocative ways.

Of the four, however, Dietz’s Lobster Boy is the only piece that takes the audience into darker, more introspective waters. A man, played by Robert Faires, stands onstage behind a podium, cradling a small stack of note cards as he begins a speech that soon shows itself to be a tragedy.

Read more at austin.culturemap.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Jack & Coconuts by Corey Kwoka

Published today in

FRONTERA FEST

Jack & Coconuts, a tasty concoction served up just right

By Dawn Youngs 31.1.12

One of the offerings in the Frontera Festival’s Long Fringe this season is Corey Kwoka’s new play Jack & Coconuts, directed by Charlie Diblasi. This madcap romp around paradise is a pleasing contemporary farce, which is always a recipe for an enjoyable evening at the theater.

The show is running in Salvage Vanguard Theater’s open black box space. Set Designer Jeremy White established the world, a destination wedding facility in the tropics, using modular set pieces; the room transforms from hotel lobby to beachside bar to a cheesy wedding gazebo with ease. The work was performed in choreographed vignettes that keeps the pace of the play moving rapidly as the audience sits in rapt disbelief.

As the show begins, we discover that, this weekend at the island oasis, a second marriage ceremony is scheduled. Children, grandchildren, friends and relatives all arrive for the event. The construction of the guests’ arrivals is deftly done — think of the opening sequences of that star-studded classic film Clue, by director Jonathan Lynn.

Each hotel guest arrives, tumbles of suitcases and personal baggage in tow, to reveal a tidbit of secret sure to add to the tasty stew of insanity the playwright is cooking up.

Read more at www.austin.culturemap.com

Wicked, the touring company musical at Bass Hall, Unversity of Texas, January 25 - February 12

by Thaïs Hinton

Everyone knows how Dorothy Gale came to Oz and killed the Wicked Witch of the West. Judy Garland and pals in the 1939 film by MGM dwell deep in American cultural consciousness, none of them more than Margaret Hamilton as the vengeful Wicked Witch of the West.

In the Oz depictied by the touring company of Wicked currently at UT's Bass Concert Hall we get hear another side of the story, adapted from the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. The script, lyrics, and score by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzmanare clever. I have read the novel, and I liked the show. Their extreme care with their source material shows through.

Wicked runs through February 12 and was playing to well populated house on the first Thursday evening. A beautiful map of Oz covers the stage and the stage action begins as the Munchkins are celebrating the death of the Witch.

The show begins with Glinda entering via bubble, mechanically suspended from the flies. The bubble floats all the way down and Glinda steps off as she takes the audience back in time to earlier years.The Good Witch Glinda explains that she knew Elphaba, the bright green witch, from their college days.

I thought that actress Tiffany Haas was safely strapped in to that bubble, so I was shocked when she stepped off, apparently unsecured. Even though I was ardently suspending my disbelief, I was genuinely afraid for Haas, who of course made it look just like magic. The special effects were expertly done by Chic Silber.

No one-trick pony, that bubble reappears later in the show.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Poste Restante, The Secret Agents, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, December 15 - 17

I went up to Tim Gallagher after the Secret Agents' first run-through at the Salvage Vanguard on Thursday, congratulated him and asked, "What's the hidden message?"

I know: wrong question. But I couldn't help myself. I'm a narrative theatre guy, analyst, reporter, decipherer of mysteries. And I'd known a fair number of secret agents in my former career, even though I was in the overt diplomatic service, not the covert service.

Tim gave me a grin. "We just like to have fun!"

Spoken like a true secret agent, without a trace of guile. So you can puzzle over it as much as you like after you've experienced the multidimensional fun of Poste Restante ("dead letter office") by Tim Gallagher and Bonnie Duncan. There's a message in there; in fact, there are many messages in their post office of the mind. But they're largely wordless, expressed in an ever-surprising modulation of mime, physical comedy, contortion, ballet, puppetry, music and video projection.

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne, Out of Context Productions at the Off Center, November 28 - December 14

Encouraged by applause at last year's FronteraFest, recent graduates of Southwestern and St. Ed's are taking a great big leap right now at the Off Center.

Look Back in Anger was a landmark, a watershed, a paradigm shifter (take your pick)for twentieth century theatre in England. With his 1956 three-act play John Osborne took clubs and cudgels to the genteel British stage, presenting his protagonist Jimmy Porter as a fiercely intelligent university graduate of lower class origins, white hot with anger at a society that provided him no better opportunity in life than a position as a clerk in a candy store. Porter lives with his wife Alison in grubby rented digs. Their stolid, slightly dim friend Cliff has a room in the same building and spends most of his time with them

Osborne gave articulate voice to the British underclass. Jimmy Porter professes to believe in nothing and spends most of his time onstage ranting, challenging and insulting. Alison is a mute, intellectually brutalized young thing occupied most of the time with the ironing. The perpetual trope between the two men is Cliff's effort to read the newspapers and Porter's acrid dismissals both of him and of the 'posh rags.' There's a back story: Alison grew up in India, where her father served and became a senior military officer, and Alison's mother has never forgiven the crudely offensive Porter for overwhelming their daughter, marrying her, and taking her off to live in poverty.

Director Tyler King and the cast of Out of Context Productions (OOC), with the encouragement of mentor Jared J. Stein, theatre department staffs, and Austin arts supporters, have thrown themselves into the project. The productions runs on the highly unusual cycle of Mondays through Wednesdays, from December 1 to December 14 -- evenings not calibrated to attract the idly curious or the general public. Within the black box of the Off Center they've put up Leslie Turner's meticulously squalid set.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Guest by Courtesy by Hannah Kenah and Jenny Larson, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, November 4 - 19

by Michael Meigs

On their opening night Hannah Kenah and Jenny Larson attracted an audience with lots of youngish faces more often lit by footlights, spots and stage lighting than by house lights. Those audience members were happily anticipating an entertainment that had been in gestation for two years. The two well known and well liked Austin actresses had presented workshop versions of Guest by Courtesy in May and November 2009 as part of the SVT's Works Progress Austin series.

They begin your evening with a lengthy cryptic tableau, a kōan of the brash physical comedy that is to come. The brightly lit black box performance space is anchored by a sofa set at center stage, draped with a white sheet. Two pairs of motionless bare feet are on view, the only parts visible of two persons seated or more likely reclining beneath that cover.

There's a silent motionless prologue going on here for those who aren't busy finding seats, climbing past audience knees, texting, listening to the hectic top 40s soundtrack or chatting: whose feet are we seeing? The pair at stage left are slim and almost self-effacing but there's a gauze bandage wrapped around one big toe; the pair at stage right are strongly defined, forthright with fiercely rampant big toes, the sort of feet that might be used for kicking butt. You have about twenty minutes to place your mental bets; I got mine wrong.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Paul E. Robinson on Austin Lyric Opera's Magic Flute, November 5, 11 and 13

Found on-line at www.theartoftheconductor.com:

AOL Flute Lacks Magic!

Posted November 8, 2011 at www.theartoftheconductor.com

by Paul E. Robinson in LIVE CONCERT and OPERA REVIEWS

The Magic Flute by Mozart

Austin Lyric Opera directed by James Marvel; Conductor: Richard Buckley
The Long Center, Austin, Texas, November 5, 11 and 13
Review of performance of Saturday November 5

Congratulations are in order for the Austin Lyric Opera on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary. The organization also deserves enormous credit for dealing quickly and apparently effectively with a serious financial crisis that came to a boil last spring. Changes since then have included the resignation of General Director Kevin Patterson, the listing of ALO’s office building for sale, and major program cuts to the 2011-2012 season. Kevin Smith was appointed interim General Director and principal conductor Richard Buckley was given the additional title of Artistic Director.

Mozart’s “The Magic Flute“ was the first opera the ALO produced in its inaugural season in 1987. In a program note Kevin Smith declares that the theme of the 25th anniversary is “Let the Magic continue…;” unfortunately, there was little, if any magic in James Marvel’s production of “The Magic Flute.”

Let it be said at the outset that “The Magic Flute” is full of wonderful music, but the libretto is an unruly mishmash of comedy and spirituality. It is a huge challenge for any director to make sense of it all and put it together in a way that is both faithful to Mozart and intelligible for the audience. Come to think of it, there are any number of Shakespeare plays that have a similar challenge.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I would guess that director Marvel had another challenge too: how to mount a production of one of Mozart’s greatest operas with a severely trimmed budget resulting from the ALO’s financial troubles.

Click to read the full review by Paul E. Robinson at www.theartoftheconductor.com . . . .

Theatre Coverage: How the Denver Post Does It

Profiled by David Cote as one of the country's twelve most influential theatre critics, theatre reporter John Moore of the Denver Post describes in his blog Running Lines the paper's multifaceted coverage of theatre in the state:

I’m just a little surprised (but not at all ungrateful) that the reason I was told I pretty much made the list isn’t reflected in the article [. . . .] I’m no dummy. I didn’t make it because I produce reviews you might mistake for the New Yorker’s. What I will own is a work ethic that has allowed our Denver Post team to cover an average of 160 to 180 plays a year for the past decade.

But the real reason I was included, I was told, is the multimedia innovations we have implemented on The Denver Post’s online theater page that have advanced the ways in which major metropolitan newspapers can cover theater in the age of social media. Some people have this misguided impression that the “legacy” (old school) media is dying, and I say it’s only dying if you stubbornly go down with the Santa Maria, instead of taking the wheel of a modern ocean liner.

At The Denver Post, we cover theater in print as much as any paper of our size could be possibly expected to in this era of shrinking news holes – we average three reviews, one advance, one issue story and one news roundup every week. But it’s been five years since we fully embraced the amazing possibilities that social media provide for us to expand our reach. In doing so, we’ve been able to both reach new audiences, and exponentially expand the ways in which we can get word out about what’s going on in local theater. Much more so than we were ever able to do with print alone.

Off the top of my head, I am thinking about our:

*Running Lines video podcasts (more than 200 episodes now, including audio segments)

*Standing O – our full-service web site dedicated exclusively to high-school theater in Colorado.

*Our “Running Lines” theater blog – home to breaking news, cast lists, spotlight on college theater and whatever else comes up during the day. This summer, when a visiting New York actor went missing on the streets of Denver, “Running Lines” had record traffic by giving the concerned a place to virtually gather, and helped (I think) coordinate efforts to bring the mystery to a quick and positive close.

*New Play Sampling Series – These are 5-to-10-page excerpts from new plays being performed in the area. This helps both theaters reach readers who have no prior knowledge of an unfamiliar title.

*Interactive presence on Facebook and Twitter.

*Our commitment to maintaining comprehensive online listings of every scheduled production, by opening date, by company, or by all current offerings.

*Our 24-7 online photo gallery that includes one production shot from every currently running production, which we embed in several places including our home page, so that readers can get a visual sense of their theatergoing options all in one place.

I think, too, that the comments that are already showing up at the bottom of David’s American Theatre story are worth an ongoing conversation. The list centers on legacy media, but there’s no doubt of the impact that new critics whose distribution is solely through the internet are having.

Click to read John Moore's full blog posting at the Denver Post

View 25-minute interview of John Moore by Eden Lang on her web program 'In Focus' of June 25, 2011 (especially recommended for his discussion of the role of the reviewer) (27 min. on YouTube -- the version without the initial advertising)

Upcoming: The 39 Steps, Silver Spur Theatre, Salado, October 14 - November 5

by Michael Meigs

Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play Arsenic and Old Lace is a "golden oldie" kept alive for American culture by Frank Capra's 1944 film with Cary Grant and by community theatre productions such as the charming one currently at the playhouse in Wimberley.

Theatre critic Mortimer Brewster has been brought up his maiden aunts Abby and Martha, and one wonders how he escaped noticing the fact that they're nuttier than fruitcakes. Mortimer's brother Teddy stalks about the place, throughly convinced that he's President Teddy Roosevelt.

Just as romance is blossoming for the drama critic (who despises the theatre), he discovers that his sweet aunts have been cheerfully poisoning lonely old men and encouraging Teddy to bury them in the cellar as victims of yellow fever at the Panama Canal. Mortimer just might be able to resolve those problems if he could get all three members of his deranged family shuttled off to the Happydale Asylum, but another complication turns up: his long-lost second brother, the homicidal Jonathan, accompanied by a plastic surgeon of questionable ethics and not much talent.

The comedy of the piece springs from the juxtaposition of the thoroughly normal -- doting spinster aunts in their tidy frame house in Brooklyn -- with the deranged and the depraved, creating a bubbling pot that Derek Smootz as the reasonable, rational male lead must keep contained. It's most inconvenient to find unexpected corpses in the window seat and in the trunk of bad brother Jonathan's automobile. All that while trying to keep his increasingly bewildered and annoyed fiancée Elaine (Celeste Coburn) uninformed and out of the way.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

In Case You Missed Her: ALT's 2008 Review of Selena Rosanbalm as Patsy Cline, Tex-Arts, brought back October 15 - 31

ALT is pleased to recommend Tex-Arts' revival of Always, Patsy Cline, bringing back Selena Rosanbalm and Edie Elkjer. Here's the 2008 review published by AustinLiveTheatre:

Selena Rosanbalm is a great big bundle of vocal talent.

She delivered again and again in the TexArts’ production of Always, Patsy Cline, blending with our memories of Patsy’s joy, melancholy, honky-tonk and hokum from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

That was the time when that plucky little singer with the vibrant voice traveled from town to dusty town, earning her coins with a different band every night instead of staying in Nashville and watching the royalties roll in.

I recognized almost every one of the 27 numbers done by Rosanbalm in this two-hour compendium. They were part of the sound track of growing up in the South at that time. Patsy and Loretta and Brenda Lee and, soon after, Dolly came through the WGN/Nashville/Grand Ole Opery circuit and their catchy melodies and simple lyrics of their hits were anthems of a simpler time. That happy nostalgia is part of the reason this show works so well.

Click to read the rest of the review at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Georgetown Palace, May 7 - June 6

With Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the Georgetown Palace Theatre demonstrates once again the blend of professional standards and excitement of community theatre that makes it the premiere venue in the greater Austin area for musical theatre.

Webber wrote this piece well before his hit Jesus Christ Superstar, for a school performance in London. The structure hints at that, for when the lights go down, cheery Patty Rowell comes on stage, beckoning, and down the aisles of the Palace come two scampering files of young persons in jeans and white t-shirts. They hug her and squat in a semi-circle in front of the curtain; the music starts, Patty smiles, gestures, and then launches into a lilting melody. We understand quickly that this is a class, probably a Sunday school class, as she and her classroom assistant Stephen Jack begin the story.

From that spare but charming beginning the story of Joseph expands.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

A Milestone: The 1000th Post at Austin Live Theatre

Austin Theatre, meet yourself.

Or, as Bogey said to Ingrid, "Here's looking at you, kid."

This is the 1000th post on AustinLiveTheatre since I established it in June, 2008 with a review of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Austin Playhouse. I wound up that 900-word article with the comment, "We had a great time. As Austin newcomers, we were attending our second Austin Playhouse production - - and at the intermission I went out to the foyer and purchased season tickets for 2008 – 2009 from Producing Artistic Director Toner himself, who was happy to talk theatre with me."

Commemorating the milestone, ALT offers readers background on its origins, a summary of Austin media coverage of theatre matters, and a brief portrait of the Austin theatre scene.

Origins

After a diplomatic career of assignments abroad and in Washington, we chose to relocate to the capital of Texas. We found some superlative local theatre -- starting with The Seagull, produced with very little fanfare by Breakin' String Theatre. We were intrigued by the apparent lack of information about theatre doings in Austin. Taking an example from the cooking blog established by my daughter and her guy, I set up on Google's freebie hosting service blogspot.com my own blog: "Austin Live Theatre." The stated aim for the blog was to serve as "a voyage to discover the underreported Austin theatre scene."

Ticket by ticket, trip by trip, ALT has done that. The following profiles emerge from some meticulous info-crunching of postings, links and information provided by ALT in calendar year 2009.

Media coverage of Austin's Theatre

Austin's free papers and free on-line press cover theatre much more extensively than the daily Austin Statesman and its on-line counterpart www.Austin360.com. The numbers tell the tale:

• Austin Chronicle, weekly free newspaper: 80 reviews, averaging about 1.5 per week

• Austin Statesman: 46 reviews, averaging almost 1 per week. A number of the reviews appearing on-line do not make it into the daily paper.

• Austinist.com: 43 reviews, averaging almost 1 per week\

• AustinOnStage.com: 24 reviews, about 1 every two weeks

• Examiner.com (Ryan E. Johnson, blogging as "Austin theatre examiner"): 26 reviews, averaging 1 every two weeks

• Daily Texan, University of Texas: 22, averaging one every 16.5 days

• Austin.com: 17 reviews, averaging one every three weeks. Postings on this site are often stale or outdated.

• KUT-FM: 17 reviews or features, averaging about one every third week. John Aielli discontinued at mid-year his occasional half-hour programs entitled "Aielli Unleashed." Most coverage is in the form of 2 minute spots done with Mike Lee for KUT's "Arts Eclectic."
  

• KOOP-FM: 18 programs featuring musical theatre productions covered by AustinLiveTheatre. Lisa Schepps hosts the weekly "Off Stage and On the Air" Mondays at 12:30. This program, begun in 30-minute format and extended to 60 minutes, is also posted on-line. Ms Schepps interviews artists and directors; they may perform music live or she will play recordings from Broadway shows or other versions of upcoming presentations.

• AustinTheatreReview (now defunct): Sean Fuentes' undertaking reviewed 9 local productions before going inactive in about September, 2009.

• INSITE, the free monthly entertainment magazine: 4, averaging one feature article per quarter.

• Television coverage is sparse. ALT does not monitor television programming but found and included links to short written or video features: two each from KEYE and News 8, one each from KXAN and KFOX.

• Miscellaneous coverage: 10, including 5 postings by San Antonio weekly and daily papers and one each from www.soulciti.com, www.outinamerica.com, a podcast by Stage Directions magazine, RepublicOfAustin.com, and the Blanco, Texas, newspaper.

Summing all the above, extended media for the Austin region provided 328 features or reviews for approximately 380 theatre productions in 2009 -- an estimate drawn from the fact that ALT posted 387 "upcoming" announcements that year.

Those reviews were not evenly spread. They ranged from nine reviews for Capital T's production of Killer Joe at the Hyde Park Theatre (which ALT reluctantly panned), to a more typical score for well attended shows of two non-ALT reviews (28 productions) or one non-ALT review (57 productions, although this includes some Short Finge elements of Hyde Park Theatre's 100-item Frontera Fest). More typical, however, was no review at all-- the case for 195 productions, or 59.5 percent of those staged in the greater Austin area.


Austin's Live Theatre

Austin is seething with theatre activity. The town deserves its reputation for original work but its theatre companies and groups are producing mainstream comedies, dramas, musicals and narrations as well. Quality is high, variety is striking, and ticket prices are low, often ranging from $10 to $25.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .