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)

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)

A WALK IN THE WOODS by Lee Blessing, Street Corner Arts, July 19 - August 4, 2013

STREET CORNER ARTS

presents

(poster: Street Corner Arts)

 A WALK IN THE WOODS
by Lee Blessing
directed by A. Skola Summers
July 19 - August 4, 2013

click for map to Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall, 6001 Airport Blvd.

Opening Friday, 7/19; running Friday & Saturday nights at 8 pm; Sundays at 5 pm, through 8/4 General: $20

*Austin Playhouse subscribers receive a $5 discount

“A work of passion and power with the ring of political truth. It is not only the best of the few dramas to reach Broadway this season, it is also the funniest comedy.” – Time Magazine


“...man has the potential to become a whole new animal. One that trusts instead of fears. One that agrees when it makes sense to agree. That finds the way to live, because life has become for him - has finally become - a sacred thing.”

Nearing the end of the Cold War, two men – a clever, yet cynical Russian and an idealistic young American – discuss and debate politics, life, and the future of the free world on the outskirts of Geneva. As arms negotiators, they explore the obstacles their countries face on the path toward peace. Can personal bonds bridge political chasms?

Starring Michael Stuart (August: Osage County, Dead Presidents Club) & Benjamin Summers (Importance of Being Earnest, 39 Steps)
Directed by A. Skola Summers (Gruesome Playground Injuries, Men of Tortuga)

www.streetcornerarts.org // (512) 298-9776

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES by Rajiv Joseph, Street Corner Arts at the Museum of Human Achievement, May 16 - June 1, 2013

Street Corner Arts

presents


Gruesome Playground Injuries

by Rajiv Joseph

directed by A. Skola Summers and Rommel Sulit

featuring Molly Karrasch and Benjamin Summers

May 16 - June 1 at 7:30 p.m.

at The Museum of Human Achievement, Springdale Rd. and Lyons -- click for map

TICKETS: Ticket pricing: Fridays and Saturdays - sliding scale $15-$25; Thursdays – sliding scale $10-$25.

Students & Educators: $10 Tickets are available at www.streetcornerarts.org or by phone at (512) 298-9776

Maybe if I could climb to the top of this telephone pole in the rain at night, like the mast of a ship lost at sea, maybe I’ll see the shine of you, bringing me home again. 

Street Corner Arts is delighted to announce their upcoming production, GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES by Rajiv Joseph. This stunningly beautiful script will be brought to life by two of Austin’s most talented actors – Benjamin Summers & Molly Karrasch. Featuring choreography by A. Skola Summers, costume design by Glenda Barnes, and video/audio design by Jim Hickcox.. Set and musical elements have been contributed by Austin’s own creative community.

Over the course of 30 years, the lives of Kayleen and Doug intersect at the most bizarre intervals, leading the two childhood friends to compare scars and the physical calamities that keep drawing them together. Gruesome Playground Injuries tells a different kind of love story through sharp humor and even sharper insights into the human condition. They say love hurts, and that’s what makes it worthwhile. Of course, they’ve never met Doug and Kayleen - some love stories are written in the scars...

Molly Karrasch, Benjamin Summers (photo: Street Corner Arts)

About STREET CORNER ARTS Street Corner Arts exists to facilitate enjoyable, collaborative, and engaging stuff with our friends. Poetry or politics; trash or treasure. Open your guitar case or climb that soap box. This corner offers a collection of creative adventures.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde, Austin Playhouse, March 15 - April 7, 2013

 
by Michael Meigs

Oscar Wilde wrote and proclaimed almost to tedious extent about aestheticism in his early career as writer, lecturer and journalist, and he was so well known for his extravagance and opinions that Gilbert & Sullivan had caricatured him in their 1881 operetta Patience. Wilde wrote a couple of dramatic tragedies in the 1880s that came to nothing, and in 1891 he wrote Salomé, in French. The Lord Chamberlain put a stop to Sara Bernhardt's plan to stage in London on the grounds that Biblical characters should not be depicted onstage.


In summer of 1891 on holiday in the north country Wilde sat down and produced the first of four society plays that were produced in London in the first half of the 1890's. Lady Windermere's Fan was the first of these, and it was a huge success, almost certainly because he endowed his characters with the wit, epigrams and repartee for which he himself was famous. These are scenes and domestic dilemmas of the idle rich, most of whom produce nothing but words. Wilde gleefully undermines the very society that lionized him. His stereotypes as are vivid as those who later populated P.G. Wodehouse's novels and they're equally, mindlessly devoted to their status quo as the 1%, but any one of them would serve as a charming dinner companion for a whole evening.




The structure of Lady Windermere's Fan is that of the "well-made play" typical of 19th century drama, in which a a dramatic plot is driven by secrets that are described and gradually brought to light, often through the device of a letter or object that reveals hidden information. This is a plot turn as old as the theatre itself, of course, and no doubt those London audiences in evening clothes were agreeably pleased when the sweet young Lady Windermere's fan, a present from her husband of two years, turns up in the private quarters of the sleekly caddish Lord Darlington. 


 Wilde artfully turns the discovery into an opportunity for the outsider, Mrs. Erling of dubious past, to intervene and cover for the ingénue. His clever turn is that the play does not end in the expected revelation; instead, there are two mirrored secrets that are successfully covered up and an identity that is revealed to the audience but not to the character most closely concerned by it.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Pain and the Itch, Capital T Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, October 25 - November 17

by Michael Meigs

Mark Pickell has an eye for mordant black humor, so Capital T's productions fit perfectly into Ken Webster's Hyde Park Theatre -- both into that odd and intimate space and into the ironic, brash, better-than-hip ethos of the place. If you like Ken's stuff, you'll love Mark's. And a further lure: the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago has premiered the last seven works of this playwright.


Bruce Norris' savage deadpan flaying of the earnest American upper middle class in The Pain and the Itch is more than mere satire, though. It's a paradox wrapped in an enigma presented in one of Ia Esterä's exquisitely imagined box sets. In the guise of a family visit to attorney Kelly and her house-husband Clay at Thanksgiving time, Norris serves up at least two mysteries: what is that reserved Middle Eastern taxi-driver doing in this American home? And what is the malady of adorable five-year-old daughter Kayla that Cash the pediatrician surgeon brother-in-law is called to investigate and at the same time to conceal?


I missed the staging of this 2005 play when the University of Texas MFA program did it in a April, 2011, followed immediately by Norris's Clybourne Park (which was later awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the 2012 Tony for best play).


The arc is from the squabbling of grown siblings to the disconnects of incomprehension, television, clashes of culture, accidents, victims and deceit. Norris writes with a scalpel whetted to such a fine edge that at first one doesn't realize the depth and damage of his adroit strokes as he dissects the bland, blind conceits of this all-American family.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

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)

Upcoming: Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin, Austin Playhouse, May 6 - June 3

presents

Born Yesterday

by Garson Kanin

May 4 - June 3

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.

Austin Playhouse temporary facility, 1801 1/2 Simond Street, Mueller Development (click for map)

Starring Andrea Osborn, Michael Stuart, Benjamin Summers, Brian Coughlin, Hans Venable, Dirk van Allen, and Mary Agen Cox

Men of Tortuga, Steet Corner Arts at the Hyde Park Theatre, December 1 - 17

Where is Tortuga and whom are these conspirators targeting?

Tortuga is Spanish for "turtle" and there are Tortugas all over the place. Lots of islands, for example -- a former pirates' haven off the northern coast of Haiti, an island off Venezuela, others off Costa Rica, in the Gallapagos and down in the Florida Keys. There's an unincorporated community in California close to the border with Mexico. My brother, in town for a visit, misremembered the title as Men of Tortuga Street, since the ancient reptile is honored in many another California community.

I had no difficulty imagining that these conservative suits and their hired expert in kinetic kills might be studying someone like charismatic ideologue Hugo Chávez, elected president of Venezuela in 1998. Chávez is still in office today despite economic mismanagement, audacious grandstanding and the hammering that he has given the wealthy elites and middle class. In another life I was the State Department officer waiting at the bottom of the ramp to welcome him upon his first visit to Washington.

The timing corresponds, as well. This script was one of about a thousand unsolicited manuscripts mailed to the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in 2004. They produced it as part of their new plays series in the converted space in the parking garage. Cast member in this production Rommel Sulit saw it during that first run.

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

Images for Upcoming: Men of Tortuga, Street Corner Arts at Hyde Park Theatre, December 1 - 18

Images and information found on-line:

Street Corner Arts presents

Men of Tortuga

by Jason Wells

December 1 - 17, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe (click for map)

Tickets are $15; Thursdays are 'pay what you can' nights. For reservations please contact Hyde Park Theatre at 479-PLAY.

A group of powerful men formulate plans to assassinate a member of the opposition (cannonballs or missiles?). They could be corporate titans, intelligence agents or perhaps even politicians. As the scheme spins wildly into complication, the plotters descend into suspicion, bloodlust and raucous infighting. This pitch dark & provocative, gut-check comedy by Jason Wells demands: Do the ends justify the means?

The Men of Tortuga cast includes Kenneth Wayne Bradley, Garry Peters, Joe Penrod, Rommel Sulit and Benjamin Summers.

Word on the street:

"If ever a play demonstrated that most men conduct business the way they once plotted schoolyard warfare, it’s Men of Tortuga...once the laughter has died away one recognizes with chilling clarity how close our culture has really come to such madness."
– Leigh Kennicott, StageHappenings.com

Click to view additional images from Street Corner Arts at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Austin Playhouse, January 14 - February 13

This "Trivial Comedy for Serious People" opened in 1895 and it was the last shining moment for Wilde's career as writer and dramatist. Soon afterwards he found himself in court, accused of immoral behavior and then sentenced to gaol. Because of that scandal the original production closed after only 86 performances. Since then it has become one of the most dependable and regularly revived comic satires on the boards.

Wilde's earnest young men show themselves of strenuously conventional Victorian morality in society but entirely subversive in their private lives.

Both Algernon Moncrieff (Jason Newman) and Jack Worthing (Benjamin Summers) have secret identities. Algernon goes "Bunberrying," using the excuse of a mythical ailing relative to escape from unappealing social engagements and to sail off on devil-may-care exploits.

Jack uses the excuse of his mythical brother "Earnest" to get away from the tedium of the country and the responsibilities of his guardianship for the fetching but bubble-headed Cecily, his ward and the daughter of his deceased benefactor. Masquerading as "Earnest" while in London, Jack is courting Algy's cousin Gwendolen.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images from The Importance of Being Earnest, Austin Playhouse, January 14 - February 20

Austin Playhouse posts images by an uncredited photographer, January 20, for

Oscar Wilde’s

The Importance of Being Earnest:

A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Directed by Don Toner

Featuring Rick Roemer as Lady Bracknell and Bernadette Nason as Miss Prism

January 14 – February 13; Thursday–Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m.

Austin Playhouse, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C

www.austinplayhouse.com and on Facebook and Twitter

Tickets: $26 Thursday and Friday, $28 Saturday and Sunday, $35 Opening Night

Can be purchased at the box office 512.476.0084 or online at: www.austinplayhouse.com

To become a subscriber: call 512.476.0084

Click to view larger versions and additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Click to view full album on Facebook. . . .

The 39 Steps, Austin Playhouse, September 10 - October 30

Austin Playhouse scheduled Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps for a run of almost two months, but I didn't manage to use my season tickets until the penultimate weekend of the run. Not that I expected to be disappointed; The 39 Steps won an Olivier award for best comedy in 2007 and the Broadway version, with the added tag tying it to Hitchcock, ran for two years before moving off-Broadway. And not too far off Broadway -- to New World Stages at 340 West 50th Street, where it is still playing. A road version did a limited tour in 2009-2010.

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps was nominated for six Tony awards in 2008 and walked away with two. The marketing people don't mention that those Tonys were for best lighting design and best sound design.

Never mind all that. The important thing is that it's more fun than a barrel of actors. The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England, pioneered this one, applying the ingenious notion of using only four actors to put onstage the entire plot of the Hitchcock movie. Here in Austin, Benjamin Summers as Richard Hannay is the only player with an immutable role (unless you count his momentary masquerade as a milkman in order to flee from the police). Lara Toner gets to play three characters -- a German-accented femme fatale who rapidly becomes a femme morte, much to Hannay's surprise, a dreamy lassie in the wilds of Scotland, and a self-assured young blonde who winds up kidnapped and handcuffed to the fleeing Hannay.

The comic duo of Michael Stuart and David Stahl play everyone else in the movie -- oops, I mean, in the play. Bad guys, local notables, a dour Scots crofter, an innkeeper and his wife, the red-turbaned mysterious professor, a pair of vaudeville clowns and many, many more. In fact, the two of them are listed in the program simply as Clown #1 and Clown #2. They change identities as easily as changing hats, and sometimes they're carrying three hats at a time.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Mousetrap, Austin Playhouse, November 20 - December 20

Theatre journalism has a half-life of perhaps two weeks, a fact that prompts me to strive to see a production as soon as possible. After all, a theatre review published only 48 hours before closing has not much more than archival interest.

One would prefer to deliver the report and comments hot off the first-night griddle, particularly when the show's an interesting or engaging one. Perhaps, just perhaps, the review might contribute to increasing the turnout for deserving productions.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to The Mousetrap until its final weekend, due to family visits, a surging December theatre season, and my own return to the boards in mid-December.

We're subscribers and modest contributors to the Austin Playhouse, in part because it's the first theatre we discovered in Austin after relocating here in 2007. I have an affection and respect for Don Toner and the Playhouse's company of about two dozen actors. Now mid-way through their tenth season behind the Penn Field water tower at 3601 South Congress, they have increased their core season to five plays and they operate an intriguing side space, the Larry L. King Theatre.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, Austin Playhouse, November 20 - December 20

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, December 30

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

The Mousetrap
by Agatha Christie

November 20 – December 20, 2009
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm
(No performance on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26)

Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery takes the stage!

Giles and Mollie Ralston have just completed renovating the imposing Monkswell Manor into a charming country inn. The first night the inn is open for business they’re quickly snowed in with four guests and a stranded motorist. A detective arrives on skis to warn the group that he believes a murderer may be on the way, but when one of the guests is found dead, it becomes clear that the murderer may already be at Monkswell Manor. As the detective attempts to discover the truth, everyone becomes a suspect and long-hidden secrets are revealed.

[graphic based on HarperCollins' UK 50th anniversary edition, 1995]

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Frost/Nixon, Austin Playhouse, September 11 - October 11

Almost thirty years had gone by when British dramatist Peter Morgan wrote this piece. The Gielgud Theatre picked it up from an "off-West-End" theatre in 2006. It moved to Broadway for 137 performances in 2007. Frank Langella won both a Tony Award for best actor, as well as the corresponding Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.

Thirty years is about the right lapse of time before one exorcises demons and rehabilitates felons. Pain is remembered but no longer throbs, and different issues occupy the public mind.

The audience members at the Austin Playhouse were almost without exception of an age to have vivid memories of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and David Frost's 1977 interviews, watched by some 45 million persons. That is reportedly still the record viewership for a televised political interview.

The play is structured as a hunt, a negotiation, and a verbal contest. Don Toner and his cast keep the suspense tight, almost convincing us that we don't know how this will turn out. The pull of the piece, however, is in the acting.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Drowned World, directed by Ken Webster, FronteraFest at Blue Theatre, January 21, 25, 31, February 1

Ken Webster's austere staging of this vision of a nightmare world uses the vocal and emotional projection of these four actors with the formal eloquence and depth of a string quartet. The music here is their inflection, counterpart, and conviction in a narrative that raises the hairs on the back of your neck.

Ben Wolfe appears first, in solo, as Darren, citizen in a world drowned in gray totalitarianism and decay. Motionless, from the depth of the stage he recounts a simple train journey, the pain of attraction, and his effort to find an "angel." The range and intensity of his telling, like a lengthy, complex solo cello sonata, is all the more striking because he scarcely moves a muscle. The color and depth of the text overrides our lazy spectator demands for visual excitement.

The rest of the quartet joins him. They stand virtually motionless in the depth of the stage, dressed in featureless dark clothing. They unfold the story, each speaking in first person when solo and reverting to dialogue when interacting with one another. At intervals of ten to fifteen minutes in this 90-minute piece the words stop, the lights fall away to black briefly and then re-illuminate the stage, where the four artists stand in the same positions and attitudes as before.


Instead of a Singspiel, this is a Hörspiel. The German term is used for radio plays, and in fact you could appreciate the depth, violence and images with your eyes closed. The presence of the actors before you adds a corporality to the story that heightens your sense of the vulnerability of characters, actors and humanity itself.

Tara (Xochitl Romero) and Julian (Benjamin Summers) are lovers, in hiding from police who have been carrying out systematic raids and mandated "quarantines" of individuals guilty of possessing "radiance," a sort of vitality and charisma not conforming with the duties of citizens of an authoritarian state. Diligent citizen Kelly (Andrea Skola), with quarantine order in hand, takes thugs to apprehend, torture and murder the uncomplying lovers. Her glimpse of Julian at the window saps her will.

The lovers escape, attempt mutual suicide and intrude into the apartment of hapless Darren, who takes them in. He sees Tara as the angel of his yearnings. In clumsy efforts to sustain the triangle by selling on the black market hair and then teeth imbued with their radiance, Darren stumbles into Kelly, defrocked as a police officer and sent undercover to find the lovers.

Gary Owen's vision of that gray world is complete and convincing. His text is blank verse, especially in the mouths of these players. He meticulously describes desires, betrayals, exploitations and killings with a power of language and image evoking an Aristotelian level of pity and fear.

Owens is writing much more than an Orwellian meditation. In addition to oppression, these characters are exploring for us themes of intimacy, attraction and allegiance, decay and death, hope and the human condition. The finale finds us with two couples, of unexpected composition, the first imprisoned in that drowned world and the second in inscrutable apotheosis. His final image is cryptic: a silver moon seen through a burned, torn hand, delighting a girl child.

Ken Webster told us that this piece has to date been performed in the United Kingdom and in Chicago. Wolfe, Romero, Skola and Summers take the stage only three more times during Austin's FronteraFest.

See them. Be preprared to concentrate. Don't expect any laughs. Prepare to be haunted and rewarded.

Comments by Brian Losoya of Daily Texan, in article on FronteraFest, January 23

Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle of January 30

Review by Ryan E. Johnson on Austin.com, January 30

Upcoming, FronteraFest: The Drowned World, January 21 - February 1

UPDATE: ALT review, January 22

Received January 15:

Ken Webster presents the Southwest Premiere of Gary Owen's hauntingly powerful THE DROWNED WORLD.

THE DROWNED WORLD is a poetic and futuristic vision of a world where the beautiful and intelligent are hunted down and destroyed.

The play will be directed by HPT Artistic Director and member of The Austin Arts Hall of Fame, Ken Webster, and features HPT Company Members Ben Wolfe (FEATURING LORETTA), Benjamin Summers (DOG SEES GOD, THE LONESOME WEST), Andrea Skola (HAM), and Xochitl Romero (BLACKBIRD, DOG SEES GOD).

WHERE: The Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road

WHEN: Wednesday, January 21, at 7:00 PM

Sunday, January 25, at 4:15 PM

Saturday, January 31, at 6:30 PM

Sunday, Febraury 1, at 2:15 PM

TICKETS: $12 order online at www.hydeparktheatre.org or call 479-PLAY