Video Promo: Der Bestraffte Brudermord, Hidden Room Theatre, January17 - February 9, 2014

Video by Lowell Bartholomee:

Tent Revival fundraiser for Robert Matney at the Off Center, July 17, 2013

 

Tent Revival

Performance Benefit for Robert Matney

Robert Matney

 Weds July 17th,
doors open at 8 p.m., kick-off at 8:30 p.m.
The Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo, Austin TX 78702 - click for map
Join us at the Off Center for a healing crusade by the power of awesomeness in honor of Robert Matney. Stand beside this linchpin of the Austin theatre community, this excellent human, and help him he-yal from the evils of a malignant melanoma.

Scheduled guests currently include:

 

Steven Tomlinson
Manateeman
Cami Alys
Shoulders

 

special guest deejays Graham Reynolds, Michael Joplin, and Peter Stopschinski
a prayer by Kirk Lynn
hosted by the Rev Lowell Bartholomee
more to come...

And be ready to bid on the best silent auction items you've ever seen!

Sponsored by Tequila 512, Pluckers, Ruby's BBQ, Don't Panic Hispanic, Real Ale, Live Oak, Tito's Vodka

Hosted by the Rude Mechs
Co-produced by the Hidden Room Theatre, Street Corner Arts, A Chick and A Dude, Palindrome

Want to join our host committee? Starting at just $250 write or raise, you can support the Fishneys and join us for a private pre-show champagne party. Comment below or PM for more information. Can I get an AMEN?

DONATE HERE:
www.youcaring.com/matneyvscancer

CLICK HERE to view the video by Lowell Bartholomee

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Tent Revival fundraiser for Robert Matney at the Off Center, July 17, 2013

Join us at the Off Center for a healing crusade by the power of awesomeness in honor of Robert Matney.
Weds July 17th, 8PM - 11PM
The Off Center
2211 Hidalgo, Austin TX 78702
Scheduled guests currently include:
Steven Tomlinson
Manateeman
Cami Alys
special guest deejays Graham Reynolds, Michael Joplin, and Peter Stopschinski
a prayer by Kirk Lynn
hosted by the Rev Lowell Bartholomee
more to come...
And be ready to bid on the best silent auction items you've ever seen!
Sponsored by Tequila 512, Pluckers, Ruby's BBQ, Don't Panic Hispanic, Real Ale
Hosted by the Rude Mechs
Co-produced by the Hidden Room Theatre, Street Corner Arts, A Chick and A Dude, Palindrome
Want to join our host committee? Starting at just $250 write or raise, you can support the Fishneys and join us for a private pre-show champagne party. Comment below or PM for more information. Can I get an AMEN?
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Video Appeal: Support Robert Matney's Fight Against Cancer, via YouCaring

A few weeks ago, Robert Matney- actor, technology designer, and all-around extraordinary person was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma that had spread to his lymphatic system. In 2008, Rob was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Rob beat it. Last year, a pulmonary embolism tried to do its worst. But Rob beat that, too.

Rob started his new fight the day after Lowell Bartholomee and Beth Burns of Hidden Room Theatre shot this. We want to help get some of his medical bills out the way so he can win this one, too. Any contribution means the world to Rob, his family, his friends, and his future friends family family. Because he's awesome. Please click on the YouCaring image to go to the contribution page.

There will be a benefit performance of Hidden Room's THE TAMING OF THE SHREW at York Rite Theatre (311 West 7th Street 78701) on June 30 and a "tent revival" benefit at The Off Center (2211 Hidalgo 78702) in late July. Go to youcaring.com/matneyvscancer for benefit details and to make a contribution to the medical bill fund.

Rob constantly proves himself to be a treasure among people. We want to make sure that stays true for many years to come. Thank you!

TAMING OF THE SHREW, benefit for Robert Matney, staged reading by Hidden Room Theatre at York Masonic Hall, June 30, 2013

The Hidden Room Theatre
[performing at the York Masonic Hall 311 W. 7th St., Austin - click for map]

presents
a staged reading and benefit for Robert Matney:
the original practices staging of
The Taming of the Shrew
by William Shakespeare
June 30, 2013
at the York Masonic Hall, 311 W. 7th Street - click for map
Please join us as we band together to support our very own and much beloved Robert Matney. We are proud to announce that the launch event of the Matney vs Cancer: Fight! benefit is a reunion staged reading of our award-winning Taming of the Shrew Original Practices, Sunday June 30th at the York Rite Masonic Hall. Tickets go one sale shortly. What a wonderful way to show the love for Matney and stand with him in this fight!

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Opinion: Robert Matney on Hacking Theatre in a Networked World, Howlround.com

Hacking Theatre in a Networked World

by Robert Matney
April 15, 2013

Robert Matney

We come to the theater to satisfy a Luddite urge for something more visceral, more live and less mediated, more unpredictable than a two-dimensional screen provides. It is, then, no surprise that the theater selects for, and cultivates, in its practitioners a reticence to integrate new technology. Let's own up: collectively we are late adopters.

As theater artists, we have an obligation, I think, to remedy this, or we find ourselves sprinting (faster) toward our obsolescence and abdicating our duty to hold a “mirror to nature” in an increasingly technological culture. Let us hack theater for a networked world, using the Internet's numerical, geographical, and temporal scalability to interact with new audiences, insist on an ongoing and authentic relevance for our work, test new forms, and propagate new possibilities while preserving what is essential about our discipline. Let us trust that theater is resilient enough to make this leap as it has made many others, and that it will survive a modest but important re-programming. And of course, in the pursuit of this remedial integration, let us seek methods that integrate deeply into the art and the aesthetic, rather than yield to the easy seduction of bolt-on and gimmicky technical appendages.


Austin, a bubbling cauldron of new works for theater and a world-class center of hi-tech startups should be a focus of this work, and yet its marvelous potential as a capital of innovation for digital integration with performing art remains largely unrealized. There are virtually no dedicated performance spaces with a functional wired internet connection with proximity to the tech booth/performance space, and only one, to my knowledge, offering a connection greater than low-end residential speeds (>15 Mbps down & 1.5 Mbps up). 

So our work is cut out for us in making good on these extraordinary possibilities in Austin.
I've been collaborating with Beth Burns at Hidden Room Theatre, Graham Schmidt at Breaking String Theater, Ron Berry at Fusebox Festival, Paul Menzer and Matt Davies at Mary Baldwin College (Staunton, VA), and Philip Arnoult at the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD; Baltimore, MD) to work on disparate pieces of hi-tech integration into the work of theater on stage and off.

Our world is networked, and our theater need no longer be wholly defined by a proscenium arch, a black box, or any physical space (empty or otherwise).

For Mary Baldwin College, we are currently working with the Shakespeare and Performance faculty and graduate students to co-create actorscholar.com as an experimental platform for digital dramaturgy (or "digiturgy," a term recently introduced to me by Cassidy Browning during the Cohen New Works Festival). We seek here more than a simple web publishing site (with fair use and copyright sensitive access-control that attends to professional and academic contexts, of course), but also a means of integrating open APIs and freely available web-based data streams to open up new possibilities for dramaturgical content and analysis (such as the ability to easily plot a plays locations in an interactive map so artist and audience can pull the kind of data they desire about the play's location(s)).

With the CITD, Mr. Arnoult, Susan Stroupe, and I are preparing to digitize and live stream for real-time interaction many of the events of Beyond the Capitals II, an international exchange project funded by the Bilateral Presidential Commission: American Seasons in Russia, a program of the US Embassy in Moscow, and which will travel throughout Russia this May. Our goal is to ensure that all of the American participants in the Beyond The Capitals I project can take the journey with us, engage digitally, and interact with the artists we will be visiting in Russia.

At Fusebox, we are in the early stages of building an Art+Technology platform to feature and sustain exploratory work, education, and presentations that innovate in the area of art and technology integration. This year's festival features a number of exciting works, including Motion Bank and Ant Hampton's Cue China.


In the Hidden Room, we seek to solve a distinct art/technology challenge with each project. The first challenge we undertook was to patch together two disparate geographical locations into one contiguous aural and visual performance space. In You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives In London (named so in Austin) / You Wouldn't Know Him, He Lives In Texas (named so in London), we teamed up with Mimi Poskitt and Look Left Look Right theater, and tethered a site-specific venue in Austin with the Roundhouse in London, with each venue containing a portion of the cast and a full in-location public audience. We picked up video in each location and cross-displayed it, "lining up" the people and equipment for mutual visibility for all participants. Additionally, we microphoned and cross-amplified the spaces such that if an Austinite opened a candy wrapper during the performance he could successfully annoy the audience in Austin and London. We then used a separate computer in London to encode the video conversation between the Austin and London locations, streaming the results to the web for a third, online audience. In all locations, a Twitter-hashtag- delimited text stream was presented, and all audiences were encouraged to interact with each other and the performers for shared textual visibility.

Hidden Room's next project was to tune our technical process to enable transcontinental rehearsal. With Rose Rage, we conducted our rehearsals with actors located in London, Cornwall, Virginia, and Austin. This process took us through 75% of the rehearsal period before all gathered in Austin to present a run of this six-hour production.
 
Click 'Read more' to continue or click HERE to go to the article at www.howlround.com

THE GIRL WITH TIME IN HER EYES, Hidden Room Theatre at SXSW, March 10, 2013

The Hidden Room Theatre is proud to present

Robin Jones’ and Beth Burns' mind-bending interactive time-travel pulp play

THE GIRL WITH TIME IN HER EYES

March 10 at SXSW

Become a volunteer test subject for an emerging technology that allows you to witness and document a mystery that happened sixty years ago. Change the fabric of history as you untangle clues and avoid deceptions. Running time 40 minutes, Next Stage Austin Convention Center, SXSW Interactive. Come back with us as we travel through crime!

Starring Judd Farris, Julia Lorenz-Olson, Toby Minor, Ryan Hamilton, and Robert Matney. Directed by Beth Burns. Story by Robin Jones and Beth Burns.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Invisible, Inc. by Paul Menzer, Hidden Room Theatre at Rolllins Theatre, Long Center, January 11 - 20, 2013

by Dr. David Glen Robinson and Michael Meigs

Outside the Austin skyline was bright and magical as ever while enthusiastic crowds gathered for last Thursday’s preview and Saturday’s performance of Invisible, Inc. The Hidden Room Theatre created a delicious, dark and intriguing world in the Rollins black box theatre at the Long Center, emerging from the secret shadows of the historic York Rite Masonic Temple on W. 7th Street and going big time. It's too bad that the company and its director and proprietary matriarch Beth Burns can't occupy that venue for a longer term, because Invisible, Inc. is an elegant and witty entertainment. It’s their first theatre outing since last year’s multiple-award-winning Rose Rage.


One special appeal is that its leads are Robert Matney and Liz Fisher, a young husband and wife pair who enjoy the sort of respect and affection in Austin that Alfred Lunt and Margot Fontanne had on Broadway from the 1930's through the 1960's. Noël Coward wrote his 1933 Design for Living for that famous couple; coincidentally, Austin Shakespeare will be doing that work in this same venue in just a few weeks. Now, there's a thought experiment: substituting Matney and Fisher for Miller and Merino.


Burns presents a gorgeously designed package. Ia Ensterä's set makes the black box into a Manhattan highrise living room with a broad window at deep center stage, decorated in Art Deco via Bela Lugosi. At the audience's far left stands an upright piano that's part of the same playing space; at the far right there's a tumble of furniture representing a garret somewhere far downtown. With furniture shifts the central playing space can belong to either of these. With a shift in lighting, the flare of a spotlight and a change in the image at deep center stage, the space becomes a theatre complete with proscenium.


Patrons desiring premium seating can pay a bit extra to settle at one of the four-person nightclub tables on the floor with the performing space, where they'll be handsomely welcomed and entertained by an amiable professional magician who does up-close illusions and prestidigitation. On Saturday evening the company's Master of Magic (coach) J.D. Stewart was resplendent, gregarious and astonishing. He left us dumbfounded with his skills. We have no idea how those playing cards flew invisibly through the air or those coins appeared impossibly at his bidding.


Invisible, Inc. is soaked with atmosphere and its spookiness is boosted when the lights first go down and that upright piano erupts into lengthy evocative passes of the keys by the invisible Graham Reynolds. His score for MIDI-assisted player piano punctuates the action with the same dexterity as the big Wurlitzer organs at the cinema palaces of the 1930's.


Menzer’s play offers us the world of vaudeville magic acts and magicians in the 1930’s. The potential for a peek behind the magician’s cabinet is immense, and the playwright gives us several such peeks on our way through the story. The characters present magic turns in every scene, their very gestures accented with flash paper. Handcuffs fall off wrists; cards appear and disappear; straitjackets and cabinets cannot contain them. The disappearance of objects, people and reality raises the tension and the ante, and the onslaught of illusions challenges the audience’s perceptions and certitudes.


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

INVISIBLE INC. by Paul Menzer, Hidden Room Theatre at Rolllins Theatre, Long Center, January 11 - 20, 2013

The Hidden Room

presents

 


January 11 - 20, 2013
January 11-20 at the Long Center, every night except on Tuesday 15th.
Mondays - Saturdays 8 pm, Sundays 5pm
Click to purchase TICKETS

The Hidden Room is proud to present the world premiere of this stylish and crackling noir mystery by Paul Menzer (author of The Brats of Clarence). This fantastical event swirls around feuding magicians in New York: one in the ritzy theatres of Manhattan, the other in back alley speakeasies, both knee-deep in danger.

Starring Robert Matney, Liz Fisher, Joseph Garlock, Laurence Pears, Todd Kassens, and Julia Lorenz-Olson.

Original music by Graham Reynolds, set by Ia Enstera, lights by Megan Reilly, props by Justin Cox, and magic consultation by JD Stewart.


Purchase a general admission ticket, or enjoy the magic close up at table seating!

SPECIAL TALK BACK WITH PLAYWRIGHT MENZER post-show Friday the 11th and Saturday 12th.

There will be no extensions! 10 performances only!

Running time 90 mins.

Proudly supported by the Redd Carpet Fund
Presented at the Joe R. and Teresa Long Center for the Performing Arts

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Mystery Show party fundraiser for Hidden Room, December 20

Hidden Room Theatre presents


Mystery Show party and fundraiser
for Invisible, Inc.

York Rite Masonic Hall 311 W 7th Street, Austin 78701

What Show Awaits You? It's a Mystery... Get out of the cold and into one hot night in a Hidden Room somewhere inside 311 W. 7th Street, downtown Austin. Look for a shadowy figure at the door and give them the password "Invisible." Inside you'll be transported into a section of the world just outside of Invisible Inc.

Our annual Mystery Show fundraiser supports our ability to open the Hidden Room doors to more theatrical curiosities such as the award-winning Rose Rage, Taming of the Shrew Original Practices, and You Wouldn't Know Her. Enjoy hooch and hoofing, as you wonder at what entertainment may arise. Depression-era clothing is encouraged. Look for hints as to the Mystery Show's secrets. They are everywhere.

Starring the talents of Stephanie Delk, Djahari, Amara, Jack Darling, Toby Minor, Cami Alys, Shoulders, members of the cast from Invisible Inc, and more!

Running time approximately 90 minutes plus hot jazz into the night.

TICKETS ON SALE SHORTLY...

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Rose Rage - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, July 26 - August 11

The Hidden Room Theatre

presents

Rose Rage

a two-part adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays

July 26 - August 11

Details forthcoming

The Hidden Room is honored to have been granted the rights to Edward Hall and Roger Warren's Rose Rage - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, cut down into an epic two-part event. Theatrical Deviser Beth Burns will be the first director since Hall (Propeller) to tackle this cutting of Shakespeare's earliest historical masterpiece. The production will also introduce our Foreign Actor Exchange Program, where we will be joined by three actors from the UK, first rehearsing via Skype, then traveling to Austin to perform as an international team. 

Filled with political intrigue and ruthless ambition, Rose Rage witnesses the toppling of kings, the loss of France, and the making of the monster that takes over young Richard III. July 26 - August 11th, in a hidden room somewhere within 311 W. 7th Street, Austin TX. Featuring an amazing all-male cast, beautiful live period music, and a bawdy, robust style. Costume design made with careful attention to Original Practices detail by the Baron's Men.

Profile of Hidden Room Theatre by Dawn Youngs at Culturemap

On-line at www.austin.culturemap.com:

The Hidden Theater: A secretive Austin gem that's going global

By Dawn Youngs,12.31.11

As Master of Company and Theatrical Deviser Beth Burns put it, “The Hidden Room Theater is a Theatrical Curiosity Shop specializing in Original Practices classics, technologically forward-thinking works, intriguing new plays, and rarely-done oddities.” The company, critically acclaimed for its media jumping cross-Atlantic theatrical event You Don’t Know Him He Lives in Texas/You Don’t Know Her She Lives in London, will be bringing all of these diverse specialties together in this season’s production of Rose Rage.

Hidden Room has been making waves in the modern world of Shakespeare by going old school. Their recent Original Practice production of Taming of the Shrew had a historically accurate all male cast, period Elizabethan dress and stayed true to the minimalist staging of Shakespeare’s time. The company is not lost in the past, however, evidenced by a recent Kickstarter campaign which harnessed the power of the internet to take the company to the Blackfriar’s Conference at the Shakespeare Center to present the work to some of the world's most renowned Shakespeare scholars. This trip was a big success for Hidden Room Theater, solidifying their place on the international stage.

Read full text at www.austin.culturemap.com . . . .

Arts Reporting from the Blackfriars Shakespeare Conference: Beth Burns and cast on the original Practices Taming of the Shrew

Notes from Cass Morris at the Blackfriars Shakespeare Conference in Staunton, Virgina, October 27:

Beth Burns, Hidden Room Theatre:

"Original Practices at Hidden Room"

Beth Burns introduces her support team from Hidden Room, noting that she met her dramaturg for The Taming of the Shrew at a previous conference. She positions herself clearly on the side of practitioners as opposed to strict academics, but states that she tries to make her practice as well-grounded in scholarship as she can. She thanks the scholarly crowd for "letting me steal your work, as I do do and will do today."

Burns discusses her experiences with Original Practices and notes that, while different companies and scholars have different views on what that means, they all come down to: "let's not fight the text; let's go with it." She's curious about the idea of "male playing female, and what that does to the text," particularly what it does to jokes -- which she doesn't like to cut just because the reference isn't relevant. She wondered if the idea of men playing women would balance out the gender issues in Shrew. "What I found instead was, actually, a love story. A really sexy love story." It also produced a theme of identity.

She noted two challenges: 1) to get the audience to believe the man playing a woman as a female character, and 2) to make the audience perceive the relationship displayed as a heterosexual one, not a homosexual one. Her actors from Hidden Room then present the introduction between Kate and Petruchio (2.1), in (as in her production), late-sixteenth-century costumes and (lead-free) makeup. The scene is fast-paced and full of action, with a Kate visibly enjoying the challenge of sparring with Petruchio, and a Petruchio utterly unwilling to part company with her. Kate also seems moved (though somewhat uncomfortable) by a Petruchio speaking to her sexually -- as, this staging seems to suggest, no other man has ever done.

Burns notes that the scene is "a veritable cornucopia" of the techniques they use. She notes that, to make the steaminess palpable, they don't just go for the obvious sexual jokes, but also those words that "sound sexual" by virtue of their sonic qualities or the face-shapes the sounds cause. They also explored "non-standard touch", to break the expectation of the usual courtship interactions. She moves to the next scene, which she hopes will cause us to look at gender role and power.

In the "sun and moon" scene, 4.5, Kate's concession to Petruchio's declarations comes with more than a light touch of sarcasm -- but she laughs when Petruchio address Vincentio (an impromptu substitution of Matt Davies) as a fair mistress. When Kate gets the joke and flirts with Vincentio, Petruchio intervenes a bit hastily, to cut off a kiss -- which represents, as Burns points out, that she's now playing on an even field with him. They move to the final scene: 5.1, on the street -- the "kiss me, Kate" moment. Their frenetic energy slows to tender regard, but loses none of its passion.

Burns brings her actors out and first asks Ryan (Kate) about building the character. He talks about placing her "center" low, to ground her and also give her grace. Burns and Judd (Petruchio) talk about building the "uber-macho" Petruchio, who Judd describes as "the archetypal alpha male" who goes beyond the typical plateau of gentlemanly behavior.

Matt Davies opens up to questions from the audience for either presenter.

Click for notes on Q&A session at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

The Servant of Two Masters, Penfold Theatre outdoors in amphitheatres, Round Rock 8/04-21, Wimberley, 8/26-27

by Michael Meigs

I always enjoy watching the handsome and talented Penfold Theatre folk. Not only onstage in their accomplished presentations, of which The Servant of Two Masters directed by Beth Burns is only the latest shining example, but also as with considerable skill they build their presence and reputation.

Austin attracts graduates of theatre programs the way that Nashville attracts banjo pickers, and with not much effort I could name you half a dozen groups of friends who are putting their work up in dusty rented venues throughout this town. Talent is not lacking, and there's plenty of courage and ingenuity.

The Penfold team is grouped around funnyface Ryan Crowder, playing the leading rascal in this show, and Nathan Jerkins, who gives his self-assured ironic humor to the stock role of Brighella the innkeeper. In 2007 they founded the company with their Abilene Christian University classmate Sean Martin, at about the same time I arrived in Austin.

Penfold formed an early alliance with St. Ed's musical jack of all trades Dr. Michael McKelvey (director of their sparkling chamber musical theatre pieces The Last Five Years, John and Jen and I Love You Because). Company members' work with Austin Shakespeare and with recent arrival from California Beth Burns helped build networks including many of the liveliest and most dedicated theatre folk in Austin. They won B. Iden Payne awards.

And unlike most other young devotees of the theatre, they looked around for a promising home in the greater Austin area. Penfold made friends in Round Rock, the rapidly growing community just north of Austin, and has secured support from businesses, the municipality and potential arts patrons for their vision of a resident theatre company in that town.

Their summer shows at the Round Rock amphitheatre, open to all without charge, are splendid marketing devices, making Round Rock residents aware both of their talents and of their intentions to put down roots in that town. Last summer they put on the frantic crowd-pleaser The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and through most of this month they've been performing this late classic of the Italian commedia dall'arte by Carlo Goldoni. In addition to the Penfold founders the cast of The Servant of Two Masters features lively character actors familiar to Austin audiences from many venues (for example, Robert Deike, Alejandro McDonald-Villarreal, Griçelda Silva, Andréa Smith and the recently arrived Toby Minor).

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She Lives in Austin/Edinburgh, Hidden Room Theatre & others, August 6 - 28

received directly:

present

BY BETH BURNS

STARRING UK IMPROVISATIONAL ACTORS Rachel Watkinson, Sally Hodgkiss in Edinburgh

& US IMPROVISATIONAL ACTORS Judd Farris, Ryan Hamilton in Austin

Fringe First winners Look Left Look Right connect live across an ocean from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to make live long distance theatre love to US partners, the award-winning Hidden Room Theatre in Austin, Texas for the world premiere of You Wouldn’t Know Her, She Lives in Edinburgh.

This fully immersive, interactive Skype theatre experience casts audience (both online and in person) as the friends and family of the play’s long-distance lovers Ryan and Elizabeth. Audiences are then invited to meet and play together live from the UK and the US in this delightful romantic comedy that tests the common definition of what makes a relationship “real.”

Saturdays and Sundays in August

August 6 - 28

Two Shows a Day
12 noon and 2 p.m. Texas time

in a hidden room somewhere within
the East Village Apartments, 1211 E. 7th Street,
Austin, Texas

or streaming at

www.youwouldntknow.com
please contact the Matriarch to acquire your complimentary in-person reservations: (310) 243-6426

hiddenroomtheatre@yahoo.com

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: A Servant of Two Masters by Goldoni, Penfold Theatre , Round Rock Amphitheatre, August 4-21 & EmilyAnn Amphitheatre, Wimberley, August 26-27

Received directly:

presents

Servant of Two Masters
By Carlo Goldoni
Adapted and directed by Beth Burns
Featuring Katie Blacksmith, Ryan Crowder, Robert Deike, Joseph Garlock, Nathan Jerkins, Alex McDonald-Villareal, Toby Minor, Gricelda Silva and Andrea Smith
Comedy, "Penfold in the Park" series
Running time: About 1 hour 40 minutes, with one intermission.
Content advisory: For all ages.

August 4-21, 2011
Round Rock Amphitheater, 301 W. Bagdad Ave, Round Rock TX 78664 (Map it)
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm
Special encore performance Sunday, August 21, at 8:00pm
Free admission (donations accepted)

August 26-27, 2011
EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens, 1101 Ranch Road 2325, Wimberley TX 78676 (Map it)
Friday and Saturday at 8:15pm
Regular $15, Students $10
To make reservations, visit the EmilyAnn website or call (512) 847-6969 .

Mistaken identities, reunited lovers, and over-the-top hilarity! When a man thought dead shows up at the house of his former fiancee, all sorts of madcap mayhem breaks loose! Filled with disguises, plot twists and Marx brothers-style slapstick, Servant of Two Masters is a laugh-out-loud comedy for all ages based on the beloved characters of commedia dell’arte. With nightly pre-shows by other performing arts groups around Austin, this free outdoor performance at the Round Rock Amphitheater is pure summer fun.

Auditions for Goldoni's A Servant of Two Masters, directed by Beth Burns for Penfold Theatre, April 23

Caught in a Tweet, followed up on-line at

announces

Auditions for

A Servant of Two Masters

Saturday, April 23

About the show | Audition Information | Character Descriptions

We're kicking of our 2011-12 season with a fabulous farce, A Servant of Two Masters. Written in the style of commedia dell'arte, this hilarious classic keeps audiences roaring through hysterical plot complications, bold characterizations, and extreme physical mayhem later employed by comic icons like the Marx Brothers.

The show, directed by Beth Burns (Taming of the Shrew, You Wouldn't Know Her, etc.), will be presented free to the public, thanks to a generous partnership with the City of Round Rock Parks and Recreation Department. It runs August 4-21 at the Round Rock Downtown Plaza and August 26-27 at EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens.

For a complete plot synopsis of the play, click here.

Audition Information

When: The afternoon and evening of Saturday, April 23rd.
Where: ArtSpace in Round Rock (231 East Main Street, Round Rock TX 78664) Map it.

To schedule an audition time, please email Will Culbertson at production@penfoldtheatre.org. If you are only available during certain hours of the day, please tell us so. You will receive your time by email, along with sides from the show. Please come to the audition ready to read your sides. We also ask that you bring a copy of your headshot and resume. All roles are paid.

[image: costume design for Smeraldina by Jodi Ozimek, www.msu.edu]

Click to read descriptions of the nine characters

You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She's from London/Texas, Hidden Room Theatre and Look Left Look right, March 5 - 13

Artists are intrigued by the possibilities of social media, a fascination that they share with commercial enterprises, institutions, marketing strategists and your old granny. In 2010-2011 the share of the U.S. over-55's on Facebook quadrupled to 9.5%, because of a more than nine-fold increase in the numbers, to just under 10 million creaky Facebook boomers.

It's no surprise that Austin with its happily volatile mixture of knowledge industries and creatives is exploring that fuzzy junction of social tech and art.

Beth Burns and collaborators at her Hidden Room Theatre, particularly the gifted actor and technological practitioner Robert Matney, have cobbled together with London's Look Left Look Right theatre an alluring trans-Atlantic theatre experiment. Adjusting themselves both to time zone differences and to the disynchronous switches to daylight savings time, the companies convene again this weekend on Saturday and Sunday for You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, etc. You can 't get a ticket, by the way, at least not in Austin, for all twenty-five places in the east Austin loft apartment are filled for the 3 p.m. sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Promoters had announced the venture for all four weekends in March but have for unspecified reasons curtailed to only two.

But you can join in directly, on-line, thanks to some crafty engineering via the Round House Theatre in London, venue for the UK participants. The theatre's live feed will feature both Skype video feeds as well as a edited and controlled Twitter feed of comments you and others generate using the tag #TexasLondon.

Austin principals in person and London principals in remote will engage SXSW media visitors tomorrow, Saturday, March 12, with a discussion of the experiment.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, Taming of the Shrew tour, Hidden Room Theatre

Received directly, news from the Hidden Room, Austin, Texas:

The Hidden Room Theatre in Austin and London's Look Left Look Right are very proud to announce their original production You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London / You Wouldn't Know Him, He Lives In Texas. This highly innovative romantic comedy promises to "link London and Austin through love and the Internet."

You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London will turn audiences in the US and the UK into the friends and family of two lovers: one living in Austin, the other in London. Both actors and audience will be linked via video teleconferencing, interacting with one another to determine the future of the couple in question, as well as have a lot of fun together. The show will run Saturdays and Sundays, March 5th - 27th, at 2 p.m. in Austin and 8 p.m. in London. Upon reserving a seat, audience members will receive links to befriend the character couple through social media, and begin their introduction into this interactive world.

You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London will also be represented at this year's SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas. The panel "Theatre Collaborations Via Skype: Turning Distance into Drama" is confirmed and scheduled for Saturday March 12th at 9:30am, and will be led by The Hidden Room Theatre and Look Left Look Right. This panel will also include a demonstration of the rehearsal process for "You Wouldn't Know Her" featuring the show's stars, London actress Molly Taylor and Austin actor Judd Farris.

Tour for 'Original Practices'

The Hidden Room is scheduling a tour of the Southwest for its The Taming of the Shrew, Original Practices, winding up in Los Angeles. Artistic Director Beth Burns has been giving sold-out workshops to actors on both improvisation and Shakespeare in London while working on this current production. She is planning to bring some of the Hidden Room's actors to the American Shakespeare Center for a staging session on Original Practices at the Blackfriars Conference in October 2011.

Partner company in London

Look Left Look Right is a documentary theatre company based in London. Their productions have won awards and sold out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Royal Court Theatre. Their current production Counted is touring "unusual political spaces" around the UK. Artistic Director Mimi Poskitt is currently interviewing people in the United States for an upcoming project which has yet to be announced formally.

A Most Unsettling and Possibly Haunted Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm, Hidden Room Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theatre, October 28-30

We had a lovely evening at the Hidden Room last weekend in the company of some of Austin's more whimsical and talented theatre artists. That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds.

Sweet enough to make you giddy with the fetching, subtle taste of cyanide. . . .

Imagination was rife. This collaboration must have been a labor of love, done for three nights only. Guiding forces were Beth Burns of Hidden Theatre, that gifted refugee from Los Angeles who has become thoroughly Austin; the genial Robert Matney, so familiar in character roles in this town; puppet wizards Connor Hopkins, Caroline Reck and theTrouble Puppet team; musicians masked and led by Jennifer Davis, sorcerer of period music; and the slim, mysterious and exotic Djahari Clark, a bicoastal dancer who leads her own group Desert Sin.

Spectator participants gathered with their passwords at the historic Masonic building on West 7th Street. Those who know Austin theatre received a special shiver of anticipation when they realized that Bernadette Nason was the prim receptionist downstairs. Nason is a clever and personable actress in her own right -- her presence in the downstairs antechamber in itself promised astonishing events upstairs.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .