Professional Development: Theatre Teacher Summer Internships, 2013

Billy Dragoo, AHS Theatre Teacher

Tal Lostracco’s summer theatre camp is excited to announce the creation of the Teacher Internship program for current teachers to strengthen their skills in directing and technical theatre.

Receive Professional Development Credit - Get 120 hours of Professional Development/GT Credit with certificate - Choose either Directing emphasis or Technical Theatre emphasis

Directing interns get one-on-one mentoring with one of the 5 award-winning directors and serve as an assistant director for one of the camp productions. They will shadow the director through the entire process from casting to opening night. Technical interns get one-on-one mentoring with the scene designer, costume designer, lighting designer, sound designer, and/or stage manager.

Sign up today! Only 5 directing interns accepted. email orej@southwestern.edu to reserve your spot

Room and Board and Tuition: $950 includes housing and meals for the two week camp as well as tuition for the program.

Playing this week: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, Red Dragon Players, Austin High School, November 15 - 17

The AHS Red dragon players

present



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

November 15 - 17

Thursday - Saturday, 7:00 PM
$5 per person

AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL

PREAS THEATRE

1715 W. CESAR CHAVEZ

Proceeds from this production will help pay for our upcoming musical.
visit www.RedDragonPlayers.com for more details.

(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Austin High School Red Dragon Players Rated #1 in UIL One-Act Play Competition

The Red Dragon Players of Austin High School have won the UIL ONE-ACT PLAY 5A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP for the 2nd year in a row.

Last night the AHS Theatre Department broke records and received many accolades for their outstanding achievement in theatre.

Felipe Ramirez was named Best Actor in the State.

AHS won Best Actor at every level of competition with a different young man each time. (Richard Dent at District, Ian Erbe at Area, Billy Rainey at Region).

Richard Dent was named to the All-Star Cast.

Catherine Schwartz and Jasmin Weber were named to the Honorable Mention All-Star Cast.

Records Broken

• First school to ever win two back to back Championships in 5A.
• First School in 5A to advance to the State Finals six times in a row.
• Only school to advance and win a championship with a sequel.
• First school to have 4 different actors win Best Actor at four different levels of competition.

This has been an incredible year for the Austin High Theatre Department! Next month, they will take their production of Spring Awakening to the International Thespian Festival to perform in front of approximately 3000 students, teachers, directors, college/university reps, and theatre professionals from around the country.

Arts Reporting: Culturemap Profiles Austin High School and Upcoming Spring Awakening (School Edition)

Found on-line:

The 400 Club:

Red Dragon Players of Austin High present landmark production

[Spring Awakening, School Edition, December 9 - 11, 30-31]

by Michael Corcoran

When Billy Dragoo was hired to replace his retiring mentor Larry Preas as head of the theater department at Austin High School in 1993, he noticed one difference there than at other Texas high schools he had worked at or visited. “At Austin High, it’s cool to be a theater kid,” he said. "It's a welcoming environment, not a closed shop."

You won’t hear taunts of “drama queens” or “theater sissies” at Austin High, where the rich stage tradition is a source of Maroon pride.

The AHS Red Dragon Players, whose alumni includes actor Zachary Scott (Mildred Pierce), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle) and Emmy-winning actress Valerie Mahaffey (Northern Exposure), is one of the nation’s oldest continuously active drama troupes west of the Mississippi.

While the school’s football team has not won a playoff game since 1957, the theater department has won three state championships (two in the past three years), in the UIL one-act play competition. The reputation goes beyond the state, as theater companies in New York City often look to Austin High to test-stage musicals that have been adapted for high school theater.

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

Upcoming: The Magic Fire by Lillian Groag, Red Dragon Players, Austin High School, October 6 - 16

The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School consistently perform at levels considerably above those of their peers, a fact confirmed once again last year when their Over The Tavern was judged the winner among the one-act plays presented by the largest high schools in Texas.

There's some good fortune and serendipity involved there, as well as a healthy topographic/demographic input, but a good deal of the credit must go to Billy Dragoo, head of the theatre department there. In addition to his coaching and directing abilities, the man has a real teacher's touch in selecting the scripts for his talented young troupe. No "smiley-face" plays here or predictable standards. In the past couple of years I've attended Alan Ayckborne's Season's Greetings, Jane Martin's Talking With, Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest and Tom Dudzik's Over The Tabern (ranked first of the 256 competing submissions from 5A high schools in Texas). And get this, since it's now official: Austin High School will be presenting the pilot production of Spring Awakening, this coming December 8-12.

Lilllian Groag's The Magic Fire fits nicely on that shelf of challenging, instructive playscripts. This play was first produced in 1997 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with the support of a grant from a Kennedy Center New Play Fund. It's the drama of a family of Austrian and Italian immigrants to Argentina, set in the times of Peronist fascism. In the first act one gets to hear the solemn radio announcement of the death of Eva Peron.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Magic Fire by Lillian Groag, Red Dragon Players, Austin High School, October 6 - 16

Found on-line:

present

The Magic Fire

by Lillian Groag

directed by Billy Dragoo

October 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, at 7:00 PM

$7 per person

Preas Theatre. Austin High School, 1715 W. Cesar Chavez (click for map)

THE MAGIC FIRE concerns a family of Italian immigrants in the Buenos Aires of the 1950s at the time of the death of Eva Perón. The father, Otto Berg, himself a refugee from Nazi Austria, and his family find themselves trapped in the fascist system of Juan Perón's regime, and once again retreat, taking private refuge in books, music, theatre and the arts. Their next-door neighbor, Henri Fontannes, a high-ranking officer in the Peronist army, is most likely involved in secret police activity in which enemies of the state are known to "disappear." He and his wife, Angelica, share with the Bergs the geographical location of their living quarters and an ardent love for the arts. When the reality of the political situation enters the Bergs' own apartment (their maid's brother is in hiding there), they are forced to confront their ethical choices—morals and politics in place of art, and Fontannes becomes the only man who can help them.

Reserve tickets by calling the theater office ~ 512 - 414- 7311
(No credit cards accepted -- cash or checks made payable to "AHS Theatre")

Arts Reporting: Austin High School Red Dragon Players Advance to UIL One-Act Play Finals, May 11

News from the Red Dragon Circle, supporting Austin High School's theatre department:

The Red Dragon Players competed at the UIL One-Act Play Region contest on Friday in Waco with Over The Tavern. For the 5th year in a row, the RDP has advanced to the STATE FINALS! What a wonderful performance that moved the audience and the adjudicator! This advancement makes AHS and director Billy Dragoo one of only two high schools and directors in the history of the UIL One-Act Play Contest who have advanced to the statec ontest five years in a row in conference 5A. This is quite an achievement for our students and directors! They have truly worked hard and their dedication to theater shows. Congratulations! State final competition is at Bass Hall, University of Texas, on May 11.

Honorable Mention All-Star Cast
Ian Erbe
Jasmin Weber

All-Star Cast
Corbin Chase
Catherine Schwartz

Art by Yasmina Reza, 5 x 4 Productions, Preas Theatre, Austin High School, February 3 - 12

The French, oh, the French -- I squirmed often while watching 5 x 2 Productions' staging of Yasmina Reza's Art, because she captures with deadly accuracy the most galling aspects of the Gallic character.

You may well laugh at the absurdities of the premise and the reactions of the characters. Serge, a dermatologist, is proud of the painting by a fashionable artist that he has just purchased for "two hundred thousand" -- those are 1995 French francs, so roughly $40,000, not quite as much as you might initially think, but even so a high pricetag on a canvas covered with white paint.

Serge (Kyle Odom) smirks and adores the concept, the fashionable artist, and his own daring in laying out that much for art. His long-time friend Marc (Billy Dragoo) is appalled. Marc can't resist an oh-so-French campaign of intellectual attack, initially against the art piece and then inexorably against the aesthetic it represents and before too long against Serge himself. That would be a fruitless joust if Reza had left it there, but she has the good sense to introduce a third friend in this tight little circle -- Yvan, no intellectual at all, a big puppy of a man full of self-doubt and open emotion.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Art by Yasmina Reza, 5x4 Productions at Preas Theatre, Austin High School. February 3 - 12

Received directly:

5 by 4 Productions presents...

ART

by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton

directed by Jenny Lavery

A Benefit to Create Theatre Scholarships at Austin High School

Larry D. Preas Theatre on the campus of Austin High School,1715 W. Cesar Chavez (click for map)

February 3 - 5, 1-12 at 8 p.m.

Tickets $10 at www.AusTix.com, or cash/check only at the door

ART centers on the relationships of three long-time friends, Serge, Marc, and Yvan, after Serge purchases an expensive work of abstract art—a large painting consisting of white lines on a white canvas. As the three men engage in an ongoing debate over the value of the painting, emotions run high and the conflict escalates to the point of nearly destroying their friendship. As Robert Hurwitt observed in a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘‘Art isn’t about aesthetics but the psychological, emotional and power dynamics of friendship.’

French playwright Yasmina Reza garnered international acclaim with her play Art (1994), for which she received the 1998 Lawrence Olivier Award for best comedy, the 1998 Tony Award for best play and Molière awards for best author, best play, and best production.

NYU graduate and Austin newcomer Jenny Lavery makes her Austin directorial debut, alongside veteran actors Joe Reynolds, Kyle Odom and Billy Dragoo. Proceeds from this production will be used to create theatre scholarships for Austin High students pursuing degrees in theatre.

produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc

Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill, AHS Red Dragon Players, October 14 - 21

Theatre is a lens. The audience and the players look through the action in the playing space to perceive a story in the collective imagination. That story may be entertaining, or trivial, or profound, and the clarity of the vision is directly affected by the skill of the players and the willingness of the audience to engage.

The themes may be familiar. Take vampires, for instance. The century-old thrills of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel got a new boost in 1997 with Buffy. Since then they've proliferated in romance fiction, the Young Adult section in bookstores and libraries, and even Gnap! theatre's Dusk, an ongoing weekly PG-13 improv series down at the Salvage Vanguard now entering its second season. Most of the recent stories about all those undead guys are suggesting the fears and pleasures of adolescent secuality, an eminently marketable commodity in these United States. And by the way, October is the time of the theatre season when spooks and ghosts and vampires are brought frequently out onto the state.

In contrast, the vampire that appears unexpectedly in the third act of Churchill's Mad Forest is a lot older. Billy Rainey appears tired, tired to death and beyond death, sunk in the discouragement of a Romania that hasn't changed in 500 years, despite the excitements of the 1989 uprising, the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, his 90-minute hearing and the summary execution of Ceausescu and his wife Elena. Meeting the vampire in that powerful scene is Brazos Bell as an abandoned dog, desperate for food, companionship and a master. They dialogue and we understand the incomprehension between them. That scene in its magical realism captures the unsolved plight of Romania -- blood, time, history and a vulnerable desire to please.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Wonderland High, Red Dragon Players, Austin High School, May 13 - 22

The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School invest themselves gallantly in this first-anywhere musical theatre premiere. The music by James Merillat in Wonderland High is challenging and stage-quality, with several clever numbers, cleverly staged. The Players workshopped some of this material last year, according to Billy Dragoo, who runs the AHS program, and they've delivered on his promise to Merillat to stage the piece when he finished it.

The book, by Merillat and Jesse Johnson, doesn't live up to the music. It's a confused effort to meld a stereotypical "new kid in high school" story with Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. An occasional jokey reference comes through -- the Tweedle sisters are really dumb, for instance -- but most of the time it doesn't connect. The new arrival at Wonderland High is Arthur (Andrew Murray), son of the new English teacher Dr. Bloom (??). Alice Little (Kaylie DeLauri) is already in Wonderland, reigning witlessly as head cheerleader and girlfriend to the dumb leading football player Paul (Corbin Chase). New arrival Arthur gets a bloody nose from the jealous jock, then covers up cheating by Alice and her cronies, not fooling his teacher-father Dr. Bloom (Blake Nixon) for a moment. That sacrifice awakens Alice's consciousness, showing her it's okay to have your own friends and actually to be smart rather than popular. "Bad girl" Alicia (cf., the Red Queen) engineers a coup, taking over as girlfriend to the football player. Alicia's arrant manipulation of voting for homecoming king and queen rouses the citizenry to reject traditional ballot stuffing. There's some confused stuff about a time capsule and about the school store.

The smart and savvy Red Dragons aren't learning any lesson from the predictable moralizing of this concoction. It's a cautionary tale invented by some old guy, one that might best be aimed at junior high students wondering about the big, bad world of high school pressures.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Arts Reporting: Austin High Red Dragon Players, Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle, May 6

Robert Faires sketches the Red Dragon Players' reach for another honor in the state-wide UIL One Act Play contest:

UIL State One-Act Play Contest

Red Dragon redux

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Here's the score: Star player who helped lead the high school team to a state championship last year is on track for a repeat. Now, this isn't a sports story (or even an episode of Friday Night Lights), but it has all the intensity and even more of the drama – because it's the University Interscholastic League State One-Act Play contest. The school is Austin High, and its theatre program is on par with those Texas high school pigskin dynasties. Over the 17 years it's been headed by Billy Dragoo (most of that time with his wife, Annie), the Red Dragon Players have achieved national recognition – Disney approached them about field-testing its stage adaptation of High School Musical – and made the One-Act Play State finals in the 5A division now three years running. In 2009, the school's staging of Over the River and Through the Woods, co-directed by Tommy Grubbs, snagged Austin High its first state championship since 1931, and now the school has another shot at the title with the Craig Lucas comedy Reckless, which advanced from Region to State on April 23. Out in front of this effort is junior Haleigh Holt, who was named Best Actress at last year's State competition and whose turn as flighty housewife Rachel has already been recognized with Best Actress honors at the Area and Region levels and All-Star Cast honors at District and Zone. Want to cheer on these hometown thespians in their bid for a second consecutive state title? They'll perform Reckless in Session II of the 5A competition, Saturday, May 8, 7:30pm, in Bass Concert Hall, 23rd Street & Robert Dedman Drive. For more information, visit www.uil.utexas.edu/academics/drama.

Read more at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

Talking With by Jane Martin, Austin High School Red Dragons, January 8 - 16

Talking With is a collection of eleven monologues by women characters, first staged in 1981 in Louisville, Kentucky. It played off-Broadway in 1982 to great success. The identity of playwright Jane Martin remains a mystery. All of her considerable work has first been staged at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky, by that group's artistic director John Jory.

This is a collection of sharp, bittersweet portraits of women, many of whom have reacted to disappointments by melting into private worlds. An actress; a housewife who lives much of the day in the dream world of Oz; a baton twirler and a rodeo rider; an aspiring actress; a woman about to give birth to a child who may be deformed; a devotee of the plastic world of McDonald's; and more.

Martin's pieces offer actresses a moment on the high wire -- an almost bare stage, a character, and an audience to convince. Monologues run about ten minutes. They have a rhythm. Establishment; elaboration; vivid word pictures;a moment of absence; a jolt or a moment of defiance as the woman leads us, willing, to lean over her Pensieve.

Six actresses associated with the North by Northwest Theatre company did Talking With last October at the City Theatre. The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School have just done a version featuring no fewer than 27 actresses, trading out roles over the five-day run of the production.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn, Red Dragon Players at Austin High School, December 3 - 12

Their institution is ancient by Austin standards, with 80 years of theatre history under its present name, but the Red Dragon Players themselves are younger than most thespians in the town. They perform at Stephen F. Austin High School, at 1715 W. César Chavez near Mo-Pac, in the Praes Theatre, an impressive and well-equipped space with stadium seating three-quarters of the way around the playing area.

The Red Dragons' Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn played the first two weekends in December. It was an impressive, crisp and bittersweet comedy, delivered under the direction of Billy Dragoo with the snap and assurance of professional theatre.

High school players are necessarily young in years, but as this piece proves, through the consensual make believe of theatre they can transform themselves convincingly into characters of any age without the guignol of heavy makeup or caricature. For example, Brian Schwartz became Harvey, the sour 60-year-old uncle of this English family, with little more than a cursory touch of white in his hair for the first act. He inhabited that misanthropic, distrustful personality throughout with concentration and fierceness, providing the audience with moments of delighted laughter in the second act when he was repeatedly roused at night by untoward goings-on in the downstairs living room.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn, Austin High School Red Dragon Players, December 3 - 12

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, December 15


Found on-line at the site for Austin High School's Red Dragon Players:

Our December offering is Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings. It's a wonderfully clever play about a dysfunctional British Christmas.

This show, which features a nine-actor ensemble, concerns half a dozen friends and relatives who are celebrating Christmas at the home of Belinda and Neville. Squabbles -- some petty, others not so -- break out and lead to an apparent tragedy. As in all Ayckbourn plays, the humor is sometimes gentle, sometimes hilarious, yet always tempered with cynicsm and just a little darkness.

It runs two consecutive weeks, Thursday through Sunday (December 3, 4, 5 and 10, 11, 12). The curtain time for all shows is 7:00 p.m.

Tickets are $7. Seating is general admission; the house opens at 6:40 p.m. Those wishing to purchase tickets may call 414-7311.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .