Moscow Times: Russian Theatre in Austin, Texas, by John Freedman, March 12

Russian Theater in Austin, Texas

12 March
By John Freedman


"Moscow Now, Here," the headline states in the Austin Chronicle; "The New Russian Drama Festival opens a hotline to the culture of Russia today."

That is a lead-in to a story about what one man, Graham Schmidt, has been up to for two years now, bringing Russian culture, theater and drama to Austin, Texas. This weekend he kicked off the second annual festival with three days of events that were highlighted by the English-language premiere of Maksym Kurochkin's play "The Schooling of Bento Bonchev." It all happened under the umbrella of Breaking String Theater, a producing organization that Schmidt founded in 2007 and named after a line drawn from Anton Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard."

(Please note that I translated "The Schooling of Bento Bonchev" and have been a consultant for Breaking String Theater since the first New Russian Drama Festival took place in 2011.)

"Over the last couple of years we have started to find a niche" in Austin, Schmidt told me in the wee hours of Sunday morning following the second performance of "Bento Bonchev." Numerous "prominent people attend and participate" in the activities of the festivals, which have presented the work not only of Kurochkin, but of Olga Mukhina, whose play "Flying" enjoyed its English-language premiere last year.

Schmidt calls his work on "Bento Bonchev" "fantastic," in part because he was able to have Kurochkin on hand for the final dress rehearsal and first performances, which occurred on Friday and Saturday. "It was a dream experience having the playwright in the room," he explained. Kurochkin made several practical suggestions that the director and his cast incorporated in the performance at the last minute.

"Bento Bonchev" is, in Schmidt's description, "a romantic comedy with a twist. Max imagines a world in which love does not exist." The play, he declares, "has a great deal of depth through its lightness and humor." It runs Thursdays through Sundays until March 31 at Austin's iconic Off Center.

Read more at the Moscow Times on-line . . . .

Upcoming: The New Russian Drama Festival at the Off Center, March 9 - 11

Friday, March 9 through Sunday, March 11

The Off Center
2211 Hidalgo Street, Austin, TX 78702 (click for map)

Thanks to generous support from the Center for International Theatre Development and Austin's Fusebox Festival, NRDFest is free and open to the public.

Festival Schedule

Friday, March 9

8:00pm - (American Premiere) The Schooling of Bento Bonchev

Saturday, March 10

• 2:30pm - Staged Reading: The Right of the Captain of the R.M.S. Carpathia, by Maksym Kurochkin, translated by John J. Hanlon, directd by James Loehlin
• 4:30pm - Staged Reading: Vodka, Fucking and Television, by Maksym Kurochkin, translated by John J. Hanlon, directed by Liz Fisher
• 6:30pm - A Conversation: Avant-Garde Theater in Austin and Moscow with Maksym Kurochkin, John Freedman and Robert Faires
• 8:00pm - Performance: The Schooling of Bento Bonchev

Sunday, March 11

• 3:00pm - Maksym Kurochkin's plays and contemporary Russian culture - a conversation with UT experts Tom Garza and Elizabeth Richmond-Garza
• 4:15pm - Staged Reading: Dancing, Not Dead by John Freedmanh, directed by Daria Davis
• 6:00pm - Contemporary Russian Theater - Closing remarks and a look forward, by John Freedman
• 8:00pm - Performance: The Schooling of Bento Bonchev

Click for additional information about the author and the translator at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

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Upcoming: The Schooling of Bento Bonchev by Maxsym Kurochkin, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Off Center, March 9 - 31

presents

The Schooling of Bento Bonchev

by Maxsym Kurochkin

translated by John Freedman

directed by Graham Schmidt

March 9 - 31, Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.

The Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo Street, behind Joe's Bakery and near 7th St. and Robert Martinez

Tickets: $15 - $25 General Admission
Get Your Seats

Somewhere in the not-too-distant future, a grad student named Bento runs out of patience at his typical American university. He no longer wants to study that ancient relic of human behavior called love. He no longer believes it even ever existed. It was just a myth someone dreamed up to market useless products. As Bento breaks with his mentor-professor, shuns the attentions of a young student named Sandy and feels his life falling apart, he sees the world engulfed in a furious sexual revolution and falls into happily married life - all as he strives to just connect.

Bento's opening weekend coincides with the 2012 Breaking String New Russian Drama Festival, produced in association with Austin's Fusebox Festival and the Center For International Theatre Development's New Voice and attend the 2012 Breaking String New Russian Drama Festival, produced in association with the Center for International Theatre Development through its New Visions/New Voices initiative.

NRDFest 2012 is free and open to the public, and features staged readings of new Russian plays, panel discussions including expert UT commentators Tom Garza and Elizabeth Richmond-Garza and Austin Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires, plus opportunities to meet and interact with one of Russia's most popular, important and innovative playwrights (Maksym Kurochkin himself!) as well as Bento translator and Moscow-based critic, scholar and theater-maker John Freedman - considered one of the world's leading authorities on contemporary Russian theater.

Click to view cast and crew information at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ghosts, Penfold Theatre Company and Breaking String Theatre Company at Hyde Park Theatre, October 13 - November 5 (ALT Review 2)

by Michael Meigs

The Penfold-Breaking String joint production of Ghosts is a moody, beautiful piece. Its honesty to Ibsen's 1881 text is almost a disadvantage, for among we twentieth-first century chrononauts will be some who find inexplicable and inherently comic the restraint of his language. How quaint not to name the evils: prostitution, syphillis, debauchery, incest, spouse abuse, addiction, wifely duty, madness, social convention, obligatory purity for women, licensed libertinism for men . . . .

By retaining Ibsen's approach of creating in our minds the unnamed spectres which polite company will not name, director Graham Schmidt takes us back to the sharp blacks and whites of brittle European morality of the 19th century. Never mind that in our own day we indulge and are indulged by broad fields of gray and we celebrate the colors of experiment and diversity.

The subtle set designed by Ia Ensterë captures that world, with a sort of spider web of threads along the walls, wrapping the proper 19th century living space in an evocative indefinition. Costuming by Buffy Manners gives visual reinforcement to time and place -- from Mrs. Alving's gown to the opposed masculine visions of Pastor Manders' Norwegian cleric black and Oswald's muted extravagance.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ghosts, Penfold Theatre Company and Breaking String Theatre Company at Hyde Park Theatre, October 13 - November 5 (ALT Review 1)

by Hannah Bisewski

Penfold Theatre Company and the Breaking String Theater joined forces to stage Ghosts, producing a well considered work that breathes a fresh vitality into a familiar story. Revolutionary reevaluation of old convention is precisely the theme of Ghosts.

Settling into their seats in the cramped, angular space of the Hyde Park Theatre, the audience sees a dusty, dirty, though elegant, Victorian-era living room. A dim chandelier hangs from a cobweb-lined ceiling. Given the play’s title, an uninformed audience member could reasonably guess that the cast will present a horror story.

Attractive young housemaid Regina Engstrand enters to clean the room, only to be interrupted by her scheming unwelcome father.One has no idea how entangled even the maid is in this family’s self-destructive legacy. Only during the confrontational conversation between the house’s matriarch Helene Alving and the family pastor, Manders, prompted by estate affairs following Captain Alving’s death, do the family secrets begin to spill forth. There are many, further complicated by Helene’s attempt to keep Osvald, her recently returned only son, from discovering any of them.

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

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

Received directly:

presents

Anton Chekhov’s

Uncle Vanya

directed by Graham Schmidt

June 16th - July 2nd

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

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

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

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

General Admission: $15 - 25, Sliding scale;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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