Three or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

(poster design by JennyMarie Jemison)

by Brian Paul Scipione

What Philosophers Call It

A pause button: many wish for it and none achieve it.

Many of life’s moments skyrocket past us with meteor-like frenzy. Some we miss altogether, because we were simply too wrapped up in, well, what we consider to be life. Vonnegut fantasizes about something similar in Slaughterhouse Five: the ability to stretch time out like taffy, look at each and every important moment from our past, and understand how they brought us to the present. Because, honestly, we know all along as it’s happening. One thing does lead to another,r and while nothing was actually our fault, if we could do it all over again differently-- we probably would.

Three or the Sound of Existential Nothingness is not science fiction or a playful modern fantasy. It’s a modern adaption of Chekov’s masterpiece Three Sisters. The play portrays the titular trio plus one lover and one brother. No special effects or time travel involved; yet while watching the play, the spectator is whisked back and forth, through a thousand moments: many seem insignificant but all matter.

Allow me to explain, if I can (avoiding spoilers and misdirection, of course).

Jeff Mills (photo: Will Hollis Snider)

Within the first three minutes of the evening the fourth wall is shattered. No objection to that; many people know that playwright Timothy Braun is adapting 113-year-old material for a modern audience: why not take a casual approach to the format? Alas, this is only the least of the changes to this inter-dimensional story. 

The crux of the drama lies not in what Andres the brother (Jeff Mills) says directly to the audience as the de facto narrator. Rather, it consists of every little thing the characters don’t say. Here, the five players of Three truly explode the parameters of Ia Enstera’s theatre-in-the-round set-up.

Wait, let’s pause and rewind. . . .

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . . 

Video Promo by Robert Moncrieff: Three, or the or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

Robert Moncrieff's second promo video for the

presentation of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt

July 26, 27 - August 1, 2, 3, 5 - August 8, 9, 10 - August 14, 15, 16, 17

at The Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery) - click for map

In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect. 

Photos by Will Hollis Snider for Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

A photo spread by Will Hollis Snider with costumes by Jamie Urban for the

presentation of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt

July 26, 27 - August 1, 2, 3, 5 - August 8, 9, 10 - August 14, 15, 16, 17 

at The Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery) - click for map

In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect.

Cami Alys, Dawn Youngs, Gricelda Silva, Jeff Mills (image: Will Hollis Snider)

Gricelda Silva (image: Will Hollis Snider)

David Higgins, Chris Gibson (photo: Will Hollis Snider)

Click to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Video Promo: Three, or the Existential Sound of Nothingness, Breaking String Theatre at the Off-Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

Robert Moncrieff's promotional video for the










staging of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt


July 26 - August 17, 2013 (dates and times TBA)

at The Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery) - click for map


In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect.

Click for additional information at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

THREE by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off CTHREE, Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre, Graham Schmidt, Austin, Texas, Austin Live Theatreenter, July 26 - August 17, 2013

presents

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness
by Timothy Braun
directed by Graham Schmidt
July 26 - August 17, 2013 (dates and times TBA)
at The Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery) - click for map

As the final production in its 2012-2013 season, Breaking String Theater will stage Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, directed by Graham Schmidt.

Three posits a small family adrift in a far-flung provincial town, scouring highly circumscribed existences for meaning, and the modest joys that make day-to-day living bearable. Having borrowed themes and fragments from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece, Three Sisters, Mr. Braun reshaped the play, achieving a magically realistic world in which the ensemble will explore Chekhov's themes and concerns, colliding them with the images and sounds of contemporary life as we live it, asking again where we are going as individuals and as a race, where to find "our Moscow," and why we feel ever more lonely even among those we know the best.

With Three, for the first time Breaking String will draw on its strengths as a company rooted in meticulously dramaturged Chekhovian productions, this time using that knowledge to fuel a new-play development process, loosely based on that employed for the highly successful Austin riff on Hamlet, - The Assumption.

We have partnered with Timothy Braun - an accomplished and innovative playwright who brings a commitment to contemporary forms and fresh perspectives to Breaking String, best demonstrated in his work as Editor of New and Social Media for Fusebox Festival - as well as a stellar ensemble comprising artists who will be instantly recognizable to frequent patrons of Austin's vibrant new-work and experimental performance community: Cami Alys (The Rude Mechs' I've Never Been So Happy, Intergalactic Nemesis), Jeff Mills (The Assumption), Dawn Youngs (Dionysium, The Schooling of Bento Bonchev by Maksym Kurochkin), Chris Gibson (Intergalactic Nemesis) and Gricelda Silva (Trouble Puppet Theatre Co.; Glass Half Full Theatre Co.; Flying by Olga Mukhina). The creative team is rounded out by all-star designers, including perennial standout scenic-lighting pair Ia Enstera and Steven Shirey, Glenda Barnes (costumes) and Buzz Moran (sound).

Mr. Braun wrote Three at a playwriting residency during the summer of 2012; in December, the play received a reading at Hyde Park Theatre, and after a brief development process, the play will receive its world premiere at The Off Center this summer.

For more information about Mr. Braun, please visit his website: timothybraun.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Third New Russian Drama Festival and Two One-Acts by Yury Klavdiev, Breaking String Theatre Company, February 6 - 16

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


The third annual New Russian Drama Festival in Austin, organized and hosted by Breaking String Theatre Company and its artistic director, Graham Schmidt, offered a full weekend of theatre to Austin, with impressive guests, panel discussions, staged readings, a musical program and full stage presentations of two world-class one-act plays by the preeminent contemporary playwright Yury Klavdiev. My first and 
last impressions are that Austin is fortunate indeed simply to have access to such theatrical and artistic enrichment in the course a single weekend.

The core of the festival is the full staging of the Klavdiev works I Am the Machine Gunner and Martial Arts. They are well-matched and exemplary of new Russian drama. At one of the talkback sessions, an audience member asked translator John Freedman what characterized contemporary Russian drama. Freedman’s an intellectual, an observer, and a practitioner who could have offered a long-winded literary exposition, but his initial response was terse and to the point: “Violence.” Since the fall of the U.S.S.R. Russian playwrights have focused not on politics but on the dark side of capitalism and its new avenues for crime. Panel discussants detailed diametrically opposed political views of producing playwrights, usually by categorizing them as pro or con on President Putin’s policies.

I am the Machine Gunner led the evening’s program. Actor Joey Hood performed it as a solo, although the later panel discussion informed us that elsewhere it had been staged for two actors and even nine actors. In Austin it was Hood alone, shifting throughout the forty-minute performance between two characters: a contemporary street criminal and his grandfather, a combat veteran of World War II. I Am the Machine Gunner was more than just overwhelming.

Translator Freedman told us that among contemporary Russian playwrights, Klavdiev is foremost for taking an “in your face” approach. Blood, death and the f-word filled the air, nowhere more climactically than when Hood stood far downstage center and opened the mind of the machine gunner in a delirium of killing the leaves on the trees, shooting down the moon, filling the blue sky with black bullet holes and finally, finally ending the pain by destroying the earth.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

VIdeo by Robert Moncrief for Breaking String's 'I Am A Machine Gunner' and 'Martial Arts' by Yury Klavdiev, February 6 - 16

Video promo by Robert Moncrief posted by









for its production of

STRIKE: MARTIAL ARTS and I AM THE MACHINE GUNNER 

by Yury Klavdiev

directed by Graham Schmidt
 February 7 - 9 and 13 - 16, 2013

(note: includes a performance on Wednesday, February 13)

Click to purchase tickets via the Breaking String website

Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. - click for map

New Russian Drama Festival, Breaking String Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, February 9 and 10, 2013

presents














Our third annual New Russian Drama Festival, to take place at Salvage Vanguard Theater from February 8 - 10, promises an opportunity for particularly rich immersion in the best that Russian theater has to offer today. Celebrated Russian playwright Yury Klavdiev will join us for a 5-day Austin residency, where he will join visiting artists David White (A.D., Generous Company), John Freedman (Theater Correspondent, The Moscow Times), Pavel Shishin (A.D., 5th Theater, Omsk), and Maria Kroupnik (Independent Producer, Moscow) for a weekend of discussions around contemporary Russian theater, and Mr. Klavdiev's work. The main event for the festival will be Breaking String Artistic Director Graham Schmidt's staging of two Klavdiev plays, forming a single night of theater: Martial Arts (adapted by David White) and I am the Machine Gunner (translated by John Freedman).

Salvage Vanguard Theater
2803 Manor Road, Austin TX 78722

February 8 - 10, 2013

Festival Schedule

Staged readings and panel discussions are free and open to the public. Join us!

Thursday, February 7

• 8:00 PM: Strike: Two plays by Yury Klavdiev

Friday, February 8

• 8:00 PM: Strike: Two plays by Yury Klavdiev

• 10:00 PM: Talkback with adaptor David White, and translator John Freedman

Saturday, February 9

• 2:30pm - Staged Reading: Trash, by Mikhail Durnenkov, translated by John Freedman, directd by Beth Burns
• 4:30pm - Staged Reading: Political Play, by Lasha Bugadze, translated by John Freedman and Maya Mamaladze, directed by Bob Jones
• 6:30pm - On Contemporary Russian Theater: John Freedman, Masha Kroupnik, Pavel Shishin
• 8:00pm - Strike: Two plays by Yury Klavdiev

Sunday, February 10

• 6:00pm - Contemplating International Collaboration: Russia - US Models
• 8:00 PM: Golden Hornet Project: Prokofiev Miniatures

JOHN FREEDMAN has translated three dozen Russian plays which have been performed in the United States, Canada, England, Australia and South Africa, including five works by Maksym Kurochkin. His translation of Olga Mukhina's Flyingwas produced in 2011 at Breaking String Theater. He has published and/or edited nine books about Russian theater, and for two decades has been the theater critic of The Moscow Times. He was the Russia director of The New Russian Drama project at Towson University, 2007- 2010, and the director of the U.S.-government supported New American Plays for Russia program, 2010-2012. With the company and Jennifer Johnson he was co-author of the Double Edge Theatre performance The Firebird in 2010, and his play Dancing, Not Dead won the new play competition conducted by The Internationalists in 2011.

DAVID WHITE: Artistic Director of WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory since 2007; faculty member in the Department of Theatre Arts, Towson University; and playwright-in-residence of Generous Company. Playwriting: Last Chance: Trash & Ninjas and Squirrels: Studio Theatre, Towson University (2012); Leaves of Hope: reading, Joplin, MO (2012); and Enough: reading, ArtFaq Café, Moscow, RU (2011). Translations (with Yury Urnov): Yury Klavdiev’s Martial Arts (US premiere - Towson University / CITD New Russian Drama Conference); and Pavel Pryzhko’s Panties (reading - WordBRIDGE 2011). Publication: Atom-Smashing Playwright A US Perspective on Yury Klavdiev, Contemporary Dramaturgy, Moscow, RU (2010). Directing: US premiere of Klavdiev's I am the Machine Gunner: Baltimore, Chicago, and San Diego (2010); and George Brant's Elephant's Graveyard: Towson University (2010). Current Project: The Beholder's Share, a devised piece of theatre examining connectiosn between art and neurobiology.

MARIA KROUPNIK A Moscow-based project manager, translator, and media specialist, cooperates with a number of Russian theatres, including Teatr.doc, J. Beuys Theatre, Theatre ‘Centre for Playwriting and Directing.’ Her translations/subtitle adaptations of Nina Belitskaya’s Pavik Is My God and Elena Gremina’s 1 Hour 18 Minutes were showcased at the Golden Mask Festival’s Russian Case in 2010 and 2011. In conjunction with Yale University, she translated Meg Miroshnik’s The Fairytale Life of the Russian Girls, which was featured as part of their “Workshop on Begovaya” project, performed in December 2011. Kroupnik has also worked in media and public affairs for the British Embassy in Moscow and the British Council in Moscow.

PAVEL SHISHIN Literary Director of the Fifth Theater. Omsk is considered by many to be a theatrical city surpassed in reputation only by Moscow, St. Petersburg and, perhaps, Yekaterinburg. The Fifth Theater, created 20 years ago, has contributed a great deal to that reputation. It is a house that champions new, cutting edge work, often supporting it with workshops and festivals. The Fifth Theater is the host of the biannual Young Theaters of Russia festival which brings many emerging artists to perform in Omsk. Pavel has been instrumental in running this festival, as well as several new drama workshops that have helped bring important new plays to the attention of Russian theater.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Video by Robert Moncrief for Strike, a double bill by Yury Klavdiev, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 7 - 16, 2013

Robert Moncrief's video of Joey Hood, Molly Karrasch and Kaci Beeler of









talking about 

STRIKE:

MARTIAL ARTS and I AM THE MACHINE GUNNER

by Yury Klavdiev

presented February 7 - 16, 2013 at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. (click for map) in conjunction with the third New Russian Drama Festival.

 

Click for additional information at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Upcoming: MARTIAL ARTS and I AM THE MACHINE GUNNER by Yury Klavdiev, Breaking String Theatre New Russian Drama Festival at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 8 - 10, 2013

presents

MARTIAL ARTS and I AM THE MACHINE GUNNER 

by Yury Klavdiev

February 8 - 10, 2013

Breaking String Theatre New Russian Drama Festival at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre

Our third annual New Russian Drama Festival, to take place at Salvage Vanguard Theater from February 8 - 10, promises an opportunity for particularly rich immersion in the best that Russian theater has to offer today. Celebrated Russian playwright Yury Klavdiev will join us for a 5-day Austin residency, where he will join visiting artists David White (A.D., Generous Company), John Freedman (Theater Correspondent, The Moscow Times), Pavel Shishin (A.D., 5th Theater, Omsk), and Maria Kroupnik (Independent Producer, Moscow) for a weekend of discussions around contemporary Russian theater, and Mr. Klavdiev's work.

The main event for the festival will be Breaking String Artistic Director Graham Schmidt's staging of two Klavdiev plays, forming a single night of theater: Martial Arts (adapted by David White) and I am the Machine Gunner (translated by John Freedman). 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Vodka, Fucking and Television by Maksym Kurochkin, Breaking String Theatre, November 29 - December 15

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

This play, written in 2003, may reach an apex in the new generation of Russian plays. Breaking String Theater Company is getting used to this Russian art explosion, having produced a number of Russian plays in translation, and producing this extremely well written comedy with an exceptional ensemble of some of Austin’s most talented actors. Liz Fisher directs Vodka, Fucking and Television for Breaking String.

The only speed bump in the raceway to success for this sparkling vehicle is the obscenity in the title, which seems to have inhibited some of the more conventional marketing modes. No problem. Judging from the enthusiastic audience on opening night, word of mouth alone will counteract the dearth of posters in grocery stores.

The story behind VF+T is that of Russian theatrical creativity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The conduit for funneling the best new plays into English translations and on into the English-speaking world has been John Freedman, theatre writer for the Moscow Times. Graham Schmidt, Breaking String’s producing artistic director, describes Freedman as the rare man in the right place at the right time: he was visiting Moscow on a Fulbright to write his doctoral dissertation on Russian playwright Erdman when the Iron Curtain fell. Freedman moved to Russia, and the rest is ongoing cultural arts history. Freedman has been instrumental in bringing Maksym Kurochkin to the attention of the West. For more on this story, read Michael Meigs’ profile of VF+T and Liz Fisher for AustinLiveTheatre.com.

VF+T takes its title from the three vices that beset a 33-year-old writer and Red Army veteran variously referred to as Hero, Poet or Writer. His name is just as symbolic as are those of the other characters. He is Everyman (artist variant), portrayed by Noel Gaulin. In one of the most effective play openings that I have seen in the curtainless postmodern era, the house opens with Gaulin already onstage in pajamas and robe in the midst of his small but serviceable Moscow flat. The interior design is definitely post-Soviet Union; the room has central heating. 

Gaulin spins and contorts in apparent writer’s block, his grimacing face lit mostly by the laptop screen mocking him with its emptiness. The vices have a peculiar presence in the apartment, too: the flat-screen TV blares, and, pity Russia, its daytime TV is worse than ours (unfortunately, a good third of the audience misses the flat screen amusements because a table and pile of blankets block them). The kitchen sink if full of dirty dishes and used drinking glasses and bottles of vodka and wine are everywhere. The bed clothing and scattered blankets and comforters convey the tumbled look of recent sex, hinting perhaps at more to come.

Hero struggles and eventually declines into a a giant hallucinatory spasm. The personified vices materialize and swirl around him. The vices loudly claim triumph over the writer, backing him into every corner in the flat. Clutching for control, Hero declares that he will reclaim mastery if he can banish at least one of the vices from his life.

The rest of the play is a kind of reverse Judgment of Paris. Hero insists that each vice must make its best case for staying in his life, and he says he will expel the vice with the least compelling argument. Of course, aided by addictive denial, all the vices make great cases for themselves. The ensuing speeches are a showcase of Kurochkin’s writing skill, and they all jab and torture Hero’s weakening psyche.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Profile: Breaking String's Vodka, Fucking and Television by Maxsym Kurochkin, November 29 - December 18

 

by Michael Meigs


It's a long way from Chekhov's elegiac The Seagull to Maksym Kurochkin's Vodka, Fucking and Television. If Graham Schmidt, artistic director of Breaking String Theatre, were teaching courses on modern Russian drama -- which he is not, having decided for the time being to do rather than to teach -- then Chekhov's first major play, staged in 1896, would probably be on the assigned reading list for the first or second week of the fall semester. Not until one of the concluding classes in the spring semester would VF+T appear, as a 2003 piece that helped shape the resurgence of the production of contemporary original drama in Russia.

If the grad students were lucky, they might get to meet Max Kurochkin, the playwright, either in person or via Skype, since over the past couple of years Schmidt has gotten himself involved in a big U.S.-Russia theatre cultural project financed by the U.S. State Department, one that reaches beyond the capitals and the big-money producers to a handful of theatre-rich regional hotspots including Austin.

There are a couple of other ways to draw lines  between the Chekhov and the Kurochkin works, and those also involve Austin.  Breaking String's The Seagull was staged in October 2007. Director Graham Schmidt had translated the play. After working with many of the same artists in two other Chekhov pieces, he turned the company's focus to what's happening now in Russia.

For me these pieces anchor a timeline, however provisionally.  That 2007 Seagull was one of the first theatre pieces that Karen and I attended after relocating to Austin five years ago. It provided our entry point to a creative culture that continues to astonish and to delight -- an experience that directly prompted the eventual establishment of AustinLiveTheatre.com. 

Austin actress Liz Fisher and her husband Robert Matney were both in that memorable Seagull and in subsequent Breaking String productions. Last year during the company's second annual New Russian Drama Festival, Fisher and friends got together to do a staged reading of VF+T, presented as lagniappe to the company's full staging of Kurochkin's The Education of Bento Bonchev. She later agreed to direct a fully staged production of Kurochkin's comic and decidedly odd little twenty-first-century morality play. It opens this week at the Hyde Park Theatre for a three-weekend run.


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

Funding Appeal: Vodka, F***ing and Television by Maxsym Kurochkin, Breaking String Theatre

Breaking String's artistic director Graham Schmidt and director Liz Fisher appeal via Kickstarter for $4200, about a third of the budget for Vodka, F***ing and Television by Maxsym Korochkin, to be staged at the Hyde Park Theatre in Austin November 29 - December 15. Click the Kickstarter logo to go to the donations page for more information and to donate.

A writer struggles with his vices, in a twisted comedy by one of Russia's finest living playwrights, Maksym Kurochkin.

• Launched: Oct 24, 2012 Goal: $4200
• Funding ends: Nov 21, 2012

NEW RUSSIAN DRAMA!

Vodka, F***ing and Television by Maksym Kurochkin, directed by Liz Fisher, translated by John J. Hanlon is a hit play by one of Russia's greatest living playwrights, and it's being staged by Breaking String Theatre Co. in Austin, Texas. Facing a nervous breakdown, our hero - a struggling writer - resolves to quit the vices that are holding him back.

The twist?

In a move worthy of Tim Burton, Kurochkin propels actors and audience into a strange fantasy, and transforms the three vices - vodka, f***ing and television - into full-fledged characters. Each vice gets a chance to justify its presence in the hero's life, or get the boot. With a sexy script, mind-blowing design and performances from one hell of a creative team, this show promises to make a splash.


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

Liz Fisher on Maxsym Kurochkin's Vodka, Fucking and Television, Breaking String Theatre blog

Liz Fisher's Vodka, Fucking and Television

by Graham Schmidt on the Breaking String blog, July 15

Liz Fisher (image: Will Hollis Snider)

 

I caught up with Liz Fisher a few days ago for a cup of coffee and some talk on her upcoming work with Breaking String - a full-on production of Vodka, Fucking and Television by 2012 New Russian Drama Festival spotlight artist Maksym Kurochkin, to be staged at Hyde Park Theatre this coming November. Fisher's pale blue eyes, smokey voice and arresting stage presence have knocked out thousands of Austin theater-goers over the past decade, and her work with Breaking String's been extensive, with award-winning performances in The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and as a co-producer of the inaugural 2011 New Russian Drama Festival.

Fisher - an old hand when it comes to new plays - projects palpable excitement at the idea of staging a Kurochkin piece. "Maksym writes these sprawling, epic stories, some of them even have a mythic feel, mixing reality with fantasy, spanning centuries. This one's a four-hander, it's compact, but even here he's skewering audience assumptions, pranking all over the place, pushing against his own limits.”

Fisher's upcoming production grew out of her work on the second annual NRDFest this past March (here's a rundown on Breaking String's efforts to link Austin with Moscow's contemporary theater scene). To complement the American premiere of The Schooling of Bento Bonchev, she worked up a staged reading of Kurochkin's 2003 comedy. Vodka introduces the "Hero" - a writer at the end of his rope who tries shedding the vices that hold him back. The plot hinges on a delightful, irreverant device: Kurochkin presents these vices as characters - Vodka, Fucking and Television - who are challenged to justify their presence in the hero's life, or get the boot.

From her first encounter with Max's work, Fisher sensed its "Austin" vibe. "It felt young, fresh, smart, darkly comic, and there's so much new work being staged here. And of course, with Vodka being a four-hander, it was perfect for a staged reading. Right after the festival, Robert Faires said it'd be easy to mistake Max for an Austin playwright, and I think he really nailed it."

Read more at the Breaking String blog. . . .

Images by Will Hollis Snider: Uncle Vanya, Breaking String Theatre Company, June - July 3

Performance photos taken by Will Hollis Snider for

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

Click to view additional images by Will Hollis Snider at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, Penfold Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, October 13 - November 5

Found on-line:

and

present

Ghosts

by Henrik Ibsen
Adapted and directed by Graham Schmidt
Co-produced with Breaking String Theatre
Classic drama
Running time: About 2 hours 15 minutes, with one intermission.
Content advisory: For mature audiences.

October 13 - November 5, 2011
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm. Sunday, November 5 at 2:00pm.

Hyde Park Theatre (Map it) 511 West 43rd Street

A special reception will follow the show on opening night.$20 Regular, $18 Students / seniors, $25 Opening night.Tickets go on sale later this season. For more information, call (512) 850-4849 or email us at info@penfoldtheatre.org.

Yesterday's secrets return to haunt you. Tomorrow, a new orphanage will be dedicated in honor of the late Captain Alving, but his widow is tormented by the ghosts of family secrets. Keeping these secrets may prove an impossible burden, but exposing them could spell ruin for the entire family. This classic masterpiece of modern drama features Babs George is produced in partnership with Breaking String Theatre.

Profile: The Moscow-Austin Connection: Breaking String Ties Knots

Chekhov ends his elegiac Cherry Orchard with a stage direction and sound that contrast in eerie fashion with the moving, realistically acted story of a Russian provincial family's loss of its estate and way of life: "A distant sound is heard that seems to come from the sky, the sound of a breaking string mournfully dying away."

The company that coalesced around UT graduate student Graham Schmidt for The Seagull in 2007 and for The Cherry Orchard in 2009 took that transcendent ending moment as its emblem. It included some of Austin's very best, most serious actors, both Equity members and non-professional devotees. Last year, with his UT master's degree in hand, Schmidt was looking at Ph.D. programs elsewhere. It looked as if the Breaking String Theatre Company might drift away as did the family that lost the cherry orchard.

Unexpected opportunities changed that. Some background: in their first meeting in April 2009 President Obama and President Medvedev agreed to sponsor increased bilateral cooperation in several areas, including the arts. Philip Arnoult, a shaggy international theatre impresario associated with the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) at Towson University in Maryland had been working with a shaggy American journalist and translator long resident in Moscow, John Freedman. Arnoult had been concentrating on eastern Europe but Freedman and others enticed him into a closer engagement with Russian theatre. Graham Schmidt got wrapped up in these contacts at just about the time that the United States embassy in Moscow got a new minister-counselor for public affairs, Michael Hurley.

Hurley's predecessor had favored sponsoring visits to Russia of high-profile big-splash U.S. performers. Hurley sought out John Freedman at the Moscow Times and learned that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a vigorous, new and very unofficial movement had been underway in Russian theatre. Some of the U.S. government money for bilateral promotion went into an Arnoult-Freedman effort to collect and translate scripts from this "New Russian Drama." Arnoult now has a collection of 26 translated new Russian playscripts that he has been handing out to theatre companies and drama opinion-makers across the United States. (Click for Freedman's February 11 column on the bilateral initiative.)

One of the first of those seeds to sprout is Flying by Olga Mukhina in Freedman's translation, currently playing in Breaking String's exciting production at the Rude Mechs' Off Center stage here in Austin, Texas.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Flying by Olga Mukhina, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, January 28 - February 19

ALT's first take, for NowPlayingAustin's "A-Team":

Olga Mukhina’s Flying is a fast, dangerous and exhilarating ride.

Graham Schmidt and Breaking String Theatre put audiences up close to the beautiful youth of post-Soviet Russia in this 2004 piece. Olga Mukhin Qa one of those who originated the “New Drama” that came raging into Russia's mid-1990’s. It plays until February 19 at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street (behind Joe’s Bakery on 7^th Street).

Heedless, hedonistic and rootless, a gang of six young professionals address one another only by their remarkable nicknames. Snowstorm, Blizzard, Snowflake, Maniac, Orangina and Lenochka strut, talk, preen and play hard. They revolve about one another and thrust themselves through the drab Moscow nights like shooting stars. Director Schmidt, choreographer Adrian Mishler and composer Justin Sherburn give this story a kinetic power that leaves the audience breathless at the end of the first half.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: New Russian Drama Festival, Breaking String, Rude Mechs, Scriptworks and UT at the Off Center, January 28 - 31

Found on-line:

in association with the Rude Mechanicals and the Fusebox International Theatre Festival proudly presents

The Breaking String New Russian Drama Festival

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

January 28th through January 31st

Thanks to support from the Center for International Theater Development and its director, Philip Arnoult, Breaking String is proud to host two of Russia’s most important contemporary playwrights: Maksym Kurochkin and Olga Mukhina.

All Festival events, except performances Flying, are free and open to the public. Join us!

Friday, January 28

• 8:00 PM: North American Premiere of Flying by Olga Mukhina, translated by John Freedman.

Saturday, January 29

• 12:30 PM: Discussion on New Russian Drama. Panelists: Olga Mukhina and Maksym Kurochkin
• 2:00 PM: Panel Discussion: New Russian Drama in Context. Panelists from the University of Texas at Austin: Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Thomas Garza, and Seth Wolitz
• 4:00 PM: Staged Reading of YoU, by Olga Mukhina, translated by John Freedman. Directed by Liz Fisher
• 8:00 PM: Flying by Olga Mukhina, translated by John Freedman

Sunday, January 30

• 1:00 PM: Discussion of the Center for International Theatre Development's New Plays for Russia Initiative, with CITD Director Philip Arnoult
• 3:00 PM: Staged reading Repress and Excite, by Maksym Kurochkin, translated by John Freedman. Directed by James Loehlin.
• 8:00 PM: Flying by Olga Mukhina

Monday, January 31

• 6:00 PM: Austin Scriptworks Panel Discussion on new play development in Russia and the United States. With Scriptworks Director Christi Moore, Olga Mukhina and Maksym Kurochkin.