Upcoming: Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, Trinity University, April 13 - 21

presents

Cloud 9

by Caryl Churchill

directed by Stacey Connelly

April 13 - 15, 18 - 21

Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.

Stieren Theatre, Ruth Taylor Theatre Building (#3 and #3A), Trinity University, San Antonio (click for campus map; click for Google area map)

Tickets Regular: $10, Seniors/Faculty/Alumni: $8, Students: $6 CASH, CHECK, OR TIGER BUCKS ONLY!
To reserve tickets call (210) 999-8515 or email tutheater@trinity.edu

Upcoming: Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, Southwestern University, September 28 - October 2

Click for ALT review, October 4

Found on-line:

presents

Cloud Nine

By Caryl Churchill
Directed by Christi Moore

September 28 - October 2, 2011
7pm | Wednesday & Thursday
8pm | Friday & Saturday
3pm | Sunday

Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Theater, Southwestern University, Georgetown

click for campus map (see item 13) click for driving directions

(purchase tickets)

Set in colonial Africa and late 20th century Britain, the play explores relationships - between women and men, men and men, women and women. It’s about sex, power, politics, money and Queen Victoria. Presented in an unforgettable juxtaposition of satire, farce, high and low comedy and uncompromising prose that is funny and slightly disturbing. (Adult subject matter for mature audiences only)

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 . . . .

Upcoming: Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill, Texas State University, San Marcos, February 11-14

Found on-line:




presents

Vinegar Tom

by Caryl Churchill
directed by Lara Willars
February 11-13 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, February 14 at 2 p.m
Theatre Center: PSH Foundation Studio Theatre
Tickets:$8 general admission and $5 for students with a valid Texas State ID

Written by one of England's foremost contemporary playwrights Vinegar Tom transports the audience back to the seventeenth-century witch hunts and the role of women within the male-dominated society of the time. With glimpses of past and present intermixed, Caryl Churchill creates a world filled with both vivid imagery and poignant characters.

Cast

Alice Terissa Kelton
Susan Allison Gregory
Joan Ashley Rountree
Margery Leslie Monge
Jack Geoffrey Douglas
Betty Ragan Rhodes
Ellen Stephanie Marlow
Goody Tina Morille
Packer Zach Schulte
Man Wesley Crump
Doctor/
Bellringer Nicolas Kier
Kramer Curtis Barber

A Number by Caryl Churchill, Different Stages, April 23 - May 10

The concept of human cloning is profoundly unsettling.

We like the fact each of us is unique. Individuality situates us in the universe and in our own skins. Each of us might fantasize a different reality or our self as a different individual, but we intuit that even those avatars, if realized, would be unique.

The existence of fraternal twins or triplets is nature's benevolent random trick that reinforces our faith in our own individuality. Nature has made each of us.

But suppose that nature took a backseat in the process?

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

World Theatre Day Observance: Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill, Cambiare Productions and Austin Circle of Theatres, March 27

The speech for World Theatre Day written by Brazilian author Augusto Boal was read by Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle. Boal's comments are brief, but they sum up a lifetime of theatre, political activism and teaching, following his arrest by the Brazilian military government in 1972 and twelve years in exile. Boal's principal concept is expressed immediately in the opening:

All human societies are “spectacular” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre! . . . .

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.

About 30 persons came to the Dougherty Arts Center for the Theatre Day commemoration, the staged reading of Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children, and the discussion of the play. The group was diverse. By the end of the event we'd encountered students, actors, a playwright, the organizers, a Jewish couple in their late 60s, a Palestinian man, a Frenchwoman and two women from Palestine.

Seven Jewish Children is a stark piece of only about 170 lines, divided into seven sections of unequal length. Playing time is hardly ten minutes, and one can scan the text in far less than that. The version available on-line from the Royal Court Theatre contains no stage directions, other than the comment that the piece may be read or performed without fee anywhere, by any number of people.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming for World Theatre Day: Seven Jewish Children, staged reading by Cambiare Productions, March 27

UPDATE: Review of Seven Jewish Children, published by Austin Live Theatre on March 29

Received March 20:














Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children to Premiere in Austin
To celebrate World Theatre Day, Austin Circle of Theaters teams with Cambiare Productions to present a staged reading of Churchill’s controversial new work, Seven Jewish Children. Free.

As part of the global celebration of World Theatre Day, Austin Circle of Theaters in collaboration with Cambiare Productions will present a staged reading and discussion of Caryl Churchill's controversial new work, Seven Jewish Children, at the Dougherty Arts Center (1110 Barton Springs Road, Austin) on March 27, 2009 at 8PM.

In the aftermath of the Israel/Gaza war in January of this year, noted playwright Caryl Churchill crafted this emotional response. Structured to reflect seven key moments in Israel’s history, Churchill's short piece asks how parents would explain these complex events to their child. The February premiere at the Royal Court Theatre created a firestorm in the London press as editorials and columns debated whether or the play was inherently anti-Semitic.

This Austin premiere, read by a cast of Austin luminaries, with a discussion to follow facilitated by Robert Faires and C. Denby Swanson, is the perfect way to celebrate the power of live theater to move us and to stimulate conversation even on the most delicate of topics.

The program will begin at 8:00 PM; admission is free.

The performance will be streamed live at CambiareProductions.com

The author requests donations to the UK charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians, which can be given online at www.map-uk.org/ or at the performance.

World Theatre Day was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). It is celebrated annually on the 27th March by ITI Centres and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to mark this occasion. One of the most important of these is the circulation of the World Theatre Day International Message through which at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares his or her reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day International Message was written by Jean Cocteau (France) in 1962. The 2009 International message was written by Augusto Boal.

Boal’s message, together with Churchill’s provocative work and Travis Bedard’s passion to engage Austin in World Theatre Day inspired ACoT to get behind Cambiare Productions’ effort. Helping emerging artists and theatre groups do their thing has long been part of what ACoT is about.

About Austin Circle of Theaters (ACoT): ACoT is a not-for-profit performing arts service organization working to create greater public awareness, participation, and support for our local performing arts community. Founded in 1974, ACoT membership includes more than 130 large and small arts organizations in Central Texas as well as their practitioners and enthusiasts. Its website, NowPlayingAustin.com, is a portal for all arts and cultural activities in Austin.

Austin Circle of Theaters is funded in part by City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from Texas Commission on the Arts.


About Cambiare Productions: Cambiare Productions is committed to stories in all forms with a focus on collaborative creation, and the use of technology in live performance. For more information on Cambiare Productions please visit www.CambiareProductions.com.


TEXT of Churchill's play, published by the Royal Court Theatre, London (.pdf)

Wikipedia on the piece and the controversy