'Tis Pity She's A Whore by John Ford, 7 Towers Theatre Company at the Cathedral of Junk

(image: 7 Towers Theatre via Facebook)

by Michael Meigs


At the intermission beneath the giant writhing oak tree behind the Cathedral of Junk my wife leaned over and whispered. "These actors are really good."


John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore is a tangled skein, for sure, and it builds inexorably from a canter to a gallop to a thundering bloody finish that's if anything bloodier and more devastating than that of Shakespeare's Hamlet, staged some thirty years earlier. 'Tis Pity does not reach Shakespeare's heights but the thump of its meaty iambics and the hair-raising central intrigues of incest, betrayal, duplicity and murder deliver a spectacle from which you cannot divert your eyes, as much as sometimes you might wish to do so.


It's also a tour de force for the recently founded 7 Towers Theatre Company, the second smashing artistic success in its eight-month existence. This gives it so far the sort of clean sweep that World War II submarine crews would celebrate by hoisting a broom over the conning tower as they sailed back into port.


Director Christina Gutierrez and Aaron Black as her second chose to concentrate this explosive stuff into a small cast, assigning two and three roles to all except Kevin Gates, playing the obsessed and rabidly jealous brother Giovanni and to newcomer Sara Cormier as Annabella, the sister who cedes in docile, almost wooden fashion to his entreaties.


The rest of those on stage slip in, out and through the remaining characters with shifts of costume, altered stances, changed voices, and above all visible and highly credible changes of presence and motivation.

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

Upcoming: 'Tis Pity She's A Whore by John Ford, 7 Towers Theatre Company, June 22 - July 15

presents

'Tis Pity She's A Whore

by John Ford

directed by Christina Gutierrez

June 22 - July 15, Fridays - Sundays at 7:30 p.m.

No performance on Sunday, June 24

at the Cathedral of Junk, 4422 Lareina St. (click for map)

Join us for 7 Towers' first site-specific verse play: A late Renaissance play about incest, revenge, and destruction.

Following the success of last December's Burn This, 7 Towers' first season continues with our first classical verse play.

John Ford's late Renaissance revenge tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a story of forbidden love and the disastrous consequences of a society that attempts to legislate morality. A play in which an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister stands out as honest and pure, 'Tis Pity is hyper-modern in its skewed explorations of love, gender, taboo, faith, and corruption.

We will be staging 'Tis Pity at Austin's own Cathedral of Junk (4422 Lareina Drive), a space whose very construction similarly forces visitors to adjust their ideas and perceptions of reality.

Eight talented Austin actors portray 19 characters in this fast-paced tragedy, interlaced with moments of tenderness, high comedy, and passion.

Friday-Sunday nights June 22-July 15
(no show Sunday, June 24)
All shows at 7:30

$15 suggested donation.
Seating is limited, and can be reserved in advance with a $15 donation at www.wepay.com/events/tispity
Otherwise, seating is first-come, first-served

Directed by Christina Gutierrez
Assistant director/Set Design: Aaron Black
Costume Design: Sally Ziegler
Dramaturgy: Eleanor Owicki

Kevin Gates as Giovanni
Sara Cormier as Annabella
Travis Bedard as Friar/Bergetto/Cardinal
David Boss as Florio/Poggio
Devin Finn as Grimaldi/Officer/Banditto
Nathan Lahay as Vasquez/Richardetto
Sam Mercer as Soranzo/Donado
Megan Rabuse as Putanna/Hippolyta

The Green Bird by Gozzi at the Cathedral of Junk, August 11 - 20

by Michael Meigs

Adriana Montenegro and friends have a good time presenting The Green Bird at the Cathedral of Junk at 4422 Lareina Street in South Austin. If you like many others in Austin haven't visited Vince Hanneman's towering backyard construction of strangeness, this free show for Thursday through Saturday evenings would be an apt occasion to repair your shortcoming in Austin lore.

Artist/proprietor Hanneman has hosted theatre events before, including notably the annual theatrical comedy by the Weird Sisters Theatre Collective two years ago. He had agreed to provide the venue for Kyle John Schmidt's Fernando and the Killer Queen in April last year but City of Austin engineers served notice that the place required reinforcement to make it safe for the public. (If you visit, you'll understand that "repairs" wouldn't be the appropriate term for Hanneman's wildly eleclectic three-story assemblage of everything from bicycle frames to gnomes to CDs to miscellaneous tchotchkes). So get there with enough time before the 7 p.m. start to wander around and to absorb his only slightly deranged vision of post-industrial America.

You may wander past the actors in costume and you may get a jolt of surprise in the maze of construction and garden. Two eerie figures will be sitting motionless in separate spots: a grey-tinted female figure with a snipped-off funnel nose and alarmingly alert brown eyes, and a young woman swathed and grease-painted in stark white. Those are Laura Burgess playing Calmon the intermittently oracular statue and Ashley McNerney as the garden statue Pompea with whom the young gallant will fall in love. Their silent presence in the Cathedral and park pose for you the challenge of all silent, motionless mimes: do you pretend that they are indeed inanimate and therefore ignore them? Or do you acknowledge them, inspect them, perhaps speak to them? No one I saw became so bold.

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

Auditions for The Green Bird by Gozzi, Commedia dell'Arte to be Staged at the Cathedral of Junk

Found at AustinActors.net:

Casting for the Italian Commedia dell'Arte play

THE GREEN BIRD

by Carlo Gozzi

Auditions will be held Thursday April 21st from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
Auditions will be conducted as group scenes. The actors will go through the scene once, then switch groups and characters.
Roles are unpaid. The play is going to be experimental.

Please contact Adriana Montenegro at adrianamontenegro888@gmail.com

Performance dates August 11, 12, 13 and 18, 19, 20 at the Cathedral of Junk

Looking to fill these ROLES :
BRIGHELLA: the court astrologer
PANTALONE: Prime Minister
TRUFFALDINO: Shopkeeper
BARBARINA: King's daughter, twin of RENZO
RENZO: King's son, twin of BARBARINA
CALMON: Statue of Philosopher
NINETTA: Queen
THE GREEN BIRD: a dancer
TARTAGLIA: The King
TARTAGLIONA: The King's mother
POMPEA: statue of a princess
FATA SERPENTINA: offstage singer
THE APPLE: a singer
WATERS: six dancers
Soldiers
Servants
Enchanted Trees
Monsters

Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet, Weird Sisters Theatre Collective at the Cathedral of Junk, July 23 - August 1

The Weird Sisters Theatre Collective's Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet was a very Austin event. The Sisters performed Anne-Marie MacDonald's broad feminist satire of Shakespeare and stuffy scholars in the backyard at the one and only Cathedral of Junk in South Austin, just a few blocks south of 290W/Ben White Boulevard.

Closing night last Saturday was full, as a wide mix of folks filled up the very miscellaneous and inventive collection of chairs. Proprietor Vince Hannemann was rustling up seats right up till the opening, and he received a special ovation from the Sisters and the audience afterward, for his broad-spirited hosting.

This was theatre, but it was also a party and a celebration.

The fun-loving feminist group was doing its fifth summer production. Their lengthy 2004 manifesto remains very in effect. It begins, "WEIRD: We mean WEIRD in its original sense: wayward . We challenge the status quo, for we know that most theater drifts and defaults to old, hegemonic ways of interpreting, casting, directing, and producing."

This is a loopy "what-if?" story about a woman academic, much neglected, misled and patronized by her thoughtlessly arrogant male supervisor.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .