Upcoming: Almost, Maine by John Ciardi, Trinity Street Players, February 1 - 17, 2013

(4th floor black box theatre, First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street)


present

Almost, Maine

Feb 1-3, 8-10, 15-17, 2013

Directed by Cathy Jones

Donations accepted

Reserve a seat

The mystical magic of love is on display under the northern lights. The northernmost reaches of the 48 united states is the setting for this romantic fantasy, a perfect way to entertain your friend or lover for Valentine’s season.

John Cariani’s Almost, Maine is a play composed of nine short vignettes that explore love and loss in a remote, mythical place called Almost, Maine. The New York Times reviewer wrote that it is “A comedy comprising almost a dozen two-character vignettes exploring the sudden thunderclap of love and the scorched earth that sometimes follows. John Cariani’s play will evoke either awww’s or ick’s, depending on your affection for its whimsical approach to the joys and perils of romance.”

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions for Almost Maine by John Ciardi, Trinity Street Players, December 1

Trinity Street Players announces open auditions for Almost Maine by John Cariani, produced by Trinity Street Players in downtown Austin, directed by Cathy Jones: 901 Trinity Street, 4th floor Saturday, December 1st, 10am .

Auditions will be for 2 female & 1 male actors and 2 non-speaking "stage hands" who are not afraid to wear goofy clothes and participate in sight gags. Almost Maine is a romantic fantasy for the Valentine's season with 9 different scenes only partially interconnected. Each actor will play 5-6 roles. 

Rehearsal will be through January, tech Jan 27-31, and performance the first 3 weekends in February Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. Please bring a short comic scene you have prepared, or just come and read one of ours. If you have questions, please call Cathy Jones 512-632-2820.

Incident at Vichy, Trinity Street Players, April 2 - 17

The black box on the fourth floor has a claustrophobic feel. The central space is stark and looks more like a basement than an attic -- a couple of benches, neutral gray walls, a narrow high window, a couple of empty beer bottles left on the sill. As you gather and settle into the ranks of seats around that central space, the theatre serenades you with recordings of French music -- Jacques Brel, an anachronism, singing his lament about the 1914 assassination of pacifist Jean Jaurès, then a better calibrated sucession of ballads by Edith Piaf.

The house lights are up when a couple of men in overcoats and fedoras bring in a man from your right and summarily deposit him on a bench. He sits, bewildered. A few moments pass, and the plainclothesmen bring another arrested man in from your left. Eventually the house lights go down, the collect continues, and the spectators face an unwilling, withdrawn and involuntary group of about a dozen males.

This is Vichy, some 400 kilometers south of Paris. It's the administrative capital of the "free" zone administered during early years of World War II by a government headed by Marshal Pétain. Expressionless French police do not respond to the uneasy questions of the detainees. We gradually learn that they've been picked up off the streets by cruising patrols. None appears to have broken the law, except perhaps for the sullen gypsy presumed to be a thief by vocation.

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

Upcoming: Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller, Trinity Street Players, April 2 - 17

present

Arthur Miller’s

Incident at Vichy

April 2, 8- 9, 15-16 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
Sundays April 3, 10, and 17 at 2:30 p.m.

Black Box Theatre, 4th floor of the First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street (click for map)

Tickets are FREE. Call 512-476-2625 to reserve seats.

Starting April 2, Trinity Street Players will present Incident at Vichy, Arthur Miller’s compelling morality play about the Holocaust. Directed by Cathy Jones, the large all-male cast explores the rounding up of Jews in occupied France during World War II.

In 1942, in a make-shift detention room in Vichy, France, a group of men find themselves detained for questionable reasons. As the play unfolds, they realize the horrible truth of why they have been brought together. The setting of occupied France, at a time when many brave French citizens had joined underground groups and found ways to stymie the Nazis, adds a fresh, yet chilling dimension to this historical piece.

Miller's exploration leaves both characters and audience members with questions. Where is the guilt? Can anyone atone for the horrors? And who gets to decide what our life means, anyway?

Director Cathy Jones said Black Box Theatre's thrust stage extending into the audience “is a powerful and interactive way to present this live show. The audience is allowed to see up close human beings that we can understand and even identify with; struggling with questions and decisions we all face, eventually.”

Trinity Street Players is comprised of all volunteers. Local actors and technical staff commit a tremendous amount of time to deliver strong performances. They have been so successful in their mission, she says, the ensemble troupe now offers three shows a year in their intimate Black Box Theatre, located on the fourth floor of First Baptist Church of Austin at 901 Trinity Street in downtown Austin.

Audtions: Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy, Trinity Street Players, January 29

Received directly:

Trinity Street Players audition notice:

Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy

Ever wanted a chance to play Arthur Miller at his most powerful? Trinity Street Players will produce Incident at Vichy in April. There are roles for 20 men and one boy, and they range from walk-ons to some of the most challenging and moving you will ever see. Some parts require German or Austrian accents.

Auditions will be in the blackbox theatre on the fourth floor of 901 Trinity St., Saturday, January 29 at noon. The show will run April 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17. Rehearsals will begin the week of February 27.

Please consider joining us for this important work and gift to the Austin community.

For more information contact:

Cathy Jones, Director
catauspag@yahoo.com
http://www.trinitystreetplayers.com

The Fantasticks, Trinity Street Players at First Baptist Church, August 12 - 22

The Trinity Street Players call the third-floor theatre space at the First Baptist Church "the black box theatre." Now that I've attended three performances in that space, it seems to me that the appellation is a bit too generic.

"Black box" suggests a void, perhaps one that's wrapped in mystery. A better reference for this long-running Theatre Ministry might be "jewel box."

When we were living in Geneva, Switzerland, in the opening years of this 21st century, I took my adolescent daughter N with me for some special Christmas shopping. We went to Gobelins, the discreet high-priced dealer in jewelry and horlogerie at the Rue de Rive. In addition to their displays of the newest and most sparkling, Gobelins maintains a binder describing "heritage jewelry" for sale. With an appointment and a few days of advance notice, one can view a chosen assortment of previously-owned pieces. In that seance in early December, with my daughter's approval, in a heart-stopping moment I picked out a beautiful, classic Christmas present for my wife K.

That, approximately, is what the Trinity Street Players are about. In their third-floor space at the First Baptist Church on Trinity Street, they have been preparing and performing with discernment, discretion and style a selection of some of the best, most solid, traditional, high-value items of English language theatre. Assistant director David McCullars enticed me to their Steel Magnolias last year; I reveled in their You Can't Take It With You earlier this year; they are holding auditions on August 28 for the November production of Shadowlands, the play by William Nicholson based on the marriage of C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. McCullars will direct.

The Fantasticks fits solidly into that tradition. The show written by UT alumni celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and it is the longest-running musical in New York. In fact, UT is holding a two-day conference on October 15-16 to celebrate the anniversary, as well as staging its own production of The Fantasticks from October 15 - 24. From an earlier conversation with Trinity Street player the Rev. Ann Pittman, I had the impression that the players hadn't been aware that UT was planning the bash.

Director Cathy Jones rose to the occasion in her pre-curtain remarks, marking the 50th anniversary. That was diplomatic but unnecessary, because Trinity Street's attractive, gripping and musically sophisticated production of the show will stand up to any other that may come along.

Part of the appeal of The Fantasticks is the simplicity of its concept. Boy and girl fall in love; their fathers pretend to oppose the match and hire "El Gallo," a bandit and merchant of dreams to give the boy his chance to be a hero. Romance triumphs but gives way to unease. In the second act the boy ventures forth to explore the cruel world while the girl dallies with the mendacious El Gallo. An eventual happy ending is tinged with the melancholy feel that life is more earnest and more difficult that the dreams of romance. This action is wrapped in tunes that have become key in the musical theatre canon: Try to Remember, Soon It's Gonna Rain, and I Can See It, to name only the most evident.

Cathy Jones recruited experienced, charismatic players for this show. Joe Penrod, playing the cynical El Gallo, is one of my favorites on the Austin musical stage. Justin Langford, playing the earnest, naive young man, appeared with Penrod in Man of La Mancha at the Georgetown Palace, capturing our attention with his pure tenor.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Steel Magnolias, Trinity Street Players at First Baptist Church, July 31 - August 9

I was invited this past weekend to attend the closing performance of Steel Magnolias, produced at the First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street, by the aptly named Trinity Street Players.

The audience filled the black box theatre, a converted space on the upper floor of the church, in which banks of raised seating stood on three sides of the rectangular playing space.

Both the venue and the disposition of the stage brought to mind one of the essays in UT philosopher Paul Woodruff's book last year, The Necessity of Theatre: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). After thirty years of work, like me, he returned to an early passion for the theatre. "Instead of writing about Aristotle," he comments in the introduction, "I have written a kind of poetics of my own."

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .