Upcoming: The Twelfth Labor by Leegrid Stevens, Tutto Theatre and MacTheatre, August 10 - September 1

Tutto Theatre presents

in Co-Production with MACtheatre

The Full-Stage Premiere of

The Twelfth Labor

 

 

 

By Leegrid Stevens

(Click for AUTHOR BIO)

Directed by Gary Jaffe

10 August – 1 September 2012

WEEK 1—Friday and Saturday
WEEK 2—Thursday through Saturday
WEEKS 3 & 4—Wednesday through Saturday

All Performances are at 7:30 p.m.

The Laboratory Theater, McCallum Fine Arts Academy, 5600 Sunshine Drive, Austin, TX 78756

Thursdays – Saturdays: $15 General Admission
(GACA/Senior/Student: $12 & Priority Seating: $25)

LIMITED SEATING, Reserve Yours TODAY.

Wednesdays are Pay-What-You-CAN
Name Your Own Price w/ Donation
of Non-Perishable Canned Food Item(s) to benefit
Hope Food Pantry at Trinity United Methodist Church
[Price without donation is $12]

Featuring the award-winning artistic contributions of actors: Helen Allen, Wray Crawford, Trey Deason, Chris Humphrey, Skip Johnson, Content Love Knowles, Megan Minto, Rebecca Robinson, Erin Treadway, Fred Winkler, and introducing Annamarie Kasper; the set design of Ia Ensterä; the lighting design of Natalie George; the costume design of Benjamin Taylor Ridgway; and the hair and make up design of Austin M. Rausch.

Leegrid Stevens’ evocative new play, The Twelfth Labor, is epic, utilizing the myth of The Twelve Labors of Hercules to explore the inner workings of a hardscrabble World War II era family in Idaho. We follow a single day in the life of an Idaho farm family, October 15, 1949, as seen through the uniquely damaged mind of the family's eldest daughter, Cleo. Through her fragmented memories, often prophetic dreams, and swirling language, we come to understand the price she and her family have paid for a little dignity, as they await the return of their long absent father, lost somewhere in the war, half a world away.

In addition to the myth of Hercules, The Twelfth Labor draws upon the popular culture (music, literature, and film) of Cleo’s childhood, which frames and colors her experience of the real world—an outer shell of Realism surrounds an inner-shell of Surrealism, which together generate what The Des Moines Register (speaking of the second workshop production) called an “[…] elemental magnetism […]” which pulls the audience in and keeps them thinking of the play days and even weeks after.

Images by Bret Brookshire: Night of The Iguana by Tennesse Williams, Different Stages at City Theatre, March 18 - April 9

Images by Bret Brookshire, from the Different Stages website:

Tennessee Williams'

Night of the Iguana

March 18 – April 9
City Theater, 3823 Airport Suite D ( ^map)
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Pick your Price Tickets: $15, $20, $25, $30
Reservations: 474–8497

Different Stages continues its 2010 – 2011 season with The Night of the Iguana. This Tony-Award-winning play by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Tennessee Williams is a provocative exploration of human struggle and passion — full of intense drama, biting wit, and sexual tension. Defrocked priest T. Lawrence Shannon now scrapes out a living as a tour guide in Mexico. On the verge of a collapse, he abducts his tour group to a crumbling seaside hotel on the edge of the jungle. As a fierce tropical storm rolls in, Shannon must wrestle with the passions of the women around him – the wrath of a Texas school teacher, the advances of a lustful teenager and the jealousies of the widowed hotel owner – as he seeks solace with a new arrival, a gentle spinster traveling with her grandfather – the world's oldest living poet.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Carpetbagger's Children), The Night of the Iguana features Tom Chamberlain (The Goat or Who is Sylvia?) as the Rev. Shannon, Content Love Knowles (Murder Mystery Ballad) as the hotel proprietor Maxine and Rebecca Robinson (Circle, Mirror, Transformation) as the artist Hannah Jelkes. Also In the cast are Donald Bayne (The Duck Variations) as the poet Jonathan Coffin, Karen Jambon (Mary Stuart) as the Music Teacher Judith Fellowes and Chloe Edmundson (The Skin of Our Teeth) as her music student Charlotte Goodall. Rounding out the cast are Brian Brown, Ben McLemore, Scott Friedman, Phoebe Greene, Carrie Stephens, Justin Smith, Tony Salinas, Carlos Saenz and Ashley McNerney.

On Saturday March 26 join the cast for a Tennessee Williams Birthday Party, in honor of the Williams centennial.

Click to view additional images by Bret Brookshire at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams, Different Stages at the City Theatre, March 18 - April 9

Found on-line:

presents

Tennessee Williams'

Night of the Iguana

March 18 – April 9
City Theater, 3823 Airport Suite D ( ^map)
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Pick your Price Tickets: $15, $20, $25, $30
Reservations: 474–8497

Different Stages continues its 2010 – 2011 season with The Night of the Iguana. This Tony-Award-winning play by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Tennessee Williams is a provocative exploration of human struggle and passion — full of intense drama, biting wit, and sexual tension. Defrocked priest T. Lawrence Shannon now scrapes out a living as a tour guide in Mexico. On the verge of a collapse, he abducts his tour group to a crumbling seaside hotel on the edge of the jungle. As a fierce tropical storm rolls in, Shannon must wrestle with the passions of the women around him – the wrath of a Texas school teacher, the advances of a lustful teenager and the jealousies of the widowed hotel owner – as he seeks solace with a new arrival, a gentle spinster traveling with her grandfather – the world's oldest living poet.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Carpetbagger's Children), The Night of the Iguana features Tom Chamberlain (The Goat or Who is Sylvia?) as the Rev. Shannon, Content Love Knowles (Murder Mystery Ballad) as the hotel proprietor Maxine and Rebecca Robinson (Circle, Mirror, Transformation) as the artist Hannah Jelkes. Also In the cast are Donald Bayne (The Duck Variations) as the poet Jonathan Coffin, Karen Jambon (Mary Stuart) as the Music Teacher Judith Fellowes and Chloe Edmundson (The Skin of Our Teeth) as her music student Charlotte Goodall. Rounding out the cast are Brian Brown, Ben McLemore, Scott Friedman, Phoebe Greene, Carrie Stephens, Justin Smith, Tony Salinas, Carlos Saenz and Ashley McNerney.

On Saturday March 26 join the cast for a Tennessee Williams Birthday Party, in honor of the Williams centennial.

Sleeping Beauty, Vortex Repertory, April 2 - May 9

The Vortex's Sleeping Beauty is a riot of costumes and color, music and dance. Bonnie Cullum and composer-librettist Content Love Knowles keep that cast of 20 swirling in the vortex around the spiral staircase at stage center, animated by Knowles and three other musicians perched high above stage right. Many of the players play double roles. Costumes by Pam Fletcher Friday and Griffon Ramsey are inventive, playful and brilliantly colored, with the witty use of found fabrics and objects, as if the players had discovered a treasure trove of dress-up clothes in grandma's attic.

Jennifer Coy as the Fool deserves the lead image for this musical. In good fool tradition, she is the only real adult in this happy ensemble of gifted adult-sized characters and artists. Coy has a brash, raucous side to her, a knowing wink at this nonsense, and she winds it up with a solo epilogue addressing the audience, making sure that they enjoyed the spectacle and crowing, "And now let's all have a drink!"

Playtime at the Vortex gives us a sprightly retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story full of incident and relatively bereft of deeper meaning. The first act establishes the court, the statuesque Queen (Betsy McCann) yearning for a child, some Disneyesque jumpin' jive in the castle, a long funny number as the Queen is offstage in labor, celebration, and a long, long naming song that saddles the kid with about fifteen names.

And then there's the extended business of fairies bringing gifts. Because the heedless top-hatted King (Adam Smith) neglected to invite her, the impressively salamander-like fairy Ixlamere (Suzanne Balling) curses the newborn with the prediction that she'll prick her finger on a spindle and die.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Sleeping Beauty, Vortex Repertory, April 2 - May 9

UPDATE: The Vortex has extended Sleeping Beauty to May 9

Click for ALT review, April 11

UPDATE: Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman's "Seeing Things" blog, April 8

UPDATE: Jeanne Claire van Ryzin interviews Bonnie Cullum about Sleeping Beauty, April 1

UPDATE: Lisa Schepps on KOOP-FM interviews leading singer-actors Jonathan Itchon and Julia Lorenz, as well as creators Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles on her program "Off Stage and On the Air," March 29

Received directly:

Vortex Repertory Company
presents

Sleeping Beauty

A new musical faery tale
by Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles
April 2 - May 9 Thursdays-Sundays 8 p.m.
ASL-Interpreted Saturday, May 10, 2010
Audio Description Saturday, May 17, 2010
Faery Masque Ball on Saturday, May 1
The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd. Austin 78722. Free Parking. Bus Route. Lovely café.

Tickets: $30-$10 Available at 512-478-LAVA (5282) or www.vortexrep.org
$30-$25 Priority Seating, $20-$15 General Admission, $10 Starving Artists. Thursdays and Sundays 2-for-1 admission with donation of 2 non-perishable food items. Limited seating.

VORTEX Repertory Company proudly presents Sleeping Beauty, a magical new musical by Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles. Loosely based on the Grimm Brothers’ faery tale, this dynamic production joins the musical theatre cannon with a feminist, revisionist re-telling of a well-beloved faery tale. While this production is not designed for children (scary faeries), we welcome audiences of all ages (PG-13 with no nudity or foul language). This is not your mama’s faery tale.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Arts News: Vortex Receives NEA Grant for Sleeping Beauty

Click for ALT review, April 11

Received directly:

VORTEX Receives NEA Grant for Sleeping Beauty

Vortex Repertory Company proudly announces its first-ever grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for Sleeping Beauty a musical faery tale for all ages by Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles, to be revised and performed in an all-new production at The VORTEX in April 2010. Sleeping Beauty was first performed at The VORTEX in the spring of 2005.

Finely crafted designs blend with live music, dramatic dance, and insightful storytelling in Sleeping Beauty, a musical theatre adaptation by award-winning artists Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles. Originally created and debuted at The VORTEX in 2005, this newly revised production of Sleeping Beauty provides an environmental and feminist adaptation of the Grimm Brothers’ faery tale.

www.vortexrep. org

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Tutto Theatre at Vortex Repertory, October 23 - November 7

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery is imagined and delivered as a clown show balanced precariously on deep and true traditional ballads.

Those ballads are deep, because stories of passion, violence and murder are rooted somewhere pretty close to our shared DNA; true, because they contain archetypes of our culture. The restless husband; the innocent and defenseless girl-child; the rapscallion, the rapist, and the rowdy. Including, of course, musicians and theatre folk.

Playwright Elizabeth Doss, who appears here as the female half of a Bonnie-and-Clyde type duo, began this piece while living in Spain, perhaps spurred to re-examine her own cultural traditions.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Oceana, A Musical, Vortex Repertory, May 9 - June 3

There is, indeed, an oceanic feel to the staging of this production. Arriving spectators are welcomed by undulant costumed young persons bathed in blue and green lights designed by Jason Amato. The actors are welcoming, slithery, playful and exotically costumed. Director/author Bonnie Cullum extends the compact playing space of the Vortex vertically, transforming it at times into the visual equivalent of an aquarium. She stations her three singing sirens on a high shelf across the back, with the band mostly out of sight in the grotto below them.

Steel gym rings hang just out of reach of the front rows on either side of that V-thrust stage, and the sleekly muscular merpeople regularly hoist themselves fluidly up and around those swaying fixtures. Anyone with scuba diving experience recognizes at once the promise of liquid flight and freedom from gravity that they evoke. As well as the surprise and satisfaction of coming face to face with schools of fishy creatures -- the cast numbers 14, and most of them are somewhere on that compact stage throughout the presentation.

Cheerful mischief marks these goings-on. For example, I had placed myself in the front row; one of those swinging mer-guys reached down, and with a flick, untied my shoelace. While the characters spoke with mythic seriousness, they often moved in poses, prances, and postures, emphasizing their otherworldliness.

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

Oceana, A Musical, Vortex Repertory, May 9 - June 3

Click for ALT review of June 3




UPDATE: Comments by Clare Croft on Austin Statesman's "Seeing Things" blog, May 18

Posted at the Vortex Rep's website:

VORTEX Repertory Company presents the World Premiere of

Oceana

by Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles
May.09 - Jun.06, 2009, Thurs-Sun 8pm
ASL (American Sign Language) iInterpreted on Friday, May 15, 2009

Reawaken your love affair with the Ocean
From the makers of Sleeping Beauty and Dark Goddess comes a spell-binding new theatrical work that celebrates stories of the Ocean. Follow the journey of “Gulf Girl” as she encounters powerful oceanic deities and otherworldly spirits from diverse global mythologies. Join her as she meets the Mer (Maid and Men), the Sirens (Greek), Olokun (Yoruban/West Africa), the Selkie (Northern Scotland), Lakshmi (Hindu/India), Hine Moana (Maori/New Zealand), Sedna (Inuit/Arctic), Pele (Hawai’ian/Pacific Islands), and Chalchiuhtlicue (Nahua/Central Mexico).

This extraordinary cast of mystical characters lures the spectator to dive deep and discover treasures within the history, magic, and exploration of the precious Ocean. All Oceans are one Ocean.

Warning: Real water. Some nudity. Beware the Splash.

Robert Faires' pre-opening piece in the Austin Chronicle, May 14

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .