Zach Theatre Auditions for Harvey, January 7

ZACH Theatre announces auditions for Harvey by Mary Chase on January 7, 2013 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the ZACH Nowlin Rehearsal Studio located at 1426 Toomey Road. Dave Steakley will be directing this Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy which recently had a successful run on Broadway at the Roundabout Theater. 

"Austin's favorite actor" (according to the Austin Chronicle) Martin Burke stars as Elwood P. Dowd, a happy-go-lucky chap with a kind word for everyone he meets, especially his invisible best friend, a six-foot tall rabbit named "Harvey."

Rehearsals begin on April 22, 2013. The first preview performance is on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 and opening night is Thursday, May 23, 2013. Performances will be Wednesdays through Sundays weekly with the final performance on Sunday, June 16, 2013.

Please be prepared to read sides from the play for the character for which you are interested in auditioning. Click here to download sides.

Actors will be seen by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, please send an email with your name, phone number, email address, and the character(s) auditioning for to auditions@zachtheatre.org. All actors should bring a headshot and resume to the audition. For general information about ZACH please visit us at www.zachtheatre.org.

We are seeking both AEA and non-AEA actors.

Click here for a list of characters with descriptions at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Upcoming: The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris and Joe Mantiello, Zach Theatre, November 24 - December 23

presents


THE SANTALAND DIARIES

written by David Sedaris • Adapted for stage by JOE MANTELLO • Directed by DAVE STEAKLEY • Starring MARTIN BURKE, AMY DOWNING (for evening performances) and JILL BLACKWOOD (on matinees)

Musical Director and Arrangements by JASON  CONNOR
Original Set Design by HEYD FONTENOT • Lighting Design by JASON AMATO • Sound Design by CRAIG BROCK • Properties Design by BLAKE REEVES • Costume Design by BLAIR HURRY

THE SANTALAND DIARIES previews November 23 - Opening night is Saturday, November 24 (Press night) - Performances continue through December 23, Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
To order tickets call 512-476-0541 ext. 1 or visit www.zachtheatre.org. Tickets range from $35-$65.

Student Rush Tickets: $18 one hour before showtime (with valid ID). 
 ZACH’s bar opens one hour before showtime.

ZACH’s intimate Whisenhunt Stage, 1510 Toomey Road, (Toomey intersects S. Lamar Blvd. between W. Cesar Chavez and Barton Springs Rd.)

ZACH’s production of THE SANTALAND DIARIES is sponsored in part by Lina’s Cocoa Couture.

Austin's favorite irreverent elf returns in the 15^th — and final — edition of Sedaris' hysterical tale of elfin woe. Enjoy the real-life story of Sedaris' tour of duty at Macy’s as Crumpet the elf, and what it takes to juggle tots and tottering Santas during a painfully festive time of the year. A laugh 'til you cry evening of merrily subversive entertainment to delight adult audiences! (Note: mature themes.)


For real-time updates on ZACH Theatre news, events and happenings, visit http://www.zachtheatre.org/blog, be a fan of ZACH Theatre on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/zachtheatre, and follow ZACH on Twitter @zachtheatre http://www.twitter.com/zachtheatre.


About ZACH Theatre ZACH Theatre is Austin’s leading professional producing theatre, employing more than 600 actors, musicians, and designers annually. Founded in 1932, ZACH is the longest running theatre company in Texas, serving 95,000 adults and youth annually. ZACH creates its own nationally recognized plays and musicals that ignite the imagination, lift the spirit, and engage the community under the proven leadership of Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley and Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. Launching its 80th season in 2012, ZACH continues to expand and engage with Austin, adding the new 420-seat, 32,000-square-foot Topfer Theatre to its performing arts campus, nearly doubling ZACH’s capacity while retaining its hallmark intimate theatre-going experience. Visit www.zachtheatre.org for more information.


ZACH Theatre is sponsored in part, by Applied Materials, Austin Catering, Four Hands Home, Holiday Inn-Lady Bird Lake, Kirk Tuck Photography, Marquee Event Group, OnRamp, Austin American-Statesman, KXAN TV 36, and Time Warner Cable; and by grants from Junior League of Austin, The Shubert Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, which believes an investment in the arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.


(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Ragtime, Zach Theatre, October 17 - November 18

by Michael Meigs

The Zach's Ragtime is a huge -- I mean HUGE -- and lavish production, inaugurating its state-of-the-art 425-seat Topfer theatre. The flair, finish and finesse of this production are simply breath-taking.


Ragtime is a fable of a faraway America, one that existed at the very opening of the twentieth century. In his 1975 novel E.L. Doctorow imagined a tangled story involving a prosperous bourgeois family in New Rochelle, an unmarried African-American couple and their child, and an impoverished Jewish immigrant peddler and his young daughter in the New York slums.


The story is told in an amusing faux-historical narrative with cameos by real figures notable and notorious, ranging from escape artist Harry Houdini to Henry Ford to polar explorer Robert Peary to Evelyn Nesbit, infamous in the love triangle that led to the murder of architect Stanford White.


Miloš Forman turned Ragtime into a 1981 film featuring Randy Newman's clever and gently nostalgic score. Although the story is set principally in a small town upstate and in New York City, somewhat ironically the 1996 musical was underwritten by Canadian empresario Garth Drabinsky and first produced in Toronto. The music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens sweep the audience away.


Ragtime is a dream epic, a late twentieth-century imagining of how it should have been possible to overcome the differences between races and ethnic groups. It's imbued with an optimism of America's possibilities, even as it depicts setbacks.


While the wealthy owner of a fireworks factory is away on a polar expedition, his wife discovers an abandoned black newborn child in the garden. She takes it in along with Sarah, its despondent mother; professional musician Coalhouse Walker, Jr., drives up from Harlem every week, trying to speak to Sarah, and the family accepts him. The courteous and well-dressed outsider even becomes a music tutor to Edgar, the son. In an unfortunate encounter, white thugs beat Coalhouse and trash his automobile. Police and courts deny him justice; police brutality causes a death; Coalhouse and his armed followers occupy the J.P. Morgan library in New York City. Conflicts are sharp; dilemmas are insoluble. The New Rochelle family becomes involved and members learn different, difficult lessons.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Robert Faires Profiles the Zach's New Topfer Theatre, Austin Chronicle, October 4

Wheels of a Dream

With the long-awaited Topfer Theatre, Zach races full-throttle into the future

by Robert Faires, October 4, 2012

(image: Sandy Carson for the Austin Chronicle)

Yes, that's a car on the Karen Kuykendall Stage inside Zach Theatre's new Topfer Theatre: a full-size automobile (albeit one built from the scraps of early 20th century Model Ts). And in a town dominated by postage-stamp stages that'd be hard-pressed to accommodate a soap box derby racer, that might seem an impressive enough signifier for this $22 million addition to Austin's performing arts venues. But it isn't like Zach hasn't put a car onstage before – remember Aralyn Hughes' pink, pig-encrusted sedan rolling onto the Kleberg's thrust in Keepin' It Weird a few years back?

 

No, the remarkable thing here is not the machine, which is just the vehicle for understanding what this new facility means for Zach, but the space around it – the space between those 21-foot tall proscenium sides, expansive enough to hold four dozen actors, comfortably spread out, to ooh and aah over the auto; space beyond the proscenium's frame – 20 feet on either side – into which said auto may be moved and stored without crowding out cast, crew, or scenic pieces; space above it – 70 feet above – into which the car, were Zach mounting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, could be flown out, and out of which all manner of set-pieces can be flown in; space below it, a basement's worth, into which parts of the stage may be lowered for the exits and entrances of actors (or cars) or for creating an orchestra pit; and, far from least important, the space in front of it, large enough that 420 people may peer at the auto from their seats in the auditorium yet with even those most distant from the stage's edge no more than 10 feet farther from it than the back-row patrons in the Kleberg. It's a theatre that allows Zach to do so much that it never could in that 40-year-old mainstage, or the Whisenhunt Arena Stage built 20 years ago, to produce shows of a size and technical complexity comparable to those in major resident theatres across the country and even in Broadway houses. The Topfer represents possibilities.


Read full profile at the Austin Chronicle . . . .

See also
Zach Unveils New $22 million Topfer Theatre by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman, September 29

Dividing the Estate by Horton Foote, Zach Theatre, May 29 - July 2

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

The Zach Theatre is a great showcase for local and regional art and talent, claiming as it does all the advantages of location, etc. It seems to hold court over Lady Bird Lake, with hill country scenery upstream and the shining, multi-colored towers of Austin across the lake. I visited Zach to see Dividing the Estate, Horton Foote’s 1989 play about a Texas family falling apart over estate inheritance.

To cut to the chase, the family had already fallen apart, and so had the estate of the title, which was really only a metaphor for that family. The former glory of the estate was represented by the gorgeous set by Cliff Simon. If you think this is a spoiler and with that the play was over save for upscale furniture-gnawing, think again,for this was indeed only the beginning. Dividing the Estate is a brilliant exposition of time and place and how the fortunes of families and individuals depend on those elemental things. The Zach Scott production of the play does it proud.

The time of the play is the mid-Eighties oil bust, the one centered in Houston. The place is fictional Harrison, Texas. The real-life place is Wharton, Texas, without a doubt. The characters discuss the features and problems of life in Wharton, Texas in great, accurate detail. These include the vast acreages of grazing land tumbling in value, proximity to Houston (in every sense), sulfur domes, oil wells, ranching mansions, a main street lined with empty store fronts and a plastics plant run by Asian investors (still in operation today).

Click to read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Laramie Project, Ten Years Later, Zach Theatre, April 18 - May 13

by Michael Meigs

You know these people; you're comfortable with them.  Most likely because you attended their portrayal in March and April of The Laramie Project, but possibly also because you recognize them as the Zach regulars who have appeared before you so many times.  The Laramie Project 10 Years Later has the reassuring buzz of a class reunion, which is something like the way it must have been for the Tectonic Theatre Project as they undertook the visits and research in 2008 that led to this text.

The Laramie Project featured the looming absence of gentle Matthew Shepard, the boy-man who was enticed by two men from a bar into a pickup and then driven out to be beaten almost to death, left tied to a fence in a remote and desolate location.  It was crafted to tell the horrific, inexorable story of that spectacular event, the investigation and the actions in response both of the justice system and the townspeople of Laramie, a town of fewer than 30,000 persons on I-80 just north of the Colorado border. The work had a necessary beginning in outrage, a middle of reflection and discussion and an end featuring retribution and mercy.

10 Years Later has no such clean plot line, although Moisés Kaufman and the credited collaborators of the Tectonic Theatre Project worked assiduously to give it one.  They discovered that the vivid accounts at the trial and in the newspapers were no longer a daily reality in Laramie but instead the story of Matthew Shepard had undergone transformation, partly due to the collective process of healing via forgetfulness and partly due to disinformation from a national investigative television program that claimed drug use and drug dealing lay behind the murder.  The theatre troupe's interviews and re-enactments battle those claims, trying to re-establish for their wider audience the picture of a despicable hate crime.  They also chart the successful emergence from the closet of a woman who won a seat in the legislature and the ideological combat there over a proposed amendment to the Wyoming constitution to define marriage as consisting solely of the union between a man and a woman.

[images by Kirk R. Tuck]

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Zach Theatre Announces 2012-2013 Season

Received directly from:

ZACH’s 2012-13 Mainstage Season features:

• Ragtime
• White Christmas
  
• 33 Variations
• Harvey
• Mad Beat Hip & Gone
  
• And a Broadway-bound musical TBA

Season extras are:

• Tru
• The Santaland Diaries
  

“I’m thrilled to bring Austin so many firsts, filled with unforgettable moments, in our first spectacular season in the Topfer Theatre,” says Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley. “From Ragtime – the largest and most extraordinary musical ZACH has ever produced, to the world premiere of a new play written especially for us by Steven Dietz, the most-produced playwright in America and an Austinite; from the dazzling holiday favorite White Christmas brimming with effervescent Irving Berlin hits, to a riveting drama starring Anton Nel, one of the greatest concert pianists in the world; and from a brand new Broadway-bound musical to a fresh revisioning of the beloved classic comedy Harvey, starring Martin Burke, the funniest man in Austin. For an artist like myself with a 20-plus year commitment to this city, it’s a dream come true. There will be so many delicious moments for all of us who love this city to savor and inspire and celebrate!”

Click for additional details about the upcoming Zach season

Video: Dave Steakley Introduces the Topfer Theatre and Capital Campaign

Posted at the Zach website on February 17:

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to YouTube]

Next to Normal, Zach Theatre, January 25 - March 4

Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word. The intensity of the emotion, the huge volume of sound, the zig-zag of florescent lighting on the back walls of the set and above all the pitiless focus upon the mental illness of a suburban wife and mother -- all of these foster a numbness of mind that leaves you feeling as if you had swallowed a 200 mg capsule of Thorazine at the opening of the show.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. It shows that the Zach succeeds in setting the opera's message deep into the brain,down there where the limbic system controls emotion, memory and cognition. For a musical work about grief, disorientation and pharmacology, that's exactly the intention.

The Pulitzer committee that awarded the New York production of Next to Normal the drama prize for 2010 called it "a powerful rock musical . . . . that expands the scope of subject matter for musicals." My experience of the Zach production -- my trip along with housewife Diana and her family into her hell -- left me feeling that "rock musical" was an inadequate term for the evening. It isn't "rock" in the Elvis Presley sense or even the Pink Floyd sense, and although it was told almost entirely in sound and song, one couldn't really classify it as corresponding to most of the conventions of most American musical theatre. The score and story are complex and contemporary, all too relevant to our American experience. Let's be frank: let's call it a contemporary opera, even though that designation might be a drag at the box office.

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

Upcoming: The Laramie Project 10 Years Later in repertory with Part 1, Zach Theatre, April 22 - May 13

Found on-line:

presents

The Laramie Project 10 Years Later

April 22, 2012 - May 13, 2012

Kleberg Stage

Written by MOISÉS KAUFMAN, LEIGH FONDAKOWSKI, GREG PIEROTTI, ANDY PARIS and STEPHEN BELBER

Directed by DAVE STEAKLEY | Starring the original ZACH cast: JASTON WILLIAMS,JANELLE BUCHANAN, MARTIN BURKE, MEREDITH MCCALL, ROBERT NEWELL, SARAH RICHARDSON and JENNY LARSON, with HARVEY GUION
Please arrive early for parking.

Student Tickets: $18 One Hour Before Showtime (with Valid ID)
Bar opens 1 hour before showtime. Drinks welcome inside the theatre.

Please note: THE LARAMIE PROJECT plays in repertory with THE LARAMIE PROJECT 10 YEARS LATER.
Part 1 will play in repertory with Part 2 on Saturdays April 18 – May 13. It will be possible to see both parts on the same day with a dinner break between. See our calendar for individual show times.

A decade passed and we return to Laramie to see what has changed — and what hasn’t. The results are surprising, life-altering and unforgettable!

Video: Zach's Dave Steakley on TCG's 'I Am Theatre'

Uploaded by Theatre Communications Group on January 3, Dave Steakley's talk about his twenty years with Zach, reciting part of a monologue about the "web of souls" from Tony Kuschner's Angels in America and speaking of the new Topfer Theatre:

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to Youtube.]

Auditions: Zach Seeking One Male Actor for the Laramie Project Plays

Posted in the classifieds at www.NowPlayingAustin.com on January 4:

ZACH Theatre is accepting photo and resume submissions for The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. We are looking to cast one male actor between the ages of 30 and 45 to play several characters including PHILLIP DUBOIS, MOISES KAUFMAN, JON PEACOCK, DOUG LAWS, MATT GALLOWAY, NARRATOR, * DOCTOR CANTWAY, GOVERNOR JIM GERINGER, E-MAIL SENDER, CONRAD MILLER, THE COURT JUROR 6, AARON MCKINNEY (**Roles are subject to change**)

Dave Steakley will be directing these two plays from the Tectonic Theater Project. Rehearsals begin on February 13, 2012. The first preview performance is on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 and opening night is Saturday, March 24, 2012. Performances will be Wednesdays through Sundays weekly with the final performance on Sunday, May 13, 2012. Tuesday performances will be added throughout the run as needed.

Please submit a digital headshot and resume to auditions@zachtheatre.org by Friday, January 6, 2012. Actors will be contacted by January 9, 2012 with decisions and, if applicable, additional audition details. For general information about ZACH please visit us at www.zachtheatre.org.

We are seeking both AEA and non-AEA actors. Contact Info: Lily Williams, email: auditions@zachtheatre.org

Construction in Progress: Zach's Topfer Theatre, November 9

Zach Theatre Management Invites the Press and Media into the Topfer Theatre

November 10, 2011

by Michael Meigs

Building crews continue hard at work within the Zach Theatre's $22 million venture at Lamar and Riverside. Zach's producing artistic director Dave Steakley and managing director Elisbeth Challener invited press for a tour of the locale yesterday, in company of the architects Arthur W. Andersson and F. Christian Wise. Mort Topfer was there for part of the walk-though.

Andersson drew word pictures of the rain garden and plaza that would link the Zach's three theatres as of the formal black-tie opening of the plaza and the new Topfer Theatre on September 27 . The Topfer's western façade will feature thick glass panels evoking curtains and the "Juliet balcony" for which Zach is commissioning short drama pieces from Suzan-Lori Parks, Steven Dietz and others. Once the inaugural production of the full-orchestra musical Ragtime gets going, the Zach will provide free pre-show performances featuring the balcony, running from 6:30 p.m. and available to all passers-by. Steakley expects to announce the 2012-2013 theatre schedule for Zach in February, 2012.

The Topfer will feature all-LED lighting, an innovation pioneered by one other theatre to date, in London. Heating and air conditioning machinery is located in an immediately contiguous building, well insulated from the audience space and will feed the airflow into a large space beneath the seating area. Air will rise through the auditorium floor via vents located beneath seats.

The main stage is named for Zach legend Karen Kuykendal, whose ashes have been interred in its foundation. It features a full orchestra pit. The audience space will accommodate 427 spectators.

The management is undertaking a final push to complete funding of construction and set-up costs. To date $18.3 million of the $22 million needed has been raised. A mail-out just made to regular subscribers is asking for a commitment of $60 per year; the Zach is asking potential donors, both individuals and corporations, to pledge to the project, offering 'naming' opportunities for building features, down to the individual seats.

Click to view AustinLiveTheatre.com images from yesterday's walk-through of the project and links to other media reporting of the event. . . .

Arts Reporting: Austin Chronicle Readers ' Theatre Picks

The Austin Chronicle's annual 'Best of' issue, arriving today and tomorrow features only three names related to Austin live narrative theatre. Appearing under 'Arts & Entertainment' in the readers' poll are actress Barbara Chisholm, Zach Theatre artistic director Dave Steakley and musician/composer Graham Reynolds. The Chronicle critics' poll for arts & entertainment includes none at all, although it gives three nods to improv and sketch individuals and events.

Spring Awakening, Zach Theatre, September 20 - November 13

by Hanna Bisewski and Michael Meigs

Spring Awakening won eight of the 2007 Tony awards, including that for best musical, and the powerful production opened by the Zach Theatre last Saturday shows you why. This very contemporary musical adaptation of Franz Wedekind's Spring Awakening has played across Europe, and the U.S. national touring company fielded by Broadway Across America visited Bass Hall for a week in October, 2009. Awakening has now settled in to the Wisenhut Stage until November 13 playing an extended Tuesday to Sunday schedule. Zach management clearly expects this one to resound with the Austin public.

The time is the late 19th century and the place is a quietly repressed, sinister bourgeois community in rural Germany. The story is one that encompasses child abuse, sexual ignorance, adolescent suicide and a hushed-up death, all orbiting themes of the sexual awakening of children aged around thirteen. The Zach's production, true to the script and the music, takes these matters head-on, each actor approaching his character's criminal sexuality with a child-like shamelessness and a believable innocence.

The show is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for those offended by stage depictions of sex. Can you laugh at a young man avidly masturbating on the toilet while reading a penny-dreadful novel? What would you think of some adolescent sado-masochism with a switch? An intense, angry song by two girls about fathers who fondle them at bedtime or even do more? The first act ends with the tense, lengthy, very hot and fully suggestive seduction of sweet innocent Wendla by her smart, troubled friend Melchior, staged in profile on a high platform as a grim Lutheran pastor preaches below them to the robed choir.

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

Upcoming: Hairspray, Zach Theatre, June 16 - August 28

Found on-line:

Hairspray

June 16 - August 28

Kleberg Stage

Book by MARK O'DONNELL & THOMAS MEEHAN | Music by MARC SHAIMAN | Lyrics by MARC SHAIMAN & SCOTT WHITTMAN | Based on the 1988 JOHN WATERS film | Directed by DAVE STEAKLEY | Musical Direction by ALLEN ROBERTSON | Choreography by ROBIN LEWIS

ZACH's GLBT Hairspray Wilde Party is July 7th.

Move over Baltimore! Austin is the new home for Hairspray -- the soultastic, hair hoppin’, dance-til-you-drop musical! Big girl Tracy Turnblad has big ideas about teasin’ to stratospheric hairdo heights while dancing on the Corny Collins TV record hop countdown, and instigating a change that’s gonna come. When this equality cutie starts back-combing and bee-bopping across the racial divide, the bigots can’t stop the beat. John Waters’ campy film inspiration and ZACH Artistic Director Dave Steakley are a match made in ozone-depleting, the higher-the-hair-the-closer-to-God, Beehive heaven!

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, Zach Theatre, March 31 - May 22

Director Dave Steakley proves that with a first-rate cast and a gifted scenic designer he can turn Tracey Letts' savage misanthropy into a mesmerizing long evening in the theatre.

That's no modest achievement. The last -- and first -- Letts work I saw was Capital T Theatre's Killer Joe, which I found violent and obscene. Not in the sexual sense, but because of Letts gloated while degrading his working-class characters. Perhaps Letts is easier to stomach in the modestly affluent middle-class home of the Westons than in the trailer park setting of Killer Joe.

Things fall apart in both places. Or, abjuring Yeats since in the opening scene Letts has the patriarch, retired literature professor Beverly Weston, ramble to the uncomprehending new housekeeper about T.S. Eliot, each play is set in a wasteland populated with hollow men. And while we're dealing with symbolism, let's get the housekeeper out of the way. Johnna Monevata is a simple, good-hearted full-blooded Indian -- a native American -- so we can see her as the authentic antithesis to the drug- and alcohol-soaked psycho Weston family that symbolizes the contemporary Anglo heartland.

You won't see Michael Holmes again until the curtain call, for patriarch Beverly Weston disappears, causing confusion and alarm. After he has been missing for four days, plain-Jane stay-at-home sister Ivy (Irene White) calls her two sisters as well as Aunt Mattie Fae and Uncle Charlie. All converge on the expansive, bourgeois triple-level set crafted by Zach's Michael Raiford, complete with a mechanical chair on a track by the staircase, allowing tottering mom Violet to get downstairs. The Zach jocularly calls it "one bitch of a family reunion." I call it a gripping extended battle, a sort of lengthy, determined knife fight, in which drug-dazed Violet (Lana Dieterich) and her embittered sister Mattie Fae (Janelle Buchanan) are the chief protagonists.

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

Upcoming: August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, Zach Theatre, March 31 - May 22

Received directly:

presents one bitch of a family reunion

by Tracy Letts

directed by Dave Steakley

starring Lauren Lane, Michael Holmes, Lana Dietrich and Janelle Buchanan

March 31 - May 22

Previews: Thursday and Friday, March 31 and April 1 (7:30 p.m.)

Champagne Opening Night and Press Night: April 2 (7:30 p.m.)

Performances continue through MAY 22, 2011 (Wed., Thurs., Fri., Sat. @7:30 p.m.; Sunday @2:30 p.m.)

ZACH Theatre’s Kleberg Stage 1421 W. Riverside Dr. (Corner of Riverside Dr. and S. Lamar.)(click for map)

Tickets range from $20 to $49. $15 tickets are available to students starting one hour prior to curtain time. Charge tickets by phone at 512-476-0541, ext. 1 or visit http://www.zachtheatre.org.

ZACH – Austin’s Theatre and Texas’ longest running theatre company -- presents this scathingly hilarious tragicomedy of cataclysmic proportions, one bitch of a family reunion! When Dad unexpectedly vanishes into a sweltering Oklahoma summer night, the rest of the Weston clan rushes home to figure out what the hell happened. No easy feat with their serpent-tongued matriarch whose prolific pill-popping only sharpens her vitriolic outbursts. And if mama ain’t happy … she’ll make sure you’re worse! Perfectly subversive, this entertaining turbo-charged saga shocks with each new diabolically funny bombshell that’s dropped.

Read more and view links at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris, Zach Theatre, November 26 - January 2

Received directly:

(image by Kirk R. Tuck)

ZACH’s Original “Little Macy’s Elf” Returns !

ZACH Theatre presents
The 2010 Edition of David Sedaris’

The Santaland Diaries

Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello • Directed by Dave Steakley
Starring Martin Burke and Meredith McCall, winners of The Austin Chronicle’s 2010 Readers’ Poll for “Best Actors,” with Jason Connor on piano.
November 26, 2010 – January 2, 2011
Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

ZACH Theatre’s intimate Whisenhunt Stage at 1510 Toomey Road (near Riverside Dr. and S. Lamar.)

David Sedaris’ wickedly funny THE SANTALAND DIARIES tells the real-life story of Sedaris’ tour of duty as the Little Macy’s Elf – Crumpet, and what it takes to juggle tots and tottering Santas during a painfully festive time of the year. A laugh ‘til you cry evening of merrily subversive entertainment to delight adult audiences.

Tickets available online at www.zachtheatre.org, ZACH’s box office at (512) 476-0541 ext. 1 or, in person, at 1510 Toomey Rd.
Special pricing available for groups of 8 or more, seniors and students.

For real-time updates on ZACH Theatre news, events and happenings, visit http://www.zachtheatre.org/blog/. Add ZACH Theatre as a friend on Facebook, and follow ZACH on Twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/zachtheatre.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ongoing: Rent, Zach Theatre, September 16 - November 28

UPDATE, October 10 from www.thefoodiegirls.com: Sensational news is that Foodie Girl Verity Branco has stepped up in the lead role - playing Mimi - in the hit musical, RENT!

Click for ALT review, September 24

UPDATE: Click on 'Read more' to view "Mark's Actual Movie: Zach's Rent Post Show," posted September 28 (4min 45sec)

UPDATE: Zach posts cast headshots and bios, September 8

UPDATE: Review by Nick Mannix for AustinOnStage.com, September 18

UPDATE: Review by Cate Blouke for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, September 23

Found on-line:

presents

Rent

September 16 - November 28
Kleberg Stage, 1421 Riverside Drive at Lamar

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets range from $20 to $57. $15 tickets are available to students starting one hour prior to curtain time. Charge tickets by phone at 512-476-0541, ext. 1 or visit http://www.zachtheatre.org.

Book, Music & Lyrics by Jonathan Larson | Directed by Dave Steakley | Musical Direction by Allen Robertson
A
Immerse yourself in the vibrant world of New York City bohemia when ZACH transports you to the lively East Village where performance artists, musicians, and hipsters of all persuasions band together to revolt against convention. The artist squatters have taken over the theatre and have created an environment in which you are fully surrounded by Austin’s finest rock vocalists and musicians and visual artists’ creative expressions of sculptural whimsy. And when Mimi locks eyes with Roger, and Angel spies Colin, and Maureen tugs at Joanne this rock opera ignites sparks of love that redefine what family can be. Viva la vie boheme!

Read more and view videos at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .