Video: Wimberley Players Reflect on 'Stay' by Sheila Cowley, September 13 - October 6, 2013

David McCullars' video with glimpses of the performance and comments by the cast of







production of

Deanna Lalich, Aaron Johnson (photo: Wimberley Players)

Stay

by Sheila Cowley

Sept. 13 – Oct. 6, 2013

Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Reserved Seating $18; Opening Night $20; Students $9 with ID, except opening night.

450 Old Kyle Road, Wimberley, TX -- click for map

A Texas premiere! A gripping psychological drama about a marriage on the brink whose pulse refuses to stop throbbing. It’s the story of dark, complicated relationships and the nature of trust, love, sacrifice, and ultimately letting go. Stay revolves around an eye surgeon who, in a desperate attempt to keep her husband from leaving her, convinces him that he’s been blinded in an accident. As she struggles to keep him, her lies grow and become all too real.

Featuring comments by Will Mercer, Deanna Lalich and Aaron Johnson

with them and Leigh Shelton in scenes from the play

Video by David McCullars 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Stay by Sheila Cowley, Wimberley Players, September 13 - October 6, 2013

by Michael Meigs

The Wimberley Players give Sheila Cowley's Stay a quality production with a strong cast and superb production values. This piece by the Florida playwright had its premiere with the Players Theatre in Sarasota, and its transfer between local theatres ready to try out new work is an encouraging sign that not all such venues are in lockstep with the likes of Arsenic and Old Lace, Neil Simon and the Texas gothic comedies of Jones, Hope & Wooten.

Deanna Lalich is Leanne Abrams, a quietly moody physician separated from Mark, her journalist husband of twenty years, played by Aaron Johnson. He's one of those lost sheep that keeps returning; although he has a new girlfriend, he inevitably gravitates back to the apartment to pick up clothes, books and the mothering of his perhaps-soon-to-be-ex-wife. Early in the opening act Mark deposits a legal document requiring Leanne's signature, presumably necessary for some sort of no-fault divorce.

Flashbacks designated by special lighting effects take us back to the couple's earliest years, when Mark had just gotten his big job and Leanne was on her way to med school. Playwright Cowley explores repeatedly the dynamic between them, with Mark's excited, distracted talk about The Places He'll Go and Leanne's ever-patient tracking and correcting of his schedules. We hear this trope again and again, with Leanne always resorting to a wistful, unsubstantiated, "It'll be all right. . . ."

These two appealing actors work that territory as far as it can be worked, but their relationship never becomes more vivid or understandable. Cowley is asking us just to assume the best and believe that they're real people. Though Leanne turns out to be an opthalmologic surgeon, a wizard in transplanting corneas, we never hear her talk about medicine other than to lament that a girl patient of hers is still waiting for transplants. Cowley has Mark the journalist bubble about the exotic destinations that his media organization is sending him to, and evidently has been sending him to for the past twenty years, but other than that the character doesn't have a thought in his head. The two don't give us any real insight into their de facto decision not to have children, and we hear almost nothing about their history or relationship, other than his bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm like a five-year-old and her solid acceptance of him like an eternally indulgent mommy.

Aaron Johnson, Deanna Lalich (photo: Wimberley Players)

The title Stay voices Leanne's yearning for her husband, and the promotional photo of the blindfolded Mark and the contemplative Leanne suggests the central ploy of this plot. Applying her medicines, Leanne deceives Mark into thinking that he has been in a car accident and has only just roused from lengthy unconsciousness to find himself with eyes blindfolded, utterly dependent upon the wife he would sort of like to stay with if only he wasn't fascinated by his much younger female editor and feeling obliged to stay with that woman, who's pregnant by him.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Auditions in Wimberley for Stay by Sheila Cowley, July 9, 2013

The Wimberley Players proudly announces auditions for Stay by Sheila Cowley, directed by David McCullars, Tuesday, July 9, 2013 starting at 6:30pm to 9:30pm. 

Stay is a psychological drama about a marriage on the brink whose pulse refuses to abate. It is the story of darkly, complicated relationships and the nature of trust, love, sacrifice, and ultimately letting go. Two men, two women, ranging 20s - 50. These are real people: we’ve known them; we’ve been them. Stay is a brand new play which has been staged only once by the Players Community Theatre in Sarasota, FL (August of 2012).

Eugenie Bondurant, Kevin Sario, Sarasota Players (photo: Cliff Roles)

Please schedule a time slot ahead of time to avoid a long wait. Callbacks Thursday, July 11, 2013, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Rehearsal period: 6 weeks, starting the first full week of August. Exact dates and times will be based on conflicts provided at audition time. Performances: September 13 - October 6 (Fri & Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2:30 pm)

What to expect in the auditions: If you would like to perform a 1-2 minute dramatic monologue, we would love to see it. In addition, sides from the play will be sent out prior to the audition date that you can prepare as well. Please arrive 10 to 15 minutes early to fill out an audition sheet. IMPORTANT: Please bring all conflicts for the rehearsal period at this time.

What to expect in the Callbacks: If invited, you will be grouped in different combinations and asked to read selected scenes together. Each group will be given time to read together and prepare prior to performing on stage.

Click for character descriptions at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Auditions in Wimberley for The Elephant Man, EmilyAnn Theatre, December 1

The EmilyAnn Theatre is remounting their productiong of The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance that was a huge success a few years ago [click for AustinLiveTheatre review]. Bringing in a new director, David McCullars, and featuring the same actors as Merrick (Patrick Byers) and Treves (Carl Galante), this production proves to be a heartbreaking and amazing tale of acceptance, betrayal, regret, renewal, redemption, and love. We are auditioning for all roles, except for those of John Merrick, Fredrick Treves and Mrs. Kendal.

Auditions will take place on Saturday, December 1st at the EmilyAnn Theatre from 1-5pm. You must email bridget@emilyann.org to set up an audition time. This show will be running the month of February and will be taking place in our new indoor theatre, Burdine Johnson Studio Theatre.

Click to view a character list with descriptions at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Video: Blood Brothers by Willy Russell, Trinity Street Players, June 1 - 24

Austin Live Theatre's backstage visit with director Bob Beare and the cast:

Blood Brothers

by Willy Russell

directed by Bob Beare

Jun 1-3, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24

Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

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

free admission; reservations at (512) 402-3086; donations gratefully accepted

Written by award-winning author Willy Russell, the plot of Blood Brothers revolves around the story of two twin brothers separated at birth. One brother, Eddie, was adopted by wealthy parents and lives an affluent life with endless opportunities. The other brother, Mickey, not blessed with similar circumstances, is raised in poverty by his birth mother. The tale spans more than 20 years of the boys’ lives and finds Eddie going to prestigious University of Oxford, while Mickey turns to a life of crime and ultimately prison. While trying to overcome the social divide, the boys both fall in love with the same girl. This proves to be too much, splits their relationship, and leads to tragedy.

Proof, Trinity Street Players, February 16 - March 10 (extended run)

David Auburn's Proof plays with the audience, cannily withholding elements essential to the story taking place before our eyes in a back garden, adjacent to the University of Chicago. The first of those elements arrives after a lengthy gentle conversation between a relaxed, reassuring professor of mathematics and his earnest, worried daughter. Similar to an instruction to divide by the square root of -1, it obliges new rules upon us, sending us off into the world of the imaginary.

Auburn does it again at the close of Act I, when Bridget applies an operator that's similar to [*-1], giving our results a smart shake that turns our received knowledge inside out. And since in good story telling tradition surprises come in 3's, he situates the opening of the second act not in n but rather in [n - x] where x = 4 and the units are years.

Leaving math play aside for a moment, one intriguing aspect of Auburn's story about the frontiers of mathematics and the far reaches of human rationality is how little of mathematics appears in it. Of course, your ordinary audience would probably sit glassy eyed at any serious intent to explain a major postulate or proof. We who are largely innumerate take the existence of higher mathematics largely on faith, and we're perfectly satisfied when Auburn withholds the mumbo jumbo of technical terms for the the final seconds of the piece when the stage lights are going down. Catherine, granted credence by her aspiring suitor the graduate student in math, is about to take his adoring attention into those mythical realms where we can't follow.

Proof only hints at mathematical proofs, exercises in a closed and shining world where everything fits incontrovertibly. More importantly, it offers us the search for proof in a more judicial sense -- the messy accumulation of facts, testimony and human interactions intended to establish in our fallible mind , beyond a reasonable doubt, a version of reality.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Video for Upcoming: Proof, Trinity Street Players, February 17 - March 4

present

Proof

by David Auburn

February 17 - March 4, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

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

Admission free (donations gladly accepted) -- Please reserve at (512) 402-3086 or email reservations@trinityplayers.com

For mature audiences

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

Click to view 'Upcoming' announcement with additional information at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Auditions for Proof, Trinity Street Players, November 19 and 20

Received directly:

Trinity Street Players audition notice for Proof by David Audburn

Audition dates: Saturday, November 19 at 1 p.m.; Sunday, November 20 at 1 p.m. (optional callbacks)

901 Trinity Street, 4th Floor Blackbox Theatre (click for map)

This Pulitzer-Prize-winning play is a powerful drama about the fine line between madness and brilliance. It's a story of creativity, control, passion, and second chances. Audburn is simply flawless in the execution of the script: "The work was beautiful. It's streamlined: no wasted moves, like a ninety-five mile-an-hour fastball. It's just elegant" says Hal.

CHARACTERS:

Catherine (age 25) - a complicated young woman, unpretentiously brilliant, caught in the shadow of her great father to whom she is deeply devoted yet painfully resentful; guarded and layered but quirky and extremely endearing. Her sense of humor and novel behavior traits walk the line between funny and heartbreaking. Utterly afraid she suffers from the same incapacitating mental illness that took her father's brilliance away from him.

Robert (age 50-65) - an obviously brilliant mathematician with a particular fondness for his mathematically prodigy of a daughter; suffers from an unspecified mental illness that causes him to fill reams of notebooks with complete nonsense; desperately longing for the days when his mind was still capable.

Hal (age 28) - graduate student and devotee of Robert; a nerd perhaps and awkward often, but he retains a self-awareness and compassion that brings him into a romantic relationship with Catherine; a complicated character with questionable motives at first but who ultimately provides the turning point for Catherine at this most vulnerable time in her life.

Claire (age 30) - Catherine's sister, breezy and business-like. Unlike Catherine's brooding, Claire holds her feelings about their father in check and decides to take on the role of caretaker to her sister (who Claire believes is showing signs of mental illness). Claire has a good job in New York and has been paying the medical bills for her father while Catherine was the one taking care of him. Much unresolved conflict and history surfaces between Claire and Catherine.

FORMAT: The audition will consist of sides from the play. Email director@trinitystreetplayers.com for sides if you wish to prepare them ahead of time (encouraged). There will be individual readings and paired readings. Headshots and resume are not required, but you may bring them if you have them, and you are not already on file with TSP. VERY IMPORTANT: Bring your list of conflicts during the months of Jan, Feb, and early March.

ADDITIONAL DATES: Rehearsals will begin the first week of January, four per week. Actors will be asked to attend rehearsals only when working on their scenes. All actors will be expected to have lines memorized before rehearsals begin.

Show dates are: Feb 17, 18, 19; Feb 23, 24, 25; Mar 1, 2, 3

For more information contact David McCullars, Director at director@trinitystreetplayers.com -- website: http://www.trinitystreetplayers.com

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 . . . .

Arts Reporting: Wimberley Players' Heiress Links to 1947 New York Production

Received directly via Wimberley Players' "Curtain Call" newsletter:

Perhaps the name Finklehoffe rings a bell?

Carolyn’s husband Fred F. Finklehoffe wrote, directed, and produced many plays, television shows, and films during his lifetime. One of the plays he produced was The Heiress at The Biltmore Theater on Broadway. Carolyn said that when Fred was producing The Heiress, he and director Jed Harris went to London to talk to Wendy Hiller about performing the leading role. Fred had told Carolyn that they would not have done the show if they could not have Wendy.

Carolyn Finklehoffe resides with her daughter Casey and son-in-law Don Marinucci on their Texas Hill Country ranch. Don has shown and won in Western Pleasure for years, often competing in Texas, which is what spurred the big move for him and Casey. Four years ago, Carolyn said farewell to her home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and joined Casey & Don on the ranch.

Carolyn and Fred met at a private screening party given by Mickey Rooney in New York City. Rooney and Fred were good friends and frequently worked together on films. Carolyn worked as a fashion model, so an invitation from Rooney was run of the mill for the young woman who spent evenings out with the likes of Frank Sinatra. Carolyn said that when she arrived at the party, she saw Fred. At first sight, she knew that Fred would be the man she would marry.

Carolyn and Fred’s wedding was held at the home of Judy Garland. Her daughter, Liza Minnelli, was Carolyn’s flower girl. Judy Garland later became Casey’s godmother. Many of the shows Fred wrote were specifically for Miss Garland, and she was a dear friend of the Finklehoffe’s. Carolyn and Fred’s wedding was covered by Louella Parsons of the Associated Press, thus their wedding picture and write up appeared in papers nationwide.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Heiress, Wimberley Players, February 18 -March 13

Received directly:

present

THE HEIRESS

by Ruth Ann and August Goetz
Directed by Robert FitzGerald

February 18 – March 13, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Wimberly Players Theatre, 450 Old Kyle Rd., Wimberley (click for map)

Tickets are $18 each ($20 each for opening night including a pre-show reception at 7 p.m.) available at www.wimberleyplayers.org. Box Office at 847-0575 is open Wednesdays & Thursdays, 2 - 5 p.m., Fridays 2 - 6 p.m.

The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz is an adaptation of Henry James's novel Washington Square. The play launches the Wimberley Players 2011 season and will run for four consecutive weekends.

This Tony Award winning drama is set in the drawing room of a mansion in an affluent residential square in New York City during the 1850’s. It immerses us in the life of Catherine Sloper, a wealthy, yet commonplace, young woman of a retiring and reserved disposition. Unexpectedly, she meets and is wooed by an attractive young man, Morris Townsend, and ultimately falls desperately in love.

We witness Catherine’s anguish, and feel her pain as she is torn between her wealthy father, Dr. Austin Sloper, who has dominated her life since birth, and the promise of a bright future with a man she dared not dream could be hers. Add to this mix a foolish, meddlesome aunt, with other members of two intertwined families and you have a story of love, selfishness, hope and plot-turning surprises. T he Heiress has humor that lightly taps you on the shoulder and brutal reality that slaps you in the heart.

Shadowlands by William Nicholson, Trinity Street Players, November 5 - 21

I am a bookish sort of person -- not fiercely literary, but more inclined to take my reference points from a printed page than from a screen. I was aware of C.S. Lewis because my daughter and son had absorbed the Narnia books and because back in my own school days I had wrestled a bit with the Screwtape letters, but I had not much more knowledge of him than that. When this piece came along, I was vaguely bothered by the mentions of the 1993 film that I had never seen. Our years of living abroad had hindered the acquisition of many of the video memories floating in the national consciousness, including those of Richard Attenborough's cinematic version with Anthony Hopkins in the central role.

So Karen and I were completely vulnerable to this powerful, calculated piece about the pottering Cambridge don serenely lost in his books, gab-fests with academic fellows, and his own imaginings. Jose Schenkner as C.S. Lewis vividly creates that late middle-aged bachelor, thoughtful and contained, and brings us into his crisis of love and religion as if we were members of the Inklings, the tweedy bunch that met every week to grumble, gossip and discuss.

Director David McCullars makes sure that we know the story that we're getting into, even those of us not already set up by the film. The program outlines the facts in a page of discursive biography, and on the back page McCullars muses about his exposure to Lewis, both to the works and to the man's history. Shadowlands situates us in the shabbily genteel world of Lewis, the inveterate bachelor who shared a house with his brother Warnie, then brings on board Linda Miller Raff as Joy Gresham, the American woman estranged from her own novelist husband and in search of some guiding insight above and beyond those offered by Lewis in his books. As Nicholson tells the story, Gresham eventually became the friend and force who reconnected Lewis to his own emotional life.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Shadowlands, Trinity Street Players, November 5 - 21

Received directly:

present

Shadowlands
by William Nicholson
November 5, 6, 11, 12, 13*, 19, 20 @ 7:30pm
November 7*, 14, 21 @ 2:30pm

* Free childcare provided upon request

901 Trinity Street, 4th Floor Blackbox theater
Tickets are FREE. Call 512-476-2625 to reserve seats.

The Trinity Street Players are proud to present our fall production of Shadowlands, a drama about the true story, late-in-life romance of C.S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce) with his American soul mate Joy Gresham. It is a rivetting play on the nature of suffering, following Lewis's own painful journey through love, loss, and acceptance. David McCullars directs a stunning cast of seasoned veterans, including Jose Shenkner and Linda Miller Raff as Lewis and Joy. It's a must-see for all.

Upcoming: Shadowlands, Trinity Street Players, November 4- 21

Received directly:

present

Shadowlands

by William Nicholson

November 4**, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13*, 18, 19, 20 @ 7:30pm
November 7*, 14, 1 @ 2:30pm

* Free childcare provided upon request
** Preview night

901 Trinity Street, 4th Floor Blackbox theater

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

The Trinity Street Players are proud to present our fall production of Shadowlands, a drama about the true story, late-in-life romance of C.S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce) with his American soul mate Joy Gresham. It is a rivetting play on the nature of suffering, following Lewis's own painful journey through love, loss, and acceptance. David McCullars directs a stunning cast of seasoned veterans, including Jose Shenkner and Linda Miller Raff as Lewis and Joy. It's a must-see for all.

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 . . . .

Leading Ladies, Wimberley Players, April 17 - May 10

Leading Ladies by Ken Ludwig has all the big-footed clowning of a British pantomime, that venerable, wheezy holiday art form in which the British public hoots and chortles at manly men dressing up as women. Dame Edna is the royalty of that genre, but every middle- and lower-class family wants to attend the local "panto" in December, and British TV comedy sketches will inevitably get around to putting a male comedian into something frilly, and preferably topping him with a hat.

The show is set in 1958. I was surprised when a little research turned up the fact that Ludwig's piece premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston only five years ago. It has fallen into the warm embrace of community theatres since then. I missed the recent staging in Leander by the Way Off Broadway Community Players, but made up for it this past weekend with the Wimberley Players, at their handsome, intimate playhouse on Old Kyle Road.

Leading Ladies is a goofy masquerade. Two down-on-their-luck British actors of mediocre talent, on a whistle-stop tour of small town Moose Lodges and Elks Clubs, discover in a newspaper left on a train that a $3 million inheritance will soon be available to a young lady and two long-lost cousins, absent for many years in England. Aha! What better scheme for our wayward Brit showmen than to imitate those inheritors? Problem: a closer reading reveals that the lost are women, not men!

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