Upcoming: Hillcountry Underbelly Preview Party, Vortex Repertory Yard, July 27

Received directly from

JOIN US NEXT WEDNESDAY JULY 27th FOR A PARTY BENEFITING PAPER CHAIRS' HILLCOUNTRY UNDERBELLY...

(we'll also be introducing the new Paper Chairs joining the company).

Wednesday, July 27, 8:00pm-11:00pm - The VORTEX

What Will They Do Next is donating free whiskey for our drinking pleasure.

The Butterfly Bar will offer Happy Hour prices on drinks for the duration of the party.

We'll have local musicians jamming out BLUEGRASS tunes on the patio as well as a SNEAK PREVIEW of a few of Mark Stewart's original music from HILLCOUNTRY UNDERBELLY.

We'll also have cards, games, dominoes, merriment, projection things....

IT'LL BE FUN. promise.

$5 suggested donation.

See you there.

Upcoming: Hill Country Underbelly, a musical by Elizabeth Doss and Mark Stewart, Paper Chairs at the Vortex Yard, August 5 - 21

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Paper Chairs Announces Production of an Original Musical –

Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts

Book and Lyrics by Elizabeth Doss, Music by Mark Stewart

Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd. - click for map).

Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Paper Chairs excitedly announces its third production, Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts, written by Elizabeth Doss, with original music by Mark Stewart, directed by Dustin Wills and Keri Boyd.

Pa’s fall down a deathtrap rattles through the land like thunder. His ghost appears in limestone, prophesying a great flood will take the hillcountry by storm. His six surviving orphans must head to higher ground to elude their demise. Watch the pack aim to outrun and outsmart every obstacle on the outskirts in the fierce pursuit of life. How do you survive a flood when you’ve lost your roots? Paper Chairs will flood the VORTEX Yard and wash away a scorching August in an environmental production of this torrential tale. Holes, floods, tunes, dogs and buzzards abound. Prepare for a soaking.

Featuring performances by Robert Pierson as Pa (2011 Critic’s Table and 2010 B. Iden Payne Best Supporting Actor), Caroline Reck as the Theotokos, and Jacob Trussell, Emily Tindall, Noel Gaulin, Kelli Bland, Jenn Hartmann, and Mark Stewart as the orphans – oh, and musicians too.

Scenic design by Lisa Laratta (2010 Critic’s Table Best Scenic Design), costume design by Dustin Wills, projection design by Noel Gaulin and lighting design by Natalie George (2011 Critic’s Table Best Lighting Design).

Hillcountry Underbelly runs Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd.; Austin, Texas 78722). Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Hillcountry Underbelly will be presented in the VORTEX yard – we encourage folks to dress down! The Butterfly Bar will sell cooling refreshments and Paper Chairs will offer bug spray (if needed), fans, mist, general comfort and an outhouse – you can even bring your own chair if you don’t like ours.

Paper Chairs creates sensorially dynamic theatre combining fractured subjectivity, music, unconventional audience situation, surrealism and labor-intensive mechanics. We favor challenging texts that allow for a fusion of various performance styles, music genres, and historical periods to excite modern sensibilities and educate by suggesting past and present cultural connections. The work is outrageous, well-researched, and a little bit dangerous.

OUR KICKSTARTER SITE: www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperchairs/hillcountry-underbelly

Heddatron, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 11 - March 5

Central Texas is about to be knee-deep in Heddas. Dustin Wills and friends down at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre start that unplanned festival with this "back to the future" version. The promising, term-limited Palindrome Theatre opens a "world premiere" (!) adaptation by Nigel O'Hearn at the Blue Theate, beginning next week. And then in May Tony Ciaravino will do another, presumably more classic, with the Classic Theatre in San Antonio.

SVT's jangly, mystifying absurdist staging of Heddatron runs riot with Ibsen's play. To tell the truth, you don't need to be familiar with the original in order to appreciate this funhouse madness. Precocious young Ava Johns plays a smug-beyond-her-years sixth grader giving a book report on the play.

A sixth grader assigned to read Ibsen's subtle portrait of the destructive, self-destuctive young Norwegian bride? That should give you a hint and a warning.to fasten your seatbelts for a theatre ride that outdoes Honey, I Shrunk The Kids for weirdness, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly for menace, and The Iron Giant for cybernetics. The script riffs explicitly on the first two. And on Ibsen -- both on Hedda Gabler and the mutton-chopped, sometimes oblivious incarnation of the Norwegian writer himself.

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

Baal by Bertolt Brecht, Paper Chairs at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, November 11 - 28

Baal was Brecht's first play, written in 1918 at the age of twenty. He had avoided the draft by taking a medical course and he was called up to staff a venereal disease clinic only a month before the war ended, and much of that time he was studying theatre.

Brecht did not articulate his doctrine of theatrical alienation until 1935, but this text and the production of it by Dustin Wills and the Paper Chairs company suggest strongly that he was on his way in that direction from the very first of his career. Playwright and company achieve the Verfremdungseffekt by using plot devices and staging techniques that remind spectators that they are witnessing a theatrical enactment, not real life -- the intent is didactic, pressing viewers to question and to rouse themselves from the comfort of their passivity. It is a tidy justification for a presentational (not representational) stage technique. Many readers and theatre practitioners consider that Brecht's stories and characters gripped his audiences despite of the V-effekt instead of because of it.

I wanted to like this production because I appreciate Wills' exploration of early 20th century theatre and I enjoy the brash ensemble techniques he encourages. You enter the Salvage Vanguard to find a square central stage oriented in proscenium fashion, even though there's no proscenium. Instead, on either side, you see "backstage" dressing and costuming areas, with cast members boisterously preparing for the show. They wear baggy underclothes of tan-colored muslin, they pay little attention to the gathering spectators, they josh, they fret, they give the impression of a circus troupe preparing for one more day on the boards. Some will wander by to greet spectators; others do vocal or physical exercises. The energy is attractive and invigorating.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Salon Vanguard party fundraiser, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, December 2

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Join Salvage Vanguard Theater for the 2nd Annual

Salon Vanguard

benefit soirée.

December 2, 7 - 11 p.m.
Eponymous Garden, 1202 Garden St.
Tickets $50 individual, $80 couples
Email jenny@salvagevanguard.org for tickets and information

Buy a ticket for Salon Vanguard, a benefit soiree, and receive complimentary food, expertly made cocktails, and intimate performances from Austin artists Owen Egerton (author and performer), Margery Segal (dancer and choreographer), and PJ Raval (film maker). Plus the Church of the Friendly Ghost, SVT’s resident music makers, will set the mood and serenade you with a jazz trio on the back patio. Your distinguished hosts for the evening will be SVT company member Adriene Mishler, directing savant Dustin Wills, and Westen Borgehsi from White Ghost Shivers.
Throughout the evening, they’ll lead the soiree in group songs, fun-filled parlor games and an old-fashioned good time.

Salvage Vanguard Theater is a hub for Austin artists, audiences, and arts organizations. SVT creates and presents transformative, high-quality artistic experiences that foster experimentation and conversation. Since 1994 Salvage Vanguard Theater has been producing new American plays. Since June 7, 2007, Salvage Vanguard Theater has been cultivating an arts facility located on Manor Road. It is a facility in Austin that allows both visual and performing artists to incubate ideas, create and develop new artwork, and present that artwork to the general public. More than 30,000 artists and spectators now make use of the space over the course of a year. As a result of the eclectic and energetic work happening at SVT, and by SVT, they are able to reach thousands of people in and around Austin, creating a true center for the arts on the east side.

Upcoming: Baal by Bertolt Brecht, Paper Chairs at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, November 11 - 28

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Paper Chairs excitedly announces its sophomore production

Baal

by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Peter Tegel from the 1922 edition

directed by Dustin Wills.

Ba·al [bey-uhl, beyl]

1. any of numerous local deities among the ancient Semitic peoples, typifying the productive forces of nature and worshiped with much sensuality.

2. (sometimes lowercase) a false god.

The slightly intoxicated, morally bankrupt patrons of “The Night Cloud” are putting on a play about their idol, Baal. Baal is a mysterious figure said to have roamed the forests, inns and bars leaving nothing but poetry, destruction and a hefty bar tab in his wake. The perfect – though some may disagree – idol for a band of hooligans in a seedy cabaret.

Bertolt Brecht’s first play, Baal, drags its audience deep into a body of youthful desires and complete moral abandon. Written in 1918, when Brecht was 20 years old – before the Epic Theatre and the overtly political work for which he is lauded – Baal unfolds in fragments; like a piecemeal of the nearly forgotten events of a drunken evening. It tells the story of our poet-musician and title character, Baal, fleeing the civilized world to live the extreme life somewhere in the forest finding plenty of people and pursuits to indulge his insatiable appetite for experience. The themes coursing through this text are especially pressing today: emerging adulthood, substance abuse, nature’s destruction, homosexuality, and exploration of the body. This performance of Baal also features original score and 8 songs written to Brecht’s verse performed live by the bar patrons and composed and directed by boozers Andy Tindall and Rob Greenfield. We also invite 12 audience members to buy priority seats at tables on stage – free refreshments included!

Featuring bar patrons Joey Hood (2010 Critic’s Table Best Actor), Robert Pierson, Jacob Trussell, Noel Gaulin, Michael Amendola (2010 Critic’s Table Best Supporting Actor), Rob Greenfield, Kelli Bland, Adriene Mishler, Elizabeth Doss, Kimberly Adams, Chase Crossno, Sonnet Blanton, and Gabriel Luna (2010 Critic’s Table Best Actor) in the title role, Baal. The Night Cloud Cabaret is designed by Lisa Laratta (2010 Critic’s Table Best Scenic Design), the costumes by bar regular Benjamin Taylor Ridgeway, and the lovely Natalie George hanging lights from the trees.

Baal runs Wednesdays – Sundays from November 11 to November 28 nightly at 8:00 p.m. (three weekends in total) at The Salvage Vanguard Theater (2803 Manor Rd.; Austin, Texas 78722). Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Wednesdays and Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays - $15.00 general seating, $30.00 table seating. Advanced Purchase ticket pricing ($15 each) will be available through our website as of October 18, 2010 (www.paperchairs.com). There will be no performance Thanksgiving, November 25.

Paper Chairs creates sensorially dynamic theatre combining fractured subjectivity, music, unconventional audience situation, surrealism, provocative design and labor-intensive mechanics. We favor challenging texts that allow for a fusion of various performance styles, music genres, and historical periods to excite modern sensibilities and educate by suggesting past and present cultural connections. The work is outrageous, well-researched, and a little bit dangerous.

Auditions: Heddatron at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, October 24

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Auditions for Salvage Vanguard Theater mainstage production

HEDDATRON

by Elizabeth Meriwether.

Directed by Dustin Wills.

Show performances are Feb 11- March 5 at Salvage Vanguard.

Auditions will be held October 24 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

By appointment only. Email jenny@salvagevanguard.org to schedule.

Sides will be provided at the audition. Actors will be compensated for the performance.

ABOUT HEDDATRON, written by Elizabeth Meriwether

A pregnant housewife, Jane, is abducted by robots and taken to the rainforest and forced to perform Hedda Gabler by her robot captors. Meanwhile, her family back home in Michigan trying to find her, and Henrik Ibsen is in Norway attempting to write Hedda Gabler, as Strindberg taunts him. A hilarious and savage journey to freedom.

"That's my robot heart beating itself to death inside my rock hard torso-tron."

CHARACTERS to cast

RICK GORDON / HANS ROBOT - male, early 30's - early 40's, weak but not dumb, normal in a frustrating way. Jane's husband. ROBOT: tall, glowing, muscular, articulate.

CUBBY GORDON / BILLY ROBOT - male, mid 20's - late 30's, figuratively or literally mustachioed, wears rings. Rick's brother. ROBOT: junky, visible rust, stop-start way of speaking.

MRS. IBSEN / AUNT JULIE-BOT - female, late 30's - early 50's, a pistol-whip, not to be reckoned with. ROBOT: wears a big tacky hat.

NUGGET GORDON - female, ten years old, freakishly brilliant. Jane's daughter

FILM STUDENT - male, just barely 20, in over his head. Pimples.

AUGUST STRINDBERG - male, early 30's - late 40's, sexy, sexual, if Sweden had cowboys.

Auditions: Heddatron at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, October 24

Received directly:

Auditions for Salvage Vanguard Theater mainstage production

HEDDATRON

by Elizabeth Meriwether.

Directed by Dustin Wills.

Show performances are Feb 11- March 5 at Salvage Vanguard.

Auditions will be held October 24 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

By appointment only. Email jenny@salvagevanguard.org to schedule.

Sides will be provided at the audition. Actors will be compensated for the performance.

ABOUT HEDDATRON, written by Elizabeth Meriwether

A pregnant housewife, Jane, is abducted by robots and taken to the rainforest and forced to perform Hedda Gabler by her robot captors. Meanwhile, her family back home in Michigan trying to find her, and Henrik Ibsen is in Norway attempting to write Hedda Gabler, as Strindberg taunts him. A hilarious and savage journey to freedom.

"That's my robot heart beating itself to death inside my rock hard torso-tron."

CHARACTERS to cast

RICK GORDON / HANS ROBOT - male, early 30's - early 40's, weak but not dumb, normal in a frustrating way. Jane's husband. ROBOT: tall, glowing, muscular, articulate.

CUBBY GORDON / BILLY ROBOT - male, mid 20's - late 30's, figuratively or literally mustachioed, wears rings. Rick's brother. ROBOT: junky, visible rust, stop-start way of speaking.

MRS. IBSEN / AUNT JULIE-BOT - female, late 30's - early 50's, a pistol-whip, not to be reckoned with. ROBOT: wears a big tacky hat.

NUGGET GORDON - female, ten years old, freakishly brilliant. Jane's daughter

FILM STUDENT - male, just barely 20, in over his head. Pimples.

AUGUST STRINDBERG - male, early 30's - late 40's, sexy, sexual, if Sweden had cowboys.

Machinal by Sophie Treadwell, Paper Chairs at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, May 28 - June 13

This production of Machinal by Sophie Treadwell, currently playing at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, is a memorable staging of a 1928 shocker -- which in 21st century terms means that it is endearingly two dimensional.

Back in the 1920's,most American theatre art was unexciting, conventional or cast in moral platitudes. At the same time, newspaper reporting of crimes were sensationalistic and very big business. In a time when both radio and cinema were still new,big city newspapers' accounts of accounts of murders and of murder trials sold a lot of papers.

Those days have been memorialized in cinema and in theatre since then. For example, Chicago journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins scored a big hit in the theatre with a thinly fictionalized account of the 1924 exploits of two murderesses, both of whom were acquitted. That 1926 play ran for 171 performances and was the basis for Kander and Ebb's 1975 musical Chicago, featuring the oh-so-innocent but oh-so-guilty Roxy Hart -- a musical revived successfully in New York in 1990 and made into an Academy- award-winning film in 2002.

Journalist SophieTreadwell scored a similar succès de scandale with Machinal, a poetic, expressionistic imagining based on the crime and execution at Sing Sing prison of Ruth Snyder. Treadwell had covered the 1927 murder trial. The state execution of Snyder in January, 1928 was a huge sensation, both because this was New York's first execution of a woman since 1899 and because the New York Daily News published the next day a photo of the execution, taken with a hidden camera strapped to the ankle of one of its journalists.

Machinal opened in New York in fall, 1928, featuring the relatively unknown actor Clark Gable in the pivotal role of a relaxed seducer whose casual attitude (Quien sabe? Who knows what might happen?) eventually opened the way for the Young Woman to undertake murderous action.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Silent Stage, A Live Action Silent Film, Episode 1, Undisclosed Location in Austin, February 19 - 28

UPDATE: Review by Virginia Hickenlaible for the Daily Texan, February 24

UPDATE: Robert Faires' short feature for the Austin Chronicle, February 18

Received indirectly:


The@re Ranch announces its inaugural theatre event


Silent Stage, A Live Action Silent Film
Episode One: Little Girl, Big City
at an undisclosed location
Thursdays-Saturdays, February 19 - 28, 8 p.m.

Quietly – no, silently - creep down the narrow alleyways of nowhere into a midnight party, something illicit and illegal, something magical and macabre. Silently sneak through the back of a 1920’s silent movie house – through the window, the chimney, the basement – get in at any cost.

Silent Stage's full length episode “Little Girl, Big City” follows the small town Dakota darling from the tumbleweed train platform to the seedy underbelly of Little Italy, NYC. Once in the city’s clutches: a mix up, a switch, a change of clothes, a handgun, a dream, a con artist, a flood, a big love.

Silent Stage features Dustin Wills, Westen Borghesi, Adriene Mishler, Sam Webber, Mark Stewart, Kyle Lagunas, Hilah Johnson, Chase Crossno, Francisco Rodriguez, Keri Boyd, Sonnet Blanton, and David Yeakle. Musical Accompaniment by Ashville, North Carolina's Reese Gray (Firecracker Jazz Band, Squirrel Nut Zippers)

Silent Stage runs Thursdays – Sundays, February 19 – 28, nightly at 8 p.m. Location and additional information will be disclosed upon ticket purchase. Advance ticket purchase or reservation is required! Seating is limited to 21 spectators per performance. Tickets may be purchased at www.silentstage.eventbright.com.

In This House (Everything Is You), Salvage Vanguard & Tutto Theatre for FronteraFest at the Eponymous Garden, Januar 21-24

No, despite the enigmatic lines of the teaser, this is not a ghost story. It is collaborative imagination of memories tied to the faded upright eloquence of that two-story bed and breakfast residence in lower East Austin now known as the Eponymous Garden.

"Eponymous" because the Garden takes its name from the street, Garden Street, and perhaps -- it would seem appropriate -- from that neighborhood in Austin. It's just east of I-35 and a couple of blocks south of César Chávez Street. To find it, you drive east on Chávez and after you cross under the Interstate, at the next traffic light take a right onto Waller Street. The neighborhood has lots of small clapboard houses, of the sort that would have been homes for tradesmen and artisans back in the 'teens of the previous century.

The garden is not very much in evidence in January, but the pictures on the website suggest that the house is engulfed in blossom once better weather arrives. In its weathered pink-and-white elegance, 1202 Garden Street carries a strong flavor of earlier prosperity.

In This House is a collaborative work for which fourteen artists are credited in the single photocopied page of the playbill. Jenny Larson of the Salvage Vanguard and Dustin Wills of Tutto Theatre directed. Others are writers, writer/actors, and actors, both grown ones and child actors.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: In This House (Everything Is You), Salvage Vanguard at Eponymous Garden, January 21-24

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, January 22



Found on-line:

In This House (Everything Is You)

presented by Salvage Vanguard Theater and Eponymous Garden for FronteraFest 2010's "Bring Your Own Venue"

Eponymous Gardens, 1202 Garden St.
January 21-24 at 8 p.m., January 23 & 24 at 5 p.m.
Tickets are $15. Seating is limited to 20 people per performance. Tickets available here.

We are thinking of a lost child. We are thinking of the past poking up into the present and giving you a chill. We are thinking about the present reaching back into the past, and giving it a loving hug.

A workshop production written by Sharon Bridgeforth, Daniel Alexander Jones, Monika Bustamante, and Cyndi Williams. This ghost story is an examination of love, loss, and family.

Co-directed by Dustin Wills and Jenny Larson. Featuring performers Florinda Bryant, Wesley Bryant, Adriene Mishler, Jude Hickey, and Cyndi Williams.

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 . . . .

Upcoming: Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Vortex Repertory, October 23 - November 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 26

UPDATE: Lisa Scheps on KOOP-FM writes on the website for Offstage and On The Air: "Today my guests were all from Tutto Theatre Company's production, Murder Ballad Murder Mystery playing October 23 - November 7 at The Vortex (click here for tickets). We had Tutto Artistic Director and Director of the show, Dustin Wills; playwright, lyricist, and performer Elizabeth Doss; Composer and performer, Mark Stewart and performer Kelly Bland. It was a fun show and most of the music was played live in the studio." Click here to listen. (30 mins)

Found on-line:

Vortex Repertory Company and Tutto Theatre Company
present the world premiere production of

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery

by Elizabeth Doss
Directed by Dustin Wills
Oct.23-Nov.07, 2009

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery unearths a host of dank and dirty bayou bandits whose names once marauded headlines, wanted posters, and LP sleeves. Watch these corpses whittle out new murder tools to make mincemeat of fair maidens and turn your sweetest dream into your worst nightmare. This psychedelic bluegrass symphonic romp through the swamp spins infamous southern-gothic tales of torture and true crime into a circus massacre of whodunits. A blast from the past straight up from the grave. Get caught at the crossroads, October 23rd at The Vortex. Halloween Drink Specials. Costumes welcome.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Black Snow, Tutto Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, June 26 - July 12

UPDATE: Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle, July 9

UPDATE: Profile of Dustin Wills and Tutto Theatre's mid-July performances in Rome, by Nicola Ferlei Brown in "The Roman Forum," July 8

UPDATE: Review by Dan Solomon on austinist.com, July 8

UPDATE: Review by Javier Sanchez in the UT Daily Texan On-line, July 7

UPDATE: Review by Sean Fuentes at Austin Theatre Review, July 1

UPDATE: from interview of director Dustin Wills, published by UT June 13 at the alumni profiles section:

Q. What's next for you?

A. The show I'm working on right now is called Black Snow. It's adapted by Keith Reddin and it's based on a theatrical novel by Mikhail Bulgakov who was a writer at the Moscow Art Theatre during the Stanislavski era. I really liked it I think because this is going to be the first play I've ever directed that I didn't write or have a hand in writing or was able to work with a new writer to be able to rewrite. I cannot cut it, cannot change genders – so this feels more new to me than anything right now.

Black Snow, featuring: Gabriel Luna, Smaranda Ciceu (MFA in Acting candidate), Francisco Rodriguez (BA '05), Amy Downing, Maarouf Naboulsi, Ron Weisberg (BA '07), Verity Branco (MFA in Acting candidate), Diego Larrea–Puemape (BA '08), and Kyle Lagunas; with Scene Design by Lisa Laratta (MFA '08), Lighting Design by Megan M. Reilly (MFA '07), and Costume Design by Kim H. Ngo (BA '07), runs June 26 to July 12, at Salvage Vanguard Theater. Visit TUTTOtheatre.org for details.

Found on-line:

Black Snow
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Adapted by Keith Reddin
Directed by Dustin Wills

26 June – 12 July 2009
Thursday – Sundays 8:00 p.m.
[No Performance July 4th]
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
At the Door: $15 (Starving Artist Rate: $12 Starving Theatre Company Rate: $20)
Thursdays 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 Gabriel Luna,Smaranda Ciceu, Francisco Rodriguez, Amy Downing, Maarouf Naboulsi, Ron Weisburg, Verity Branco, Diego Larrea-Puemape, & Kyle Lagunas. Scene Design by Lisa Laratta, Lighting Design by Megan Reilly, and Costume Design by Kim H. Ngo.

Sergei Maxudov, a proofreader for the Shipping Gazette, has written an awful palimpsest of a novel, entitled Black Snow, and decides to hang himself on account, that is until a strange visitor pounds on his door and offers to publish it. This is Sergei’s introduction to the outrageous world of publishing and from there, to the downward spiral of adapting one’s work for the stage.

Nine actors portray 54 characters, the often absurd, sometimes vicious employees of the famed Moscow Art Theatre, each poised to cut, slice, rip, edit, mutilate, and otherwise butcher his script in this tour-de-force performed at breakneck speed. See for yourself how hard it really is to develop a new play as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Black Snow savages the theatrical world of post-revolutionary Russia.

Director Bio
Press Release
BUY TICKETS NOW!
MAP TO SALVAGE VANGUARD

Ophelia, Tutto Theatre Company at the Blue Theatre, November 7 - 23

The Ophelia – or Ophelias – of Tutto Theatre Company appearing currently at the Blue Theatre in east Austin is a puzzle and a frustration.

The more deceiv’d Ophelia of Shakespeare has deep resonance in our tradition. She is the enamoured, disappointed, dutiful daughter who returns her lover’s tokens per her father’s instructions and in complying with filial and social obligation becomes the pawn and victim of both sides.

Trapped in an impossible situation, powerless and then bereft of lover, father and brother, she departs from reality entirely. Ophelia sings, babbles of lost maidenhood, dispenses flowers redolent with symbolism and rebuke, then dies unseen, pulled to the depths of a pond as her garments absorb the dark water that pulls her down.

Ophelia was a favorite subject of late 19th and early 20th century painters and writers, including the pre-Raphelite brotherhood in England, a group of mostly male painters and writers given inter alia to swooning over the innocence and vulnerability of young girls. Take these visions, for example (click on image for larger version):

In our own day, psychologist Mary Piper employed the character in Ophelia Revived, a popularized 1994 study of social dilemmas and character changes of adolescent girls. A sample, implying her thesis: “Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle. In early adolescence, studies show that girls’ IQ scores drop and their math and science scores plummet. They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and “tomboyish” personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed. They report great unhappiness with their own bodies.”

So there you are – the alluring character from Shakespeare, made eternal in plot, verse, and image, interpreted variously, including by gentle lechers and by concerned psychologists, fraught with possibilities for our own day.

No wonder director/author Dustin Wills selected Ophelia for his project – including a UT workshop with staged readings in 2005, and now, after his villeggiatura in Italy, for this first production of a rechristened theatre company.

It just didn’t work for me.

Wills chose to split Ophelia into five personae – Ophelias “in love,” “impassioned,” “on edge,” “undone,” and “in water.” Designer Lisa Laratta and lighting designer Megan M. Reilly create a haunting nowhere for them to co-exist. Upon entering the theatre we find a rectangular space defined by chalk-white rafters with a teardrop pond at the back of it. The five Ophelias gather dreamily around the water.

As a joint persona, these five Ophelias are musical, lively and giggly, with the mischievous mutual confidence of high schoolers – they are high on life and thick as thieves. I half-expected one or another to whip out a cell phone and start text messaging.

There’s much movement here. For example, they perch on the five ladders ranged like trellises against the framework. The choreography of these early scenes is novel and appealing, reinforcing the message of untouched innocence. Chanting, singing, and repetition are devices that emphasize the shared identity of the five.

The action of the piece consists of the sequential exploration of these five. Each steps forward to interact with father Polonius or with the hot Hamlet (both roles played by Gabriel Luna).

Ophelia in love (Sofia Ruiz) is the first on deck. After her unsuccessful interactions with the father/lover, she winds up dead on her back in the water, where she gets to stay for the next hour.

Ophelia impassioned (Chase Crossno) has the next go. She is strong, daring, flirtatious and determined, with an amusing “will she – won’t she – what does she want?” scene, but she gets no farther. Off to the pond.

Ophelia on edge (Lizzi Biggers) is more successful in seductive arts, but she betrays alarm and anguish at her deed. Hamlet just laughs; Polonius goes into righteous rage when he finds Hamlet’s discarded trousers in the playing space.

Off to the pond.

And then there were two.

At about that point I seriously lost interest.

Maybe because Wills’ script is a dog’s breakfast of texts, mixing contemporary adolescent slang (“Oh, shit!”) with pseudo-Elizabethan talk with Shakespeare’s 24-carat verse from other characters or other plays jammed unexpectedly into the mouths of the Ophelias.

I found the text tiresome and pretentious, like the quotes from Chaucer, Kafka and Peter Brook in the program and the “Hamlet, in brief” summary found there (c’mon – if some idiot doesn’t know the plot or Ophelia’s part in it, how can he possibly absorb it from a 26-line summary that includes everything, down to the kitchen sink of Fortinbras – who, by the way, did not “arrive from the conquest of England”).

This is not meant to take away from the zeal or attention of the actors in the piece. All five Ophelias, in their, oh, dear, pre-Raphelite stereotypical dresses, are earnest, vulnerable and convincing in their efforts to deliver that much afflicted child/woman. Gabriel Luna makes a good foil to them, though he speeds through some of the real Shakespeare bits without adequately parsing or delivering the meanings.

So -- good try, guys. Maybe next time the show would benefit from a dramaturg or a session with a script doctor.

Click for JustFo's approving review on Austinist.com

Click for Joey Seiler's review on Austin360, November 17

Click for Avimaan Syam's strongly positive review in the Austin Chronicle, November 19

Statesman "Best Bets" Clare Croft's brief interview with director Dustin Wills, November 4

Hannah Kenah's pre-production article in the Austin Chronicle of November 6