San Antonio Auditions for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, Attic Rep, February 18

Open Audition for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Saturday, February 18 from 2 P p.m. to 7 p.m.
Call backs Sunday, February 19 from 4 to 8 PM.
Audition is held in the Attic Theater, Taylor Fine Arts Bldg, Trinity University (click for campus map).

George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces that she has invited a young couple to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive the charade begins. The drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter, lurks an undercurrent of secrets and despair that is the foundation for their relationship. Winner of the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play. The Broadway production of this play was a shattering and memorable experience and proclaimed the author as a major American playwright. Directed by Roberto Prestigiacomo.

Performances are August 6 through 26, 2012 Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 2:30 PM. Rehearsal starts at the end of June 2012. Actors receive pay.

Please, email Roberto@atticrep.org to schedule your audition time. Bring a headshot and resume. Audition consists of a one-minute monologue. Click for character descriptions at AustinLiveTheatre.com..

Upcoming: The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, Joey Hood & Tom Truss, various locations, April 16 - May 22

Found on-line at www.secondhandtheatre.biz:

Click to view choice of locations and dates (near UT, East Austin, South Austin, North Austin, Round Rock)

To reserve tickets online click the e address below

secondhandtheatre.biz@gmail.com or call 512 981 7332

Please include the date and time of the show you want to see and the number of reservations. We will confirm your reservation by email or phone.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, November 11 - 21

I knew that this was going to be intense. I had invited friends to see it with me, and we had seats in the middle of the front row, south side of the "theatre in the square" at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre. After Michelle Polgar had dedicated the opening night's performance to the memory of Oscar Brockett, that grand old man of Austin theatre, the lights began to fade and I had a feeling similar to that you get when you light the fuse on a fistful of firecrackers and throw them down.

My usual view is that a cinema version of the text is irrelevant to the stage performance, but here I have to admit that in any staging of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the ghost of Richard Burton and the presence of Elizabeth Taylor roil fitfully about the set. The movie rating code had just been instituted when Mike Nichols' film was released in 1966. The MPAA had relented after a couple of minor revisions of the dialogue and gave it a "suggested for mature audiences" rating. In my town meant that you had to be 18 years of age to get in, unless accompanied by a parent. My father, a secret movie buff, insisted that I see it and he stood behind me as my 17-year-old self bought my ticket.

Thirteen Academy award nominations, including for Nichols as director and all four in the cast, with five wins, including Taylor as the monstrous Martha and Sandy Dennis as an unforgettably inebriated bubble-blowing little wife. So how can a contemporary theatrical production stand up to that?

The answer in Austin is simple but three-fold: by playing to an audience predominantly of college students who do not know the film; by enlisting Babs George for the role of Martha and Ev Lunning Jr. for the role of George; and with Christie Moore's tight direction in Leilah Stewart's starkly effective, almost claustrophobic set.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Edward Albee once commented, "If you can sum a play in one sentence, that's how long the play should be." That's a fine bon mot and a cutting challenge to all who try to work in the odd art form of the theatre review.

Albee has challenged and puzzled the public, the theatre community and academics since The Zoo Story, the second half of this theatre evening, first took the stage in Berlin 51 years ago. I have on my desk the Austin Public Library's copy of the Prentice-Hall collection of essays on Albee, published in 1975, where writers try to deal with The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and other pieces written in the opening decades of the playwright's career.

I remember vividly reading The Zoo Story, probably for a university class back in the late 1960's -- when it was new, so to speak, and path-breaking, a glimpse beyond the comfortable categories of American drama. It's interesting that a couple of the writers in the 1975 compendium -- which I've glanced at but not read attentively -- seek to interpret the piece through the lens of the Theatre of the Absurd. Martin Esslin, inventor of the term, in fact faults Albee for not pushing the situation to absurdity, for not taking the rant and ultimately the threats of a deranged New Yorker far enough.

But that was the fascination of the piece: that its poetic intensity of horror was completely plausible. Certainly to those us in the hinterlands, and probably even more so to New Yorkers, even in the comfortable late 1950's. Hasn't the poetry of threat and violence been played out over and over again in the past 50 years, distilled and dealt out by the media in doses that make The Zoo Story seem simple and sensible by comparison?

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Received directly:

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT:

AUSTIN PREMIERE OF EDWARD ALBEE’S

AT HOME AT THE ZOO

Palindrome Theatre’s Final Production of Their Inaugural Season

Directed by Austin Sheffield and featuring Jude Hickey, Robin Grace Thompson, and Nigel O’Hearn, the production will run for 13 performances only!

Nov. 5 – Nov. 21 Thur.–Sat. 8pm, Sun. 5pm*.

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo. Just south of E. 7^th, off Robert T. Martinez

Ticket Price: $15-$30 sliding-scale general admission, $10 25-and-under, 60-and-over.

Box Office phone and website: 512-939-6829, www.palindrometheatre.com

for mature audiences

Capping their first season, Palindrome Theatre is bringing to Austin for the first time Edward Albee’s At Home At The Zoo, a completion of America’s greatest living playwright’s very first play, 1958’s The Zoo Story.

Expanded earlier this decade from the original 1958 version, At Home At The Zoo is a delicately startling look at strangers at home and at the zoo, the relationship of people and animals, people as animals, and the longing for connection in a frighteningly solitary life.

Very funny stuff!

*Community Days - in an effort to fulfill our mission of working to make theatre a more accessible social and spiritual necessity, Mon. and Tue. Nov. 15 and 16 will be community days, with hearing and visually impaired performances, and $7 tickets for all!