Robert Faires Interview: Murder Ballad Murder Mystery Saloon Tour

 



'Murder Ballad Murder Mystery'

Paper Chairs resurrects its hit musical as portable, hit-and-run bar entertainment
 
By Robert Faires, Fri., Nov. 15, 2013

Usually, when a play reaches the end of its run, it's dead, departed, gone with the wind. Once in a while, though, a show gets pulled back from oblivion, and such is the case with Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, the backwoods musical by Elizabeth Doss (book) and Mark Stewart (score) that scored critical raves and multiple awards when it premiered in 2009. Now, like the ghost-faced killers who populate its swampy setting, it once more walks among us – only this time the show won't be haunting a theatre as it did in its original co-production by Tutto Theatre and Vortex Repertory Company, and it won't be the full-length, site-specific spectacle seen before. Paper Chairs, the company that grew out of that staging, has reconceived the show as a shorter, portable production to be presented in saloons. The new incarnation will debut at three local watering holes, as well as one in New Orleans (for the New Orleans Fringe Festival), and one in Marfa. The cast has been whittled down to eight characters, and director Keri Boyd and designer Lisa Laratta have worked to make the space adaptable to any environment. Playwright/performer Doss explains the show's second life in an email exchange.

Click to read interview at the Austin Chronicle

MURDER BALLAD MURDER MYSTERY by Elizabeth Doss, Paper Chairs, various venues, November 20 - December 7, 2013

ART SHOW/MODEL SHOW, Paper Chairs at the Off-Shoot, August 29 - September 14, 2013

[click logo above to visit paper chairs on Facebook; click HERE for website -- www.paperchairs.com]

presents

Art Show/Model Show
August 29 - September 14, 2013

 

at the Off-Shoot, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery - don't park there; they tow!) 

ART SHOW/MODEL SHOW is a multi-media, interactive performance experiment undergoing creation by Kelli Bland, Meghan Adriel Dwyer, Michelle Keffer, Jorge Sermini and Elizabeth Doss based on our experiences as art models. The piece will investigate three folds of art modeling that interest us: the physical experience, the contemporary and historical context, and the queries we encounter in the discipline. Paper Chairs is excited to present our most fruitful findings at the end of summer 2013!

ART SHOW/MODEL SHOW aspires to be these things: a living gallery, a life drawing session, a voyeuristic experiment, a lesson in drawing and art history, a conversation about the purpose of art in society, and an intimate look at the relationship between the artist and model in figurative art.

This collaborative performance will include live drawing and painting by local Austin artists. Alongside the composition of timed poses and staged scenes will be sensorial stimulation, including documentary-style footage and sound bites pieced together from interviews with local artists and models, as well as live drawing projections. It will also include a gallery show, curated by the Austin artists who hire us, and will be presented, or rather, categorized by each model, so that the audience can see the varied and unique perceptions of each individual person

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

MURDER BALLAD MURDER MYSTERY by Elizabeth Doss, Paper Chairs at Longbranch Inn, May 21 & 22, 2013

[click logo above to visit paper chairs on Facebook; click HERE for website -- www.paperchairs.com]


presents

Written by Elizabeth Doss
Directed by Keri Boyd
Designed by Lisa Laratta

May 21 & 22
8 pm start
Longbranch Inn
1133 E 11th St. Austin, TX 78702 - click for map
Pay What You Can ($5 suggested)
Tickets at the Door! Cash Only!

For two nights only, paper chairs will haunt our neighborhood bar, the Longbranch Inn, with a workshop resurrection of Murder Ballad Murder Mystery. Saddle up to the bar, sip yer whisky and watch a host of legendary killers commit crimes riddled with ghoulish slapstick, frantic line dances, and tear-jerking ballads. This romp-through-the-swamp musical takes a stab at gutting the inner animal and spills its contents at close range.


Cast:
Tom - Mark Stewart
Tom’s Wife- Cami Alys
Felicity - April Perez-Moore
Sadie- Emily Tindall Burke
Bea- Elizabeth Doss
Jay- Nigel O’Hearn
Stagger Lee- Noel Gaulin
The Sheriff- Kelli Bland


This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

THE PICNIC PLAYS: Sunday Readings by Paper Chairs in February, 2013

presents

The Picnic Plays: Readings on Sunday in February

Each Sunday in February you’re invited to pull up a blanket someplace cozy and give listen to a play we think has promise, with a lively discussion to follow. This series will feature works by local writers Mark Stewart, Dallas Tate, and Elizabeth Doss and will also include The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman. Each reading will take place in a well-suited spot and will feature stellar paper chairs talent. Mark your calendars!
WHEN:
February 3:
Bomb Shelter by Mark Stewart
February 10:
The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman
February 17:
New Therapy by Dallas Tate
February 24:
Murder Ballad Murder Mystery: Redux by Elizabeth Doss
All readings begin at 2pm
WHERE:
All locations: TBA: check back on Facebook for more details, coming soon…

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Boom for Real by Jason Tremblay, Paper Chairs at the Museum of Human Achievement, October 25 - November 10

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

It was Halloween night and I went to the theatre in costume as I always do. The show was Boom for Real by Jason Tremblay, produced by Paper Chairs. This company has a gift for finding truly unusual but serviceable performance spaces, albeit sometimes hard to find. I tramped through the crushed limestone parking lot of an industrial east Austin construction zone in my wobbly fireman’s boots, uncertain of my balance and vision behind my long-nosed mask and worried that I might be showing too much skin. I am such a typical Austinite.


The venue, by railroad tracks and near the old Blue Theatre (I could see the lights of Weird City Theatre’s Halloween party going on there) was the pretentiously named Museum of Human Achievement. It was a museum wearing a wooden frame warehouse costume. The production was of the multilevel, open-stages type, where the cast changes the set (all set objects are on casters), and lighting cues shift the audience’s focus and attention from scene to scene. A costume rack for the cast stood upstage right. Creative values were very much to the fore, technological artifice a little to the back. 


The heavily costumed audience knew what was expected of them in this twenty-first-century mode and seemed highly appreciative.


The story was set in mythic time and a kind of post-industrial-punk space. The world is drowning in a never-ending fall of ash, straight into the mouths of all the characters. A leading dancer has suffered a disfigurement, and with her single flash-memory chip of magic she banishes dance from the world city, a curse so severe that the word dance is also banned, replaced by the word petunias. The dancer becomes a witch living in a tower above the city, where she can watch and enforce the curse. A young dancer, Boom, played by Ashley Rae Spillers, discovers that it is her fate to bring dance back.


The theme here is ambition, served by its demon servant desire, at many different levels. Desire as lust is well portrayed, but desire for transformation, success, money, alcohol, nicotine and life itself suffuse the story so thoroughly that it is hard to keep track of all the categories. They suffer a blending effect and also cause the story to seem to ramble a bit.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Picnic Plays, Sunday readings by Paper Chairs, May 13, 20, 27

Picnic Plays

readings by Paper Chairs

With great pleasure, paper chairs announce, THE PICNIC PLAYS: READINGS ON SUNDAYS IN MAY. We invite you give listen to some deft drafts of new work by local playwrights Elizabeth Doss, Sarah Saltwick, and Jason Tremblay. Join us these final spring Sundays to experience each play in a unique location accompanied by refreshing cocktails and snacks to complete an ideally idle Sunday afternoon.

This is a FREE event series. The paper chairs will bring the plays and some potluck libations to share, if you bring two open ears, a blanket, and any BYOP (Bring-Your-Own-Picnic) items you like. Family friendly (with a warning, the content may be PG-13 & White Horse is 21+) & dog friendly at Big Stacey only (sorry). Informal chats will follow each read.

Mark your calendars:
Sunday May 13th 4pm:
MAST by Elizabeth Doss at the historic home of Tammy Shaklee and Cliff Mitchell 712 W 16th Street

Sunday May 20th 3pm:
A Perfect Robot by Sarah Saltwick at Big Stacey Park (Between Annie St and Live Oak St.Park on East Side Drive)

Sunday May 27th 2pm:
Boom for Real by Jason Tremblay at the White Horse 500 Comal St

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

Received directly:

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

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

Received directly:

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.

Dionysus in 69, re-enacted by the Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, December 3 - 20

The Rude Mechanicals' Dionysus in 69 is a charming exercise in theatre archeology, one that captivates us by illustrating how sincere, how naive and how lucky we were to be living back in the dark, dark days of 1968.

Back in 1968, the Performance Group's interpretation of Euripides' The Bacchae resounded with the times. Their canny staging of the ancient classic about violence, ritual, unknowing and ecstasy scandalized conventional citizens and captured the imagination of the young -- that earnest generation of forty years ago who were about the age of the Austin's Rude Mechanicals today.

The nudity sold the show then, and the Rudes' press photos suggest that they understand well that aspect of the marketing. And these young folk are without exception all very handsome in their skins, displayed confidently and unselfconsciously in key group rituals portraying of birth, death, and murder.

The Rudes' re-enactment is based on films of the original and it benefits from workshops and discussions with Richard Schechner, director of that path-breaking production. Schechner is now an eminence grise, a venerable elder and NYU professor. He was invited to Austin by UT's Humanities Institute and was scheduled for a discussion and talk-back for the second performance on Friday, December 4.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Dionysus in 69, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, December 3 -

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, December 5

UPDATE: Dan Solomon interviews director Shawn Sides for austinist.com, December 4

UPDATE: Extensive backgrounder by Robert Faires, published in the Austin Chronicle, November 26

Found on-line:

Rudes rebirth

Dionysus in 69

December 3 -20, Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
at The Off Center
Tickets on sale now at Brown Paper Tickets

[Photos by Bret Brookshire]

Rude Mechs is proud to produce the first-ever revival of The Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69, a groundbreaking interpretation of Euripides’s The Bacchae. Offering Austin theatre-goers an extraordinary opportunity to relive history, the Rudes are painstakingly recreating the original production, using Brian de Palma’s filmed version of the play and the 1970 book, Dionysus in 69 as source materials, as well as inviting the original production's director, Richard Schechner, to guide several rehearsals.

Rude Mechs celebrates 40 years of experimental theatre by experiencing and learning about Dionysus in 69 in the deepest way - through its performance.

Ensemble: Heather Barfield, Elizabeth Doss, Thomas Graves, Jude Hickey, Matt Hislope, Jodi Jinks, Hannah Kenah, Josh Meyer, Aron Taylor, Katie Van Winkle
Co-Directed by: Madge Darlington and Shawn Sides

NOTE: In addition to Richard Schechner leading several rehearsals in advance of the production he will return to Austin for opening night December 4, when he'll briefly introduce the piece immediately before the show and will attend the opening night party following.

WARNING: NUDITY AND ADULT THEMES.
NO ONE UNDER 18 WILL BE ADMITTED WITHOUT PARENT OR GUARDIAN.

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

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 . . . .