Upcoming: FronteraFest Best of: A, B, and Wild Card, Hyde Park Theatre, February 9 - 13

Just posted by Hyde Park Theatre: jury's picks for Best of FronteraFest 2010, to play in two bills, plus a Wild Card Night:

Bill A -- Tuesday, February 9 and Friday, February 12

Consultant for Hire, by Max Langert (ASW Commission). Hire me!

ms, by Molly Fonseca. A one-person play that explores the journey of accepting a diagnosis and offers a turn towards hope.

Excerpts from Things in Life, by Ben Prager. Three time Best-of-Fest winner Ben Prager performs comic monologues that portray with unblinking realism “ordinary” Americans, excerpted from his 2010 Long Fringe show. In 2009, Things in Life was nominated for three Austin Critics Table Awards. Directed by Wynne West.

The Mommy Confessions: An Excerpt, by Rhonda Kulhanek . Three mommies confess their stories of motherhood revealing the truth about what it takes to be a mommy --- an excerpt from the hilarious one-woman show playing at FronteraFest Long Fringe.

Saint Matilde’s Malady, by Kyle John Schmidt. A swashbuckling new play about rage, love, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Directed by Elizabeth C. Lay.

Bill B - Wednesday, February 10 and Saturday February 13

Seamstress, by Kenneth Wayne Bradley (ASW Commission). A one woman show featuring Melanie Dean, directed by Ellie McBride.

Here, Nigger, by Roger Reeves. A short play that begins with a prank: one seventeen-year-old boy finds a Ku Klux Klan robe in a wood while hunting and wears it to spook his best friend. However, the robe has a mind and will of its own. In this play, the American legacy of race holds hostage even the most sacred of friendships. Directed by Kyle John Schmidt.

The Wussy Boy Manifesto: Episode Five: The Wussy Boy Strikes Back, by Big Poppa E. Three-time HBO "Def Poetry" veteran and National Poetry Slam Champion Big Poppa E performs new works about growing beards, making sweet love, and the joys of pubic hair. His hilarious poetry has garnered eight Best of Fest finishes in seven years, and this time, he's bringing presents for everyone.

I'm not a writer . . .but I got a story to tell, by La Tasha Stephens. You see these people every day. They make you laugh, grab your wallet, drop your eyes…. To you, they’re part of the landscape. But what if one day, the landscape talked back? Ain't that some shit?!?! Co-directed by Wendy Bable.

The Bitter Poet's "Looking For Love In All The Wrong Cafes, Strip Clubs and Black Box Performance Spaces," by Kevin Draine. The Bitter Poet performs an excerpt from his Long Fringe show of the same name - a collection of darkly humorous satirical guitar-driven poems about searching for True Love and the contortionists you meet along the way!

Wild Card Night, Wednesday, February 11

Parents/Kids Dance Party, by Michelle Flanagan in assoc. w/ Rubber Rep. 3 sisters, 4 daughters, 2 moms, and a grandma GET DOWN!

Spit, by Evie Worsham aka June Doe. Short stories that are rare, incorruptible, striptease views of the inner workings of my heart, after all the therapy.

Growth (Danny Strack) will showcase a set of poems on the topics of time, space, sex, relationships, and how they all fit together.

Cathy Dresden Sings for Her Supper, by Joe Hartman. Join Cathy Dresden, that singer with a heart of gold and pipes to match, as she gamely makes her way through the mid-west of 1959 with pianist Jerome Tolliver in tow. It's "Swellegant"!

Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints, by Annie La Ganga. Spoken word artist and writer Annie La Ganga performs a collage of monologues and poems about awkward grieving, bad judgment, and important stoners. A range of voices that are funny, depressed, deluded, idealistic, cynical, wise, compassionate, and warmly bitchy tell the story of a person determined to make a good life out of her creative mistakes, family traumas, and clumsy relationships.

Arts Reporting: Fox-7 Does FronteraFest with Schave & Reilly and Kevin Draine, January 26

Found on-line: Nik Ciccone of Fox-7 interviews Ben Schave & Caitlin Reilly (2 min. 56 sec)
and Kevin Draine the "Bitter Poet" ( 2 min. 35 sec.):

FronteraFest Celebrates Offbeat Theatre

Updated: Tuesday, 26 Jan 2010, 9:13 AM CST
Published : Tuesday, 26 Jan 2010, 9:12 AM CST

A big month-long theatre festival in Austin has more than a hundred shows. FronteraFest is going on now across Austin and it's described as the "newest, rawest, most exciting theatre happening."

Nik Ciccone stopped by Hyde Park Theatre and spoke to some local actors about this festival.

Ongoing: Some Other Day, Schave & Reilly at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre , January 19, 27, 30, 31

Picked up at the Salvage Vanguard:

From www.schaveandreilly.com :

Have you ever seen a rubber chicken duel that you didn't like?

Welcome to the bizarre world of SCHAVE & REILLY. Modern-day versions of Vaudeville's baggy-pants comedians. Reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, these two delightful clowns use an original blend of ridiculous dance, slapstick, and juggling to tell stories of life, love, and jubilation. Expertly intertwining emotion and absurdity, SCHAVE & REILLY appeal to adults and children alike. They are memorable, touching, one of a kind, and very, very funny.

SCHAVE & REILLY have taken their act all over the western world, performing in circuses, variety shows, and cabarets, cruiseships, renaissance fairs, and theatrical festivals. Trained at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College and the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre, SCHAVE & REILLY work as performers and teachers in Austin, Texas.

Read more about us here

Ongoing: The Mommy Confessions, Rhonda F. Kulhanek, January 31

Card picked up at the Salvage Vanguard:

The Mommy Confessions

Blue Theatre, January 31, 7 p.m. (last of 4 performances)

To survive their maternal lives, a Memaw raising her grandkids confesses to Jesus, a former beauty queen comes clean at Mommies Anonymous, and an unwed mother-to-be confides in her unborn son. These are just three of 13 characters that confess their stories of motherhood throughout this hilarious one-woman show.
Join them as they demonstrate the joy, sorrow, laughter (and alcohol) required to be a mommy!

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: Flyers from FronteraFest

Picked up at the Hyde Park Theatre tonight:

Upcoming: ms by Molly Fonseca, Sustainable Theatre Project at FronteraFest,

Received directly:


ms

by Molly Fonseca, Sustainable Theatre Project
FronteraFest Short Fringe at Hyde Park Theatre
Thursday, February 4 - program starts at 8 p.m.

ms explores one patient's journey from unfamiliar doctor visits and tests to an inevitable diagnosis. Like many unexpected journeys the path is sometimes frustrating, terrifying and amusing, but it is always unknown.

Molly Fonseca's one-person play strives to open the lines of communication about disease and what it does not only to our physical bodies but also to our hearts. How do we recover in the face of this new information and how do we find the strength to keep moving forward?

Making its Austin premiere at FronteraFest Short Fringe, ms offers a peek into the mind of a reluctant patient who is as unsure of the next step as is the audience who is joining her.

Reservations via Hyde Park Theatre.

Arts Reporting: Statesman Backgrounder on Johnny Meyer and 'American Volunteers' (FronteraFest Long Fringe)

UPDATE: Review by Dan Solomon at Austinist.com, February 1

UPDATE: Jeanne Claire van Ryzin's review of American volunteers at the Statesman Austin360 "Seeing Things" arts blog, January 22

UPDATE: Statesman's video interview of Johnny Meyer, January 17

The Statesman's arts editor Jeanne Claire van Ryzin does a backgrounder on Johnny Meyer and American Volunteers, published January 16:

THEATRE - FRONTERAFEST
Conflict doesn't end at the Afghan border in new play
by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
American-Statesman arts writer

[. . . .] Meyer, 27, is a former Army Airborne Ranger and staff sergeant, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "American Volunteers," adapted from Meyer's unpublished novel of the same name, charts the personal and military lives of an isolated squad patrolling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Meyer focused the action on the three men responsible for leading the squad and the conflict that arises as each pursues the most basic of American values.

Meyer chooses his words carefully when talking about the war. And his tone darkens.

His play is not about his politics, he says, nor about politics in general nor even about his personal experience, though he did serve on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The urgency of combat exposes the basest of human reactions, he says, and that was where he found his story. And that story was about the inherent conflict that erupts when the goals of a foreign war clash with American values.

"What happens when soldiers, even though they are volunteers, try to live out certain very American values — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — above the orders they receive?" he asks. "There are questions, larger questions, there that are worth looking at, I think."

(click to view full article at Statesman.com)

[Statesman photo by Deborah Cannon]

FronteraFest Listing
City On a Hill? Productions – American Volunteers by John M. Meyers (90 minutes)

American Volunteers follows a squad of special operations Rangers as they patrol the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The play focuses on three sergeants responsible for leading the squad, and the conflict that arises as each pursues life, liberty or happiness. The story is told through the bifocal perspective of a female soldier briefly attached to the squad, and a metamorphic Chorus. Warning: Strong language, violence, and meter.

Tickets: $8, Blue Theatre, 911 Springdale Road
Tue. 1/19 9:15 p.m. Thur. 1/21 7 p.m. Sat. 1/23 9:45 p.m. Sat. 1/30 12 p.m.

Upcoming: One Man's Music, Vince Bell at Frontera Fest, January 23, 25, 26 30

UPDATE: Tony Gallucci's review of Vince Bell's book and CD, published at his "Milk River Blog," January 21

Received directly:

VINCE BELL RETURNS TO AUSTIN:
THE PLAY’S THE THING

FronteraFest 2010 Long Fringe at the Blue Theatre
January 23, 25, 26 and 30

"I've grown up in music, worked to distraction in music, married unsuccessfully in music, and I've been at it for several wifetimes."

So says Vince Bell in One Man's Music: A Monologue with Song, the new one-man show that he brings to Austin in January as part of FronteraFest 2010. "Most of the heavy lifting in my play happens in the alleyways of Austin," says Bell, who lived there for 15 years. "I played in every ice-cream parlor and headquarters in Austin. My early music career was smeared across the intersection of Riverside and I-35, and a decade of rehab happened on Providence Street, in a house I bought from one of Willie's crew."

The 50-minute monologue, which includes six songs, is based on his new autobiography, One Man's Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell (University of North Texas Press, April 2009). In tandem with the book and play, Bell also released his fifth CD, a “soundtrack" to both works, called One Man's Music: The Songs.

"Vince Bell has been a stalwart of the Texas singer-songwriter scene since he emerged in Houston in the 1970s," wrote Joe Nick Patoski, author of Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. "He was a rising star until he was almost killed in a car wreck in 1982. A severe head injury effectively wiped out his career. For a while. His determined rehabilitation and subsequent comeback have culminated in a trifecta this year: an album, a one-man play, and a wonderful book that tells the tale.... a fine book about Texas music, the singer-songwriter tradition, and a personal journey that ends triumphant in the here and now."

Also on the Vince Bell front, Lyle Lovett covered Bell’s “Sun & Moon & Stars” on his new album and is opening concerts on his current tour with the song.

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.

Upcoming: FronteraFest 2010 Long and Short Fringes, January 12 - February 13

UPDATE: News 8 interview Ken Webster and Christi Moore, February 6

UPDATE: Spike Gillespie's feature on FronteraFest 2010 for the JetBlue blog, January 18

UPDATE: Lisa Scheps and Stuart Moulton feature Christie Moore talking about FronteraFest and Mike Henry of Austin Poetry Slam at KOOP-FM's "Off Stage and On The Air," posted January 15 ( in second half of 1 hr. program)

UPDATE: Mike Lee of KUT-FM talks with C.J. Moore and Ken Webster about Frontera Fest 2010 on his program "Arts Eclectic," January 11

UPDATE: NowPlayingAustin podcast on FronteraFest 2010 featuring Ken Webster, Big Poppa E, C.J. Moore, Vince Bell, Aaron Black's Hotel Morocco, others, January 9 (11min, 40sec)

UPDATE: Robert Faires' backgrounder on FronteraFest in the Austin Chronicle, January 6

UPDATE: Ryan E. Johnson's backgrounder on FronteraFest at the Examiner.com, January 7


Received directly. Press announcement below includes full schedule and capsule descriptions both for FronteraFest Long Fringe and Short Fringe, as well as Bring Your Own Venue and Su Casa Es Mi Teatro.

17th Annual FronteraFest Showcases
29 Night, 100+ Production, Multi-Venue Fringe Theatre
Immersive 5-week Festival Offers Profusion of Performance from the Edge

Those looking to discover the newest, rawest, most exciting theatre happening need look no further than FronteraFest: a smorgasbord of over 100 new works presented over 5 weeks on a multiple stages. Named the “best theatrical event” by the Austin Chronicle and “the fringe theatre event of the Southwest” by the Austin American-Statesman, the 17th Annual FronteraFest will again exhilarate theatre fans and purveyors alike by opening its stages to some of the most innovative local and national talents on Tuesday, January 12 through Saturday, February 13.

“FronteraFest is like a huge grab-bag of performing arts” said Christina J. Moore, festival producer and executive director of Austin Script Works. “With multiple performances every night for five weeks, audiences can be surprised, delighted, touched, and entertained by the work of over 1,000 local and national talents, including performers, directors and playwrights, at venues all over Austin.”

Co-produced with Austin Script Works and Hyde Park Theatre, FronteraFest 2010 features more out-of-town visitors than ever before including performers from New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, New Orleans, and more.

For the last 16 years, FronteraFest has provided a venue for new theatre, comedy, and dance performers, as well as established local and national performers and writers to explore new works that challenge these artists and Austin audiences.

Nationally recognized playwrights like Kirk Lynn, John Walch, and Lisa D’Amour presented some of their earliest work at the festival. Many plays that began as FronteraFest pieces have gone on to become full-length, award-winning productions incuding works by Steven Tomlinson, Ron Berry, Hans Frank, Cyndi Williams, Lowell Bartholomee, Zell Miller III, and others.

The breadth and variety of offerings available in FronteraFest includes four tracks: the Short Fringe including 80 pieces under 25 minutes, the Long Fringe including 20 feature-length works, Mi Casa es Su Teatro where participants present their creative work specifically in their homes, and Bring Your Own Venue featuring site-specific performances.

Read details for each division of the festival, with full calendar, title list and capsule descriptions, all at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .