Upcoming: Cardigan by Trey Deason, added performances at UT, February 5 and 6

Received directly:

Purple Crayon Theatre presents

Cardigan

by Trey Deason

reprised from FronteraFest 2011

Saturday, Feb 5th and Sunday, Feb 6th at 8PM
Rm 2.112, The Winship Theater
UT Campus, corner of 23rd and San Jacinto
Suggested Donation: $10 (no one turned away!)

Edgar Cardigan is a world-renowned author and university professor: beloved by his students, courted by publishers, desired by women. Or he's a pathological liar compensating for life's disappointments by indulging in a world of fiction. As he assails his students with the story of his fateful date with Mary, a waitress with acting aspirations, the line between truth and fiction becomes blurred beyond distinction.

Click for ALT review, January 30

One Venus Hour by Sheila Gordon, FronteraFest LF, January 20, 23, 25, 29

Equity actor Shela M. Gordon took the opportunity of FronteraFest 2011 to do a solo turn showing friends, the general public and her students at St. Ed's that she's endowed both with an actor's shape shifting wiles and with a warm and thoughtful writer's imagination.

Gordon developed this piece with support from Scriptworks, here in Austin. Her One Venus Hour is not about the goddess or even about the planet. It's about time, the final arc of a life, and the deep uneasiness of children facing the failing of a father. Gordon uses a projected starfield and audio of a quietly authoritative female voice explaining dispassionately the faraway eruptions of stars. Both voice and text are Gordon's, in a subtle parody of the ethereal meditations read by Sandy Wood on the McDonald Observatory's radio spot Stardate.

Our neighboring planet Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction from that of the Earth and ever so slowly, turning on itself once in 243 of our days. One Venus Hour is ten days in earth time.

Beneath that vast firmament and its incomprehensible realities, Gordon acts all roles in a simple, almost banal family story. The widowed or divorced father, retired alone in Florida, with the querelous mutter and collapsed world of an aged New Yorker, pushes back at his daughter's pained, well-intentioned ministrations. Her brother, his son, cannot face the old man's decline.

Gordon lightens the tone by assuming the cocky persona of a real estate auctioneer, enlisting us for a trial exercise in bidding. She's glib, rythmic and solemnly funny, playing both the chief auctioneer and both of his assistants. This was the firm that sold them the previously foreclosed property in which the father now lives.

The story arc is short -- one Venus hour or a bit more -- but the feeling is deep. The old man suffers a stroke. Gordon captures the slur of his speech and his deep frustration, as well as the bright "we" chatter of the speech therapist who, without thinking, treats him as if he were mentally handicapped. Gordon provides a short portrait of the brother but brings most of our attention to the quandry of the daughter. The auctioneer comes back on and challenges us to bid, this time for the house that the old man was living in -- "this time for real, folks!" and we do. The night I was there Gordon as the crisp, disengaged auctioneer pushed the bids right up to $150,000 in mythical dollars to be used by the wistful, lonely woman as she arranged the final managed care of her father, the leftover from another time.

EXTRA

Click to view program sheet of One Venus Hour by Sheila Gordon

Cardigan by Trey Deason, Purple Crayon Theatre at FF Long Fringe, January 20 - 29

Maybe a playwright shouldn't act in his own play. Unless, of course, he's one of those comedy yuksters who speaks directly to the audience and makes smartass observations about his own life exeriences and surroundings.

Trey Deason, the playwright, plays the lead character in Cardigan, a piece expanded from a well-received 2010 Short Fringe offering. His assumption of that identity may be disconcerting to those who have run into him in so-called real life.

Deason is reticent, polite and quiet almost to a fault, at least with those whom he doesn't know well. As Edgar Cardigan, writer, arriving to lecture to us for a class in creative writing, he's emphatic, dismissive, vulgar and as hopped-up as if he were on speed. One is tempted to suppose that this is a portrait of Deason's Evil Twin, a sort of exercise in personal psychodrama. The writer is writing about a writer who is quickly revealed as a compulsive fabricator, and most of what follows is demonstration both of misogyny and misanthropy.

Perhaps director Rudy Ramirez shouldn't have allowed Cardigan to have have snarled so quickly and viciously at Angelia Davis, the actress planted in the audience to play the student. Perhaps Deason should have done breathing exercises so that his character would be less twitchy at the start. Or perhaps just have entrusted the role to another actor.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Agamemnon by Aeschylus, City on a Hill* Productions, FF Long Fringe at the Blue Theatre, January 22, 25, 29, 30

Agamemnon as produced by City on a Hill* Productions and directed by David J. Boss is a satisfyingly crunchy rendition of the first part of Aeschylus' Orestia. In this season of Academy Award nominations it might be useful to note that the trilogy won the annual competition at the Greater Dionysian Festival in Athens in 458 B.C.

In a chronological sense it's not "the first play in the Western canon," as stated in the program. Aeschylus wrote between seventy and ninety plays, of which only seven are extant (with three of those comprising the Orestia). The parts of the trilogy were among his last compositions, for he died in Sicily at the age of 70 only three years after presenting them.

The Orestia is a defining work in the Western dramatic canon. The fate of Agamemnon has constituted a cautionary tragedy reworked regularly since Aeschylus' time. Sophocles and Euripides further explored the myths of the fall of the house of Atreus, with the tales of rivalry, cannibalism, war, child sacrifice, the conquest of Troy, treachery, sexual infidelity, prophetic ecstacy, incest, religious conflict and madness. The story and its figures are deep dyed in Western literary tradition. It's great stuff.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Review from Elsewhere: Ba

Quoted in its entirety, from Austinist.com:

FronteraFest Long Fringe 2011 Review:

A Writers Vision(s) at Salvage Vanguard Theater

John Boulanger knows American absurdism. His precedent-setting House of Several Stories, which garnered the ACTF National Student Playwrighting Award in 2008, presented a refreshing reminder of the genre's ability to stun and strike a deep, resonating cord. Viewers expecting something like a repeat of this stylistic acrobatics show be forewarned: despite typical elements like negligent mothers, incompetent therapists, and general confusion about reality, this show is only absurdist-ish. It's straight-up zany. This show simply won't allow you to take it seriously. Don't bother trying.

It's not just mad-cap and unleashed; there's technically a through-line narrated Seuss-style about a struggling writer visited a la Christmas Carol by three representations of his sub-conscious in his efforts to unclog unclear-to-him blockages in his latest creative process. It hardly matters though; the ridiculousness effervescing through the piece suffices in the place of any real meaning (though admission of this at the end of the piece comes across as unnecessarily defiant). It's a rambunctious pastiche of farce, absurdism, and pop cultural weirdness stuffed with appearances of local theatrical luminaries like Babs George, Jill Blackwood, Martin Burke, and Laura Lane that, in lieu of receiving Equity-scale pay, revel in enjoying themselves on-stage. Most successfully, it’s masturbatory and thoroughly self-amusing without being alienating. Like its lead character in the end, it simply refuses to take the process of writing "seriously" and is all the better for it.

By Bastion Carboni in Arts and Entertainment on January 25, 2011

Reviews from Elsewhere: Let

Published at austinist.com, January 19:

FronteraFest Long Fringe 2011 Review:

Let's Make Love Tonight!

Annie La Ganga at the Salvage Vanguard Theater

by Ralph Hardesty

Seen a lot of theater, seen a lot of solo performance. Seen a few shows about sex or that deal primarily with sex. Suddenly it’s surprising that we haven't seen a show that opened with the following line before last night: “We don’t have to have a play right now. We could have an orgy.”

That’s surprising, right? We could. Just have an orgy. How is it that with all of the bad performances or open mics friends perpetrate on each other this line has not come up before, a million times? Annie La Ganga, in her short, sweet and hilarious “self-help/stand-up/comedy/interactive/performance art/improv/monologue,” Let’s Make Love Tonight! has thought this through because, apparently, she’s got some questions for you about orgies.

Read more at Austinist.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Thing That Ate My Brain . . . Almost, by Amy Lynn Budd, January 20 - 22

Found on-line:

VSA Texas is bringing

The Thing That Ate My Brain... Almost

by Amy Lynn Budd, to the FronteraFest 2011 B.Y.O.V. (Bring Your Own Venue)

Dougherty Arts Center Theatre, 1110 Barton Springs Road (click for map)

Thursday - Saturday - Jan 20th-22nd at 8:00pm; Thursday 1/20 is Pay-What-You-Wish at the door
Saturday - Jan 22nd at 2:00 pm (Audio Description Provided)

Tickets also available at the door. Call 512-454-9912 to make a reservation. Ticket Prices: $15 and $10 students, seniors

Theatre, dance, puppetry and references to really bad old movies collide as neo-burlesque artist Amy Lynn Budd navigates the experience of an unexpected physical break down. The Thing That Ate My Brain…Almost examines Ms. Budd’s relationships with her brain tumor, her loved ones, and the world of medicine by combining performing art forms to affirm that creativity and curiosity are the best medicine.

First produced by Perishable Theater in Providence Rhode Island, The Thing That Ate My Brain...Almost was presented for one performance only at H Street Theater in Washington, DC as part of the VSA International Festival in June 2010.

"a unique production with universal appeal, "The Thing That Ate My Brain...Almost"is one 'wild ride' that everyone should take" -Molly Lederer, Providence Monthy

"..wrenched the hearts of an entire audience so loudly they laughed themselves to death" -audience member

Go to www.fronterafest.org to purchase tickets on line.

Also, check out
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1529854988/the-thing-that-ate-my-brainalmost-heads-to-austin

Go to Amy’s website, www.amylynnbudd.com
Check out VSA at www.vsartsri.org

Read a review about the show!

Upcoming: The New Originals, A Chick and a Dude Productions, FronteraFest SF at Hyde Park Theatre, January 28

Received directly from

THE NEW ORIGINALS

at the FronteraFest Short Fringe

Friday, January 28 at the Hyde Park Theatre

program starts at 8 p.m.

Tickets for the festival can be purchased at www.hydeparktheatre.org.

THE NEW ORIGINALS borrows from over 130 different films to create an original dark comedy!

It’s a stormy night, and the Barkeep and the Drunkard are discussing the merits of yet another drink. Enter The Lady In Red and The Guy In The Hat. Their car has broken down up the road, and they are need of assistance. The Drunkard has a wandering eye, and The Guy In The Hat can’t seem to do anything right…can the relationship last the night?

The New Originals is a campy, dark comedy, told using ONLY lines of dialogue from over 130 established films. Starring Shawn Ferrell as The Barkeep, Shanon Weaver as The Drunkard, Chris Loveless as The Guy In The Hat, and Victoria Harrison-Weems as The Lady In Red. Directed by Melissa Livingston.

About A Chick & A Dude Productions Freelancer Hy Bender wrote: "The writing, by...Shanon Weaver...is smart and tight; the dialogue in several scenes is so much fun that it garners applause." For more information, call (512) 921-4264 or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

Upcoming: Agamemnon by Aeschylus, City on a Hill Productions at the Blue Theatre, FronteraFest LF, January 22, 25, 29, 30

Received directly:

City on a Hill* Productions

presents

Agamemnon

directed by David J. Boss

January 22nd at 12:00pm - January 25th at 9:00 pm
January 29th at 9:15 pm - January 30th at 7:00 pm

916 Springdale (click for map)

City on a Hill* Productions (producers of the award-winning "American Volunteers") presents the tragic first parts of Aeschylus' "Orestia," known as "Agamemnon" at FronteraFest 2011. Using the seminal translation for the stage by scholar Peter Meinecke, we bring you a play faithful to the text as Aeschylus wrote it.

See the strain of war as first told by the Greeks. Agamemnon returns home to Argos as a war hero but his actions before the fabled conflict still have repercussions he cannot avoid. As the Chorus looks on, tragedy comes to the House of Menelaus in this tale of the cost of war and proto-nihilism.

Starring American Shakespeare Center veteran Daniel Rigney as Agamemnon and Austin veteran actor Kimberley Mead as Clytemnestra. Directed by Austin Shakespeare regular David J. Boss, and produced by the team of Ania Upstill, Emilio Banda, and the award-winning playwright Johnny Meyer.

Upcoming: Mud Offerings by Nathalie Goodnow, Hyde Park FronteraFest Short Fringe, January 28

Found on-line:

Putting la frontera in Frontera Fest:


Mud Offerings
written and performed by Natalie Marlena Goodnow
directed by Dino Foxx and kt shorb

A Chicanita has it out with the Virgen de Guadalupe. This solo play interrogates the historical and present-day roles played by women who live between cultures, and their relationships with spirituality, sexuality, violence, and betrayal.

FronteraFest - The Short Fringe
Friday, January 28, 2011, 8:00 pm
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 West 43rd Street
(43rd Street a half-block east of Guadalupe)
Box Office: 512-479-PLAY
www.hydeparktheatre.org
www.nataliegoodnow.com

Upcoming: Lost Land, Wogglebug Theatre at Blue Theatre, FronteraFest LF, January 19, 22, 23 & 29

Found on-line:

presents

by Jenny Kokai

January 19, 21, 23 and 29

Lost Land is a tale of hope and dreams, of love discovered and ultimately lost. Spanning three centuries from the late 1950’s to the present to the year 2150, the play is set in an ill-conceived nautical theme park designed around Moby Dick, the all-seeing, all-enduring commentator who takes us on a journey from a world built to delight to a world filled with despair.

Lost Land will be performed in the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Rd. in Austin on Wednesday, January 19 at 9:15 pm, Friday, January 21 at 7 p.m., Sunday, January 23 at 4:45 pm, and on Saturday, January 29 at 5:00 pm. Tickets are five dollars and can be purchased by calling the Frontera Festival box office at 479-7529 or going to www.hydeparktheatre.org and clicking on the Long Fringe section.

Upcoming: Portmanteau by Applied Mechanics at the Vortex Cafe, January 22 - 25

Received directly:

As a part of FronteraFest

Applied Mechanics presents

Portmanteau

Directed by Rebecca Wright

Designed by Maria Shaplin

Created by Kristen Bailey, Thomas Choinacky, Jessica Hurley, John Jarboe, Maria Shaplin, Mary Tuomanen, and Rebecca Wright.

The Café at The VORTEX, 2307 Manor Road

January 22 & January 23 @ 10:00pm; January 24 & January 25 @ 8:00 pm

TICKETS: $10 per ticket.

For tickets contact the FronteraFest Box Office

Or visit www.hydeparktheatre.org/site/index.html*

*Follow the B.Y.O.V. (Bring Your Own Venue) link.

An invasion. Five strangers arrive in a remote village with five very different goals. The characters enter the space with suitcases, from which they unpack the show; the action unfolds all around the audience as the five interlopers struggle for success and compete for control. Portmanteau is a choose-your-own-adventure play, where the audience is free to explore the space and follow whichever character they choose. Created by Philadelphia’s intrepid young performance group, Applied Mechanics, Portmanteau comes to FronteraFest after a sold out run at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Applied Mechanics will now transform the café space at The VORTEX with this transient environmental installation parallel narrative adventure piece, which poses the questions, how do we change the spaces we enter? And how do they change us? What happens when we’re strangers in a strange land? And how do our intentions and beliefs play out in that strange land when the going gets tough?

“a taut, cohesive, and compelling socio-political drama…very funny

and frequently moving... Truly delightful.

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

Upcoming: Howl by Allen Ginsberg, performed by Teresa Harrison, Blue Theatre, January 26 - 30

Received directly:

Boulder’s

presents

Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL

Adapted and performed by Teresa Harrison

Collaboratively directed by Emily K. Harrison & Teresa Harrison

presented as part of the 2011 FronteraFest Long Fringe

Run dates and times:

7 p.m., January 26

9:15 p.m. January 27

1 p.m., January 29

5:15 p.m., January 30

at the Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Rd.

Tickets are $10, available at the door or in advance @: www.fronterafest.org

Boulder, Colo. – Award-winning square product theatre presents the World Premiere of a new theatrical adaptation of Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL as part of the 2011 FronteraFest, January 26-30, 2011 at the Blue Theatre in Austin.

This evening’s HOWL is not an homage: it’s a portal. It’s a beckoning into a real-time, off-line, be-bop lean into the “visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!” of America “then” and “now.” It’s a reminder, a wake up call, an invitation to Howl about the Road we’ve been on. This adaptation of Howl for Carl Solomon plays itself out against the “harsh wall of America” in 2011, using poetry and music to investigate the same obstacles, epiphanies and fears Allen Ginsberg channeled into his controversial, seminal text five decades ago. HOWL looks back to a generation “destroyed by madness” to find a mirror for our own Facebook walls and Twittered souls. HOWL digs in to the question of how we as a culture communicate, and how that has changed in the last 50 years: who are those pressing into the questions and challenges, who are those who don’t want to hear it, and who are those “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years?” An evening of HOWL is a link with or without http:// : from these words to the timeless ocean of Jack Kerouac, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Carl Solomon. Howl for Carl Solomon is a watershed conduit of a poem that is as provocative now as it was then.

Praise for Ginsberg’s HOWL, 1956:

“Incantatory.” - The Guardian

"..the most remarkable poem of the [Beat generation]." – The New York Times Book Review

"..the poem left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America..." – Michael McClure, poet

*This adaptation of “HOWL” made possible by special arrangement with the Wylie Agency, LLC and the Allen Ginsberg Estate.

Read more and view additional image at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Spirits to Enforce, Capital T Theatre at the Blue Theatre, January 19 - February 12

Found on-line:

Capital T presents

Directed by Gary Jaffe

for FronteraFest 2011

Wednesday Jan 19th at 7pm
Saturday Jan 22nd at 8pm
Friday Jan 28th at 9pm
Sunday Jan 30th at 1pm

with three additional performances

Thursday Feb 10th at 8pm
Friday Feb 11th at 8pm
Saturday Feb 12th at 8pm

at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Rd (click for Google map)

Twelve superheroes take up residence in a secret submarine to hold a fundraising drive for their upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Seriously. Infusing elements of Shakespeare’s language, comic book lore, and choral arrangement, Mickle Maher’s Spirits to Enforce is formally innovative, wryly humorous, deeply compassionate — and holds firmly to the belief that the the theater can create anything out of nothing at all.

Click to read about the cast and the playwright at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Auditions for FronteraFest: Aeschylus' Agamemnon (City on A Hill, November 7) and Lost Land (Wogglebug Productions, November 9)

Found at www.austinactors.net:

City on a Hill is hosting auditions for its FronteraFest 2011 long fringe production of Agamemnon. This is our second Frontera show following our successful production of American Volunteers in 2010. Auditions take place at the ACoT building (701 Tillery Dr.) from 12-4 Sunday, November 7.

Wogglebug Theatre is seeking cast and crew for a Frontera Fest 2011 long fringe show: Lost Land. We will be holding auditions Tues Nov 9th from 6:30-9 at the Dougherty Arts Center. Auditions will be cold reading based.

Click for further information about each audition call

Upcoming: Christi Moore on How to Produce for FronteraFest, Hyde Park Theatre, September 15

Received directly:

Austin Script Works Dramatis Personae Series

FRONTERAFEST 101
A primer in self-producing for the fringe
A workshop taught by Christina J. Moore
Wednesday, September 15, 7:00 pm

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.

COST: $5 Scriptworks members; $10 general admission

INFO/RESERVATIONS:
512.454.9727; christi@scriptworks.org

This workshop, led by ScriptWorks Executive Director and FronteraFest Producer Christina J. Moore, will guide participants through the process of preparing a piece for FronteraFest, the month-long festival to be held January 11 to February 12 at the Hyde Park Theatre and other venues. From resources for finding actors, directors, and rehearsal space to the ins and outs of the technical rehearsal, we'll cover it all.

Christina J. Moore is a director and producer whose work has been seen at The State Theatre, Zachary Scott Theatre Center, Mary Moody Northen Theater, Vortex Repertory Company, Capitol City Playhouse, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Different Stages, and Austin Script Works, which she helped found in 1997. FronteraFest 2011 will mark her tenth year as producer of the festival under the joint enterprise of Hyde Park Theatre and ScriptWorks.

ScriptWorks is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and to protect the playwright's integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. The Dramatis Personae series was initiated to provide area playwrights a place to experiment with their craft and expand their careers. Contact: Christi Moore @ 512-589-4055