Wayne Alan Brenner's Favorites in 2013, Austin Chronicle

Brenner's portmanteau of 13 items includes 6 from locally produced Austin theatre:

 

Top 10 Creative Things I Lucked Into in 2013

Remembering the year thick with superlative works of art onstage and in galleries

By Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., Jan. 3, 2014

Katherine Catmull (photo: Capital T Theatre)

1) Joked with my editor that the first nine slots of this list would repeat 'THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS' (Capital T Theatre). That brilliant Mickle Maher comedy, about the consequences of two William Blake-enamored professors engaging in glorious copulation on the campus lawn in view of their students, was by far the best thing I experienced in a year thick with superlative works of art. Directed by Mark Pickell, the script was embodied by three actors – Jason Phelps, Katherine Catmull, and Ken Webster, already among the best in town – working at the height of their knock-you-over abilities.

. . . .

4) FRONTERAFEST is another multipartite perennial that keeps on giving, and one of the best Short Fringe things it gave was Kyle John Schmidt's "The Blissful Orphans," featuring Curtis Luciani, Bob Jones, and friends in a fractured fairy tale that surpassed anything Rocky & Bullwinkle ever attempted.

. . .

6) Using Jason Liebrecht as a hinge to open a door between two theatre productions: Martin McDonagh's 'THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE' (Capital T Theatre), brought to Grand Guignol life with Liebrecht chewing the scenery as an Irish terrorist who's out to slaughter whoever killed his beloved pet cat Wee Thomas; and 'FIXING KING JOHN' (Rude Mechanicals), Kirk Lynn's Deadwood-esque upgrade of Shakespeare, in which that same Liebrecht played the brave, hotheaded, sometimes near-colicky, and relentlessly besieged monarch contending with a cast of (mostly doomed) characters equal to his fierce talents.

7) Speaking of stagework, can somebody raid a sports paradigm and confer MVP status on actor MOLLY KARRASCH? I mean, Jesus, Slowgirl, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Tragedy: a tragedy, Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall – the woman's got range and a half.

8) Steve Moore and 'ADAM SULTAN' (Physical Plant) gave the Austin theatre scene an intimate view of itself with this heartfelt hall of mirrors, casting community stalwart Adam Sultan in the title role as a man who spends the increasingly lonely decades of his life commemorating all his creative friends who die as the years go by.

9) 'THE HEAD' (Trouble Puppet Theatre) was the semi-autobiographical apotheosis of everything that Connor Hopkins' strange and splendid company has done before, with so many disparate parts effectively orchestrated to show how ineffectively orchestrated a human can be when desire confounds sense and recreational drugs complicate the situation we call being alive.

Read full article at the Austin Chronicle on-line. . . .

Arts Reporting: L.A. Stage Times on the Rude Mechanicals' I've Never Been So Happy, October 5

Via a link tweeted by the Rude Mechs:

The Rude Mechs Return to LA and They’ve Never Been So Happy

Feature by A.R. Cassell | October 5, 2011

Yippee-ki-ay! The West is about to get even wilder with the arrival of the Texans who make up the Rude Mechs, the experimental theater company whose latest creation I’ve Never Been So Happy will begin performances this Thursday at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

Continuing their relationship with the Center Theatre Group (audiences may recall their production of The Method Gun at the Douglas during the RADAR L.A. festival in June), the “Rudes” are blazing new frontiers with their first bona fide musical…that is, if a “musical” is what you’d call it.

Otherwise called a “transmedia hootenanny,” I’ve Never Been So Happy, written by Kirk Lynn, centers around two star-crossed lovers in the wild wild West who, along with the help of some talking dachshunds (it’s true), must fight to stay together despite the efforts of their parents, a mountain lion, and whole slew of colorful characters. Composer Peter Stopschinski’s score ranges everywhere from down-home country, to ballads, heavy metal, opera and R&B. During the extended intermission, there is a shindig, which is described as a “interactive carnivalesque performance party.”

[image: Paul Soileau, Jason Liebrecht and Jenny Larson, via www.lastagetimes.com]

Read more and view additional images at www.lastagetimes.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: NYT Feature on Rude Mechs' Method Gun, February 27

Found on-line:

Many Methods to Collaborative Madness

By JOAN ANDERMAN, New York Times, February 27, 2011

IT began, as actors’ stories often do, with a guru. Her name was Stella Burden, a k a “the other Stella.” Ms. Burden created a risky suite of training exercises called the Approach, attracted a fervent band of followers and abandoned them nine years into rehearsals for a high-concept production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to be performed without Stanley, Blanche, Stella or Mitch.

What in the name of madcap Method acting is a company member to do?

That’s the absurdly literal and keenly figurative question at the heart of “The Method Gun,” a play about the creative process by the Austin, Tex., ensemble Rude Mechs, which since it was founded in 1995 has become one of the nation’s leading proponents of devised theater: works developed collaboratively by a company rather than an individual playwright.

“The Method Gun,” which comes to Dance Theater Workshop from March 2 to 11, is the most autobiographical of the company’s pieces. It’s satirical and celebratory in roughly equal parts, exploring ideas of togetherness and loss, the dynamics of being part of a tight-knit group and what it means to take care of one another.

While the show’s premise nods to celebrated acting teachers like Stella Adler and to extreme, emotion-based techniques like the Method, specifics are left aside in favor of merciless riffs on codified approaches to art. But the Rude Mechs’ wicked sense of humor tempers a sincere streak that the company wears like a badge of honor.

Read more at the New York Times on-line . . . .

I've Never Been So Happy, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, September 10 - 20

It's clever. It's mythic. It's melodic. It's multimedia.

It's the Rude Mechanicals still-in-workshop production of I've Never Been So Happy with book and lyrics by Kirk Lynn and music by Peter Stopchinsky, who also sings the part of the mountain lion.

But it's short and it's incomplete. By design, it will leave you wanting more.

The Rude Mechanicals have made for themselves an enviable place in the bubbling world of Austin's young non-Equity original-works theatres.

The Rudes are highly creative. They've done 22 original productions since inventing themselves in 1995, building a reputation, a following and support. They are not a high-volume theatre company, despite their six co-producing artistic directors, 28 company members, 88 business partners and an impressive array of individual supporters.

They've survived and triumphed by learning networking and grantsmanship. The Rudes succeeded in getting grant funding for this Western operetta fable from the National Endowment for the Arts, both directly and as part of the subsequent anti-recession stimulus package. The show is part of the NEA's new play development project, coordinated by the Arena Stage in Washington DC. Last December they did a workshop production in Austin of the early scenes of the play. They've worked parts of it further at the Orchard Project in the Catskills and last June with the UT Department of Theatre and Dance.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .