A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE by Tennessee Williams, City Theatre, July 25 - August 18, 2013

(3823 Airport Rd. at 38 1/2 St., behind the Shell station)

presents

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
July 25 – August 18. Thursday – Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.
The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78722 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street.
General Seating $15. Guaranteed Front/2nd Row Reserved $25.
Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.
Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org
www.citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre continues its summer season with the Tennessee Williams's American classic, A Streetcar Named Desire, which revolutionized modern drama and is still an undisputed masterpiece from one of the great voices of the American theatre. Directed by Jeff Hinkle and starring Rachel McGinnis Meissner and Tim Brown, the production runs July 25 – August 18, 2013.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” – Blanche du Bois, A Streetcar Named Desire

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Streetcar is not only a landmark in American theatre, but a ground-breaking theatrical event! Immerse yourself in the steamy French Quarter of New Orleans as we discover the torrid and fragile life of Blanche Du Bois, southern school teacher and socialite who has come to the end of the line, and is forced to move in with her pregnant sister Stella and explosive husband Stanley. In the sultry decadent jungle of half-light, honky-tonks and fleeting sanity, Blanche desperately seeks refuge in a quiet world of memory and illusion. But Stanley is there to cut off her only escape and her fragile world slowly crumbles as she quickly learns brutal lessons of passion and deceit. Embodying the turmoil of a changing nation, Streetcar strips Williams’ tortured characters of their illusions, leaving a wake of destruction in their path. Poetic and provocative, lyrical and lusty, the play is a haunting and uncompromising master work from one of the greatest writers in modern drama.


“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” ― Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Mississippi, 1911, and into a family life full of tension. He decided to become a playwright after he was admitted to the University of Missouri and saw a production of Ibsen's Ghosts. He moved to New Orleans and changed his name from "Tom" to "Tennessee.” In 1939, the young writer received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant and, what many consider to be his best play, The Glass Menagerie was written and burst its way onto Broadway. With his dominating mother and fragile sister, Rose, many critics believed that Tennessee used his own relationships as inspiration for the play. Elia Kazan, who directed many of his greatest successes, said of Tennessee: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other hits including A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for Streetcar, and reached an even larger world-wide audience when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into movies include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana. Yet, with the powerful impact he had, Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life and lived with the constant fear of insanity. On February 24, 1983, Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City residence. In addition to twenty-five full length plays, Williams produced dozens of short plays and screenplays, two novels, sixty short stories, over one-hundred poems and an autobiography. Among his many awards, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and four New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards.



The City Theatre has assembled an exciting cast for the show including the dynamic and talented Rachel McGinnis Meissner and Tim Brown who starred in CTC’s 2010 Iden Payne nominated production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The cast also includes Laura Artesi, Clay Avery, Samantha Brewer, Matt Biery, Kate Trammell, Evan Shaw, and Austen Simien. The play is directed by guest director Jeff Hinkle, whose other productions with CTC include Othello, Hair, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Romeo and Juliet. The costume designer is Lindsay McKenna with set design by Kevin George. The City Theatre Company is an Austin-based not for profit arts organization and is sponsored in part by the Austin Creative Alliance and the Austin Cultural Arts Division. Founded in 2006, the company has been recognized by the Austin Critics Table Awards, the B. Iden Payne Awards and is twice voted “Best Theatre Company” by Austin-American Statesman’s Austin 360. CTC is dedicated in providing quality theatre experience and entertainment for Austin artist’s and its community.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE by Tennessee Williams, City Theatre, July 25 - August 18, 2013

(3823 Airport Rd. at 38 1/2 St., behind the Shell station)\

            presents

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Auditions for Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, City Theatre, March 17 and 18, 2013

City Theatre CASTING CALL--- Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s Sublime Battle of Wits and Wills. Casting all roles. 


Sunday, March 17 and Monday, March 18 at The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D. Austin, TX 78722 

Times: Sunday 12:30 – 3:30 p.m. and Monday 6:00 – 9:30 p.m. Ten minute slots by appointment. Show dates: June 13 – July 4 with rehearsals starting the beginning of April. 

Considered one of Shakespeare’s most popular and charming comedies, Much Ado about Nothing features the classic couple Benedick, an arrogant and confirmed bachelor, and Beatrice, his favorite sparring partner, who would rather exchange scorching insults than sweet nothings. 

The pugnacious pair is forced to forge a partnership in order to defend house and honor, and salvage the true love of Hero and Claudio after deceptions destroy the lovers’ wedding day. Will the earnest endeavor to restore a young romance elicit an unexpected change of heart for the effort’s unlikely collaborators as well? Witty wordplay, passionate poetry and clever plot twists make this the perfect romantic evening to share love and laughter. 

Bring headshot, resume and a one-minute prepared Shakespeare monologue. Scenes may also be performed. 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org to set up an appt. For more audition details, go to www.citytheatreaustin.org

Auditions in Wimberley and Austin for Macbeth, EmilyAnn Theatre, June 23 and 25

The EmilyAnn Theatre announces auditions for our semi-professional falll Shakespeare production of Macbeth, directed by Jeff Hinkle. Audition Dates: Saturday, June 23 at the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens (click for map); Monday, June 25 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Rd, - Austin (click for map). 

 Performance Dates October 5 - 27 (Friday & Saturday nights)

To audition, please contact EmilyAnn Artistic Director, Bridget Farias, at bridget@emilyann.org to set up an audition appointment.

Fundraising Appeal for Corpus Christi by Austin Theatre Project

Posted at fundraising site RocketHub.com with a campaign goal of $5000 within the next 15 days:

CORPUS CHRISTI

by Terrence McNally

directed by Jeff Hinkle

Courageous

Beautiful

Inspirational

 

We all see the headlines about bullying, teen suicide, and hate crimes committed towards the disenfranchised. The "disease" of intolerance has reached epic and epidemic proportions. We at Austin Theatre Project have decided to kick off our inaugural season with a play that will open both hears and minds to this subject and, at the very least, initiate open and honest communication and at best, help create change in our community and surrounding area.

Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi is perhaps his most moving and controversial play, telling the story of Joshua, a young gay boy in 1950's Corpus Christi, TX. He is ridiculed, bullied, and hated by most of the people in his hometown and after he finishes high school, he flees... seeking people to share his message of tolerance and unconditional love. During his travels he finds a group of followers who help to spread his message. The time comes for him to return home and when he does so, he is betrayed by his high school boyfriend, Judas... with tragic results. Written in 1997, the play presents themes of unconditional love and  tolerance honestly alongside the themes of bullying and hate crime, all of which make this work even more relevant today than it was fifteen years ago.

Austin Theatre Project has assembled a cast comprised of the area's most talented and dedicated actors. As this important play is the first production of our inaugural season, we are looking to RocketHub to guarantee that we are able to not only pay our actors a fair and equitable compensation, but also to provide them with the necessary security that is required due to the threats of the radical movements who try everything they can to prevent this production from being produced all over the United States.

Click to go to the RocketHub donations page. . . .

Upcoming: Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally, Austin Theatre Project at MC Church, May 25 - June 10

presents

 

 

Corpus Christi

by Terrence McNally
directed by Jeff Hinkle
MCC Austin at Freedom Oaks, 8601 S. First Street (click for map)

May 25 - June 10, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
Saturday matinee on June 2 at 2 p.m.

Tickets from $26.87 for students/seniors to $37.22 for premium seating

available now via

Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi is perhaps his most moving and controversial play, telling the story of Joshua, a young gay boy in 1950's Corpus Christi, TX. He is ridiculed, bullied, and hated by most of the people in his hometown and after he finishes high school, he flees... seeking people to share his message of tolerance and unconditional love. During his travels he finds a group of followers who help to spread his message. The time comes for him to return home and when he does so, he is betrayed by his high school boyfriend, Judas... with tragic results. Written in 1997, the themes of unconditional love and tolerance are honestly presented alongside the themes of bullying and hate crime, all of which make this work even more relevant today than it was fifteen years ago.

New Company, Upcoming Auditions: Austin Theatre Project and Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally, April 21 - 22

The newly-established Austin Theatre Project of producing director Barbara Schuler and musical director David Blackburn will hold auditions for Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, to be directed by Jeff Hinkle, on Monday, April 23 and on Tuesday, April 24, 6 - 9 p.m. at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Rd. (click for map)

Performances are scheduled for Fridays - Sundays, May 25 - June 10 at the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC Church), 8601 S. First Street (click for map).

On March 28 ATP organizers announced their season through 2013, featuring The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, the musical Baby, Love Letters, Avenue Q, Edges - A Song Cycle, The House of Yes, Falsettos, and the 2013 Austin Holiday Project. They also discussed with Lisa Scheps the origins of their new initiative. Click below to listen to them on KOOP-FM's 'Off Stage and On the Air.' (9 minutes)

Wit by Margaret Edson, City Theatre, March 18 - April 8

It helps to have someone holding your hand when you look over the edge of the precipice. Even if you've always lived alone, felt self sufficient and devoted yourself to the life of the mind.

Margaret Edson's Wit is the portrait of literature professor Vivian Bearing, a devotee of 17th century English literature renowned for her publications on the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. At the age of 50 this scholar has been discovered to be the victim of Stage IV ovarian cancer. Our time with her is spent in the cancer ward, except for brief flashbacks to happy moments - as a child, learning to read; as a graduate student discovering the woman professor who became her mentor; standing authoritatively in front of a class of undergraduates, challenging them to grapple with the conceits of Donne's poetry.

Bearing's thoughts spin as she confronts the unimaginative protocol realities of medicine. She works to remain objective and in intellectual control, occasionally sharing with us a fugue state, sometimes even over the unnerving revelations being delivered by her physicians.

This piece demands a virtuoso performance every night, by a virtuoso performer, and Judith Laird is exactly that. Wit is essentially a monologue with regular lapses into conventional stage representation. The frail, earnest protagonist speaks directly to us as audience, acknowledges our presence and even comments in passing, "I have only two hours here before I die." That ironic confiding in the spectators has a touch of the metaphysical to it, a shadowed reflection of Donne's perspective in the Holy Sonnets written late in his life.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, City Theatre, February 16 - March 11

Received directly:

presents

directed by Jeff Hinkle

February 16 – March 11, Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5:30 p.m.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street. (click for map)

General Seating $15. Guaranteed Front/2^nd Row Reserved $25.

Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

www.citytheatreaustin.org

Young passions, feuding families and star-crossed lovers set the scene as The City Theatre Company brings to the stage William Shakespeare’s first great tragedy and one of his most beloved works, Romeo and Juliet. A tale of young love thwarted by circumstance, the production plays February 16 – March 11 at The City Theatre.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Hair, CIty Theatre, August 18 - September 11

City Theatre's production of the 1968 musical Hair is easy to look at, lively, familiar and loud, all of which qualities I consider to be virtues. For someone who knew every note of the 1967 cast album but had never seen it on stage, City's Hair was like a binge on vanilla Oreos.

Jeff Hinkle, his four choreographers and that enthusiastic cast of twenty actor-singers keep the stage full and lively almost non-stop. They out-do Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey by far, a notable achievement given the relatively compact space available to them. As a theatre junkie, I'm always looking for a seat in the front row, but that evening I realized that for Hair I'd made an error of strategic positioning. Not because the performers got into our faces or pulled us up to dance at the end of the show -- that's part of the fun -- but because only from the middle of the house would one have a wide enough field of view.

The stage spectacle connected the 35 musical numbers performed by David Blackburn and the exuberant band into a coherent but thin narrative for me. And yes, it recalled for me the 1960s, when I was just about the age of the performers in front of me. I won't go into any nostalgia kick, but I will point out that things were very different. The Vietnam War was in full swing, a nine-year conflict that killed ten times as many American soldiers as have died in Iran and Afghanistan since the U.S. attack on Baghdad eight years ago. Because of the military draft, teenage men found their futures and perhaps their lives determined by the annual lottery choosing them by birthdates. The media were hovering, fascinated, over the war, over the alluring counter-culture, and over the protests.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: This Spring of Love, musical based on Two Gentlemen of Verona, City Theatre, April 14 - May 8

Found on-line:

City Theatre

presents

This Spring of Love, a musical

words by William Shakespeare

musical adaptation by Andy Berkovsky

directed by Jeff Hinkle

April 14 – May 8
Thursday – Saturday 8:00 p.m. and Sunday 5:30 p.m.
The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D (behind the Shell station - click for map)
For reservations, call 512-524-2870 or e-mail info@citytheatreaustin.org.
$15 - $20. Front Row Reserved $25. Thursday all seats $10.
Group and student discounts.

The romantic musical comedy explosion of love, laughter and rock n' roll! If music be the food of love, play on in this modern musical adaptation of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Four young lovers hit the road to romance and find their bonds of friendship are tested along the way when they encounter the entanglements of stubborn fathers, pesky cupids, dirty outlaws, and everything in between. Don't miss the no holds “bard” pop musical filled with comedy, song, dance and the triumphs of young love.

Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 - November 15

Director Jeff Hinkle and the City Theatre cast led by Aaron Black as Hamlet give us a gripping up-tempo version of the famous events in Elsinore. Elapsed playing time from the first challenge on the battlements to Hamlet's dying gasp, "The rest -- is silence" is just a little more than two and a half hours.

That fits the play well within the max bounds for today's young movie-going public and gives them the bonus of a break in the middle for snacks and bathroom. The nearly full house for opening night offered the encouraging prospect of a well attended four-week run to open City's fourth season.

It's a good ride, with some surprises along the way.

Aaron Black paints a two-speed Hamlet. From the first, alone or speaking to us directly in his monologues, Black establishes the prince's intelligence. His deft timing and effectively calibrated pauses show Hamlet's mind at work and establish a bond with the audience.

In company with any but Horatio or the player king, however, Black speeds up, provokes and antagonizes. His diction is precise but as his lines move toward rant, he seems to be less the master of his own thoughts. They burst forth in hectoring images.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 -

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 26

UPDATE: Article by Sara Pressley in the Daily Texan, October 21: Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' Gets Modern Twist at Local Venue

Received directly:


Hamlet

City Theatre, October 22 - November 15
After show talk-backs October 25 and November 8.

A murdered king. A usurped kingdom. A promise of revenge. Returning to court to find his father murdered and his mother remarried, the young and melancholy Dane faces his most terrible dilemma between duty and doubt, madness and mistrust, and “murder most foul.”

[photo by Jordy Wagoner, Daily Texan]
An undisputed masterpiece of world theatre, William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy of passion, corruption and revenge has captivated audiences for more than four hundred years and remains as relevant and urgent as ever.

With Aaron Black, Collin Bjork, McArthur Moore, Christy Smith, and Tim Brown and featuring the live music ensemble orchestra of Mother Falcon.

Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed reserve $25. Thursdays pay what you can. Group and student discounts. www.citytheatreaustin.org

For reservations, call 512-524-2870 or e-mail info@citytheatreaustin.org.

The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D. – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38½ Street.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .