Upcoming, New Plays Series: Breadcrumbs by Emily Ranking, October 11, and The Bullfighter by Geraldo Olivo, October 18, Blue Theatre

Received directly from Jenny Gravenstein at the

New Plays Series- October Staged Readings

Breadcrumbs

by Emily Rankin Tuesday, October 11, 7:30PM

The Bullfighter

by Geraldo Olivo

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30PM

The BLUE THEATRE NEW PLAYS SERIES proudly presents monthly, staged readings of new theatre works by emerging playwrights. The staged readings are performed by professional actors and facilitated by playwright and director, when in attendance.
For a complete schedule of upcoming plays and show times, visit us at: (http://www.BlueTheatre.org/New-Plays-Series)

The BLUE THEATRE is home for many of our community’s performing and visual artists, filmmakers, musicians and writers. With your help we will continue to bring powerful, innovative, thought-provoking works for Austin audiences to enjoy. We produce our own shows, help support all artists and activists with our programs and can be rented for productions, rehearsals, events, auditions and workshop.

For more information, visit us at: (http://www.BlueTheatre.org)
The BLUE THEATRE, 916 Springdale Road, Austin, Texas, 78702
Showtimes Hotline: (512)684-3220 l Email: info@bluetheatre.org

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw, Austin Shakespeare at Rollins Theatre, Long Center, February 17 - March 6

Austin Shakespeare's staging of Shaw's Man and Superman at the Rollins Theatre has the pleasures of a long agreeable evening with toffee and cigars. No game of whist or bridge, for the contest here is between Man and Woman, or, to wax a bit more Shavian, between Man the Romantic and Intellectual on one hand and Woman the Life Force on the other.

Man doesn't stand a chance, of course.

You may well ponder -- where's the Superman? Shaw's play took the stage in 1903, less than ten years after the first translation into English of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra. That book presented the notion of the Übermensch, the human being who transcends conventional morality and the deceptive controls imposed by tradition and society. Treating the concept in this play, GBS disdained the awkward term "Beyond-Man" used in the first translation and coined the term "Superman." With his characteristic cheerful, waspish verbosity Shaw thoroughly explored this relatively new notion and used it as a club to wallop the conventions of English bourgeois society.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images by Kimberley Mead for Austin Shakespeare's Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Images by Kimberley Mead for

George Bernard Shaw's

Man and Superman

February 17 - March 6, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m. & Sundays at 3 p.m.
The Rollins Theatre at The Long Center, Riverside Drive at South First Street

(click for map)

Tickets are on sale now at http://thelongcenter.frontgatesolutions.com or call 512-474-5664.

Austin Shakespeare presents a delightful comedy of topsy-turvy romantic pursuit, George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, a timely look at the perennial clash between the past and the future, the reactionary and the progressive, and questions of what the proper roles of men and women really are.

Man and Superman stars Kimbery Adams, Jill Blackwood*, Janelle Buchanan*, Michael Dalmon, Shelby Davenport*, Jenny Gravenstein, Philip Kreyche, Ev Lunning Jr.*, Barry Pineo, and Mark Stewart (* Member of Actor's Equity Association).

As a special addition, there will be a staged reading of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell with Babs George* and Harvey Guion at the Rollins at 7:30PM, Sunday February 27.

Click 'to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Man and Superman by G.B. Shaw, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, February 17 - March 6

Found on-line:

presents

George Bernard Shaw's

Man and Superman

February 17 - March 6, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m. & Sundays at 3 p.m.
The Rollins Theatre at The Long Center, Riverside Drive at South First Street

(click for map)

Tickets are on sale now at http://thelongcenter.frontgatesolutions.com or call 512-474-5664.

Austin Shakespeare presents a delightful comedy of topsy-turvy romantic pursuit, George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, a timely look at the perennial clash between the past and the future, the reactionary and the progressive, and questions of what the proper roles of men and women really are.

Man and Superman stars Kimbery Adams, Jill Blackwood*, Janelle Buchanan*, Michael Dalmon, Shelby Davenport*, Jenny Gravenstein, Philip Kreyche, Ev Lunning Jr.*, Barry Pineo, and Mark Stewart (* Member of Actor's Equity Association).

As a special addition, there will be a staged reading of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell with Babs George* and Harvey Guion at the Rollins at 7:30PM, Sunday February 27.

Spirits to Enforce, Capital T Theatre at FronteraFest LF, January 19-30 and February 10 - 12

With 12 superheroes on stage, who ya gonna call? I picked over the suite of portraits at Capital T Theatre's website and I was seriously tempted by blonde Jenny Gravenstein as The Page with the come-hither eyes, particularly since Capital T is using her for one of its promo posters.

That would be a sexist indulgence in fantasy, though, so I settled on Austin newcomer Jay Fraley, who mans the central slot at the phone bank as Emory (secret identity: Ariel; yes, that Ariel, and a hint as to just why these impoverished superheroes, victorious so recently against Dr. Cannibal and his hoardes, are trying to raise donations so that they can put on a theatrical production of The Tempest).

Besides, Fraley has more than a passing resemblance to playwright Mickle Maher of Chicago's Theatre Oobleck. And when the super-rubber hits the road, Ariel's performance in the theatre before a crowd including Dr. Cannibal as chief theatre critic is a self-confessed disaster. Judging from the rest of this speedy, hectic, amusing play, that's just the sort of joke that Maher would play on himself.

Capital T's first-time director Gary Jaffe puts all superheroes on stage, all the time. They hardly move from their stations at the telethon table, except for LaTasha Stephens as The Bad Map, but the psychic energy sizzles. Jaffe has assembled a cast that is its own microcosm of valiant Austin actor-heroes, all of them in their 20's and 30's, most of them familiar and welcome to theatre junkies. They mirror pretty well the very demographic that Capital T has courted so successfully over the past couple of years: energetic folk who are smart, self-referential, creative and a touch arrogant.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ongoing: Three Viewings by Jeffrey Hatcher, Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, October 15 - 30

UPDATE: Review by Cate Blouke for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, October 21

Received directly:

presents

Three Viewings

by Jeffrey Hatcher

directed by Ben Wolfe

October 15 - 30 at the Larry L. King Theatre
Penn Field Building C, 3601 South Congress

Tickets: $20, $15 for main stage subscribers and guests, $10 for students
Box office: (512) 476-0084

Call 476-0084 or visit https://austin-playhouse.ticketleap.net/ for tickets!

Austin Playhouse continues its 11^thThree Viewings in its alternative space, the Larry L. King Theater, for this year’s Halloween season. Rich characters, surprising twists, and a darkly comic tone connect three tales set in a small town funeral parlor.

Austin Playhouse has been drawn to Hatcher’s work since its production of the classic ghost story The Turn of the Screw last October. This season Austin Playhouse delves back into Hatcher presenting Three Viewings.

Three Viewings is told through a trio of monologues, in which characters engage directly with the audience. Set at three different funerals, the play brings together the stories of three characters and reveals the intricacies of their lives. Although the characters have no real interactions with each other, their stories are woven seamlessly together, combining three short-plays into one complete production.

When produced by Connecticut’s “Theater Works,” the New York Times described the play as a “gripping production” of an “exceedingly successful notion to play upon three unrelated deaths as a means of unmasking three separate lives.”

During the play you will meet Emil, a mild-mannered undertaker secretly in love with a real estate agent who attends all his funerals. His unspoken passion for her leads him to commit crimes while planning a way to confess his true feelings. Next introduced is Mac, a drifter who makers her living stealing jewelry from corpses returns home after her wealthy grandmother dies and leaves her nothing, in an attempt to regain her inheritance. Finally we hear the story of Virginia, the widow of a wheeler-dealer contractor who discovers that her husband’s shady business deals have left her in debt to the banks, her family and the mob.

Hatcher was nominated for the Edgar Award for his adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He has written many other plays including an adaptation of Miss Nelson is Missing! and darker plays such as Murderers, and Murder by Poe.

THE THREE VIEWINGS CAST

Hans Venable as “Emil”

Cyndi Williams as “Virginia”

Jenny Gravenstein as “Mac”

Images by Christopher Loveless: Three Viewings, Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, October 15 - 31

Images by Christopher Loveless of solo performers Hans Venable, Jenny Gravenstein and Cyndi Williams in Three Viewings:

presents

Three Viewings

by Jeffrey Hatcher

directed by Ben Wolfe

October 15 - 30 at the Larry L. King Theatre
Penn Field Building C, 3601 South Congress

Tickets: $20, $15 for main stage subscribers and guests, $10 for students
Box office: (512) 476-0084 or visit https://austin-playhouse.ticketleap.net/ for tickets!

Pictured: Jenny Gravenstein

Click to view five additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Almost, Maine, McCallum Fine Arts Academy at the Blue Theatre

For the school's opening On Tour! production, student directors Ansley Lee and Sierra Tothero from McCallum Academy's theatre department took over the Blue Theatre, out behind the Goodwill warehouse on Springdale road. It was a friendly and successful conquest, with manager Jennie Gravenstein running concessions and generally helping out in the excited rush.

Almost, Maine by John Cariani is a whimsical set of sketches about folks in the icy northern reaches of the United States. He's looking at love and how it creeps up on us, even on the famously blue-collar, tactiturn and slow-moving young Mainers. Cariani likes to turn figures of speech inside-out. For example, Gayle (Kahla Brown) comes storming into the house of her boyfriend Lendall (Dylan Jones), having abruptly decided, after 11 years of courtship, that she wants all her love back. To prove her determination, she brings in boxes and bags full of love from her car, and flings them down. "Here! This is all the love you gave me! Now I want mine all back!" Lendall rides through the absurdity and rises to the occasion.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Post-Oedipus, The Getalong Gang at the Blue Theatre, March 25 - April 11

UPDATE: Review by Cleve Wiese for Austinist.com, April 15

UPDATE: Review by Barry Pineo for the Austin Chronicle, April 8

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com/austin, April 2

UPDATE: Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman "Seeing Things" blog, March 29

UPDATE: Austin Creative Alliance interviews Jenny Gravenstein, Nicole Portwood and Stephen Cruz about Post-Oedipus, March 29 (audio, 11 min 20 sec)

UPDATE: Bastion Carboni interview Spencer Driggers for Austinist.com, March 26

Received directly:

The Blue Theatre and the Getalong Gang Performance Group
present

POST-OEDIPUS
a play by Steven Gridley

March 25 – April 11
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
The Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road
Tickets: $15 at www.post-oedipus.eventbrite.com

The BLUE Theatre and Getalong Gang Performance Group present the Austin premiere of Post-Oedipus, a radical re-working of Euripides' play The Phoenician Women. Post-Oedipus chronicles the tumultuous events of Oedipus' family after his fall, using warped time, musical interjections, chaotic revelries, and intolerable silences to unravel the mental state of a family after disaster. At once a stunning family drama and a jaunt into the absurd, Post-Oedipus will delight and challenge audiences.

Coming off their most recent project, the Austin Critics’ Table-nominated Arthuriosis: A Metal Opera, the Getalong Gang’s Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor join forces to direct and choreograph this memorable production. Designed by Stephen Pruitt and featuring Jenny Gravenstein (Critics’ Table winner and B. Iden Payne nominee), Nicole Portwood, Seth Thomas, Steve Cruz, Michelle Turner, Helyn Rain Messenger, and James Brownlee.

About the BLUE Theatre The BLUE Theatre is a versatile artist-operated performance space on Austin's east side. Post-Oedipus marks the first collaboratively-produced performance by the BLUE and the Getalong Gang.

About the Getalong Gang Performance Group Named one of “10 companies that are charging up Austin theatre" by the Austin Chronicle, the Getalong Gang Performance Group strives to challenge the hearts and minds of its audience and show them a great night out, as well. Husband and wife team Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor have been melding their respective disciplines (theatre, dance) since 2006 to form an unique, genre-defying brand of performance that's been recognized multiple times by the Austin Critics’ Table, B. Iden Payne awards, and Chronicle best-of lists in 2008 and 2009. Critically acclaimed and award-winning productions like Arthuriosis, Dolly Would and Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera have helped to cement the Getalong Gang’s reputation for bringing the unexpected to Austin stages.

The Turn of the Screw, Austin Playhouse, October 23 - November 8

Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw takes you into a dark place. A brief chapter sets the scene. On Christmas Eve in an old house in the countryside a group of bourgeois friends have just listened to a ghost story. Their host, Douglas, offers them another, but they have to wait for a manuscript to be dispatched from his residence in London.

That text -- "in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand" -- came from his sister's governess, twenty years dead. Her words as imagined by James constitute the entirety of the rest of the novella.

The unnamed woman is the well-read but lonely daughter of an impoverished country clergyman. At an interview in Harley Street, central London, she agrees to care for two orphaned children at a distant estate called Bly. Her new employer, the gallant but inveterate bachelor who is their guardian and uncle, admonishes her that she is never, ever to contact him. Of course, she is immediately infatuated in that gallant gentleman.

So there we are, inside her head.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .

Upcoming: The Turn of the Screw, Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, October 23 - November 8

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com/austin, October 29

UPDATE: Review by Olin Meadows for AustinOnStage.com, October 26

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

The Turn of the Screw

adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the story by Henry James
October 23 - November 8, 2009
Thursday - Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 5 p.m.
Tickets $20 ($10 for students)

Austin Playhouse, Larry L. King Theatre, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C
Tickets: (512) 476-0084 or www.austinplayhouse.com
Website: www.austinplayhouse.com

Just in time for Halloween, Austin Playhouse presents Henry James' classic ghost story. The Turn of the Screw is not suitable for young children or the faint of heart!

Acclaimed playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has crafted a thrilling adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Austin Playhouse will present a limited run of only eleven performances beginning October 23rd. The Turn of the Screw features Ben Wolfe (A Flea in Her Ear, Frost/Nixon) and Jenny Gravenstein (Age of Arousal) and is directed by Lara Toner (Age of Arousal, Dug Up).

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Age of Arousal, Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, April 10 - May 10

Age of Arousal is a strange, febrile comedy. It's like Dickens on drugs, if Dickens were to write about a closed circle of odd women.

These women are "odd" both in the numerical meaning of "not in a pair" and in the metaphorical meaning of "singular" or "remarkable." They are not "unique," because playwright Linda Griffiths intends them to represent for us the plight of women in late 19th century England, where by demographic quirk women outnumbered men by 25%. The sentimental Victorian ideal of cozy, obedient matrimony was an impossibility for many women.

Canadian playwright Linda Griffiths took as her point of departure the 1893 novel The Odd Women by British author George Gissing.
Gissing was ranked by some contemporary British critics alongside Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. A brilliant student from working-class origins, Gissing was expelled from university for stealing from better-off classmates and briefly imprisoned. He spent a year in Chicago and then went back to England in 1877. He churned out a total of 23 novels before his death from emphysema in 1903.

Gissing's social themes were well ahead of his time. He wrote about exploitation of the poor, hypocrisy in religion, the injustices for women in conventional matrimony, and unscrupulous commercial practices.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .