SNAPSHOTS, the OUT OF INK PLAY FESTIVAL 2013, Scriptworks at the Salvage Vanguard theatre, June 20 - 29, 2013 -

presents

OUT OF INK 2013

Snapshots

the 15th annual showcase of 10 minute plays

June 20-22 and 27-29, 2013 at 8 p.m.

Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. - click for map$15 general admission, $12 students/seniors/ScriptWorks
June 20th is a Pay-What-You-Wish preview

RESERVATIONS/INFORMATION: www.scriptworks.org512-454-9727

Whether it's avoiding adjectives, employing superheroes, crickets, or trunks, or finding a way to incorporate the opening and closing lines of Finnegan's Wake, ScriptWorks members have been up to the challenge of combining three arbitrary ingredients into cohesive ten-minute plays for 15 years.

Every year for the past 15 years, members have worked feverishly for 48 hours during the Weekend Fling to pen their opuses built around that year's three ingredients. And every year for the past 15 years, eight of the plays have been produced in the Out of Ink 10 minute play showcase. Over the years, the showcase has been performed at six different venues, from the long-gone Public Domain to the recently-gone Blue Theatre with stops at ACC, The State Theatre, The Hideout, Hyde Park Theatre, and Salvage Vanguard along the way.

Dozens of national and local theatre artists have contributed ingredients including Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle, Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman, director and casting director Vicky Boone, actors Ev Lunning and Babs George, designers Leilah Stewart, Ia Ensterä, and Natalie George, and playwrights Sherry Kramer, Suzan Zeder, Sibyl Kempson, Zell Miller, III, Naomi Iizuka, Dan Dietz, and Lisa D'Amour to name just a few.

This year the mini-festival returns to Salvage Vanguard and with eight plays inspired by the following ingredients:

1) The play must contain or involve a photograph--which two or more characters interpret the meaning of differently.
2) One character speaks only in commercial lingo, using known tag-lines or slogans.
3) The play must contain a gunshot or a birth.

At the end of the Weekend Fling, the plays were read in a ScriptWorks Salon at Hyde Park Theatre. A selection committee picked eight of the plays for production in Out of Ink. The selection committee included director Sharon Sparlin and non-applying members Elizabeth Cobbe and James Venhaus.

The Snapshots scripts were written by James Burnside, Trey Deason, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Kirk German, Zac Kline, Max Langert, Jason Rainey, and Anne Maria Wynter.

The plays will be performed by an ensemble of actors including Roxy Becker, Pete Betcher, Amy Chang, David DuBose, Nathanael Dunaway, Joe Hartman, Heather Huggins, Katie Kohler, Jordan Marrett, Don Sneed, Rommel Sulit, and Katy Taylor. They'll be directed by Lowell Bartholomee, Heather Huggins, Ellie McBride, Christina J. Moore, and Sharon Sparlin. Designers for the project are Pam Friday, George Marsolek, Jennifer Rogers, and Bryan Schneider.

ABOUT SCRIPTWORKS ScriptWorks (formerly Austin Script Works) is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and protect the writer's integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. ScriptWorks is funded and supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future.

For more information about ScriptWorks call 512-454-9727 or email: info@scriptworks.org
 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

DayBoyNightGirl, DA! Theatre Collective, Rollins Theatre, Long Center, June 6 - 10

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

I walked two blocks to reach the Long Center, with its blackbox Rollins Studio Theatre, where DayBoyNightGirl played. Without a doubt, the spectacular 21^st century cityscape of downtown Austin upstages every performance staged there. After all, the downtown view is the first thing one sees upon arriving at the Long Center. DayBoyNightGirl pushed back admirably against the sensory overload. The show was spectacular at every level.

If you’re tired of small plays in small theatres, I offer you my fascination with small companies that do enormous things with their talents. Da! Theatre Collective is one such company, and DayBoyNightGirl is enormous in its scope and bold execution, without ever becoming pretentious, precious or trite. The piece is a fine example of multiple-arts performance, showcased for us recently by the offerings of the Fusebox Festival. It is my hope that multiple-arts companies thrive and create a dominant trend in American theatre. They offer freshness and quite possibly true originality.

The source of Da! Theatre Collective’s creative diversity lies in the company’s founders. Heather Huggins and Lisa del Rosario have international backgrounds in theatre and dance, and their collaborations seem to balance these major branches of the fine arts. Kirk German is a gifted playwright; the stage play of DayBoyNightGirl is brilliant (adapted from a story by George MacDonald); the language never lapses into mere functional storytelling, but at times the words in the mouths of the actors seem to vault into iambic hexameter, giving an Elizabethan lilt to many of the text passages. The thing sparkles.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: DayBoyNightGirl, DA! Theatre Collective at the Rollins Theatre, June 6 - 10

DA! Theatre Collective proudly presents…

DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL

June 6 - 9, Wednesday - Saturday at 8 p.m.

matinees at 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 9 and Sunday, June 10

Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center for the Performing Arts, 701 West Riverside Drive

Tickets    $15 - $35 (sliding scale)  available on-line via DA! or via the Long Center box-office

FOR ONE WEEK ONLY, DA! Theatre Collective is proud to present the premiere of DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL, their first full-length production since the award-winning 2009 hit Leave it to Beverly.  Developed and work-shopped for over a year by the Collective under the direction of Heather Huggins, DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL features choreography by Lisa del Rosario, a script by Kirk German, and an original score composed by guest artist Catherine Davis.

Loosely adapted from The Romance of Photogen & Nycteris, a magical novella written by Scottish author George MacDonald in 1882, DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL tells the fable of a mysterious castle where one child is raised entirely in darkness while another is nurtured by the sun.  But kids will be kids, and each of the children soon starts craving new experiences… Using only bodies, music, and light, DA! intertwines movement, music and storytelling to illuminate this forgotten Gaelic fairy tale.

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

Auditions for DayBoyNightGirl company members, DA! Theatre Collective

is holding open auditions for a a handful of roles in our upcoming production, DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL, which will premiere at the Rollins this June! We will be reading ladies for Nycteris (Night Girl) & Aurora. We are also looking for both men & women to join the ensemble.

Auditioners will be asked to work with movement & text. Please wear shoes & clothes that allow a full range of motion. E-mail kirk@datheatrecollective.org to sign up for an audition slot.

DA!'s original full-team collaborative adaptation DAYBOYNIGHTGIRL is based on "The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris," a magical tale written by Scottish fantasy maestro George MacDonald in 1882. You can read the original text here.

Development rehearsals are ongoing. New cast members are asked to join the rehearsal process by late April. Specifics available upon request & at the audition. Performances will be June 6th - 10th at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center.

[illustration by Elizabeth Unseelie. Click to see her gallery at www.deviantart.com]

Arts Reporting: DA's Heron and Crane Goes to New York

DA! Theatre Collective
proudly presents…

Heron & Crane
an original children’s production
written by Kirk German, adapted from a Russian Folk-Tale
The New York International Fringe Festival - Fringe NYC
a production of The Present Company
August 13 - August 29
Tickets: $10 -- FringeJR
for tickets visit www.FringeNYC.org

DA! Theatre Collective is proud to present Heron & Crane as part of the 14th annual New York International Fringe Festival -- FringeNYC. FringeNYC is the largest festival of its kind in North America and will include the productions of 200 companies this August.

Heron & Crane is honored to be selected as ONE of only THREE FringeJR selections this year; FringeJR is the children and families portion of FringeNYC.

Heron & Crane is the story of two strong-willed swamp-birds who discover that becoming friends requires a little give-and-take... or maybe a lot. This dynamic comedy explores diversity, problem-solving, and ecology through music, dance, and audience interaction. Adapted from a Russian folk-tale, with a new ending every time!

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Leave It to Beverly, DA! Theatre Collective at the Off Center, November 5 -21

Kirk German's Leave It to Beverly is a rib-tickler. His characters and cast go sailing off into TV Land of the 1950s and 1960s, taking the gags and the mannerisms way up over the top. DA! applies its energetic young 21st-century humor to Mom and Pop's naive entertainments and comes away a winner.

Consider, for example, canned laughter. The early days of television featured many programs filmed before live audiences, but with rising costs and the introduction of video tape, producers were happy to sweeten audience reactions or do away with them entirely by using "laugh tracks." A single eccentric artist, Charlie Douglas, pretty much had the monopoly of that business through the 1960s, thanks to his "laff box," a complicated non-computerized device.

German's opening episode "Leave It to Beverly" features our dear housewife Beverly, newly a mother of twins, and Husband, a big, genial horned-rim-glasses-wearing avatar of Robert Young. Author and actors satirize the saccharine and the silliness of those classic sitcoms, in an acting style both coy and twinkling, and the action is regularly interrupted by roars of recorded laughter.

Beverly and her girlfriends become somewhat flustered by this unexplained punctuation of their lives. Eventually, after "Trixie Knows Best," the knock-off of both Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, the girls discover great big tins resembling 2-gallon Campbell's soup containers, labeled "HA.HA.HA." Within them is a gelatinous colored substance that has got to be the canned laughter that permeates their existence. How it got there and the reason for it are enigmas that are solved in the final, post-intermission episode, "Make Room for Lorraine."

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

Upcoming: Direct Object, Da! Theatre Collective, Studio Space at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, September 17 - 26

Found on-line:

Direct Object

DA! Theatre Collective is proud to present the return of Direct Object, DA!'s award-winning debut show inspired by the world-famous and long-running production from Moscow, Objects and People.

Condensing story-telling into its most essential elements, Direct Object presents a series of transformative and astonishing vignettes which feature people interacting with every-day objects as you've never seen them before.

A tortilla-maker's rolling pin transforms him into a bold matador. A librarian takes sudden flight from the pages of an Austin Chronicle. And who knows what may happen with a soccer ball, a back-pack, a scarf, a trunk, an umbrella, an exercise bungee, and more?

This latest incarnation of Direct Object is directed by Heather Huggins and features Jude Hickey, Robin Grace Thompson, Kirk German, Lisa del Rosario, Scott Roskilly, Michelle Brandt, Jacob Trussell, Stephanie Denson, Heather Huggins, and Wallis Currie-Wood, with an original score by Travis Cooper and Melissa Jurrens.

The show opens on September 17 at the studio space of the Salvage Vanguard Theatre and runs for two weekends. Tickets are sliding scale: $10/$15/$20/$25. Wednesday, September 23rd is pay-what-you-can. Call (512) 474-7886 or go online and reserve your tickets today!

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Heron and Crane, Vortex Repertory, April 11 - 25 (daytime performances)

Received March 12:

DA! Theatre Collective
proudly presents…

Heron & Crane

an original children’s production
written by Kirk German
adapted from a Russian Folk-Tale
directed by Kirk German and Heather Huggins
Featuring Jude Hickey and Michelle Brandt

When:
Saturday, April 11 11am; 1pm
Sunday, April 12 1 pm
Saturday, April 18 11am; 1pm
Sunday, April 19 11 am; 1pm
Saturday, April 25 11 am; 1 pm

Where: The VORTEX 2307 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722
Tickets: call (512) 479-PLAY or go online at: http://www.datheatrecollective.org

DA! Theatre Collective is proud to present Heron and Crane, our hilarious and dynamic adaptation of a beloved Russian folk-tale about two strong-willed swamp-birds who discover that becoming friends requires a little give-and-take…. or maybe a lot. The hour-long show includes an interactive 30-minute show (created with 80% re-used and recycled materials), a post-show discussion where the audience helps decide the fate of the two rambunctious birds, and a new and different final scene every time! The show explores issues about diversity, ecology, conflict resolution, problem-solving, and friendship through original music, choreography, and audience interaction.

Heron and Crane features Collective members Jude Hickey (Best Actor, Austin Critics Table Award, The Pillowman) as Crane and Michelle Brandt as Heron; Kirk German (B. Iden Payne Nominee, Best Director of a Comedy) writes and co-directs with Heather Huggins; Lisa del Rosario (Austin Critic’s Table Nominee, Best Performance of a Dance) choreographs, with an original score by Austin musicians Travis Cooper & Melissa Jurrens.

Over the past four months, DA! has taken the traveling version of Heron and Crane to a diverse sampling of elementary schools in three different central Texas school districts. During that time, over 4,000 area students have seen the show, half of them for free through our matching program, created specifically to bring arts programming to Title One schools in our region.

And NOW, the Heron and the Crane are nesting at The VORTEX for three weeks this April, to be enjoyed by kids of ALL ages-- the young and the young-at-heart alike! This weekend matinee run of Heron and Crane will take place in the Yard at The VORTEX. Performances run from April 11th to 25th. Saturday performances begin at 11 am and 1 pm. Sunday performances are at 1 pm, with an additional 11 am show on the 19th. Use of The VORTEX is made possible through the support of VORTEX Repertory Company.

As part of DA!’s ongoing commitment to enhance the level and scope of education in our artistic community and to provide high-quality arts education to all members of our society, tickets for this incarnation of Heron and Crane are extremely affordable: $4 for youth and $6 for adults; groups of 8 youth and 1 adult can purchase a Flight Package for only $25; larger groups may apply for an additional discount.

To make reservations, call (512) 479- 7530 x 5 or go online at: http://www.datheatrecollective.org

DA! is proud to be sponsored by Hyde Park Theatre and Target. This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

DA! Theatre Collective
c/o Hyde Park Theatre
511 W. 43rd Street
Austin, Texas 78751
http://www.datheatrecollective.org
(512) 479- 7530 x 5