STOP HITTING YOURSELF, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, April 4 - 21, 2013

Rude Mechs will present the first work-in-progress showing of

 



Stop Hitting Yourself
The show runs April 4 - April 21, 2013, Thursday - Sunday at 8:00 pm., at The Off Center, 2211 A Hidalgo, Austin, TX. 

Tickets: Thursday and Sunday - Pay What You Can; Friday and Saturday - $12 - 25 Sliding Scale. 

Tickets go on sale March 4th at www.rudemechs.com. 

The final weekend tickets will also be available through Fusebox Festival. 

Purchase with credit card in advance. Cash only at the door.


"At tonight's party you were observed and those observations are currently being compiled into a list of the things you need to be taught. We have one month to perfect you. In one month, we're going to have another party. The difference is at this next party, the Queen will be in attendance. Improvement. Succor. Fate. Queso. Wardrobe. Charity. Belief."

Once a year at the Charity Ball a single worthy cause is selected to benefit from the Queen's annual good deed. Families of note compete to find the citizens most in need and deserving of assistance. This year, a socialite has discovered a wildman in the forest and brings him home to improve him. The wildman's desire to save the natural world and to bring about an era of love and harmony is a sure-winner. Now she must teach him how to eat and dance, how to bow and flatter, how to behave in society so that his cause can be victorious.

Rude Mechs is currently embracing the fundamental beliefs underlying late-stage capitalism and indulging in some 1930's Hollywood glamour. Part Pygmalion, Busby Berkley, part self-help lexicon -- all while tap-dancing around a queso fountain. STOP HITTING YOURSELF borrows from the plots of 1930's musicals to dig into the contemporary conservative dilemma: how to honor the steely individualism of Ayn Rand without disavowing the ministry of Jesus Christ. Tap dancing, fine dining, and the missionary position will all be employed in order to help all Americans stop hitting yourself.

Some of the Many People Involved: Hope Bennett, Thomas Graves, Heather Hanna, Matt Hislope, Hannah Kenah, Lisa Laratta, Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht, Kirk Lynn, Graham Reynolds, Brian Scott, Shawn Sides, Paul Soileau, Dallas Tate, plus awesome technicians, crew, and Rude Mechs company members keeping it awesome.


STOP HITTING YOURSELF is a commission of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater. LCT3 produces shows by new playwrights, directors and designers - new ideas in a new space. Additional creation support comes from National Endowment for the Arts and MAP Fund. Rude Mechs is supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.

Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that has created a genre-defying cocktail of over 25 original plays that we produce in Austin, TX, and tour nationally and internationally. Our most recent productions include "The Method Gun", "Get Your War On" and "I've Never Been So Happy" which have all toured to such far-flung destinations as New York City, Los Angeles, New Haven, Columbus, Boston, Portland, Philadelphia, Helsinki (Finland), Edinburgh (Scotland), and Brisbane (Australia). Since our inception in 1995, we've received over 180 awards and nominations for artistic excellence and, most recently, the company's production "The Method Gun" was recognized by both Time Out New York and New York Magazine as one of the Top 10 theatrical events of 2011.

For more information about this production and all things rude, visit www.rudemechs.com.


Read more about Rude Mechs to Present Work-in-Progress Showing of STOP HITTING YOURSELF, 4/4-21 by austin.broadwayworld.com
Rude Mechs will present the first work-in-progress showing of "STOP HITTING YOURSELF."
"At tonight's party you were observed and those observations are currently being compiled into a list of the things you need to be taught. We have one month to perfect you. In one month, we're going to have another party. The difference is at this next party, the Queen will be in attendance. Improvement. Succor. Fate. Queso. Wardrobe. Charity. Belief."
Once a year at the Charity Ball a single worthy cause is selected to benefit from the Queen's annual good deed. Families of note compete to find the citizens most in need and deserving of assistance. This year, a socialite has discovered a wildman in the forest and brings him home to improve him. The wildman's desire to save the natural world and to bring about an era of love and harmony is a sure-winner. Now she must teach him how to eat and dance, how to bow and flatter, how to behave in society so that his cause can be victorious.
Rude Mechs is currently embracing the fundamental beliefs underlying late-stage capitalism and indulging in some 1930's Hollywood glamour. Part Pygmalion, Busby Berkley, part self-help lexicon -- all while tap-dancing around a queso fountain. STOP HITTING YOURSELF borrows from the plots of 1930's musicals to dig into the contemporary conservative dilemma: how to honor the steely individualism of Ayn Rand without disavowing the ministry of Jesus Christ. Tap dancing, fine dining, and the missionary position will all be employed in order to help all Americans stop hitting yourself.
Some of the Many People Involved: Hope Bennett, Thomas Graves, Heather Hanna, Matt Hislope, Hannah Kenah, Lisa Laratta, Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht, Kirk Lynn, Graham Reynolds, Brian Scott, Shawn Sides, Paul Soileau, Dallas Tate, plus awesome technicians, crew, and Rude Mechs company members keeping it awesome.
The show runs April 4 - April 21, 2013, Thursday - Sunday at 8:00 pm., at The Off Center, 2211 A Hidalgo, Austin, TX. Tickets: Thursday and Sunday - Pay What You Can; Friday and Saturday - $12 - 25 Sliding Scale. Tickets go on sale March 4th at www.rudemechs.com. The final weekend tickets will also be available through Fusebox Festival. Purchase with credit card in advance. Cash only at the door.
STOP HITTING YOURSELF is a commission of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater. LCT3 produces shows by new playwrights, directors and designers - new ideas in a new space. Additional creation support comes from National Endowment for the Arts and MAP Fund. Rude Mechs is supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.
Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that has created a genre-defying cocktail of over 25 original plays that we produce in Austin, TX, and tour nationally and internationally. Our most recent productions include "The Method Gun", "Get Your War On" and "I've Never Been So Happy" which have all toured to such far-flung destinations as New York City, Los Angeles, New Haven, Columbus, Boston, Portland, Philadelphia, Helsinki (Finland), Edinburgh (Scotland), and Brisbane (Australia). Since our inception in 1995, we've received over 180 awards and nominations for artistic excellence and, most recently, the company's production "The Method Gun" was recognized by both Time Out New York and New York Magazine as one of the Top 10 theatrical events of 2011.
For more information about this production and all things rude, visit www.rudemechs.com.

Read more about Rude Mechs to Present Work-in-Progress Showing of STOP HITTING YOURSELF, 4/4-21 by austin.broadwayworld.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 14 - 24, 2013

by Michael Meigs

Measure for Measure

is one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, an intimate and claustrophobic study of misrule. There are no great battles here, no dazzling displays of fancy; this mythical Vienna has a stifling ambiance, a combination of bureaucratic neglect, fetid bordello and sterile cloister. One can seek to read it as a comedy, which to some extent director Michelle Polgar has done, but one can also see it as a meditation on zealotry.

Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, is an introspective, bookish fellow who has long neglected public affairs. In the opening of the play he abruptly announces his departure to points unknown and confides to the ascetic nobleman Angelo and to ducal counselor Escalus letters granting Angelo full power to administer the dukedom. We quickly learn that Vienna is a stew of moral corruption, thick with brothels and generally immoral behavior. Our jaunty guide to that underworld is Lucio, a "fantastic" well acquainted with it, and we make the acquaintance of the tapster-pimp Pompey and the brothel keeper Mistress Overdone.

Hannah Marie Fonder, Curtis Allmon (photo: Bret Brookshire)

Empowered by the absent duke, Angelo becomes the swift and merciless instrument of justice. He orders brothels in the city limits pulled down, despite -- in fact, because of -- their thriving business. Lighthearted Lucio is appalled to find that Claudio, a young gentleman, is under arrest and on his way to jail for having gotten Julietta his beloved with child without sanction of marriage. Angelo is unyielding: the law specifies death for the offense, regardless of any excuses or extenuating circumstances. Lucio turns to Claudio's sister Isabella, a novice in the convent, and persuades her to beg Angelo to spare Claudio's life.

No one else could be as appealing as the virginal Isabella. She does move the Duke's harsh deputy -- but to her dismay, it's not toward an act of public mercy but toward the dark side of his initially tenative but then increasingly insistent offer of a trade: her virginity, in secret, in exchange for her brother's life.

Shakespeare dwells upon human fallibility in Measure for Measure. In law, in religion, in dealings with one another in society generally, we are urged and constrained to ethical behavior even though our weaknesses are legion. Angelo the zealous executor of the laws falls immediately prey to temptation; worse still, he resorts to prevarication, making promises that he has no intention of keeping. Isabella is trapped between the corporal purity imposed by her order and the pressure to seek to spare her brother's life with the forbidden sin of yielding her body. Claudio, the acknowledged and to some degree repentant condemned sinner, is equally torn and tormented; he pleads, apparently in vain, for his sister Isabella to yield to the abuser of power.

And central to all this is Duke Vincentio himself, whose long neglect of the law and flight from responsibility have brought about these conflicts. One central question in staging Measure for Measure is how to portray Vincentio as he disguises himself as a holy friar and dabbles around the edges of this developing catastrophe. Is he the most reprehensible of them all? Or is he instead a thoughtful ruler who's engineering all of this to teach everyone a lesson about law and mercy, guilt and responsibility, temptation and absolution?

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

Upcoming: Heddatron, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 10 - March 5

Found on-line:

Salvage Vanguard Theatre presents

Heddatron

by Elizabeth Meriwether
directed by Dustin Wills
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 E Manor Rd
February 10 - March 5, Thursday- Saturday at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m.
(Thursdays Pay-What-You-Can at the door)
Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/145755

www.salvagevanguard.org

Like any well-made play, this one starts with a booming voice from the sky - though this booming voice arrives in the form of a hardcover copy of Hedda Gabler torpedoing into the lap of a terribly bored Michigan housewife. Suddenly, Jane Gordon finds herself captured by robots and whisked off to the Ecuadorian rainforest to perform the titular role in a robo-version of Henrik Ibsen’s famous drama. Jane’s ten-year-old daughter, Nugget, with the aid of her milquetoast father, an eager documentary filmmaker and her small arms dealing uncle must rescue her mother from the mechanical grip of her robot captors - whether she wants to be saved or not. Heddatron takes us on a hi(tech)storical journey through our trigger happy-TV-4G-machine-obsessed world to ask that great question, “What does it mean to be human?” Salvage Vanguard Theatre, with the help of the University of Texas’ tech-savvy IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, is ecstatic to offer a look at what happens when “real” robots and ever realer humans battle it out on the stage in the Austin premiere of Elizabeth Meriwether’s genre-defying head-trip Heddatron.

Feauturing: Amy Downing, Robert Pierson, Cyndi Williams, Jennymarie Jemison, Jude Hickey, Scott Daigle, Jarrett King, Matt Hislope, Kyle Lagunas, and Ava Johns
Design by: Lisa Laratta, Natalie George, Jessica Gilzow, Buzz Moran, and Lee Webster

Upcoming: Black Snow, Tutto Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, June 26 - July 12

UPDATE: Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle, July 9

UPDATE: Profile of Dustin Wills and Tutto Theatre's mid-July performances in Rome, by Nicola Ferlei Brown in "The Roman Forum," July 8

UPDATE: Review by Dan Solomon on austinist.com, July 8

UPDATE: Review by Javier Sanchez in the UT Daily Texan On-line, July 7

UPDATE: Review by Sean Fuentes at Austin Theatre Review, July 1

UPDATE: from interview of director Dustin Wills, published by UT June 13 at the alumni profiles section:

Q. What's next for you?

A. The show I'm working on right now is called Black Snow. It's adapted by Keith Reddin and it's based on a theatrical novel by Mikhail Bulgakov who was a writer at the Moscow Art Theatre during the Stanislavski era. I really liked it I think because this is going to be the first play I've ever directed that I didn't write or have a hand in writing or was able to work with a new writer to be able to rewrite. I cannot cut it, cannot change genders – so this feels more new to me than anything right now.

Black Snow, featuring: Gabriel Luna, Smaranda Ciceu (MFA in Acting candidate), Francisco Rodriguez (BA '05), Amy Downing, Maarouf Naboulsi, Ron Weisberg (BA '07), Verity Branco (MFA in Acting candidate), Diego Larrea–Puemape (BA '08), and Kyle Lagunas; with Scene Design by Lisa Laratta (MFA '08), Lighting Design by Megan M. Reilly (MFA '07), and Costume Design by Kim H. Ngo (BA '07), runs June 26 to July 12, at Salvage Vanguard Theater. Visit TUTTOtheatre.org for details.

Found on-line:

Black Snow
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Adapted by Keith Reddin
Directed by Dustin Wills

26 June – 12 July 2009
Thursday – Sundays 8:00 p.m.
[No Performance July 4th]
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
At the Door: $15 (Starving Artist Rate: $12 Starving Theatre Company Rate: $20)
Thursdays are Pay-What-You-CAN Name Your Own Price w/ Donation of Non-Perishable Canned Food Item(s) to benefit Hope Food Pantry at Trinity United Methodist Church [Price without donation is $12]

Featuring Gabriel Luna,Smaranda Ciceu, Francisco Rodriguez, Amy Downing, Maarouf Naboulsi, Ron Weisburg, Verity Branco, Diego Larrea-Puemape, & Kyle Lagunas. Scene Design by Lisa Laratta, Lighting Design by Megan Reilly, and Costume Design by Kim H. Ngo.

Sergei Maxudov, a proofreader for the Shipping Gazette, has written an awful palimpsest of a novel, entitled Black Snow, and decides to hang himself on account, that is until a strange visitor pounds on his door and offers to publish it. This is Sergei’s introduction to the outrageous world of publishing and from there, to the downward spiral of adapting one’s work for the stage.

Nine actors portray 54 characters, the often absurd, sometimes vicious employees of the famed Moscow Art Theatre, each poised to cut, slice, rip, edit, mutilate, and otherwise butcher his script in this tour-de-force performed at breakneck speed. See for yourself how hard it really is to develop a new play as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Black Snow savages the theatrical world of post-revolutionary Russia.

Director Bio
Press Release
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