Lucien Douglas Honored with University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Award

 









Lucien Douglas, Department of Theatre and dance professor and senior associate chair, has been named the recipient of the 2012 College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award. The faculty and student-nominated award is the college’s highest honor for teaching excellence.

As an actor and director, Douglas has taught undergraduate and graduate students at the university since 1997. His highly popular classes include acting and directing, as well as topics courses in contemporary stage performance and acting for the camera.

A consummate ambassador for the Department of Theatre and Dance, Douglas has built vital relationships with high school educators and their students. He presents master classes and workshops for schools throughout the stage, and works closely with University Interscholastic League (UIL) and Texas Educational Theatre Association (TETA). Under his leadership, the Department of Theatre and Dance is developing new curriculum that will enhance the undergraduate actor-training program.

This year, Douglas performed alongside department students, and taught by example in The Cherry Orchard and Love’s Labour’s Lost. At the same time, Douglas continues to work professionally. In February, he performed his solo show A Dream Within a Dream: Performing the Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe at The Arts Cottage in Smithville, Texas. He is the lead voice-over talent for “Pirates 101” and “Wizards 101”, video games produced by Kingsisle Entertainment. He is also currently working with acclaimed director Richard Linklater on a new project.

Becky's New Car by Steven Dietz, Zach Theatre, June 3 - July 11

Zach's post card calls it "A Revved-up Comic Adventure!"

The website is even more breathless, promising

"[a] life-affirming comedy about an eccentric millionaire who offers Becky the keys to a brand new life [in][. . . . ] a fantastically funny exploration about class, wealth and selling out during Becky's wild ride through a clever twist of events. Huge laughs, hairpin plot turns and a story with the pedal to the metal. Buckle up!"

So when we got a last-minute, unexpected chance to attend a dress rehearsal of Becky's New Car at the Zach, we couldn't resist. We even dressed up a bit, only to find ourselves well splashed by the Wednesday night downpour by the time we got to the theatre.

The house was relatively sparse, as you can see in these photos taken that same evening by Kirk R. Tuck. Playwright and Director Steven Dietz welcomed us but cautioned us that in this dress rehearsal they might at any time stop for adjustments or even decide to re-run scenes. That did not happen, but we were aware of Dietz and assistant director Courtney Sale sitting in rear rows and intently making notes.

Just as well. The web-blurb rode the car metaphor too far and promised more than the work-in-progress delivered that evening.

Lauren Lane is warm and endearing in her role as 40-something working mom Becky Foster. Playwright Dietz sets her up to win our hearts by granting her permission to talk directly with audience members. She's gracious and friendly, with a vague, lost air as she moves around the Whisenhut's intimate theatre in the round. When we first see her, she is picking up after her 26-year-old unemployed stay-at-home student son and her husband Joe the roofer. Most of the stage serves as her suburban home, with the desk in the southeast representing her job -- bookkeeper to a car dealership. Dietz gives her apparent command of the lights and staging, so that she can shuttle from one locale to the other at will.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Poe's Tell-Tale Heart and other works performed by Lucien Douglas, Harry Ransom Center, October 15

Received directly:

In connection with the Harry Ransom Center's exhibition From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe (September 8, 2009 - January 3, 2010)

"The Tell-Tale Heart" and other selections from the works of Edgar Allan Poe

performed by Lucien Douglas

Thursday, October 15 at 7:00 PM
Prothro Theatre of the Harry Ransom Research Center
University of Texas at Austin

Also as a live webcast of this event starting at approximately 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 15

Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Ar Rude at the Off Center, May 27 - June 7

Eugene O'Neill did not want you to see this astonishing, bleak and deeply moving drama. When he died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, he had left it locked up in the vaults of his publisher Random House with instructions that it was not to be opened for 25 years after his death, and that it was never to be performed.

Instead, his third wife Carlotta Monterrey, who had fought with him and protected him and nursed him since 1928, inherited the rights. She deeded it to Yale University with the stipulation that proceeds be used to build a drama library and to award scholarships for drama.

Long Day's Journey Into Night was first produced at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre in February, 1956. The venue was apt. O'Neill's realistic, sometimes naturalistic drama shared much with the theatrical traditions of Strindberg and Ibsen. In 1936 the Nobel Committee had awarded O'Neill the Nobel Prize for literature, the only Nobel given to an American dramatist. The Broadway premiere at the Helen Hayes Theatre in November, 1956, received Tony awards for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, as well as the New York Drama Critics' Circle awards for Best Play.

O'Neill wrote 19 one-act plays between 1914 and 1919, drawing extensively on his experiences as a seafarer, and over his career, a total of 32 full-length plays. His work was instrumental in converting the carefree, largely brainless American stage into a medium for serious literature. These were powerful stories, usually on dark subjects. Many drew on Greek mythology. Only one, Ah, Wilderness!, was a comedy, a fantasy version of the years of his youth in New London, Connecticut, as the bookish son of a successful actor.

Long Day's Journey into Night takes exactly that setting. The characters are his parents, his brother, himself and an indolent maid. Their last name is changed to Tyrone, but not to protect any innocents. The action of this one long day in the summer of 1911 includes the moment of confirmation that the younger brother Edmund, the surrogate for O'Neill, has tuberculosis ("consumption") and shows us his mother Mary, lonely and desperate as she gives in to her addiction to morphine.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Long Day's Journey Into Night, Ar Rud at the Off Center, May 28 - June 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review of May 31




Received by e-mail:




Eugene O'Neil's
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Directed by Dr. Lucien Douglas
May 28 - June 7

Tickets: FREE.....(donations Greatly Appreciated)

“A play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood,” Long Day’s Journey into Night is the masterpiece of Nobel laureate Eugene O’Neill, the playwright who revolutionized American theater in the first half of the 20th century.

Love and jealousy, recrimination and forgiveness, the agony of the artist in capitalist America—illuminated in the Tyrone family as they come to terms with a son’s debilitating illness and a mother’s tragic addiction.

The Ar Rud production of Long Day’s Journey into Night is a labor of love offered to the Austin community in honor of Eugene O’Neill and in celebration of theater’s healing power.

Thursday - Saturday 7:30 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Opening: Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 7:30pm
Final performance: Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 3:00pm
The Off Center, 2211 Hildalgo St., Austin, TX

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .