Upcoming: The Biography of Physical Sensation, Rubber Repertory at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, October 14 - 30

UPDATE: Feature by Cate Blouke for the Austin Statesman, October 13

UPDATE: "The Care of Feeding of Audiences," Travis Bedard's anticipation of the participatory experience, CambiareProductions.com, October 14

UPDATE: Review by Cate Blouke for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, October 19

UPDATE: Reflections by Sarah Coleman at the UT blog Performing Arts Management, October 19

UPDATE: Review by Avimaan Syam for the Austin Chronicle, October 21

UPDATE: Bastion Carboni and Georgia Young discuss their experiences at the same performance for austinist.com, October 21

Received directly:

The Rubber Repertory in association withg the Salvage Vanguard Theatre

proudly presents

Biography of Physical Sensation

Based on the life of Jamie Damon

Directed by Josh Meyer and Matt Hislope

October 14-30, Thursdays-Sundays at 8 p.m.

Salvage Vanguard Theater 2803 Manor Rd.

Featuring Jenny Larson, Katie Van Winkle, Matt Hislope, Josh Meyer, and Marcella Garcia.

Lighting Design by Megan Reilly

Tickets: Order online here, or call 1-800-838-3006

YOU PICK YOUR PRICE $15-$25

Very limited seating – 40 seats per performance. Advance purchase recommended.

In their first new show since The Casket of Passing Fancy, Rubber Repertory pushes the limits of audience participation to even more fateful extremes. Each night, an audience of 40 will be given the chance to experience a human life through actual tastes, touches, smells, and sounds. This reinvention of the traditional biography forgoes narrative in favor of pure physical experience, placing audience members in the center of over a hundred pivotal moments of perception.


Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Frontera Fest Short Fringe, Hyde Park Theatre, February 3

The Hyde Park Theatre house was full last Tuesday and once again the staff put down an additional front row of folding chairs. It was a varied and, ultimately, a rich evening.

Collin Bjork's (Dys)Connected opened with four actors doing a choreographed stamp around the stage, for no obvious reason other than, perhaps, to make sure that the audience was paying attention. The story is a one-quirk exploration, in which a mom, Martha (Natalie Sharpe), is so loquaciously enamored of her portable phone that she pays no attention to daughter Eleanor (Angela Moore) and in fact wonders out loud repeatedly why the daughter hasn't said a word in months. We're clued pretty quickly that Eleanor does try to speak but gets no hearing from mommy Martha. When avid consumer Mom wanders off into a shop to examine a red camisole, Eleanor wanders off to listen to a fairly unconvincing thoughtful spiel by a fairly unconvincing Homeless Person (Brad Murphy). Mom, discovering Eleanor gone, accuses everyone but herself and gets into a phone quarrel with exasperated husband George (Paul Anderson). All turns out well in the end. Credits on this one go to Paul Anderson as George and to the diminutive Angela Moore as the child. Natalie Sharpe carries the narrative in a whirlwind of words. The message, reinforced by stalking actors with portable phones: we just don't listen.

In Edges: Reflections on Female Identity, Amy McAndrew and Cindy Vining under the direction of Johanna Whitmore serve up a sweet-and-sharp buffet for the feminine condition. The single song (Rain and Snow, sung by Dry Branch Fire Squad) and five pieces take such remarkably different approaches that the effect is a bit like dipping repeatedly into a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Have a taste of - -

• A formal debate in which it is asserted alterately that a) Angelina Jolie or b) Jennifer Aniston is the most effective embodiment of Woman;
  
• a time-warped exchange between Joan of Arc and her inquisitor over Joan's failure to embrace scrapbooking;
  
• an adopted girl calling her birth mother for the first time, to announce that she's pregnant and in trouble;
  
• a mom's repugnance and then growing fascination with the kid's playing Grand Theft Auto; and
  
• a scene from Sophocles' Ajax, with a single woman as chorus as Ajax (Michael Lee) in his delirium slaughters the sheep. Surprising, thought-provoking and unusual.

Surprising, thought-provoking and unusual.

Austin bard David Jewell took the stage to great acclaim (maybe he's the reason the house was so crowded?). He did not disappoint. Dressed in a spiffy red jacket and clutching his red portfolio of clown poems, Jewell explored the quirkiness of a universe in which clowns are really people (or people are really clowns, take your pick). His blank verse is stark and witty, his stories tickle your fancy, and his utter seriousness about the utterly unreal is droll and seductive.

Marcella Garcia laid it all out in My Darkness. My Inheritance. She tells a long, involved story reaching back to the age of five when something very bad happened in her family and her relatives evidently expected her to understand it by some kind of osmosis. Garcia is slim and intense, carrying her striped box of many colors with sundry props, and her emphatically non-theatrical presence argued strongly that she was relating the truth and nothing but. Her writing was vivid, funny, thoughtful, appalling and convincing -- as she paced about the stage she provoked cackles from the audience, sympathy, horrified silence and, at the end, huge applause. Was this psychotherapy? It hardly matters. I was totally seduced by her fierce innocence and her patent vulnerability. For me, the best of the evening.

McSki, Confessions of A Couch Potato was a totally trivial character piece, written and performed with gusto by Bill Johnson with direction by Tim Mateer. Johnson had all the assurance and huge stage presence that Marcella Garcia lacked. We were all tickled at his concept of a "Couch Potatos Anonymous" with a membership of one, and a 12-step program that involves 6 steps to the refrigerator and back again. We ascended with him solo into the hazy revelations of a universe where physics is ruled by unknown particles, imagined by our cocooner to include "positivicles" and "optimisticles." And when Johnson boogies, he boogies -- to the great delight of the audience. This was fun.