Robert Faires Interview: Murder Ballad Murder Mystery Saloon Tour

 



'Murder Ballad Murder Mystery'

Paper Chairs resurrects its hit musical as portable, hit-and-run bar entertainment
 
By Robert Faires, Fri., Nov. 15, 2013

Usually, when a play reaches the end of its run, it's dead, departed, gone with the wind. Once in a while, though, a show gets pulled back from oblivion, and such is the case with Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, the backwoods musical by Elizabeth Doss (book) and Mark Stewart (score) that scored critical raves and multiple awards when it premiered in 2009. Now, like the ghost-faced killers who populate its swampy setting, it once more walks among us – only this time the show won't be haunting a theatre as it did in its original co-production by Tutto Theatre and Vortex Repertory Company, and it won't be the full-length, site-specific spectacle seen before. Paper Chairs, the company that grew out of that staging, has reconceived the show as a shorter, portable production to be presented in saloons. The new incarnation will debut at three local watering holes, as well as one in New Orleans (for the New Orleans Fringe Festival), and one in Marfa. The cast has been whittled down to eight characters, and director Keri Boyd and designer Lisa Laratta have worked to make the space adaptable to any environment. Playwright/performer Doss explains the show's second life in an email exchange.

Click to read interview at the Austin Chronicle

MURDER BALLAD MURDER MYSTERY by Elizabeth Doss, Paper Chairs at Longbranch Inn, May 21 & 22, 2013

[click logo above to visit paper chairs on Facebook; click HERE for website -- www.paperchairs.com]


presents

Written by Elizabeth Doss
Directed by Keri Boyd
Designed by Lisa Laratta

May 21 & 22
8 pm start
Longbranch Inn
1133 E 11th St. Austin, TX 78702 - click for map
Pay What You Can ($5 suggested)
Tickets at the Door! Cash Only!

For two nights only, paper chairs will haunt our neighborhood bar, the Longbranch Inn, with a workshop resurrection of Murder Ballad Murder Mystery. Saddle up to the bar, sip yer whisky and watch a host of legendary killers commit crimes riddled with ghoulish slapstick, frantic line dances, and tear-jerking ballads. This romp-through-the-swamp musical takes a stab at gutting the inner animal and spills its contents at close range.


Cast:
Tom - Mark Stewart
Tom’s Wife- Cami Alys
Felicity - April Perez-Moore
Sadie- Emily Tindall Burke
Bea- Elizabeth Doss
Jay- Nigel O’Hearn
Stagger Lee- Noel Gaulin
The Sheriff- Kelli Bland


This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

GOLD DUST - THE PLAY by Monique Daviau, Gnap! Theatre Projects at the Salvage Vanguard, March 29 and 30, 2013

presents


Gold Dust: the Play

by Monique Daviau

a staged reading on March 29 and March 30, 2013, 8 p.m.
at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd.

Order tickets via Eventbrite: http://golddustreading-efbevent.eventbrite.com/
Back when the Gnap! team was writing 69 Love Scenes, our very loose adaptation of the Magnetic Fields' album, we discovered that we playwrights all had huge musical crushes on Fleetwood Mac. We joked that our next play should be a very loose adaptation of Rumours. Well, 69 LS writer Monique Daviau went off to grad school and went and wrote that very play. Gold Dust is an extremely fictionalized view of the making of Rumours, an album unparalleled in rock history for the number of songs on it written about or for or sharply aimed at the very bandmates playing the tunes.

Gold Dust is an ambitious play about love, infidelity, competition, success and failure, the power of being in a band, and the ravages of time. Oh, and in its final form will feature a Chorus of Stevies and a full band playing original, Fleetwoodesqe music.
We want to make this play as good as we can before we mount a full production. So, we're asking you, our friends and fans and audience, to come be a part of our process. On March 29 and 30 at 8 pm at Salvage Vanguard Theater, we'll be presenting a work-in-progress staged reading of the script. Playwright Mo Daviau will be there, and after the readings we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback as we eye revisions for a true debut sometime in 2014. We'd love it if you could attend.
Featuring, as Gold Dust:
Liz Beckham
Jen Brown
Courtney Hopkin
Michael Joplin
with:
Kayla Lane Freeman
Shannon McCormick
Mark Stewart
Jericho Thorp
Brett Tribe

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre.com front page)

THE PICNIC PLAYS: Sunday Readings by Paper Chairs in February, 2013

presents

The Picnic Plays: Readings on Sunday in February

Each Sunday in February you’re invited to pull up a blanket someplace cozy and give listen to a play we think has promise, with a lively discussion to follow. This series will feature works by local writers Mark Stewart, Dallas Tate, and Elizabeth Doss and will also include The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman. Each reading will take place in a well-suited spot and will feature stellar paper chairs talent. Mark your calendars!
WHEN:
February 3:
Bomb Shelter by Mark Stewart
February 10:
The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman
February 17:
New Therapy by Dallas Tate
February 24:
Murder Ballad Murder Mystery: Redux by Elizabeth Doss
All readings begin at 2pm
WHERE:
All locations: TBA: check back on Facebook for more details, coming soon…

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Hill Country Underbelly, a musical by Elizabeth Doss and Mark Stewart, Paper Chairs at the Vortex Yard, August 5 - 21

Received directly:

Paper Chairs Announces Production of an Original Musical –

Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts

Book and Lyrics by Elizabeth Doss, Music by Mark Stewart

Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd. - click for map).

Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Paper Chairs excitedly announces its third production, Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts, written by Elizabeth Doss, with original music by Mark Stewart, directed by Dustin Wills and Keri Boyd.

Pa’s fall down a deathtrap rattles through the land like thunder. His ghost appears in limestone, prophesying a great flood will take the hillcountry by storm. His six surviving orphans must head to higher ground to elude their demise. Watch the pack aim to outrun and outsmart every obstacle on the outskirts in the fierce pursuit of life. How do you survive a flood when you’ve lost your roots? Paper Chairs will flood the VORTEX Yard and wash away a scorching August in an environmental production of this torrential tale. Holes, floods, tunes, dogs and buzzards abound. Prepare for a soaking.

Featuring performances by Robert Pierson as Pa (2011 Critic’s Table and 2010 B. Iden Payne Best Supporting Actor), Caroline Reck as the Theotokos, and Jacob Trussell, Emily Tindall, Noel Gaulin, Kelli Bland, Jenn Hartmann, and Mark Stewart as the orphans – oh, and musicians too.

Scenic design by Lisa Laratta (2010 Critic’s Table Best Scenic Design), costume design by Dustin Wills, projection design by Noel Gaulin and lighting design by Natalie George (2011 Critic’s Table Best Lighting Design).

Hillcountry Underbelly runs Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd.; Austin, Texas 78722). Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Hillcountry Underbelly will be presented in the VORTEX yard – we encourage folks to dress down! The Butterfly Bar will sell cooling refreshments and Paper Chairs will offer bug spray (if needed), fans, mist, general comfort and an outhouse – you can even bring your own chair if you don’t like ours.

Paper Chairs creates sensorially dynamic theatre combining fractured subjectivity, music, unconventional audience situation, surrealism and labor-intensive mechanics. We favor challenging texts that allow for a fusion of various performance styles, music genres, and historical periods to excite modern sensibilities and educate by suggesting past and present cultural connections. The work is outrageous, well-researched, and a little bit dangerous.

OUR KICKSTARTER SITE: www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperchairs/hillcountry-underbelly

Upcoming: Over the Garden Wall by Ruth Margraff, staged reading at the Salvage Vanguard, January 8 and 9

UPDATE: GACA A-Team review by Ross Scarano, January 11

Found on-line:

Salvage Vanguard Theater Puts Artists to Work with "Works Progress Austin 2010," including

Over The Garden Wall

by Ruth Margraff
a staged reading of the new parlor play
directed by Jenny Larson

The production features actors Robert Pierson, Mark Stewart, Jamie Rhodes, La Tasha Stephens, and Jason Hays.

Nationally acclaimed playwright Ruth Margraff's band Café Anastarsia will perform before the play.Tickets are $10 at the door.

The Salvage Vanguard's annual Works Progress Austin (WPA) - the development project that gives artists a playground to develop new works - returns on January 8th through 24th. During the course of three weeks, a variety of actors, writers, directors, dramaturges, and musicians are given the opportunity to incubate and experiment. Inspired by Roosevelt's Works Projects Administration, Salvage Vanguard's program aims to put artists to work.

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Tutto Theatre at Vortex Repertory, October 23 - November 7

Murder Ballad Murder Mystery is imagined and delivered as a clown show balanced precariously on deep and true traditional ballads.

Those ballads are deep, because stories of passion, violence and murder are rooted somewhere pretty close to our shared DNA; true, because they contain archetypes of our culture. The restless husband; the innocent and defenseless girl-child; the rapscallion, the rapist, and the rowdy. Including, of course, musicians and theatre folk.

Playwright Elizabeth Doss, who appears here as the female half of a Bonnie-and-Clyde type duo, began this piece while living in Spain, perhaps spurred to re-examine her own cultural traditions.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet, Tongue and Groove Theatre at Austin Playhouse, July 10 - 26

With David Mamet's name on the playbill, one expects edgy situations and sharp language, but this production of A Life in the Theatre was one of gentle comedy and smooth edges.

It's a two-man show in which we see two male actors in an unnamed fifth-rate theatrical company sharing a dressing room. Michael Stuart is the mature actor and Zeb West is the newcomer. Mamet gives us vignettes of them over the stretch of a season or so, sketching out their initial, stiffly polite contacts and showing the development of a relationship. The notion is that the stodgy, opinionated old-school actor is going to be eclipsed by the up-and-coming future rival. The implied question is whether there will be a passing of the torch or an arm wrestling contest for it.

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

A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet, Tongue and Groove Theatre at Austin Playhouse, July 10 - 26

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, July 29




Found on-line, following up a July 9 listing in the Austin Statesman:

Tongue and Groove Theatre presents

A Life In The Theatre
by David Mamet

July 10-26; Thursday – Saturday at 8:00 PM (and every Sunday at 5:00PM)
On the Main Stage of The Austin Playhouse
3601 South Congress, 78704

CLICK FOR TICKETS!
or call 1-800-838-3006 — available 24/7!

Ahhhh! A life in the theatre! The drafty halls, the penciled scripts, the stories you hear. The greasepaint–just vivid colors in oily goop, but somehow as evocative as Proust’s madelines–blah blah blah blah….

What is it with actors and their maddening romanticizing about life in the theatre? The surest traditions are long hours, lousy pay, inept producers, sweaty dressing rooms, falling scenery, and the wrath of critics.

The only thing that could make the job worse is some creepy old actor with an irrepressible desire to educate the uninitiated. Here we have the young Zeb West (The Red Balloon) barely tolerating the wisdom and idiosyncrasies of the old Michael Stuart (The Fantasticks)—onstage and off—in this hilarious and touching send-up of the traditions, superstitions, and vagaries of the theatre.

Directed by Mark Stewart (Bomb Shelter: Or The Modern Pinocchio).

Tongue and Groove Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theaters. 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.