Austin Artists Nominated for 2011 Falstaff Awards, PlayShakespeare.com

The website www.PlayShakespeare.com has released the nominations and winners for its 2011 Falstaff awards honoring achevements in the production of Shakespeare and Shakespeare scholarship. Five Austin area artists are among those nominated, three of them for their work on Austin Shakespeare's Hamlet with Helen Merino.

PlayShakespeare.com writes,

Sweeping the awards with 8 wins and 1 nomination this year was the highly acclaimed Sleep No More, a collaboration with Punchdrunk and Emursive. An entire New York City building was transformed into an theatrical experience of Macbeth like no other. With over 100 rooms, sold out audiences donned eerie masks and experienced a highly choreographed performance close up, even interacting with the actors themselves. A Hitchcockian flair to sets, music, and lighting earned Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle awards for Best Director, Best Set Design and Best Lighting Design. Top honors for Best Principal Performance (Male and Female) went to Nicholas Bruder and Sophie Bortolussi.

Austin area artists appearing on the list:

Best Principal Performance, Male: Philip Kreyche as Othello for his No'Az Productions

Best Scenic Design: Marketa Fantova for As You Like It, Texas State University (now at Alfred University, New York)

Best Lighting Design: Jason Amato, Hamlet, Austin Shakespeare (click to view dress rehearsal images by Kimberley Mead)

Best Cosume Design: Pam Fletcher Friday, Hamlet, Austin Shakespeare

Best Choreography or Fight Direction: Toby Minor, Hamlet, Austin Shakespeare (click to view Austin Shakespeare video including brief excerpts of the final duel)

AustinLiveTheatre.com also nominated Pam Martin and Dawn Allee for their costuming of Henry V by the Baron's Men, providing a link to the company's promotional video for the production. PlayShakespeare.com editors compared it with Kimberley Mead's portfolio of 53 images for Austin Shakespeare's Hamlet and decided to favor the work by Pam Fletcher Friday.

Click to view the announcement and link to the full list of nominees and awards at PlayShakespeare.com . . . .

As You Like It, Texas State University, San Marcos, April 6 - 16

Marketa Fantova's designs for As You Like It at Texas State University established at a glance the intentions of director Chuck Ney. The action opens at Duke Frederick's court, a bare space at the front of the wide thrust stage, bounded to the rear by a high, chill wall with a blue metallic sheen. That wall initially appears featureless, except for the edifice of steel tubing and dark metal treads parked against it -- the sort of movable ladder one might expect to find in a warehouse. Concealed doors open from that blank wall, including one at the top of the edifice. Characters descend or climb those precarious stairs that sway, suggesting a subtle danger.

The court is equally bare and cold. Young Orlando is angered by the neglect shown to him by his elder, inheriting brother Oliver. Duke Frederick, the ominous usurping head of this city state, stalks onstage accompanying by bodyguards whose chief function is to walk and stalk in step with him.

When the duke's daughter Celia and her banishéd best girl friend Rosalind flee to the forest, the metal barrier vanishes, to reveal a striking, deep stage picture very similar to that depicted on the poster for this production. Fantova has established progressive inclines running from side to side of the stage, usable as steps or as ramps, and she uses cylinders of white semi-lucent fabric to suggest the trees of a grove, perhaps of birches. Although exiled Duke Senior speaks to his band of the "icy fang and the churlish chiding of the winter's wind," their white and blue world, though suggested merely, feels far warmer than that of the court.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .