Uncle Vanya, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Off-Center, June 23 - July 2

ALTcom welcomes Brian Paul Scipione as a contributor to its coverage of live theatre in Austin. Scipione went to the Rude Mechs' Off Center on Friday night for the second performance of Breaking String Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya, but the failure of an Austin Energy transformer shut off power to the neighborhood just at curtain time. Nothing daunted, he returned for the Saturday performance.

by Brian Paul Scipione

The Tragedy of the Individual

“Why am I old?” shouts Uncle Vanya about mid-way through the play bearing his name. He doesn’t ask anyone in particular and he doesn’t expect an answer. It is a statement, a question, an interjection as well as a plea. Perhaps he’s speaking to himself, perhaps to his family and perhaps to God. He is forlorn, lost, meandering and, at best, seeking answers to questions he’s always wanted to ask.

Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya is as timeless as anything by Shakespeare or Homer and it is the latest venture of Austin’s own Breaking String theater troupe. The group led by Co-Producing Artistic Directors Liz Fisher, Robert Matney, Matt Radford, and Graham Schmidt, concentrates on Russian drama both classic and contemporary. They have already tackled Chekov’s The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard. Director Graham Schmidt crafted a new translation into English for each of the three.

Why re-translate works that have been translated many times before? Schmidt believes retranslating during the performance process lends a certain immediacy to the actor’s performance. “In this way, they feel they can take a new work approach to a classic play.”

Allow me to illustrate. An earlier translation contains the following line:

“This wonderful feeling of mine will be wasted and lost as a ray of sunlight is lost that falls into a dark chasm, and my life will go with it.”

In the Breaking String production, the same line is fired off with greater clarity and poignancy:

“My feelings are fading away like sunbeams into a pit.”

The emotive plea of the character rings out quickly and sharply, stripping away unnecessary diction and poetic prose.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Uncle Vanya, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Off-Center, June 23 - July 2

Received directly:

presents

Anton Chekhov’s

Uncle Vanya

directed by Graham Schmidt

June 16th - July 2nd

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m., Monday, June 27 at 8 p.m.

at the Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street (click for map)

Chekhov's meditation on hope and environmental stewardship speaks with increasing urgency a century after its first performance.

Tickets available at breakingstring.com/tickets and 512-784-1465

General Admission: $15 - 25, Sliding scale;

Monday, July 27th is a Pay-What-You-Will Industry Night

Student rush tickets released 10 minutes before curtain for all performances: $10

Breaking String revisits the Russian canon with a production of Chekhov’s 1899 masterpiece, Uncle Vanya. Ironically sub-titled “Scenes From Country Life,” the play chronicle a climactic moment of rural Russian life. Uncle Vanya is about finding meaning, hope, and conservation in a life that seems to promise little. Chekhov revised his early play Wood Demon (1889) into the triumphant Uncle Vanya.

Uncle Vanya’s theme of ecology speaks to the world's ever-more urgent discussions of conservation and sustainability. Chekhov's insight that the fate of humankind is tied to the fate of the environment now seems prophetic: "In all of you there’s a demon of destruction. You spare neither forests, nor women, nor one another…." (Yelena speaking to Vanya)

Breaking String’s Uncle Vanya features direction and an original translation by Graham Schmidt. The ensemble cast of actors includes Robert Deike, Emily Everidge, Liz Fisher, Harvey Guion, Anne Hulsman, Chris Humphrey, Robert Matney, and Matt Radford. The production also features sound design by Adam Hilton, scenic design by Ia Layadi, costume design by Julia Howze, and lighting design by Steven Shirey.

This is the fourth work for which Breaking String Theater has commissioned an original translation from resident translator Graham Schmidt. Of the practice Schmidt observed, “It is integral to our process, our identity, and is a reflection of our desire for direct contact with Chekhov's words, tailored for this moment and for our work.”

BREAKING STRING THEATER is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a non-profit organization. Breaking String presents drama important to Russian history and exposes Austin audiences developing Russian theater. We seek to connect people across time and culture. Our mission is threefold: We create excellent productions of Russian traditional and avant-garde plays; we provide artists with a creative, respectful and professional work environment; we pursue collaboration with Russian theater artists through our partnerships with the Center for International Theatre Development’s Philip Arnoult, and Moscow-based critic/translator John Freedman.

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Breaking String Theatre at the Blue Theatre, October 5 - 21

What is this quiet exhilaration I feel in the presence of Chekhov? Especially when the piece is as well played as this one?

For opening night at the Blue Theatre many of the seats were taken by young persons who might well have been undergraduates. Directly opposite me, across the three-quarter thrust of the playing space, one or two had spiral notebooks and pencils in hand.

I cannot recall if the vision of this end-of-the-19th-century Russian physician and author moved me so much at their age. Perhaps I was impressed principally by the exotic setting; the great but impoverished families of the Russian countryside were certainly alien to me. I probably liked the foolishness of some of the characters and admired Chekhov's women, who are simultaneously fragile and enduring.

But at university age I probably had a good deal of the unselfconscious arrogance that Mme Ranyevskaya so simply reproaches of Peter Trofimov, the eternal student who six years earlier was tutor to her son Grisha, before the boy drowned in the river:

"What truth? You can see what's true or untrue, but I seem to have lost my sight, I see nothing. You solve the most serious problems so confidently, but tell me, dear boy, isn't that because you're young -- not old enough for any of your problems to have caused you real suffering? You face the future so bravely, but then you can't imagine anything terrible happening, can you? And isn't that because you're still too young to see what life's really like?"

Now, several decades later, I am amused, perhaps a bit dismayed, to find myself resembling more closely Mme Ranyevskaya's brother Leonid Gaev, played by Ev Lunning, Jr. He's an idle but well-meaning billiards enthusiast easily tempted to pontificate over the trivial, including, for example, the hundred-year anniversary of the cabinet in the nursery. At least Leonid Gaev has the good sense to feel abashed when his nieces beg him, "Oh, do please, stop, Uncle!"

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Profile: The Grad Student, Chekhov, and the Circle of Friends: The Cherry Orchard, November 5 - 21

UPDATE: ALT review of The Cherry Orchard, November 6

Thanks to permission granted by Actors Equity at the petition of several of its prominent Austin members, Chekhov's last play will be presented in Austin for three weekends.

The production of The Cherry Orchard that opens on Thursday for a three-week run promises to be remarkable.

It’s a labor of love and a celebration of friendship, an homage to Chekhov for the second time in two years. An informal association of actors calling themselves the “Breaking String” group, a reference to the stage direction that concludes The Cherry Orchard, is working with Graham Schmidt, director, who also translated the play. Schmidt has just received his M.A. from UT.

This constellation occurs partly by serendipity and partly because of a shared admiration for Anton Pavelovich Chekhov. Dr. Chekhov, who died in 1904 from tuberculosis at the age of 44, may have been the first modern playwright, if one speaks of the twentieth century. He was one of the most humane, gentle and subtle playwrights of all time.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Breaking String Theatre Company at the Blue Theatre, November 5 - 21

UPDATE: ALT review of The Cherry Orchard, November 6

Found on-line:

Breaking String Theater** presents
an Actors’ Equity Association Members Project Code Production…

The Cherry Orchard

A Comedy by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Lyubov Ranyevskaya went to Paris to escape her past; she returns to Russia to discover that her ancestral home, and her beloved cherry orchard, are about to disappear forever. In this haunting tale of love, loss, and human frailty, Lyubov must endure the unimaginable, and realizes that even as the axes fall on the trees, a new life is being born.

More than a century after it was written, Chekhov’s last and most beloved play still holds audiences spellbound with its unexpected majesty and dramatic power. Chekhov also finds comedy in our failures to live up to those ideals we consider sacred. As Breaking String theater artists, we hope most of all to bring Chekhov’s warmth and generosity of spirit to our audiences.

Some of Austin’s finest performers have come together to perform this new translation from the original Russian. Featuring a remarkable artistic ensemble with Babs George *, Dirk van Allen *, Bernadette Nason*, Ev Lunning *, Matt Radford, Nigel O’Hearn, Liz Fisher, Sarah Gay, Robert Matney, Robin Grace Thompson, Noel Gaulin, Maarouf Naboulsi, and Cody Chua.

The off-stage talent includes Graham Schmidt as director and translator, Adam Hilton providing first-class sound design, Rommel Sulit delivering a stunning set, Jen Rogers designing an exceptional lighting layout, and Buffy Manners beautifully costuming the cast.

Performances at 8 o’clock p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, November 5 - 21 at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road

TICKETS: Suggested donation of $15-$25 at the door
Reservations available only at www.breakingstring.com

* Members of the Actors’ Equity Association. This is a Members’ Project Code production.
**Breakin’ String Theatre is a provisional name for this collaboration of artists.

Click to view full credits for cast and crew.

[click image to view animation]

Measure for Measure, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, Spetember 10 - 27

Austin Shakespeare's Measure for Measure can offer you a good time. It has a dramatic intrigue, lots of clowning, a clever time-warp setting in Savannah, Georgia of the 1920s and a cast that I'd be happy to put up against any other American Shakespeare company out there.

At the same time that he's entertaining us, Shakespeare is working some much deeper themes. These include the responsibility of authority; chastity, promiscuity, desire and disease; the role of the state in policing behavior; the arrogance of office and the equally reprehensible pride that may attend self-righteous virtue.

Summarizing all in a lengthy phrase, Measure for Measure deals with the folly of the pursuit of fleeting pleasure and the difficulty of making virtuous preparation for inevitable death.

Pretty crunchy stuff.

You don't have to take it that way, of course. The highly positive comments posted to date at NowPlayingAustin are all over the place, but each of the five ratings is for the maximum five stars.

Director Ann Ciccolella and the cast substitute Savannah for the Shakespeare's Vienna, which was imaginary, in any case, and their molasses Georgia accents give the words of this generally unfamiliar text further exotic tang. For that double distilled concoction -- Elizabethan text to Savannah speech -- you can expect your inner ear to take longer than usual to tune in. The clear diction of their wondrous speech helps.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Comedy of Errors, Young Shakespeare at the Curtain Theatre, June 25 - 28

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, June 27





Received June 10:



Austin Shakespeare Launches the Young Shakespeare Program with its first production

The Comedy of Errors

at Richard Garriott’s Curtain Theatre, City Park Road
June 25 - 28
8:00pm Thursday – Saturday
Saturday matinée at 2:30 pm, Sunday matinée at 1:00 pm
Tickets at www.nowplayingaustin.com
$15 adults / $10 under 18 at the door

The classic comic caper of double twins and doubting wives stars an all-teen cast including Rosalind Faires as Emilia, Savannah Finger as Dromio of Ephesus, Ciara Flynn playing Adriana, Dillon Marrs playing Balthasar and Officer, Katie Pocock as Luciana, and Dallas Emerson as Antipholus of Syracuse.

Young Shakespeare offers students ages 11 to 18 intensive Shakespeare training as they run and perform in a professional production. The director is Matt Radford, a professional actor in the UK for fifteen years who is currently studying for his Ph.D. in Renaissance Drama at UT.

"The Comedy of Errors will transport audiences from the idyllic shores of Lake Austin to the dockside of exotic and disreputable Ephesus,” comments Director Matt Radford. “To the Elizabethans, the port of Ephesus in the eastern Mediterranean had biblical associations with sorcery and double-dealing, but was also home to the Temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world, a place of uneasy enchantment in which travelers might lose not only their wallets but their very identities.”

Costume designer Glenda Barnes dresses the young cast in spirited 1940s-inspired costumes: men in trousers that sit on the waist, women in heels, and everyone in stylish hats. Jean Cannon, English Ph.D. graduate at UT and milliner extraordinaire, creates gorgeous headwear for the entire cast. Michael McKelvey, recent winner of Best Director and Conspicuous Versatility at the Critics Table Awards, lends his musical talents to create music and effects that combine jazz and Latin swing.

The Comedy of Errors is underwritten by generous grants from Bill Dickson and The Austin Community Foundation.









Austin Shakespeare is a member of the Austin Circle of Theatres, and is funded in part by the City of Austin through The Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Auditions for Teens: The Comedy of Errors, Austin Shakespeare

Received April 2:

Auditions for the AUSTIN SHAKESPEARE'S production of The Comedy of Errors.

Teen Actors of all ethnic/racial backgrounds.
Staged with professional director, and designers from the Austin area.

Auditions: Saturday, April 11 & Saturday, April 18, 2 – 4 pm at Sri Atmananda Memorial School located at 4100 Red River (at 41st Street.)

Contact: youngshakespeare@austinshakespeare.org for more information.

Performance dates: June 25-28 (2 performances on Sat. & Sun.) at the Curtain Theatre, a 220-seat replica of Shakespeareʼs Globe Theater, on Richard Garriottʼs Estate, off City Park Rd., Austin TX
Rehearsals: May 26-June 24, weekday evenings and weekends

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: UT Nilsson Lecture on Tom Stoppard, April 1

From UT news, March 30:

Fourth Annual Nilsson Lecture Features Performance

AUSTIN, Texas — The fourth annual David O. Nilsson Lecture in Contemporary Drama takes on meta-theatre as noted stage actors tackle scenes from Tom Stoppard's playful play about plays, "The Real Thing."

"'The Real Thing' in Real Time: An Interactive Performance/Discussion of Tom Stoppard" will take place at 5:45 p.m. on April 1 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, and is hosted by the University of Texas Libraries and the Fine Arts Library.

British actors Eunice Roberts ("Inspector Morse," "Twelfth Night," "Tartuffe") and Matthew Radford ("Macbeth," "One for the Road," Austin Shakespeare) join Austin's David Stahl ("Richard III," "Gross Indecency," "A Macbeth") onstage, with commentary by Dr. James Loehlin, director of Shakespeare at Winedale, and Department of English faculty member Dr. Kurt Heinzelman.

Alternating performance and discussion will present a uniquely interactive evening of drama.

The David O. Nilsson Lecture was founded through the generosity of Dr. David O. Nilsson, a retired mathematics instructor at The University of Texas at Austin, scholar and Henrik Ibsen aficionado.

Past lectures have featured the Swedish novelist Lars Gustaffson (speaking on paradox in Ibsen's "The Wild Duck") and a panel of local playwrights, including internationally renowned Kirk Lynn and Keene Prize winner George Brant (discussing the state and fate of theater).

A reception precedes the event beginning at 5 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Classes: Shakespeare with Matt Radford (two opportunities)

Matt Radford will be busy teaching in January - February:

A. From Austin Shakespeare:

Form and Feeling: Acting Shakespeare's Texts

Matt Radford, Austin Shakespeare's Benedick and Associate Director of Actors from the London Stage, will be teaching this four weekend course in late January and early February.

When: Sundays from 1-4PM, REVISED dates: Jan. 25, Feb. 1, 8 and 15
Where: Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
Cost: $40 per session, or $125 for all four (alums $20/$50)

To register, contact formandfeeling@austinshakespeare.org.

FORM AND FEELING

An eminent Shakespearean director once wrote, "First comes the form, and then comes the feeling." In three classes on verse and one on prose, explore the complex and rich ways in which Shakespeare uses meter and rhetoric to define and enrich his characters and to communicate with his actors.

CLASS 1-3: VERSE

To speak "smoothly in the even road of a blank verse" (to quote Benedick from Much Ado), it is imperative that the classical actor master the iambic pentameter line. However, when the sanctity of this line is challenged by metrical irregularities, a creative tension is generated from which startling character choices emerge. Trochees, spondees and pyrrhics, short lines and long lines, unstressed elevenths and alexandrines, broken backs and caesuras -- exotic terms that disrupt the heartbeat and syncopate the rhythm. Come enjamb like a jazz musician.

CLASS 4: PROSE

"Prose is about high seriousness and is often comic as a consequence," believes Sir Peter Hall. Dense, muscular and virtuosic, prose demands energy, discipline and pointing. In this class we shall examine how, lacking the metrical guidelines of verse, Shakespeare's prose directs actors and defines character through a compression of rhetorical devices: metaphor and simile, alliteration and assonance, hyperbole and personification. Take pleasure in being articulate but be prepared to verbally wrestle.

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Radford has had extensive experience on the British stage. After recently moving to Austin, Matt has appeared in Austin Shakespeare's productions of Richard III, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing. A gifted acting teacher, Matt is an associate director of Actors of the London Stage. Roles for ATLS include Angelo in Measure for Measure, and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. On TV, he has appeared on Mersey Television, BBC Television, WGBH Boston, and Granada Television. Among his film appearances was Stephen in the film Enchanted April, directed by Mike Newell. Matt played the title role in King Lear at UT's Winedale program in 2006, and is now pursuing a PhD in English Literature at UT.

B. From the State Theatre Acting School in association with Austin Community College:

FORM AND FEELING: ACTING SHAKESPEARE’S VERSE
Led by Matt Radford

This class explores the ways in which Shakespeare directs the actor through his verse. We will learn how to scan the meter for meaning, release the music in the words, and harness the power of the rhetoric. Applying these skills to monologues and scene work, we aim, as Hamlet asks of his players, to “suit the action to the word, the word to the action.” This class is for beginning to advanced acting students who may be new to Shakespeare. Please come to the first session with two or three monologues that you are interested in working on. These should be in verse rather than prose, and 1-2 minutes long.

January 27 - February 24 (5 weeks) | Tuesdays 7-10 pm | $165
Payment to State Theatre School with cash or check only for this workshop

Cloud 9, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edwards Unversity, September 25- October 5

You must see this production. It plays only four more times, this coming weekend.

Unless you’re uneasy with frank sexual language.

Unless you get disoriented by anachronism, gender bending and actors morphing character, sex, time and intention.

Unless you are frightened by vulnerability, farce, celebration or intimacy.

Unless you prefer to miss breath taking range and versatility in acting by students and professionals alike.

“Cloud 9,” the title, is a metaphor for sexual ecstasy. UK playwright Caryl Churchill worked with an improvisational theatre group in 1978, then reworked the ideas into this piece, which opened in 1979.

It plays today as fresh as a daisy, because the attractions and confusions of sex do not date.

That, in fact, is one premise of the play.

Act I shows us a group of pukkah sahib Brits somewhere in 1870 in colonial Africa, full of imperial certainties and sexual yearnings blooming in the dangerous dead air of foreign menace. Act II gives us the same seven actors and some of the same characters but played by different members in the cast, transposed to 1979 London. They are searching for love and sexual fulfillment in a post-imperial Britain where freedoms offer greater dangers, more confusions and new opportunities.

Raising the ante, Churchill specifies that certain key roles are to be played by actors of the opposite sex.

Undergrad theatre students at St. Edwards seize this opportunity to show an astonishing range. Guest artists Babs George and Matt Radford further strengthen the cast.

Ms. George surely should be nominated for a B. Iden Payne award for her performance in a duo and then solo scene at the finale as a fragile older woman belatedly awakening to sexuality.









Oh, for the certainties of Victorian times! Playwright Churchill does a fine job on the neuroses of those bearing the White Man’s Burden.


Jacob Trussell as explorer Harry Bagley (left) and Radford as administrator Clive (right) are blustering and adamant in their Duty beyond the reach of civilization. Behind that façade, though, they are boiling with frustration and passion (and not for one another).

The intimate, claustrophobic circle of society on the frontier includes their family members – Clive’s wife Betty (Christopher Smith,'10, right) and her mother Maud (Babs George, left). Smith is absolutely convincing in his depiction of the delicate Betty, stifled by circumstance, intimidated by the hypocritical, dogmatic Clive, and plaintively wishing for escape with explorer Harry. This is an entrancing performance.


As her mother, Babs George is sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued.

But we, the audience, are certainly not stifled. Act I is a happily wicked, fast-moving farce. Clive frantically pursues a widow brandishing a riding crop; and his wife Betty unwittingly attracts the passionate interest of the family governess (both roles by Helyn Rain Messenger, a graduating senior, played with such panache that I didn’t realize they were done in alternation by the same actress, in the same act).

Son Edward (Sarah Burkhalter, '10) prefers, instead of hunting and playing sport, playing with dolls.

African houseboy Joshua is at Churchill’s specification, played by a white (Jon Wayne Martin, ‘11). Joshua serves impassively amidst this madness, his anger growing as danger brews in the dark beyond the stage.




Act II, set in contemporaneous 1979, is equally fast moving, with the shock of recognizing those same actors in entirely different characters. Language is direct, dramatic, sometimes crude. The same uncertainties and desires are driving, but in the confusion and indulgence of contemporary society they take far different forms.



Take, for instance, the transformation of Smith from repressed colonial housewife to self-confident, cruising homosexual. And that of Martin from trusted servant to his gay lover Edward who would really prefer to be a woman, or maybe, if the opportunity arose, a lesbian.






Babs George hovers in genteel nervousness over the act, seeking to support her confused family – Edward the homosexual, daughter Victoria (Messenger) who is massively frustrated with her husband Martin (Radford) and their impossible daughter Cathy (another wondrous cross-gender performance, by Trussell, '10, formerly macho explorer Harry Bagley).

Sexes blur, sex blurs. In a dark wood there occurs an evocation of dark powers and an almost orgy, an apparition from beyond the grave, and a scandalized spouse. The comedy comes hard and fast, interspersed with scenes of a tenderness and intimacy that give you awe and make you squirm.

All of this builds into an explosion of light, color and music.





























Thanks to the administration at St. Ed’s for a lack of prudery and to the theatre staff there for taking on this play. Director David Long keeps his characters smoothly in motion so as to minimize the disadvantages of this vast theatre-in-the-square. The pace of the action is varied and finely tuned.

And this cast offers us a memorable evening, one that reminds us of the wonder and opportunity of passion.

Review in Daily Texan on-line by Aboubacar N'Diaye, October 2

Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle, October 3

Wikipedia on Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill bio and critical evaluation, Contemporary Writers (British Council)

Wikipedia on "Cloud 9," including plot summary