MAD BEAT HIP & GONE by Steven Dietz, Zach Theatre, April 3 - 28, 2013

(Zach Theatre, S. Lamar at Riverside (parking on Riverside and on Toomey Rd, one block south), 

presents the world premiere of

 A coming-of-age comedy about the beat generation

at ZACH’s Topfer Theatre, S. Lamar at Riverside

April 3-28, 2013, Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Champagne Opening and Press Night is Thursday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m., followed by a reception with the stars of the show. Happy Hour Theatre is April 3 ($28 tickets for patrons under 30, plus a reception beginning at 6:45 p.m. and a post-show party). LGBT Wilde Party with pre-show mixer is Thursday, April 4. Performances continue through April 28, 2013. Four weeks only!

To order tickets call 512-476-0541 ext. 1 or visit www.zachtheatre.org. Tickets range from $25-$65. Student Rush Tickets: $18 one hour before showtime (with valid ID). ZACH’s full bar featuring signature cocktails and hors d’oeuvres opens 90 minutes prior to showtime and remains open for one hour post-show.

Free Balcony Play Festival also begins April 3

ZACH Theatre – Austin’s Theatre and Texas’ longest running theatre, in the first season its new Topfer Theatre, co-commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts, presents The World Premiere of MAD BEAT HIP & GONE written and directed by STEVEN DIETZ (Becky's New Car, Shooting Star)


Steven Dietz, one of the most-produced playwrights in America, who also calls Austin home, created this world premiere specifically for ZACH's first season in the new Topfer Theatre. MAD BEAT HIP &GONE is a coming-of-age comedy that chronicles our rich and elusive dreams, immersing audiences in the cultural phenomena of the beat generation.
In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady famously went "on the road." But what about Danny Fergus and Rich Rayburn — the young guys in the car right behind Jack and Neal, the guys whose history never ended up in books? What were these kids searching for in those "mad days" of "gone kids" trying so hard to be hip? Chock-full of smooth live jazz and exuberant theatricality, MAD BEAT HIP &GONE answers these questions and more as it takes audiences on a journey back in time.

ZACH’s Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley says: “I’m thrilled to produce the world premiere of Steven Dietz’s new coming-of-age comedy MAD BEAT HIP & GONE, which was commissioned by the University of Texas College of Fine Arts. Steven teaches playwriting at UT, and it’s no secret we are big fans of his work, having produced his plays Shooting Star, Fiction, and Becky’s New Car. I’m in love with his new play, which sings with the beat poetry style made famous by Jack Kerouac and possesses Steven’s sly sense of humor and gift for a turn of phrase. The play also involves a live saxophone player on stage who interacts with the actors, punctuating the comedy with jazz riffs in a clever call and response.”

Of his long-time relationship with ZACH, Steven Dietz says: “I need ZACH Theatre – it is because of their bold and populist artistic aesthetic that I was inspired to create this story.”

ZACH’s production of MAD BEAT HIP & GONE features an all-star cast including: JACOB TRUSSEL as Danny, JON COOK as Rich, ERIN BARLOW as Honey, BABS GEORGE as Mrs. Fergus and RICK ROEMER as The Alberts.

Scenic Design by MICHAEL RAIFORD · Lighting Design by MICHELLE HABECK · Costume Design by SUSAN MICKEY · Sound Design by CRAIG BROCK · Video Design by COLIN LOWRY · Properties Design by JUSTIN COX · Stage Management by CATE TUCKER·

MAD BEAT HIP & GONE Previews April 3-10.


ZACH’s production of MAD BEAT HIP & GONE is presented by 3M and supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

NEW BALCONY PLAY FESTIVAL

In conjunction with MAD BEAT HIP & GONE, ZACH will launch the Balcony Play Festival – consisting of a series of 10-30 minute plays performed free for the public prior to mainstage productions. Drawing inspiration from the Juliet-style balcony overlooking the main entrance of ZACH’s new Topfer Theatre and from famous balcony scenes from plays and musicals, these new plays will invite a diverse audience of patrons and pedestrians alike to gather on ZACH’s People’s Plaza to enjoy this original, site-specific work. ZACH Associate Artistic Director Sarah Rasmussen (Head of MFA Directing Program, UT Austin and Associate Director, Black Swan Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival), will build on ZACH’s partnership with UT, involving MFA students in both the design and direction of the plays.


About ZACH Theatre ZACH Theatre is Austin’s leading professional producing theatre, employing more than 600 actors, musicians, and designers annually. Founded in 1932, ZACH is the longest running theatre company in Texas, serving 95,000 adults and youth annually. ZACH creates its own nationally recognized plays and musicals that ignite the imagination, lift the spirit, and engage the community under the proven leadership of Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley and Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. Now in its 80th year, ZACH continues to expand and engage with Austin, adding the new 420-seat, 32,000-square-foot Topfer Theatre to its performing arts campus, nearly doubling ZACH’s capacity while retaining its hallmark intimate theatre-going experience. Visit www.zachtheatre.org for more information.



For real-time updates on ZACH Theatre news, events and happenings, visit http://www.zachtheatre.org/blog, like ZACH on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/zachtheatre, and follow ZACH on Twitter @zachtheatre http://www.twitter.com/zachtheatre.

ZACH Theatre is sponsored in part, by Applied Materials, Austin Catering, Four Hands Home, Holiday Inn-Lady Bird Lake, Kirk Tuck Photography, Marquee Event Group, OnRamp, Austin American-Statesman, KXAN TV 36, and Time Warner Cable; and by grants from Junior League of Austin, The Shubert Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, which believes an investment in the arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.



(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Tru by Jay Presson Allen with Jaston Williams, Zach Theatre, January 10 - March 10, 2013

by Michael Meigs


Jaston Williams and director Larry Randolph take us to another place and time with Tru, now on an extended run at the Zach's intimate theatre-in-the-round Whisenhunt stage. Michael Raiford's clever low-level set is Truman Capote's UN Plaza apartment in New York City in 1975. It's a long long way from Greater Tuna, where Williams and Joe Sears romped, mugged and portrayed a whole looney town -- or, for that matter from Thornton Wilder's Our Town in which Williams played the somber stage manager for the Zach Theatre's production almost three years ago.


Truman Capote was a tiny man, only 5' 3", but he was larger than life in the monotones of the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. He was self-made, for one thing, riding the power of his pen out of a dreary childhood of neglect in south Alabama. Sensitive short stories such as the classic A Christmas Memory and Breakfast at Tiffany's opened doors, and a dreamy come-hither photograph on the dust jacket of one collection scandalized some and intrigued others. In mid-career he spent four years researching In Cold Blood, a novelized true-crime account serialized in the New Yorker magazine and a best-seller when published in 1966 by Random House.


Capote was flagrantly, unapologetically homosexual at a time when most gay men were hiding desperately in the closet. His persona as a coy, sarcastic and extravagant queen astonished middle America, and he became a celebrity on television talk shows. He hung out with the jet set, including Lee Radziwell, sister of Jackie Kennedy, and CBS president William Paley and his wife Babe. Capote wrote almost nothing of note after the huge success of In Cold Blood. He became a professional celebrity socialite and sank deeper into alcoholism and drug addiction. He kept notes on his rich friends, with the idea of writing a Proustian account one day that would be titled Answered Prayers. In 1975 he agreed to allow Esquire magazine to publish four chapters of the long-delayed work. The rich friends who had found him some amusing were shocked to see their lives, peccadillos and anxieties etched in acid. Some were named and others were only thinly disguised. Virtually all of them immediately shunned Capote.


Playwright Jay Presson Allen chose to set this portrait of Capote in that specific moment and place -- Capote's desperately lonely Christmas Eve in 1975. It's a one-man show, two acts drawn virtually entirely from Capote's own published words and broadcast comments. It's a huge and colorful catalog, and Allen has shaped it cleverly into two acts. This script is an invitation to tour de force, and Jaston Williams is simply breathtaking in it.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

G-Style Austin Profiles Zach's Scenic Designer Michael Raiford

Via Zach Theatre's Facebook page:

Cover story in G Style magazine, Austin, March-April, 2011:

The Artist's Life

This one-time band geek works his magic onstage and off to create theatrical experiences that immerse audiences in other worlds and, in the process, open their minds.

by Christopher Carbone
photography by Michael Thad Carter

Michael Raiford is a rarity. Deeply passionate about his work in the arts, devoted in the most endearing way to the love of his life of almost 30 years, his husband Todd Logan, forthright in his belief that arts education is a key to a better society, and completely invested in squeezing joy out of every moment, Raiford is the consummate modern-day working artist.

“Iwas always a goofy, creative kid. Being raised in the deep South without a lot of culture around me, it never would have dawned on me that this is something you did,” said Michael Raiford, a set designer locally and nationally for two decades. “Iwould have said, ‘Ihave no idea, none.’”

Raiford taught graduate students at UT in the master of fine arts program and started out as a band geek (he was a drummer in high school). Growing up in Florida and being raised in a conservative Baptist household, he forged his own path.

Even so, the spark for his chosen creative path was rather surprising. Every year in Jack­sonville starting when he was six years old, and continuing for the next six years, the family’s “cultural outing” was a trip to Holiday On Ice. Another version of the Icecapades, each production was a major event. Raiford saved every program and that’s where he fell in love with the showbiz spectacle of theater. “There were these big shows that were a musical review on ice,” Raiford said. “Themed numbers, big costumed shows, and full sets. It was huge and splashy and–gay.”

It was that early-on exposure to and appreciation for over-the-top theatricality that’s allowed him to excel as a set designer for Zach Scott Theatre for almost 20 years.

Click to view full article and photographs in .pdf

Reviews: Beehive, The Final Performances, Zach Scott Theatre, January 16 - February 22

From Joey Seiler's short review, posted on the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, January 19:

As a farewell run, “Beehive” seems to be finding the right mark. After 16 seasons of singing hits from one 10-year span, it’s probably time to move on, but only after one more song.

Michael Raiford's photos of previous Beehive productions, posted on the Zach theatre website

Emily Macrander's review of January 26 in the Daily Texan, with comments from performers

Photo by Britt Hackemack of the Daily Texan