Arts Reporting: Classic Theatre Explores Potential New Homes, by Deborah Martin of the San Antonio Express-News, April 23

from the paper's Art beat page at www.mysanantonio.com:

Brendan Spieth, Dru Baucus (photo: Dwayne Green)

 

Classic Theatre explores potential new homes

Posted on 04/23/2013 by Deborah Martin

In the short time since they learned they’ll have to move, the folks at Classic Theatre have looked at potential new homes at the Woodlawn Theatre, the Josephine Theatre, Performing Arts San Antonio and Fox Tech High School.


The big take-away so far? “There’s a lot of unused space in San Antonio,” said Diane Malone, a co-founder of the company.


The company currently shares space with Jump-Start Performance Co. at the Blue Star Arts Complex. Jump-Start learned nearly two weeks ago that their lease on the building will not be renewed. The company was able to negotiate an extension that allows them to stay through January.


Classic closes its fifth season with the farce “Scapin,” slated to open May 10 at the Sterling Houston Theater at Jump-Start. The company has not yet decided whether they’ll begin their sixth season there and then move, or if they’ll do their entire season at a new space, Malone said.


Ideally, Classic’s new space will include room for an office, storage and rehearsal space.


“We’re asking for the moon,” Malone said.


A lot of other theaters have stepped up and offered to house the company, she said.


“A lot of people are talking about, it giving us suggestions: There’s a place here, a place there, museums and theaters and storefronts,” she said.


There is also a possibility that Jump-Start will go in together on a new space.

At this point, nothing is off the table: “We’re not eliminating any options,” Malone said.

Auditions in San Antonio for Scapin by Molière, Classic Theatre, February 16 and 17

 




Classic Theatre of San Antonio holds auditions for Scapin, by Molière February 17 and 18
Appointments from 6PM-9PM, with call backs on the 19th. ALL ROLES ARE PAID.

Location: The Sterling Houston Theater at Jump-Start, 108 Blue Star, in the Blue Star Arts Complex at the corner of S. Alamo and Probandt, San Antonio, Texas, 78204 (click for map )

The Classic Theater of San Antonio presents Scapin adapted from Molière by Bill Irwin and Mark O'Donnell, directed by Matthew Byron Cassi. Performance Dates: May 10th - 26th, 2013. Rehearsals: April/May 2013.

Auditions on Sun and Mon, Feb 17th and 18th 6-9pm at Jump Start Theater. PLEASE CALL FLORENCE TO SCHEDULE A 15 MINUTE AUDITION APPOINTMENT, (210) 589-8450. Auditions will consist of monologues and cold readings from the script. Please prepare a 1-2 minute contemporary physical monologue. 

This adaptation of Molière's 325-year-old farce Les Fourberies de Scapin follows-with some alterations-the play's original structure. It keeps the play in period setting while adding a late twentieth century spin to the language and action, and borrowing some final lines from Molière's La Contesse D'escarbagnas. 

"This SCAPIN, directed by Irwin...from his felicitous adaptation with Mark O'Donnell, would probably have gone over big with the same audience who first saw Molière's Fourberies de Scapin...in Paris in 1671." -NY Times. 

"Commedia dell'arte and vaudeville have at least two things in common: baggy pants and Bill Irwin. All make for a natural fit in the celebrated clown's entirely unconventional adaptation of Molière's SCAPIN." -Variety.

Scapin will be played by Juliard Graduate Brenden Spieth.

Roles: 6 men, 3 women (extra's flexible casting) - 11 Total 

Click to view character list at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Classic Theatre San Antonio Announces Its 2012-2013 Season

announces the 2012 - 2013 season:

Season tickets $60 - $80 for four productions, available via

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

August 10 - 26

The Firebugs by Max Frisch

October 12 - 28

Painting Churches by Tina Howe

February 8 - 24, 2013

Scapin by Molière

May 10 - 26, 2013

Upcoming: The Imaginary Invalid, City Theatre, July 21 - August 14

Found on-line:

presents

The Imaginary Invalid

by Molière

directed by Karen Sneed

July 21 - August 14
Thursday – Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.
The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd, behind the Shell station (click for map)
Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed Front/2nd Row Reserved $25.
Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.
Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

Quick-tongued, lively, fast-paced Moliere at his best. A merry-go-round of misplaced desires and hidden agendas in this fresh new take on skewering of the health care crisis. In this hilarious satire on the world of medicine the the wealthy, yet housebound hypochondriac Argan has every disease in the book and will go to any length to marry his daughter off to a doctor, Of course, she has other ideas. Lurking around are quacks only too happy to (mis)treat him, a money-grubbing wife and servants longing to carry on his miseries. A narcotic cocktail of romantic triangles, double entendres and mistaken identities ensues, promising to leave you gasping, giggling and possibly…in stitches.

Directed by Karen Sneed and featuring Richard Craig,Suzanne Balling, Alexandra Russo, Mick D’Arcy, Laura Cannon, Scot Friedman, Kirk Kelso, Cason Longley, Mario Silva, Kate Clark, Robert Frazier, Brian Brown, Ariel Atlas, Danielle Ruth, Elena Weinberg and Jessica Smith

Auditions for Molière's The Imaginary Invalid, City Theatre, May 2 - 3

Found at AustinActors.net:

The City Theatre is casting Molière's Outrageous Comedy

The Imaginary Invalid

When: May 2 - 3
The City Theatre 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D Austin, TX 78722
Monday and Tuesday, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m. Ten minute appointment slots.
Callbacks Wednesday, May 4. Show dates July 21 – August 14.
Needed: Bring headshot and resume. Readings from the show will be performed. Have a song prepared if trying for a singing role.

The newest and most hilarious modern adaptation of Molière's famous play with music, music, and lots of music including vaudeville shticks, romantic cowboy and blues ballads and a lot of bump and grind. It's wild ride!

ROLES FOR EVERYONE! Legit singers, non-singing comedic actors, sexy guys, showgirls, musicians, no fear, energetic chorus folk willing to commit to a crazy ensemble and, of course, Hillary Clinton. Directed by Karen Sneed for the City Theatre summer season. Call or email for an audition time. Info at www.citytheatreaustin.org.

Contact: The City Theatre info@citytheatreaustin.org 512-524-2870
Website: www.citytheatreaustin.org

The Imaginary Invalid by Molière and David Chambers, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, September 16 - 26

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin would not have objected at all to this re-do of his 1673 farce. He wrote The Imaginary Invalid in rapid-fire prose, using verse only for comic ballets at the intervals (omitted in this staging). David Chambers' translation/interpretation of the piece follows the action faithfully, although often with slangy word choices. Between them, Chambers and director David Long apply a clownification of the characters and a Borscht Belt leer not obvious in the original texts.

David Long has a good time, sending the characters zinging along. Some of his direction recalled those presentational techniques he used last year for bobrauschenbergamerica -- marking soliloquies and the young lovers' mock operetta with rapid, showy shifts of lighting, for example.

Argan, the title character played with fine finicky flair by veteran actor Richard Robichaux, is a rich hypochondriac with two daughters. Their mother passed away and Argan remarried -- to an effusive gold digger determined to persuade him to deed his property to her. Chambers renders this character -- Béline in the original -- as "Nastya," played by the charming Jill Blackwood with a patently fake Russian accent. Argan is determined to marry off his elder daughter Angelina (Michelle Elisabeth Brandt) to a physician so that he'll have free medical care, but she has already fallen in love with another (Cléanthe, played by Jon Wayne Martin).

Robichaux has lots of grumpy one-liners, mostly insults. His perpetual antagonist is Toinette, the servant, but he also gets into it with physician Thomas Diablo (Robert Faires), with Cléanthe, and with his brother (also played by Faires). In contrast and to our great amusement, the hypochondriac goes all goo-goo eyes with wife Nastya and gets entirely panicked by the rages of his principal physician Dr. Defecato (Meredith Montgomery).

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .

On the Road - in Washington DC

The Imaginary Invalid by Molière

In their 22-year history in the nation’s capital Michael Kahn and collaborators have created a theatre based on the classics, one that has no equal on this side of the Atlantic. Even the great British contemporary theatres must find these Americans hard to match. In April of 2007 I saw the Royal Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at the Kennedy Center one night, and on the next, the Americans’ Titus Andronicus in the much smaller and more traditional Landsburg Theatre on 5th street. Titus was the better play. And in my memory, their Washington Coriolanus of 2000 was a better production than that of the Royals in 2007. Eve Ziebert’s article on the competing presentations published in the Washington Post adroitly contrasted Shakespeare’s plays while tactfully omitting any direct comparison of the players.

Chicago has the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, out on downtown Navy Pier near the Ferris wheel, but it's a highly marketed, populist affair (the upcoming season includes "Willy Wonka" and their current Comedy of Errors puts Shakespeare's short early comedy into a dubious framework of a film company working during the London blitz -- amusing stuff but with a treacly overlay in the pre-war style of Shepperton Studios).

In Washington, however, Kahn has progressively attracted patronage of the Great and mostly Good, and last year the company opened a huge new theatre at the Harmon Center in downtown, just across from the former MCI center, home to sports events and circuses. They expanded their season from five to eight plays or more running drawn from the classical repertory (which stretches at times into the twentieth century). Each runs for a month or more. Currently you can attend Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, alternating in the Harmon Center, and from this past week, Molière’s Imaginary Invalid at the Landsburg, just two blocks away.

When we were season ticket holders back from 1997-2000, we always brought along our two children. In 1998 they were 14 and 11 years old – the youngest audience members by several decades. Although our younger one usually couldn’t stay awake past the third act, both were deeply impressed by the theatre. They are Shakespeare lovers today.

The Washington company offers an astonishing deal to subscribers under 30 years of age. Last year they charged only $120 for my daughter’s season ticket to the eight-play season – $15 a show, while full-price mid-week tickets at the box office cost $60 and up.

In addition to entertaining at a high level, the company offers the public a superb education about its plays. Their mail-out brochure for each play offers history, commentary, biographies of principal directors and players, and insights into the production and into the art of the theatre. For all there are Podcasts available on the website, along with videos, generally featuring the director and an academic expert exploring the play and the choices for the production.

Keith Baxter, director of the Imaginary Invalid, re-establishes the “new theatre” that Molière created in 1660s for Louis XIV, France’s “Sun King.” The farce gives a linear narrative – in this case, the intrigue is that of hypochondriac Arpagan to wed his tender daughter to a physician so as to guarantee “in-house” services for bleeding, enemas, and similarly ghastly treatments. This is the text that is regularly presented even today. But Baxter and the company provide as preface, interludes and celebratory coda graceful and amusing ballet, songs, and slapstick drawn directly from the Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte. The show recreates in their imagination and ours the 4th performance of the piece at the court on February 17, 1674 – including the homages to the Sun King and at the last moment, the unexpected appearance of that regal figure onstage.

Rubber-faced René Auberjonois is a self-mocking delight as Molière playing one of his most famous characters. The actors’ diction is uniformly superb throughout, mime and business are subtle and so manifold that one could attend three nights in a row and not catch all the physical jokes. The broad style was perfectly appropriate – let’s call it Marx brothers done declamatory fashion in brilliant costumes and graced by acrobats.

The younger members of the family reported that a couple of 30-somethings seated in front of them got up and left abruptly during the first half (perhaps unwilling to stretch themselves beyond ‘Seinfeld’ -- maybe they should get their theatre at Chicago's Navy Pier). But the rest of us stayed and enjoyed it a great deal.