THE HEAD by Connor Hopkins, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, September 26 - October 12, 2013

[resident at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. -- click for map]

presents

 
 The Head: A Trouble Puppet Show

by Connor Hopkins
Sept. 26–Oct. 12, 2013, 8 pm
Thursdays – Saturdays, 6pm Sundays

Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722 - click for map

ASL interpretation offered on selected nights. Group sales welcome. Director/cast talkbacks available for groups of five or more.
**This show contains content and copious amounts of language not suitable for children.** 

Tickets$10–$20 at the door or via






Trouble Puppet Theater Co. presents The Head, a darkly hilarious original work of puppet theater for grown-ups. Inside the Man's head, an overworked Mechanic struggles with faulty machinery and the head's other residents, the Personal Demons, to navigate through the day.

The Mechanic maintains and operates the machinery that makes it possible for The Man to get out of bed, go to work, have conversations, and otherwise live daily life. The Man's issues, poor judgment, and bad habits chronically make the little Mechanic's job more difficult. When the Personal Demons climb out of the shadows of the Limbic Lobe, all hell breaks loose inside and outside the Head.

Trouble Puppet's bunraku-style tabletop puppets are each manipulated by as many as 3 puppeteers and are designed and built by Connor Hopkins, our assistant builder, and invited guest builders from out of town. The puppets, the set, and the show are a visually and technically remarkable spectacle, with a gorgeous original score.

A completely original work by the company who brought Austin award-winning productions of The Jungle, Frankenstein, Riddley Walker, Toil & Trouble, and The Cruel Circus. Written and directed by Artistic Director Connor Hopkins (winner of B. Iden Payne Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Drama as well as Outstanding Original Script and The Austin Examiner's Best New Play Written by an Austinite), The Head features music by Justin Sherburn, lighting by Megan Reilly, sound design by K. Eliot Haynes, costume design by Monica Gibson, graphic design by Chris Owen. Performers: Jose Villarreal, Noel Gaulin, Rachel Wiese, Parker Dority, David Higgins, Travis Bedard, Kim Adams, Nathan Lahay, Elyce Lahay, Chris Gibson.

Trouble Puppet Theater Company: Founded in 2004, Trouble Puppet is dedicated to the creation of exceptional works of puppet theater, to the promotion of the art of puppetry, and to the support of its practitioners. We reach as far as we can into the possibilities that puppetry offers, in its many forms and styles, and seek to balance risk and exploration with a drive for excellent craft and technique. Our work is inspired not only by our artistic passion but by our social, political, and human convictions: that there can be no end to the struggle for knowledge and compassion, against injustice and intolerance . . . and boring theater.

Trouble Puppet is a sponsored project of Salvage Vanguard Theater. This production is supported by the Jim Henson Foundation.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

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)

Adam Sultan by Steve Moore and Zeb L. West, Physical Plant Theare, March 28 - April 13, 2013

(poster design: Jennymarie Jemison)

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


For the committed theatergoer, this was a long-awaited premiere. The blended live-action and puppet play previewed at the 2012 Fusebox Festival. The preview tantalized audiences with its potential for taking many different directions.


The premiere at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre on March 28 satisfied our aroused curiosity with a long sequence of wise story choices. They took us through some surprising ways yet never strayed from its emotional heart. Sure, it was about death, and innovative puppetry sustained all its moods and action; at the same time the production remained light, humor-filled and entertaining. 
 A demanding ticket buyer couldn’t ask for much more.


The play follows the character of Adam Sultan, played by the artist Adam Sultan, through to the far distant future of A.D. 2052 (not quite forty years from now). 

 Aged and infirm, Sultan sees and feels the loss of his artist friends all around him. Seemingly despairing, he collects mementos of their lives and seals those objects into glass jars. His bookshelf fills with the jars. Then one day a half-scale doppelganger puppet enters his apartment, drinks heavily and passes out. Sultan doesn’t know what to make of it; he never does know what to make of it. What’s sure is only that from this point forward puppets carry equal weight with human actors in conveying the story and its meanings.

(photo: Physical Plant Theatre)

The Physical Plant team of Steve Moore and Zeb L. West wrote and crafted the show. In addition to makiing unerring choices in a mature story revolving around death, they incorporated advanced concepts of new puppetry that took Adam Sultan to the edge of theatre and puppetry. 

Completely black-garbed puppeteers were visible onstage. In conventional theatre, anyone wearing black is a technician and therefore invisible in the sense of operating the play and not figuring in the scripted action; technicians are merely making it happen.


The Adam Sultan puppeteers pushed this envelope or bent this frame in several ways. First and most fundamentally, the puppeteers manipulated and changed the human actors throughout the play; they did so subtly and tellingly when they reshaped the postures and stances of the living to reflect advancing age, as for example in the touching moment when they placed wedding rings on the fingers of the lead characters. In addition, the puppeteers removed their black headgear to speak narrative voice-overs at a microphone stand at stage left. With this, the audience no longer held the puppeteers comfortably framed in invisibility as helpers for the story. Attention, audience: they might do other things, so be ready.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Video by Dannie Snyder: Rehearsing Once There Were Six Seasons, Glass Half Full Theatre workshop running February 21 - March 3, 2013

A video by Dannie Snyder and LIV Creations for






and its upcoming workshop production of environmental puppetry

 

 

Once There Were Six Seasons 

Feb. 21^st – March 3^rd. Thursdays-Saturdays @ 8 PM, Sundays @ 6 PM.

 

Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 E. Manor Road, Austin, TX, 78722 - click for map  

Tickets: Sliding scale $12-$20. 
Pay-what-you-can: Sunday February 24^th. 
Some ASL interpreted performances (see ticketing site for details). 
The two-weekend workshop performance will include opportunities for audience feedback and interaction, including talkbacks hosted by Rudy Ramirez and In.gredients.



Once There Were Six Seasons from LIV creations on Vimeo.

Glass Half Full Theatre presents a workshop production of Once There Were Six Seasons, an original work of environmental puppetry. Puppeteers manipulate vast miniature landscapes to address the impact of climate change on subsistence societies around the world. From the Arctic to the Philippines to the high plains of Texas, this work highlights how the accelerating pace of human-caused climate change has outstripped the ability of traditional cultures to adapt their lifestyles. From B. Iden Payne award-winning director and writer Caroline Reck, with an award winning cast of puppeteer/performers: Connor Hopkins, Rommel Sulit, Noel Gaulin, Gricelda Silva, and Parker Dority, and award-wining designers Eliot Haynes and Stephen Pruitt.

Opinion: Dan Solomon's Top 10 Arts Events of 2012, Austin Chronicle

In today's weekly Austin Chronicle:

Top 10 Arts Events of 2012

Remembering the year onstage in dynamic acting, atmospheric design, and unexpected beauty

By Dan Solomon, Fri., Jan. 4, 2013

in no order:

Zac Crofford (Trouble Puppet Theatre Co.)

1) FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY FOR 'TOIL AND TROUBLE' (Trouble Puppet Theater Company) Trouble Puppet has proven itself good at everything, and when it pulls off the unexpected – like compelling, well-articulated stage combat – it just serves notice that they're still finding new ways to impress you.

2) NOEL GAULIN IN EVERYTHING Gaulin had a hell of a year – screaming, jumping, moving-as-if-on-strings, and otherwise turning himself into a live-action cartoon character in The Bear, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Vodka, Fucking, and Television.

3) RACHEL WEISE'S DIRECTION Yeah, my wife wrote one of the lovely plays Weise directed this year, The Man Who Planted Trees. But I also loved her staging of The Bear by Anton Chekhov, and I've never even met him.

4) THE SCRIPT FOR 'MESSENGER NO. 4 (OR ... HOW TO SURVIVE A GREEK TRAGEDY)' (Cambiare Productions) Will Hollis Snider's charming and inventive epic blended Back to the Future, The Matrix, and Euripedes into something altogether new.

5) THE FINAL MINUTES OF 'JUBILEE' (Rub­ber Repertory) Making your cast jump up and down for an interminable amount of time sounds boring, and making boring-sounding things beautiful was what Jubilee did best.

6) THE ATMOSPHERE OF 'DREAM CABINET' (Salvage Vanguard Theater) Few productions set a mood more effectively.

7) EVERYTHING ABOUT 'LEGALLY BLONDE: THE MUSICAL' (Summer Stock Austin) I'm not made of stone, you guys.

8) BETH BRODERICK IN 'JUST OUTSIDE REDEMPTION' (Theatre en Bloc) Broderick stole every scene by balancing charm, humor, and gravity.

9) KACY TODD IN 'HOLIER THAN THOU' (Poison Apple Initiative) Todd carried the emotional climax of a play consisting of interconnected monologues – no mean feat.

10) SOUND DESIGN FOR 'SPACESTATION1985' (Natalie George Presents) I didn't love the play, but the sound by Buzz Moran made the outer space setting come to life.

ONCE THERE WERE SIX SEASONS, environmental puppetry by Glass Half Full Theatre, February 21 - March, 2013

(performing at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. - click for map)

presents

Once There Were Six Seasons

opening February 21, 2013

We’ve leaped into full pre-production mode for Once There Were Six Seasons, a new work focusing on the effects of climate change on traditional societies which will open on February 21st, 2013. The title comes from a true story Caroline heard in Orissa, India, from a story passed down to a man from his grandmother:

In earlier times, in this grandmother’s lifetime, there used to be six seasons in that part of the world. The farmers still used an ancient method of observing animal behavior to determine when and what to plant. Now, that region only has two seasons (Summer, and Rains), and the animal behaviors that farmers counted on to grow their crops have been distorted by the rapidly changing planet. Farmers can no longer rely on their traditional methods, and communities are slowly collapsing as people move on to settle in the city slums.

Stories like this are happening all over the world, and we’d like to invite you to learn more of them with us in February.

The performance will make use of very small puppets existing in vast landscapes on the SVT Mainstage, with visible puppeteers affecting changes in the landscapes and on the puppets themselves. This is a genre of puppetry we have been gradually crafting, which we are calling “Environmental Puppetry.” In this style, the focus is on the changing landscapes rather than the articulations of the puppet’s body. If you are familiar with our piece, “Bob's Hardware” performed in the 2010 Winter Austin Puppet Incident, it’s in that genre.

Donate

Glass Half Full has received a very small amount of City of Austin funding for this project, which will have a workshop performance for two weeks only in February 2013. If you are interested in donating to this project, or learning more about our process of creation, please get in touch at info@glasshalffulltheatre.com or click on our donate button below:



Otherwise, we hope to see you when we present Part One in February.

Thank you from myself and on the behalf of the collaborating team on this show:
Parker Dority, Gricelda Silva, Noel Gaulin, Rommel Sulit, Connor Hopkins,
Kyle Zamcheck, Ia Ensterä, Stephen Pruitt, Zac Crofford, and Eliot Haynes.


Caroline Reck
Producing Artistic Director
Glass Half Full Theatre
caroline@glasshalffulltheatre.com
 
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Vodka, Fucking and Television by Maksym Kurochkin, Breaking String Theatre, November 29 - December 15

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

This play, written in 2003, may reach an apex in the new generation of Russian plays. Breaking String Theater Company is getting used to this Russian art explosion, having produced a number of Russian plays in translation, and producing this extremely well written comedy with an exceptional ensemble of some of Austin’s most talented actors. Liz Fisher directs Vodka, Fucking and Television for Breaking String.

The only speed bump in the raceway to success for this sparkling vehicle is the obscenity in the title, which seems to have inhibited some of the more conventional marketing modes. No problem. Judging from the enthusiastic audience on opening night, word of mouth alone will counteract the dearth of posters in grocery stores.

The story behind VF+T is that of Russian theatrical creativity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The conduit for funneling the best new plays into English translations and on into the English-speaking world has been John Freedman, theatre writer for the Moscow Times. Graham Schmidt, Breaking String’s producing artistic director, describes Freedman as the rare man in the right place at the right time: he was visiting Moscow on a Fulbright to write his doctoral dissertation on Russian playwright Erdman when the Iron Curtain fell. Freedman moved to Russia, and the rest is ongoing cultural arts history. Freedman has been instrumental in bringing Maksym Kurochkin to the attention of the West. For more on this story, read Michael Meigs’ profile of VF+T and Liz Fisher for AustinLiveTheatre.com.

VF+T takes its title from the three vices that beset a 33-year-old writer and Red Army veteran variously referred to as Hero, Poet or Writer. His name is just as symbolic as are those of the other characters. He is Everyman (artist variant), portrayed by Noel Gaulin. In one of the most effective play openings that I have seen in the curtainless postmodern era, the house opens with Gaulin already onstage in pajamas and robe in the midst of his small but serviceable Moscow flat. The interior design is definitely post-Soviet Union; the room has central heating. 

Gaulin spins and contorts in apparent writer’s block, his grimacing face lit mostly by the laptop screen mocking him with its emptiness. The vices have a peculiar presence in the apartment, too: the flat-screen TV blares, and, pity Russia, its daytime TV is worse than ours (unfortunately, a good third of the audience misses the flat screen amusements because a table and pile of blankets block them). The kitchen sink if full of dirty dishes and used drinking glasses and bottles of vodka and wine are everywhere. The bed clothing and scattered blankets and comforters convey the tumbled look of recent sex, hinting perhaps at more to come.

Hero struggles and eventually declines into a a giant hallucinatory spasm. The personified vices materialize and swirl around him. The vices loudly claim triumph over the writer, backing him into every corner in the flat. Clutching for control, Hero declares that he will reclaim mastery if he can banish at least one of the vices from his life.

The rest of the play is a kind of reverse Judgment of Paris. Hero insists that each vice must make its best case for staying in his life, and he says he will expel the vice with the least compelling argument. Of course, aided by addictive denial, all the vices make great cases for themselves. The ensuing speeches are a showcase of Kurochkin’s writing skill, and they all jab and torture Hero’s weakening psyche.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Can Can, A 1940's Style Floor Show, The Exchange Artists at Palm Door, November 13 and 15

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

I picked my way through the new development and blocked streets of downtown Austin to find this new bar I’d never heard of, the Palm Door. After hiking blocks, I saw it—it was the building formerly occupied by City Grille, once the best seafood restaurant in Austin. The address is 401 Sabine Street, immediately across the street east of the convention center. I want everyone to find it more easily than I did because the Exchange Artists’ performance there is well worth it.

The show is Can Can: A 1940s Floor Show. It's a composite of 1940s musical theatre and movie song and dance routines, finished with Romulus Linney’s exquisite one-act play Can Can. The play is a history of two relationships right after VE day.
The evening of performance is the second in a series of plays in bars mounted by Exchange Artists, one of the most creative groups in the Austin theatre community. They recently staged The Man Who Planted Trees in Sparky Park in central Austin. Surely one of their most notable traits is their seemingly unflagging ability to produce laudable productions in non-traditional performance spaces. And they do it in very short turnaround time—in this case within two months.

The lead producer this time was Bridget Farr, and Katie Richter directed the show. There I was, sitting in a room that looked like an old 1940s barracks with its open ceiling, expecting light entertainment, and suddenly I received a knock-down, lights-out stage dance performance by triple-threat performers Michelle Keffer, Bridget Farr, Cassie Stewart and Will Brittain. They were led by the terrific Jonathan Itchon, a recent B. Iden Payne nominee. Sing (like the Andrews Sisters), dance, act—this group can do it all.

And guiding us through it all was Emcee Noel Gaulin, with his two-day turnaround from Paper Chairs’ Boom for Real (likewise Michelle Keffer). Gaulin’s surprise was a stand-up routine that was a knock-off of 70s comic Andy Kaufman. Gaulin gave us a very close approach to Kaufman, and it gave the audience that queasy, I-don’t-know-if-I-like-this feeling and several icky question marks in the mind about the performer’s mental health. Pay special attention to the punch line “I got vaccinated.”

If all this wasn’t enough, the Tapestry, Too dance troupe performed classic period tap dance numbers. They are the adult student company of Tapestry Dance. They gave us the virtuoso performance of continuing to perform well when the soundtrack music unexpectedly quit. They did well, but paid in performance stress for the inevitable quirks and kinks presented by a non-traditional venue.

Exchange Artists remains true to its huge creative energies, and everything it produces offers beautiful gifts to its audiences. Performers Bridget Farr, Michelle Keffer, Noel Gaulin and Jonathan Itchon seem to hone their talents continually, and they certainly deserve greater attention and higher paychecks. I’ve singled out these few, but all the performers lit up from within when they hit the stage. It is satisfying to see people following their bliss.

Promoting and building the performance communities in Austin is one of my commitments, as it is for AustinLiveTheatre.com. And Exchange Artists is one of about a half-dozen small companies I follow that are exceptionally deserving of growth and greater attention within the community. Much of their work is of short duration and in venues somewhat harder to find than the average theatre. But their ticket prices, for their greater effort in production and your greater effort in finding them, are no higher than anybody else’s. A percentage of their ticket revenue always goes to charity. For slightly more than the price of a movie ticket you can receive much more in art and entertainment. Exchange Artists—remember the name, seek them out; the rewards are huge.

2012-2013 Season of Puppetry and Performance, Glass Half Full Theatre

celebrates its 13 B. Iden Payne Award nominations this year, with double nods in Comedy and Drama to both FupDuck and The Orchid Flotilla for Production, Acting, Script, Score, and Puppetry, as well as Direction for FupDuck and Sound & Scenic Design for Orchid

and announces its 2013 season:


Once There Were Six Seasons

February 2013 @ Salvage Vanguard

This new work uses puppetry and physical theatre to addresses the impact of climate change on traditional farming societies around the world. This project will show, through puppetry, narrative and imagery, how farming systems used for hundreds of years across the globe have been drastically affected by the rapidly changing global climate, and how communities and families are undone when their cultures are irrevocably altered by these external environmental changes. Tiny puppet figures exist in vast spaces onstage, and visible puppeteers move the figures through a changing environmental landscape. Emphasis is placed on the shifting landscapes around the puppets, and on the puppeteers’ role as the “cause” of those changes. There will be lots of sand and water. Featuring the performance and design work of Ia Instera, Eliot Haynes, Connor Hopkins, Rommel Sulit, Gricelda Silva, Parker Dority, Noel Gaulin and Caroline Reck.



The fourth Austin Puppet Incident

an evening of short works of puppetry from a variety of local and visiting artists
June 2013 @ Salvage Vanguard 

The Austin Puppet Incident is a joint creation of Glass Half Full Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theater Company, with the goal of highlighting short works of puppetry for adults, we encourage artists to participate in our reciprocal model, in which artists work with and for each other in a variety of pieces. 



The Boston/Austin Project

December 2013 at the Salvage Vanguard (Austin) and at the Charlestown Working Theater (Boston) 
 

A physical theatre performance crafted and devised by Caroline Reck and guest artist Bonnie Duncan, whose Poste Restante won the Austin Critics' Table award for Outstanding Touring Show. Bonnie and Caroline met in 2008 at the National Puppetry Conference, and are crafting their performance via Pintrest*, phone calls, and residencies. They got tired of their cohorts saying, "You two have a similar vision. You should work together." So now they are. Find it on Pintrest as "The Show We Will one Day Make Together."

Upcoming: spacestation1985 by Natalie George at the Off Center, September 13 - 22

by Natalie George

playing at the Off-Center 2211-A Hidalgo St., near E. 7th and Robert Martinez (click for map)

September 13 - 28, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturday late shows at 10:30 p.m.; matinee at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 16

Click to purchase tickets via Eventbrite: $12 general admission; $19.85 'mission control' premium seating

Click for additional information at the website

spacestation1985 is a live action science fiction psychological roller coaster coming to austin texas in september of 2012. it is the story of two down and out nasa cast-offs, dr. richard gergen and lieutenant norman james kilroy, who are blasted into space in the year 1985 by a mysterious privately-funded space exploration group.

their mission?

to be the first men to mine the tail of halley's comet. however, while working 30 day alternating shifts, the mission begins to take a turn...into not only the deepest corners of our solar system, but the very darkest corners of the human mind.

from the minds of the award-winning sketch comedy team THINK TANK,comes an 8 bit kubrickian dramedy unlike anything you have seen live on stage before. (unless you saw their run of the show in New York City, then it will be a lot like that....only with new exciting twists and a reloaded amazing design team, don't believe me? see for yourself...)

live puppetry!

oringinal score by graham reynolds!

sound design by buzz moran!

scenic design by ia enstera!

lighting design by natalie george!

costume design by benjamin taylor-ridgeway!

the acting chops of jason newman & bradley carlin!!

and

directed by jeffery mills!

still not convinced...
what about the talents of Jennymarie Jemison, Gricelda Silva, David Higgins, Dallas Tate, Noel Gaulin, Kelly Hassandras, Dani Pruitt, & Christopher Shea

and did we mention SPACE PUPPETS?
SPACE PUPPETS!

join us aboard spacestation1985...

www.spacestation1985.com

(Poster art by Duncan Gillis)

(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Baal by Bertolt Brecht, Paper Chairs at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, November 11 - 28

Received directly:

Paper Chairs excitedly announces its sophomore production

Baal

by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Peter Tegel from the 1922 edition

directed by Dustin Wills.

Ba·al [bey-uhl, beyl]

1. any of numerous local deities among the ancient Semitic peoples, typifying the productive forces of nature and worshiped with much sensuality.

2. (sometimes lowercase) a false god.

The slightly intoxicated, morally bankrupt patrons of “The Night Cloud” are putting on a play about their idol, Baal. Baal is a mysterious figure said to have roamed the forests, inns and bars leaving nothing but poetry, destruction and a hefty bar tab in his wake. The perfect – though some may disagree – idol for a band of hooligans in a seedy cabaret.

Bertolt Brecht’s first play, Baal, drags its audience deep into a body of youthful desires and complete moral abandon. Written in 1918, when Brecht was 20 years old – before the Epic Theatre and the overtly political work for which he is lauded – Baal unfolds in fragments; like a piecemeal of the nearly forgotten events of a drunken evening. It tells the story of our poet-musician and title character, Baal, fleeing the civilized world to live the extreme life somewhere in the forest finding plenty of people and pursuits to indulge his insatiable appetite for experience. The themes coursing through this text are especially pressing today: emerging adulthood, substance abuse, nature’s destruction, homosexuality, and exploration of the body. This performance of Baal also features original score and 8 songs written to Brecht’s verse performed live by the bar patrons and composed and directed by boozers Andy Tindall and Rob Greenfield. We also invite 12 audience members to buy priority seats at tables on stage – free refreshments included!

Featuring bar patrons Joey Hood (2010 Critic’s Table Best Actor), Robert Pierson, Jacob Trussell, Noel Gaulin, Michael Amendola (2010 Critic’s Table Best Supporting Actor), Rob Greenfield, Kelli Bland, Adriene Mishler, Elizabeth Doss, Kimberly Adams, Chase Crossno, Sonnet Blanton, and Gabriel Luna (2010 Critic’s Table Best Actor) in the title role, Baal. The Night Cloud Cabaret is designed by Lisa Laratta (2010 Critic’s Table Best Scenic Design), the costumes by bar regular Benjamin Taylor Ridgeway, and the lovely Natalie George hanging lights from the trees.

Baal runs Wednesdays – Sundays from November 11 to November 28 nightly at 8:00 p.m. (three weekends in total) at The Salvage Vanguard Theater (2803 Manor Rd.; Austin, Texas 78722). Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Wednesdays and Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays - $15.00 general seating, $30.00 table seating. Advanced Purchase ticket pricing ($15 each) will be available through our website as of October 18, 2010 (www.paperchairs.com). There will be no performance Thanksgiving, November 25.

Paper Chairs creates sensorially dynamic theatre combining fractured subjectivity, music, unconventional audience situation, surrealism, provocative design 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.