The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

by Michael Meigs


Nigel, this is stupid stuff. There, now I've said it.


You and your friends of Palindrome have made arresting, sometimes astounding art in the three years that you promised yourselves for the experiment after your graduation from the theatre program at St. Ed's. 


You have shown yourself to be an impressive actor and promoter of our dear, beloved and commercially moribund art of live theatre, gathering award nominations and recognition along the way.


You made contacts with some Austin's best in the field, many of them teachers -- Ev Lunning, with whom you worked in the Ar Rude Actors's Equity project of McNeil's A Long Day's Journey into Night directed by Lucien Douglas, and Babs George in that fine Cherry Orchard by Breaking String where appropriately enough you portrayed the eternally yearning and optimistic student Trofimov. 


You were a memorable drifter challenging a stolidly bourgeois Jude Hickey in Albee's At Home at the Zoo, with Robin Grace Thompson as his wife. You crafted a pungent Hedda Gabler last year by reworking someone's literalist pony translation from the original, staged it with Robin successfully here and at the Edinburgh Fringe, and caught the eye of the flattered Norwegians.


Before approaching its three-year expiration date, Palindrome's artists and sometime provocateurs have furnished Austin with fine stagings of classics. I wish I could have seen them all. I missed Babs with Harvey Guion in Arthur Miller's All My Sons last summer, Dario Fo's Accidental Death of An Anarchist, and Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play. I did see, and will long remember, Beckett's End Days with Jarrett King, Gabriel Luna and Helyn Rain Messenger.


You've been gracious and forthcoming throughout all of this. I still have a twinge of bad conscience about not recognizing you immediately two years ago when you greeted me in the lobby at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre at the opening night for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where Babs was Martha and Ev was George. I was glad to get a close-up rehearsal view of the revised Hedda before the departure for Edinburgh last year, and I was flattered to be invited along with other theatre scriveners to last weekend's advance staging for the press of your work The Attic Space, with Babs and Ev. It was a remarkable and unexpected opportunity to mingle briefly before the show with Elizabeth Cobbe of the Austin Chronicle, Jillian Owens and Cate Blouke of the Statesman and newcomer Jeff Davis of www.austin.broadwayworld.com.


The Attic Space seems grossly derivative to me. You've brought your two characters Harold and Harriet together in George Marsolek's claustrophobic and dimly lit attic space that contains the stored detritus of their lives. The dialogue is a similar in style to that of Beckett, full of ellipses and references to shared but unrevealed events and relationships. Harriet is high strung but disconnected; Harold is restrained, patient and long-suffering. She insists on staying in the attic amongst the boxes, trunks and discarded furniture. She's searching for something but doesn't know what that is. Harold urges her to come back downstairs. The dialogue suggests that they feel the suppressed terror of advanced age even though these two actors are plainly in their flourishing middle age.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

Palindrome’s Final Production: 7 performances only of

the Premiere of  

The Attic Space

Starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. 

December 14 - December 22 at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m.,
Donate-what-you-can show Wed 19th
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. 78722 (click for map)

Ticket Price: $10 subsidized ticket price*
Length: 80 min.

Reservation Website: www.palindrometheatre.com ; Reservation Line: 512-736-5191

Three years ago, when opening their inaugural season with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Palindrome Theatre promised it would expire in December 2012. Seven productions, one international festival, and a heap of critical praise (mostly) later, Palindrome is set to do just that after their premiere production of The Attic Space, by Resident Playwright, Artistic Director, and native Austinite Nigel O’Hearn.

Known for their intimate, often provocative, traditionally-influenced aesthetic, Palindrome is building on the classical foundation and intricate theatricality of their past work to present a new play that is at once in keeping with the literary influence of Beckett and Miller while striving for bold, experimental presentation (including meta-puppetry realized by Caroline Reck, Artistic Director of Glass Half Full Theatre, and designed by Tara Cooper).

Directed by O’Hearn, starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. (both courtesy of Actors Equity), and featuring early Palindrome collaborator Helyn Rain Messenger, The Attic Space is an exploration of the capriciousness of memory, the complexity of companionship and the fear of uncertainty that accompanies the recurring life-long search for definite self-evidence; set in the place in our home which we visit the least, yet store all the things we can’t bear to go on without.

*In effort to help educate the Austin public on the cost and cultural impact of professional theatre, and though it costs much more than $10 a ticket to produce a professional play, Palindrome operates under the principle that while the theatre is not free, it should be experienced as a freedom- we do everything in our power to bring our productions to the Austin public at no cost or small cost without devaluing the theatrical event.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Palindrome Theatre at various locations, May 12 - June 3

presents

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

by Dario Fo

edited and updated political commentary by Nigel O'Hearn
 
May 12-June

'Home' performances at @ Up Collective Gallery, 2326 East Cesar Chavez Street, 8 p.m. (click for map) 

Friday, May 25 at 8 p.m. 

Saturdays May 12, 19, 26 and June 2 at 8 p.m.

Sundays May 20 & 27 and July 3  at 8 p.m.  

Other dates and Itinerant locations: 

May 13 June 3 @ HOPE Farmer’s Market Gallery, 414 Waller Street, 1:30 p.m.(click for map)

Friday June 1 @ Huston-Tillotson University, Agard-Lovinggood Hall, 900 Chicon Street at E. 7th, 8 p.m.

Length: about 1 hour, 15 minutesFree and open to the public; donations accepted 

www.palindrometheatre.com

To kick off our third season, and first as Austin’s donation-based public theatre, Palindrome is taking Nobel Laureate Dario Fo’s incendiary political black comedy to the streets. Featuring a new edit and updated political commentary by Palindrome’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn, this 20th century classic redefined contemporary Italian theatre when it appeared in 1970s Milan, taking aim at the real-life incident of a man killed during police interrogation.

Banned from many theaters during its initial run but seen by nearly half a million people in its first year alone in soccer stadiums, bars, and street alleys, Accidental Death of an Anarchist explores the fear mongering prevalent in a capitalist system that encourages mistrust and exacerbates fear between certain segments of the civilian population and the police force that serves it. Palindrome is using the commentary at work in the comedy for public discussion of Austin’s own recent rash of lethal force slayings against our police force and by our police force in the name of public safety.

Click to view cast photo at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Auditions for All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Palindrome Theatre, February 27 and March 1

Palindrome Theatre is looking to cast males and females ages 25-45 for our upcoming production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

Auditions will be held on Monday and Thursday, February 27 and March 1, from 7 -10 p.m. at the State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701 (click for map).

This is a non-Equity and EMC call. Please prepare 2-4 minutes of text in relevant style. The show will run from July-August 2012 and rehearsals will commence in May 2012. Actors will be paid a stipend of $300+.

Please email palindrometheatreco@gmail.com by Sunday, February 26 with your preferred audition day and time slot to be placed in an audition group. Be prepared to be available for at least an hour and a half. Allow 24 hours for confirmation of your audition slot. Thank you.

Hedda Gabler (for export), Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, July 28-30,

by Michael Meigs

Austin's youngish Palindrome Theatre is on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to perform their new, 90-minute non-stop Hedda Gabler every afternoon from August 5 to 29, except for Wednesdays. Outside those office hours the six-member cast and associates will be free to immerse themselves in the largest international arts event around, now in its 74th year. Last year, for example, Edinburgh offered 2,453 different shows staging 40,254 performances by 21,148 performers in 259 venues.

That's a theatre artist's dream, but it doesn't come cheap. Artistic directors Nigel O'Hearn and Kate Eminger have raised all but about $3000 of the costs, including travel, staging costs and artists' compensation. The company is making a last push this weekend in Austin, staging the export version at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre Thursday - Saturday, July 28 - 30. You can purchase your $25 fundraiser ticket on-line at their website.

Palindrome staged O'Hearn's first reworking of Ibsen's piece in February and March at the Blue Theatre and received positive reviews from ALTcom and others. The ALT review provides links to pieces by Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle and by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com. Preparing to write this article, I discovered that Palindrome had put together a two-minute video promo featuring a key scene and several "pull quotes," including my own comment, "Robin Grace Thompson gives us a Hedda who is burning with psychic energy. She is deliberate and wicked." (Click to view the video at Vimeo.com.)

Attending a rehearsal of the export version of Hedda Gabler last week, I found a piece recrafted both by O'Hearn and by the ensemble, retaining the strong central core of Thompson as Hedda and Chase Crossno as Thea, the runaway wife who follows Hedda's former lover. Jacqueline Harper plays the servant Berthe, a role considerably strengthened. Nathan Osborn, who played the dissolute, desperate Einar Lövberg, has now assumed the role of George Tesman, Hedda's husband of six months.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, July 28 - 30

Click to read ALT review of July 25

Received directly:

PALINDROME THEATRE GOES INTERNATIONAL: HEDDA GABLER

Austin Preview at the Salvage Vanguard

July 28 - 30

of the piece to be presented at Theatre at the Fringe, Edinburgh, Scotland

Ticket Price: $25+ fundraising price

Box office Phone: 512-939-6829

Website: www.palindrometheatre.com

Co-Produced with Remarkable Arts of Edinburgh, Scotland, Palindrome has been selected to bring its new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn to the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe for a full run this August.

Palindrome will be presenting a reimagined, revised 90min version of their critically acclaimed production, with new, original overture, for 3 farewell performances only, to be followed by a reception each evening.

Featuring Robin Grace Thompson, Nathan Osburn, Chase Crossno, Jude Hickey, Nigel O’Hearn and Jackie Harper.

Hedda Gabler will be running in Edinburgh at The Hill Street Theater August 5-29, every day at 2 p.m.

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre, February 18 - March 13

Received directly:

HENRIK IBSEN’S

HEDDA GABLER

New adaptation by Palindrome Theatre’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn

Feb. 18^th-Mar. 13^th, Thursday-Saturday 8 pm, Sundays 5 pm

The Blue Theater, 916 Springdale (click for map)

Ticket Price: $20 general admission, $12 -25/65+

512-939-6829 - www.palindrometheatre.com

To open our second season, Palindrome offers the internationally acclaimed Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in a new adaptation by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn. Directed by Kate Eminger and featuring Robin Grace Thompson, Chase Crossno, Aaron Alexander, Nathan Osburn, Rommel Sulit, Rachel McGinnis, and Jackie Harper, this world premiere will run for four weeks only.

Upcoming: Dance Your Debt Off marathon, Palindrome Theatre, January 7

Received directly:

DANCE YOUR DEBT OFF

A DANCE ENDURANCE COMPETITION FT. $500 PRIZE

Presented by Palindrome Theatre

at The Blue Theater, 916 Springdale 78702. Just behind the Blue Hanger Goodwill

Friday, Jan. 7- doors/registration @ 7, DANCING BEGINS 8 pm (and goes until there's a winner)
Ticket Price: $20 competition ticket, $15 non-competitive guest. *must be 21+
Box Office phone and website: 512-939-6829, www.palindrometheatre.com


Palindrome Theatre is hosting its first annual dance endurance competition, for you, lovely people of Austin!

Here's an opportunity, FOR THE PRICE OF ONLY $20:
-Fill yourself on FREE HOMESLICE PIZZA
-Drink yourself on FREE BEER
-And compete to win our $500 CASH PRIZE, as well as other wonderful prizes and giveaways from local joints.

Special Guest Emcee Matt Hines of The Eastern Sea to keep the beats fresh and the jams hot, as well as the competition moving, while judges will watch your every move to make sure we have a fair competition- so come try your hand (or those feet), and see if you can swing into 2011 with style, DEBT FREE.
MUST BE 21 AND UP!
For Rules & To register, visit www.palindrometheatre.com, or call 512-939-6829.
*those looking to just eat some food and wet their whistle, or come late and leave before the cryin's started and dance some without all the hullabaloo, be our guests for $15.

Upcoming: Reading of New Text for Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, December 6

Received directly from

ONE NIGHT ONLY- PUBLIC READING of

HENRIK IBSEN’S HEDDA GABLER

New adaptation by Palindrome Theatre’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn

Monday Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Hyde Park Theatr, Guadalupe & 43rd St.

Free. Donations accepted

www.palindrometheatre.com

Please join us for a preview of the first play of our second season- Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler with a new adaptation by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn- world premiere opening February 2011 at The Blue Theater.

The reading will be of the first two acts of the new material which has never before been seen in public.

Reading features Robin Grace Thompson, Chase Crossno, Bernadette Nason, Nathan Osburn, Gabe Luna, Kim Adams, and Harvey Guion (with playwright reading stage directions and scowling).

Drinks to be served, discussion to be had. Approx 2 hrs.

[image adapted from image at www.wfu.edu]

At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Edward Albee once commented, "If you can sum a play in one sentence, that's how long the play should be." That's a fine bon mot and a cutting challenge to all who try to work in the odd art form of the theatre review.

Albee has challenged and puzzled the public, the theatre community and academics since The Zoo Story, the second half of this theatre evening, first took the stage in Berlin 51 years ago. I have on my desk the Austin Public Library's copy of the Prentice-Hall collection of essays on Albee, published in 1975, where writers try to deal with The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and other pieces written in the opening decades of the playwright's career.

I remember vividly reading The Zoo Story, probably for a university class back in the late 1960's -- when it was new, so to speak, and path-breaking, a glimpse beyond the comfortable categories of American drama. It's interesting that a couple of the writers in the 1975 compendium -- which I've glanced at but not read attentively -- seek to interpret the piece through the lens of the Theatre of the Absurd. Martin Esslin, inventor of the term, in fact faults Albee for not pushing the situation to absurdity, for not taking the rant and ultimately the threats of a deranged New Yorker far enough.

But that was the fascination of the piece: that its poetic intensity of horror was completely plausible. Certainly to those us in the hinterlands, and probably even more so to New Yorkers, even in the comfortable late 1950's. Hasn't the poetry of threat and violence been played out over and over again in the past 50 years, distilled and dealt out by the media in doses that make The Zoo Story seem simple and sensible by comparison?

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Received directly:

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT:

AUSTIN PREMIERE OF EDWARD ALBEE’S

AT HOME AT THE ZOO

Palindrome Theatre’s Final Production of Their Inaugural Season

Directed by Austin Sheffield and featuring Jude Hickey, Robin Grace Thompson, and Nigel O’Hearn, the production will run for 13 performances only!

Nov. 5 – Nov. 21 Thur.–Sat. 8pm, Sun. 5pm*.

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo. Just south of E. 7^th, off Robert T. Martinez

Ticket Price: $15-$30 sliding-scale general admission, $10 25-and-under, 60-and-over.

Box Office phone and website: 512-939-6829, www.palindrometheatre.com

for mature audiences

Capping their first season, Palindrome Theatre is bringing to Austin for the first time Edward Albee’s At Home At The Zoo, a completion of America’s greatest living playwright’s very first play, 1958’s The Zoo Story.

Expanded earlier this decade from the original 1958 version, At Home At The Zoo is a delicately startling look at strangers at home and at the zoo, the relationship of people and animals, people as animals, and the longing for connection in a frighteningly solitary life.

Very funny stuff!

*Community Days - in an effort to fulfill our mission of working to make theatre a more accessible social and spiritual necessity, Mon. and Tue. Nov. 15 and 16 will be community days, with hearing and visually impaired performances, and $7 tickets for all!

Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Palindrome Theatre at the Larry L. King Stage of Austin Playhouse, January 15 - 31

Palindrome Theatre takes you right out to the edge of the abyss with Samuel Beckett's Endgame: ninety minutes at the end of the world with four arresting characters who wrap up existence and the fitful light of human life.

Endgame is grim, yes, but it's blazingly comic at times, as well. In the shadows of this basement room the ancient Nell shares a memory with her foolish senescent husband Nagg. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But . . . . Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more."

Those who believe in theatre, theatre as a gateway to meaning and theatre as a means of capturing the human dilemma, will need to see this piece. The subtlety and complexity of the text and the delivery will move them deeply.

Read more and see images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images: Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Palindrome Theatre at the Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Stage, January 15 - 31

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, January 21

Received directly: production images by director Kate Eminger.

Palindrome Theatre's initial production is
Samuel Beckett's

Endgame

Directed by Kate Eminger
Featuring Gabriel Luna, Jarrett King, Maarouf Naboulsi, and Helyn Messenger

Palindrome Theatre will produce Endgame by Irish Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett for 13 performances only. Join in a celebration of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and his hilariously heartbreaking one-act regarding family, servitude, love, and inevitable decay.

January 15 - 31, Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
at the Larry L. King Theatre at Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress (behind the watertower).
General admission, $20 -- students, $15. Call: 512-786-1939 for reservations.

See more images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ongoing: Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Palindrome Theatre at Austin Playhouse's Larry L. King Theatre, January 15 - 31

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, January 21

Received directly:

Limited Engagement

Samuel Beckett's
ENDGAME

Palindrome Theatre’s Inaugural Production
Directed by Kate Eminger
Featuring Gabriel Luna, Jarrett King, Maarouf Naboulsi, and Helyn Messenger

Palindrome Theatre will produce Endgame by Irish Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett for 13 performances only. Join in a celebration of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and his hilariously heartbreaking one-act regarding family, servitude, love, and inevitable decay.

January 15 -3 1, Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
at the Larry L. King Theatre at Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress.
General admission, $20 -- students, $15. Call: 512-786-1939 for reservations.

[ALT notes: The text of Endgame is available online at www. samuel-beckett.net; the image above, from the Irish Repertory Theatre, is taken from www.samuel-beckett.net.]