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.

The Man Who Planted Trees, adapted by Katherine Craft from a story by Jean Giono, The Exchange Artists at Sparky Pocket Park, October 4 - 20

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


The story of how Sparky Pocket Park on Grooms St. in central Austin came to exist is a drama all by itself, involving City departments and neighborhood voters. But that story is for another time; I went there on this chilly October evening to see the site-specific work by the Exchange Artists, The Man Who Planted Trees, based on a story by the French writer Jean Giono. I certainly was not disappointed in my expectations.

The performers seemed to use every square inch of the park as well as the inside of the maintenance building in the park’s center. Riding on the impressive talents and skill of actor Rommel Sulit, the production turned the tiny half-block pocket park into an Alpine département of France, complete with forests, rocks, waters and wastelands.

Gene Menger (photo: Erica Nix)

The play is plain and simple. A traveler in the Alps encounters an old peasant who does nothing in life but plant trees, oaks specifically. Working through the setbacks and limitations of two world wars, the planter at the end of his life leaves a forest legacy comparable perhaps to the creative accomplishments of God, but far surpassing the achievement of almost every other human being.

The work is current in its theme and emblematic of the 21^st century’s Green movement, and it gains greater currency by depicting the threats and effects of war. In so doing, the play points to our time’s continual teetering on the brink of total war. We seem incapable of learning what last century’s peasants, innocent of education, knew instinctively.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .