Robert Faires Outlines FronteraFest BRING YOUR OWN VENUE performances, January, 2014

Change of Venue

This year, FronteraFest is takin' it to the streets – and a chapel, a bookstore, a home ...

By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 10, 2014


Come January every year, FronteraFest fans begin flocking toward Hyde Park Theatre and Salvage Vanguard Theater with the instinctive surety of swallows winging their way back to Capistrano. And why not? With HPT serving as the site of the Short Fringe for the performance jamboree's full 21-year history and SVT being a home base for Long Fringe shows for the last five fests, audiences have been conditioned to expect their annual fix of taking-a-risk, skirting-the-edge, what-in-sweet-heaven-was-that theatrics in those specific venues. But this year, regulars who rely on that reflex to get them to all of the festival's offerings risk missing some of the more intriguing projects on the schedule.


Now, nothing's happened to FFest's traditional stages (see "FronteraFest: The Basics" , but the number of entries in the category dubbed BYOV ("Bring Your Own Venue") is considerably higher than usual. Where most FronteraFests see one or two projects mounted somewhere other than SVT, the 2014 festival has six – and that isn't counting Mi Casa Es Su Teatro, the independently curated day of site-specific short pieces that's been part of FFest for more than 15 years. You can take your pick of a church chapel, a SoCo sidewalk, a dance studio, a bookstore, a warehouse, or a writer's residence for a performance adventure.

Read more at the Austin Chronicle on-line, including capsule descriptions of BYOB performances

Robert Faires' 15 Favorites in 2013 Austin Theatre, Austin Chronicle

Top 10 Reasons I Stayed in Love With Theatre in 2013


Austin thespians played for keeps, with boundless commitment and imagination, in the year's most memorable theatre


By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 3, 2014


1) 'SLIP RIVER' (UT Dept. of Theatre & Dance/Cohen New Works Festival) Spiriting its audience beneath the Payne Theatre, past clotheslines and through butcher-paper forests, feeding it cornbread muffins, and leaving it onstage in a festive dance party, this exhilaratingly theatrical mash-up of 19th century novels and modern pop – its orphan hero chases freedom along an "underground railroad" run by Beyoncé! – packed more imagination, adventure, and wit into half an hour than most plays do in three times that.


2) 'RICHARD III' (Texas State University Dept. of Theatre & Dance) The Bard's diabolical monarch as Third World despot, with Eugene Lee channeling Idi Amin in his brutal grasp for the crown. The entire cast seemed caught in Richard's fearsome grip, and chilling images of mayhem from director Chuck Ney kept us in dread throughout. 

3) 'I AM THE MACHINE GUNNER' (Breaking String Theatre) Lives during wartime – a mob thug in modern Moscow and a soldier on the front lines of World War II – rendered in harrowing detail by playwright Yury Klavdiev and conjured with hallucinatory power by Joey Hood, fluidly sliding between past and present while maintaining a white-hot intensity.


4) 'THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS' (Capital T Theatre) Who knew that fusty old mystic William Blake could inspire such carnal passion, such hilarity, and such theatrical bliss? A rapturous union of script, director, and actors, teeming with intelligence and craft.


5) 'THE POISON SQUAD' (The Duplicates) This inquiry into the origins of food-safety testing proved, for epicures of performance, a feast – steeped in ingenuity and collaborative energy, and liberally seasoned with playfulness.


6) 'WATCH ME FALL' (Action Hero/Fusebox Festival) The British team's cheap-theatre replays of daredevil stunts (e.g., a bike jumping over bottles of fizzing Coke) were a hoot, but seeded within them were disturbing images that also dared us to confront our cultural lust for danger and mob mentality.


7) 'THE EDGE OF PEACE' (UT Dept. of Theatre & Dance) Suzan Zeder's valedictory effort at UT wove threads from her 30 years of playwriting into a deeply felt drama of community, growing up, and moving on. A fitting farewell to her Mother Hicks characters and the year's most artfully crafted script.


8) 'TRU'/'THIS WONDERFUL LIFE' (Zach Theatre) Two solo shows, both performed in the cozy Whisenhunt, both by actors of prodigious gifts giving themselves over completely to their subjects: Jaston Williams to Truman Capote, his portrait deepened by time and made even more poignant; Martin Burke to It's a Wonderful Life, embodying the film's characters with rare honesty and embracing its message with sincerity.


9) 'ADAM SULTAN' (Physical Plant) We all died at the hands of playwrights Steve Moore and Zeb West in this extraordinary meditation on mortality and community. It imagined one man's efforts to memorialize Austin's theatre artists as they pass over time and did so with humor and grace.


10) 'ORDINARY PEEPHOLE: THE SONGS OF DICK PRICE' (Rubber Repertory) A night around the old piano in the living room – literally, as an exuberant ensemble escorted us through a batch of this local songwriter's most personal tunes as we sat in a Hyde Park living room. Sheer delight.


Honorable Mentions:


'THE BOOK OF MORMON' (Broadway in Austin/Texas Performing Arts)

'QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT' (Vortex Repertory Company)

'HOLIER THAN THOU' (Poison Apple Initiative)

'REEFER MADNESS' (Doctuh Mistuh Productions)

'BUTT KAPINSKI: WE ARE THE DARK' (Deanna Fleysher/Institution Theater)

Robert Faires Reviews Untitled Zombie Hamburger Musical at University of Texas

All Over Creation

Nativity

A new musical by the 'Urinetown' team is born on the 40 Acres, and the chorus line craves bra-a-ains

By Robert Faires, Fri., Dec. 13, 2013

'Tis the season when much attention is given to what is born – the Son of Heaven, on Earth as man; the sun in heaven, returning with spring – but I didn't expect this year's births to include singing and dancing zombies.

Of course, really, who does expect singing and dancing zombies, at any time of year? In this instance, perhaps only their creators: playwright Greg Kotis and composer Mark Hollmann, whose names may ring a bell thanks to a keen little show they made a dozen years ago, Urinetown: The Musical. In the time since that satirical sensation snagged three Tony Awards (Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Direction of a Musical for University of Texas alum John Rando), it has become a favorite on the college and high school theatre circuits and its writers have gone on to celebrate in song and drama the origin of life on the ocean floor (Yeast Nation [the triumph of life]) and the making of a one-man musical vehicle for Bush 43 Attorney General John Ashcroft (Eat the Taste). Once you've carved out niches in the American musical theatre for those topics, what's left to tackle but the living dead?

In truth, the team had been approached about writing a musical history of the hamburger for a theatre company that, Kotis says, hoped such a work would draw backing from the fast-food industry. Kotis responded with a fast-food-related musical idea that he and Hollmann had pitched for a movie: A chain called Chicken Hutt has created a new sandwich that, unfortunately, turns those who eat it into the shambling, brain-craving undead. While Kotis openly admitted that the show wouldn't inspire anyone in the industry to throw money at it, True Love Productions went ahead and commissioned Kotis and Hollmann to write it.

Read more at Austin Chronicle. . .

Robert Faires Interview: Murder Ballad Murder Mystery Saloon Tour

 



'Murder Ballad Murder Mystery'

Paper Chairs resurrects its hit musical as portable, hit-and-run bar entertainment
 
By Robert Faires, Fri., Nov. 15, 2013

Usually, when a play reaches the end of its run, it's dead, departed, gone with the wind. Once in a while, though, a show gets pulled back from oblivion, and such is the case with Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, the backwoods musical by Elizabeth Doss (book) and Mark Stewart (score) that scored critical raves and multiple awards when it premiered in 2009. Now, like the ghost-faced killers who populate its swampy setting, it once more walks among us – only this time the show won't be haunting a theatre as it did in its original co-production by Tutto Theatre and Vortex Repertory Company, and it won't be the full-length, site-specific spectacle seen before. Paper Chairs, the company that grew out of that staging, has reconceived the show as a shorter, portable production to be presented in saloons. The new incarnation will debut at three local watering holes, as well as one in New Orleans (for the New Orleans Fringe Festival), and one in Marfa. The cast has been whittled down to eight characters, and director Keri Boyd and designer Lisa Laratta have worked to make the space adaptable to any environment. Playwright/performer Doss explains the show's second life in an email exchange.

Click to read interview at the Austin Chronicle

Fixing King John by Kirk Lynn, Rude Mechanicals at the Off-Shoot, November 7 - 24, 2013

Cast of Fixing King John (photo: Bret Brookshire)

by Michael Meigs

Kirk Lynn's script isn't Shakespeare. Fixing King John is a tight, fast story with dialogue full of fucking obscenities, one suited not for PBS but maybe to HBO.

E. Jason Liebrecht creates King John as an edgy, angry, powerful capo with the force of Jimmy Cagney and the morals of Tony Soprano.

Director Madge Darlington puts the Rude Mechs' staging into the confined space of their Off-Shoot rehearsal studio behind the Off-Center at 2211A Hidalgo Street in Austin. Audience members -- no, make that spectators, practically participants -- arrive to find the big room already milling with cast members in casual contemporary dress. 

The seating is equally casual around the central space, which has the feel of a gym or a space for a cage fight. Risers on two sides of it feature a couple of high-placed rows of chairs for conventional seating with wide platforms below them, and across the playing space are wooden towers with plywood platforms to accommodate watchers. It's a makeshift settle-where-you-wish assemblage directly reminiscent of the Mechs' re-staging of Dionysus in 69 here in 2009 and 2012.

Lynn's reworking of the little-read (and less-acted) Shakespeare hjistory play, written about 1590 but not mentioned in contemporary accounts or published until the 1623 Folio, is a drastic but coherent restructuring. He reduces a cast of 24 characters to one of 10, and he so reworks relations and plot elements that even if you'd actually read this neglected work you might not recognize it.

And the language! Though Lynn's first draft methodically rendered the original verse into pungent contemporary speech, his revisions and remakings fixed it so parallelisms all but disappeared. Take this example, from the opening scene:

King John by William Shakespeare

Fixing King John by Kirk Lynn

Act I, Scene I, lines 1-25 CHATILLON Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geffrey’s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories, To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put the same into young Arthur’s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign. KING JOHN. What follows if we disallow of this? CHAT. The proud control of fierce and bloody war, To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld. K. JOHN. Here have we war for war and blood for blood, Controlment for controlment: so answer France. CHAT. Then take my King’s defiance from my mouth, The farthest limit of my embassy. K. JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace. Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; For ere thou canst report, I will be there; The thunder of my cannon shall be heard. So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, And sullen presage of your own decay. An honorable conduct let him have. Pembroke, look to’t. Farewell, Chatillion. Exeunt Chatillion and Pembroke.

Act I, Scene I Everything you see is KING JOHN'S castle. And lookit,KING JOHN is on his throne. He looks gooood. He's thehome team along with his mom, QUEEN ELINOR, and PEMBROKE, and anyone else you see. Anyone except that slick DAUPHIN, who's on a visit from France. [. . . skipping to pg 2, from line 5] DAUPHIN [. . .] my father sent me here to tell you this:Step aside! Stop pretending to be the great King of England, because really—truly it’s your nephew, Arfur, who has the most reason to pretend that game. Whoop! We're telling you to step aside and let Arfur be the next King - of England, Ireland, Poitiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and all that. All that. And now forget I was the King of France, pretending - and now pretend I’m every single one of the citizens who live in every single one of those shitholes in your kingdom I just listed, paying taxes, sleeping, making love on one another, dying and all that and listen as we say to you: Take off your hat. Take off your hat and put it on Arfur’s head. We’ll all be happier when you do. KING JOHN If Arfur wants my crown he’s gonna hafta come back from the grave and chop off my head to get it, ‘cause I’ll kill a motherfucker today just for scheduling a thought like that tomorrow. Fuck Arfur. Tell Philip that. Then what? DAUPHIN Total fucking all-out war. Whoop, whoop! And it’s not just gonna be people dressed in high fashion from France coming at you with army swords. No. Cuz we’re not trying to take the throne from England. We’re just trying to give it to the best English guy for the job. So you’re gonna have people attacking you that dress like you, and talk like you, and look like you, and cousins, and nephews, and sisters, and anybody who ever disagreed with a tax, or a law, or a decree they didn’t like coming after you. So you can see, that’s a hard fucking war to win. KING JOHN All right. You tell France I just said, ‘All right.’ What’s that in French? Just to say, ‘Great. Let’s do it. Fuck you. No big deal.’ I ain’t afraid to kill French people. I ain’t afraid to kill ANYBODY that comes after me. Say that to Philip. Like, no big deal. All right. What’s that in French? Like, ‘No biggie.’ You gotta a phrase for that? DAUPHIN Look in my mouth. You imagine you’re a great King? You got a good imagination. Look in my mouth and see my king’s response pouring out at you like a sewer. The nastiest shit you can imagine just pumping from my heart, up outta my mouth all over your stupid costume and your fake throne and filling up this fucking wayside inn you call a castle till you drown in our bile. Fuck you, too. KING JOHN I want you outta my country quick like lightning, and by the time you get home to your little fucking poodle farm you’re gonna hear the thunder of my cannons blowing up your home, your mom, your dad, your brothers and sisters, your dog. BOOM. You’re like the tip of the sword I’m gonna put in King Philip's mouth and keep pushing ‘til he feels the hilt of it on his chin. Pembroke? PEMBROKE Well said. KING JOHN Shut up, Pembroke. I'm gonna trust you with this snake.Make sure he gets aimed straight back to France, as quick as can be. And Dauphin? Remember what I said. 'Let’s do it. Fuck you. No big deal.' See you later, DAUPHIN. See you later, PEMBROKE.

Lynn describes his composition process in a thoughtful note in the program, and on their website the Mechs in their characteristic irreverent, ironic style state, "In some ways, we're offering you a more authentic experience of what a new Shakespeare play might be like than an actual Shakespeare play. In other ways, not so much." After all, Elizabethan playwrights borrowed liberally from one another and freely reworked earlier works; G.B. Harrison identifies Shakespeare's source as a two-part anonymous work printed in 1591 titled The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England and reprinted in 1611 with the addition of the words 'Written by W. Sh.' -- "a dishonest attempt to pass it off as Shakespeare's work." (Maybe much of it was Shakespeare's work, considering that Harrison writes at length about the uneven quality of the accepted text of King John.)

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Robert Faires Profiles Mark Pickell and Capital T Theatre's 'There Is A Happiness That Morning Is' by Mickle Maher, October 31, 2013

Excerpt from Robert Faires' feature:

He Happy Is

For Mark Pickell, Capital T Theatre is a source of joy

 

By Robert Faires, October 31, 2013

Mark Pickell (photo:  Bret Brookshire)

[ . . . . ] "This is going to sound weird," offers [Katherine] Catmull, [lead in Capital T Theatre's current production There Is A Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher,] "but I think what characterizes Cap T shows is an odd but sort of luscious combination of 1) humor, often quite black humor; 2) sex!; and 3) a real interest in and thoughtfulness about big ideas – ideas about life, death, love, families, society, etc."

Pickell himself breaks it down even more simply: "One constant throughout all the plays that I produce is that they're smart, that they challenge the audience to use their brains a little bit. And they're entertaining. If you had to nail me down for the two things that I really enjoy, it's being smart and entertaining at the same time." That's led him most often to works that can't be labeled with either a frowning or a smiling mask, "plays that don't say, 'I'm just a comedy,' or 'I'm just a drama.' That in-between ground of dark comedies is one I really appreciate. And so far, I think our audiences have appreciated that mix."

Webster, who's helped Pickell's company create its artistic home at Hyde Park Theatre, will testify to that, as he's had to squeeze more and more patrons – including many of his regulars – into Cap T's shows. "Capital T has been a good fit at HPT for several reasons," he writes. "Number one is probably that Mark's taste in plays and my taste in plays are very similar. Similar but not identical. The shows he produces appeal to HPT audiences, and the number of our regular audience members who have become Capital T regulars has grown steadily over the past six years. Capital T and Mark have also been great for HPT. HPT audiences have come to expect smart scripts, excellent direction, and strong performances from Mark and Capital T. And HPT productions have gotten new audience members from Mark's regular patrons."

Pickell recognizes that his company's success likely wouldn't have come as quickly or steadily as it did without Webster's support and the symbiosis between Cap T and HPT. "I owe tons of gratitude and mentorship to Ken," he says. "Hyde Park, which is, in all actuality, this terrible little space, is amazing and great, and people love to see theatre there. They associate it with quality work and newer plays, newer playwrights, newer thoughts and ideas. Ken comes across as this gruff guy, but he's been a very loving mentor to my company and me."

Read full feature at the Austin Chronicle on-line

Playwright Christopher Durang Attends Q & A and Performances of his Adrift in Macao, Texas State University

Christopher Durang (photo via Austin Chronicle)

 

 

Christopher Durang

Tony-winning playwright takes up residence at Texas State

by Robert Faires, October 3, 2013

[. . .] Adrift in Macao, a 2007 musical for which the playwright penned the book and lyrics, is being mounted by the Texas State University Department of Theatre and Dance, and the author will be in San Marcos to see it. Indeed, he and his partner of 26 years, John Augustine – a widely produced and very funny dramatist in his own right – will be on hand as playwrights-in-residence, thanks to the efforts of Kaitlin Hopkins, head of the musical theatre program at Texas State and an old friend of Durang's, with support from the Bowman Guest Artist Series.

The residency is obviously for the benefit of the department's students, and they'll have the chance to take a master class on the audition process with both authors, but Texas State is creating ample opportunities for the larger community to take advantage of it. After the evening performances of Adrift in Macao Friday and Saturday, Durang will join the cast for a talk-back moderated by Hopkins, who directed the production. And Saturday afternoon, a pair of programs involving the two writers will be open to the public – one focusing on Durang and his career, the other a roundtable discussion about collaboration featuring Durang and Augustine[. . . .]

Saturday, Oct. 12

"A Conversation With Christopher Durang" – 1-2 p.m.

Durang will field questions from head of playwriting Jim Price and the audience, and will also read from his own work.

"Collaboration: The Process" – 2:30-4pm

Durang and John Augustine will join students in Texas State's playwriting and directing programs for a roundtable discussion about the collaborative process between writer and director, and how it differs when the play is in development and when it's being fully produced. MFA directing associate professor Deb Alley will moderate.

Click to read full article at the Austin Chronicle

---

Adrift in Macao runs Oct. 8-13, Tuesday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m;. Sunday, 2 & 7:30 p.m., at University Mainstage Theatre, 430 Moon, Texas State campus in San Marcos. For more information, call 512/245-2204 or visit www.txstatepresents.com.

Seminar: What Makes Austin Theatre Unique?, September 6, 2013

With a tip of the hat to Ia Ensterä:

What makes Austin theatre unique?
An Austin Theatre Symposium

The Brockett Center at the University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance, American Theatre Archive Project, and the ZACH Theatre invite you to join us on

Friday, September 6th from 7-9 p.m.
at ZACH’s Kleberg stage (1510 Toomey Road, Austin, TX 78704)

The symposium will focus on the characteristics, history, and future of theatre in Austin. The discussion will include remarks from Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle and a roundtable with members of the Austin theatre community, including the Rude Mechanicals, ZACH theatre, and Rupert Reyes from Teatro Vivo. Renowned theatre historian, Dr. Charlotte Canning of the University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance will moderate the conversation. The symposium will launch a weekend-long effort to begin the process of archiving Austin theatre materials under the guidance of the American Theatre Archive Project.

The event is free and open to the public.

For questions about this event, please contact Russ Dembin at the UT Department of Theatre and Dance: rdembin@utexas.edu.

(Click to go to AustinLiveTheatre front page)

POEMS FOR PEACE, Subud International Cultural Association at Zach Theatre, September 21, 2013

POEMS FOR PEACE

for International Peace Day

Saturday, September 21, 2013, 12:30 p.m.

Zach Theatre Kleberg Stage
free admission

Austin-based Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) invites the entire Austin community — poetry groups, poetry teachers, poetry lovers, singers, dancers, artists, actors, pipers, players and friends to create and share POEMS FOR PEACE in honor of Peace Day, Saturday, September 21, 2013. 

SICA is part of a global coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with UK’s Peace One Day to organize activities celebrating peace and nonviolence around the world on Peace Day. Over 600 million people will be aware of Peace Day this year and there will be a 24 hour celebration for Peace Day 2013 at The Hague —headlined by Carlinhos Brown, Miguel Bosé, The Feeling and others from around the globe. SICA will be live-streaming the event. 

Austin’s own and former Executive Director of the Austin Creative Alliance, Latifah Taormina, spearheaded the Poems for Peace global initiative last year. Now, the celebration culminates in Austin with veteran Austin performers Robert Faires, Kathy Catmull, Steve Moore, and Barbara Chisholm among several others, sharing poems they love at a FREE event Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 12:30 pm at Zachary Scott Theatre’s Kleberg Stage (1401 West Riverside Drive, Austin, 78704). The event is free of charge to the public.

Peace One Day’s theme for this year’s Peace Day is “Who are you going to make peace with?” Taormina explains, “Maybe that begins with oneself, with forgiveness of ourselves and others, and from there we can begin to feel the peace inside we can share with others.”


Austinites are being called to action by participating in, or coordinating, a Poems for Peace event, which can be as simple as reciting poetry in one’s home. People can recite, write, sing and create poetry through flash mobs, poetry readings, parties, slams,performances, workshops, exhibits, classes, concerts, games and love-notes in honor of Peace Day. Poetry can be found even in a child’s scribbling their favorite rhyme on the sidewalk with chalk. Participants are encouraged to document and share their efforts on the Poems for Peace website (www.poems-for-peace.org) or Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PoemsForPeaceOneDay. There are also past examples of creative events from around the world, on the website.


“This is about actively sharing one’s love of peace through poetry.” says Latifah Taormina, SICA’s Board President. “Poems live in our music, our holy books and in our hearts. Poems for Peace is an invitation to connect to that place inside us all and share your favorite poems — wherever you are — on Peace Day.”


SICA is proud to be part of this global initiative for peace which gives everyone an opportunity to share good things with friends and neighbors in a powerful and positive way.


www.facebook.com/poemsForPeaceOneDay -- http://twitter.com/Poems4peace -- http://www.poems-for-peace.org

About Peace One Day Peace One Day began in 1999 as a cease fire initiative in Afghanistan to allow health workers to safely get to children to treat them on that day. In 2001 Peace One Day’s efforts were rewarded when the United Nations unanimously adopted a new resolution to declare its International Day of Peace (“Peace Day”) as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. http://peaceoneday.org

About Peace Day – September 21st The International Day of Peace, a.k.a. “Peace Day,” was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has enthusiastically endorsed Peace One Day’s initiative and its global coalition, and encourages all people everywhere to participate in Peace Day, September 21, 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeAOxW7O9oE

About The Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) The Subud International Cultural Association (SICA) is a nonprofit organization providing programs and services to individuals and organizations working in the fields of art, culture, and creativity for the development of human values across all fields of human endeavor. SICA believes the development of individual talent is critical to building love and respect among people everywhere. SICA was begun by members of the World Subud Association in 1983. http://www.subud-sica.org

Robert Faires on Calling a Thing by its Name, Austin Chronicle, July 25, 2013

From Robert Faires' column All Over Creation, some lexical advice: what kind of town is Austin, anyway?

 

 

All Over Creation: What Do You Mean?

Shaking up the lexicon once in a while is necessary if we want to be clear

by Robert Faires

[ . . . . ] Robert Lynch, president and CEO of the national advocacy group Americans for the Arts, in his speech on cultural tourism at the Marchesa last Thursday[, . . . .] related an anecdote about meeting a couple of folks in an airport, and Austin came up. "Oh, we love Austin," they told him. "Great," he said. "When you're there, do you ever do anything related to the arts?" "No," they replied. "We never do the arts, because we're too busy doing music." 

Rimshot.

Sure, we know what those people meant, but it still points to this divide that persists between anything artistic in popular culture and what are called traditional fine-art disciplines, as if all those sounds being cranked out at clubs and concert halls every night couldn't be part of the arts. Naw, that stuff is church; what bands play is fun. If you want to know why I and a number of other advocates for arts and culture have been ramming the word "creative" down your throat as a surrogate for "artist" of late, that's the reason. After 30 years of culture wars in which the arts have been demonized as elitist and offensive, "artist" is too charged a term to be effective in most public discourse.

"Creative" as a noun – and sorry, lexicon cops, I gotta break the law on this one – not only dispenses with all that baggage, it's more reflective of our contemporary attitude toward who's engaged in artistic pursuits. It encompasses filmmakers, designers, craftspeople, chefs, knitters, mixologists, architects, slam poets, programmers, and, yes, singer-songwriters, as well as painters, playwrights, dancers, and classical musicians. 

What all these very different kinds of people do is creative, and these days they're much more likely to do it with one another – collaborating across discipline and form – than the artists of days past. If we want people in this city or elsewhere to gain a new appreciation for the expansiveness and pervasiveness of the arts in modern society and their profound impact in every corner of our culture – education, productivity, mental well-being, the economy, human values, entertainment – it behooves us to speak in terms that make our meaning as clear as possible. Sometimes that means setting aside favored words of old, words that in a sense point backward, in favor of words that are free of the barnacles of bad experiences and controversy, that can be heard without assumption, without prejudice, and point a way forward.

Read full text at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

Theatre Bars in Austin -- an essay by Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle

Robert Faires looks at selling alcohol at the Vortex Repertory, the Zach Theatre and Fusebox Festival







Drama & Tonic

Why Austin theatres are adding mixed drinks to the mix, offstage and on


By Robert Faires, Fri., July 5, 2013

"What'll you have?"


Used to be a simple enough question to answer at a local playhouse – I mean, if you had a thirst for an adult beverage, what were your options besides a can of Lone Star or whatever jug wine was cheapest at H-E-B that week? Now, though, you look behind the bar – not a concessions counter but a bona fide bar – and you face a range of lagers, ales, and varietals, and what's that lining the shelves with them? Liquor? Sure enough, enough vodkas and gins and bourbons and tequilas to drown the cast of Cats. Maybe you'd write this off as just another sign of the ritzification of Austin – the ousting of the cheap and casual (Pearl, Liberty Lunch) for the pricey and hipsterish (craft cocktails, SoCo) – but you're at one of the established indie theatres on the Eastside.

In March, the Vortex – yes, the home to all those ritual-theatre spectacles and homegrown musicals about fairy-tale heroines, goddesses, and elementals – obtained a liquor license for its in-house lounge, the Butterfly Bar, and now you can sip a mojito or martini with your next cyberopera. Theatre founder and Producing Artistic Director Bonnie Cullum has been working toward this for several years, steadily upgrading what was originally a bare-bones lobby area into a cozy venue for enjoying libations. The idea was to create a place where patrons might arrive early enough to have a few drinks before the show or stick around afterward instead of going somewhere else. If they liked it well enough, they might even show up on nights when there wasn't a play, just to wet their whistle. "Through the years, the challenge when people finish the show is always 'Where are we gonna go now?'" says Cullum. "If they could stay here, and the actors and audience could intersect and be able to talk about the show, and some of the people come in from Salvage Vanguard and some of the restaurants on Manor Road when they close, plus the neighbors, then it starts to be this great cross-section of people."

The plan appears to be working. Cullum reports a steady increase in business over the past year, such that the Butterfly now sees action all week long. "We're looking at this year's budget being double what it was two years ago, and that's primarily because of the bar," she says. "Now we have a barback every night, because it's that busy."


And with the bar part of the theatre, when the bar does well, so does the Vortex. "It's not like we're making a ton of money [from the bar]," Cullum allows, "but if it's enough to help support the infrastructure and pay the bills, then the overhead on the building doesn't have to come out of the box-office revenue."

Read more at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, April 11 - 21, 2013

by Michael Meigs


The delightful wit and frivolity of Oscar Wilde's conceit for this play and the immense seriousness his characters apply to it make The Importance of Being Earnest an enduring favorite. This is the fourth staging of the work in the region since I began writing about theatre nearly five years ago, and it never grows stale. Wilde is not Shakespeare, but his work has a similar vitality and adaptability. His razor-sharp teasing of a distinct sector of English society seems bright and new each time I see it, and the actors deliver it with refreshingly personal modulations.

Richard Robichaux casts this piece deftly and well, neatly pairing companion roles. As the devil-may-care Algernon and his slightly priggish friend Jack, Josean Rodriguez and Jon Richardson differ in aspect and attitude, but they're really alike as two peas in a pod (or perhaps as two babes in a bassinet, which is eventually more to the point). 

Josean Rodriguez

They've mastered both the vowels and the rhythms of that insufferable upper-class "U" talk and they radiate confidence and self-satisfaction, just as two promising young men-about-town should do. Faculty member Sheila Gordon is credited as dialect coach, and she's done a cracking good job with everyone on stage.

The eligible young ladies offer another finely modulated pair. Hannah Marie Fonder as Gwendolyn has the precisely controlled chill of the very best of society, and her ice-cream elegance plays well against Sophia Franzella as Cecily, the energetic young brunette on the estate who's bored with her German lessons and eminently ready to escape if only a suitor should come calling.

And though they're not paired in the play, Barbara Chisholm and Robert Faires are paired in real life, and they provide quite different comic portrayals that are informed, vivid and veresimilar. I've carried in memory for years the aged Dame Edith Evans' haughtily crushing portrayal of the no-nonsense Lady Bracknell in a filmed version, and I was intrigued to see how Chisholm would manage one of the most adamantly comic characters of the stage. The answer, in short, is that she carries it off superbly. This Lady Bracknell is no oldie and by no means is she sexless; Chisholm delivers the ferociousness, the conviction and the dame's completely unapologetic snobbishness. And she's attractive, to boot; the wonderfully towering chapeaux provided by costume designer T'Cie Mancuso are so much a part of the character that one imagines them completely inseparable from the personality.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, April 11 - 21, 2013

(St. Edward's University, 3001 South Congress Avenue)

presents

The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

directed by Richard Robichaux

April 11 - 21, 2013, 7:30 p.m. (Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.)

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, 3001 S. Congress Avenue (click for map)

Tickets: $20 Adults Advance ($15 Students, Seniors, SEU Community), $20 at the door; STUDENT DISCOUNT NIGHT: Friday, April 12: Student tickets $8 with ID. Available through the MMNT Box Office, 512.448.8484; Available online at http://www.stedwards.edu/theatre. Box Office Hours are M-F 1-5 p.m.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, the award-winning producing arm of the St. Edward’s University professional theatre training program, continues its 40^th anniversary season with The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, directed by Richard Robichaux, running April 11 - 21, 2013.

This glorious comedy of manners was the most popular play by the quintessential bad boy of his day. Join young suitors Algernon, Jack, Cecily and Gwendolyn as they negotiate mislaid babies, mistaken identities, secret engagements, baffled suitors, one overbearing mother and some of the wittiest wordplay ever tossed over afternoon tea. This delectable morsel of a play will delight your sprit and leave you laughing long after the curtain comes down. Featuring guest artists Barbara Chisholm as Lady Bracknell, Robert Faires as Dr. Chasuble and Irene White as Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest promises to be smart, silly and wicked fun.

"The Importance of Being Earnest” is the rare work of art that achieves perfection on its own terms. – The New York Times

About Mary Moody Northen Theatre Mary Moody Northen Theatre operates on a professional model and stands at the center of the St. Edward’s University Theatre Training Program. Through the Mary Moody Northen Theatre, students work alongside professional actors, directors and designers, explore all facets of theatrical production and earn points towards membership in Actor’s Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. MMNT operates under an AEA U/RTA contract and is a member of Theatre Communications Group. For more information, contact the theatre program at 512-448-8487 or visit us online at www.stedwards.edu/theatre.


About St. Edward's University St. Edward’s is a private, liberal arts Catholic university in the Holy Cross Tradition with more than 5,300 students. Located in Austin, Texas, with a network of partner universities around the world, St. Edward’s is a diverse community that offers undergraduate and graduate programs designed to inspire students with a global perspective. St. Edward's University has been recognized for ten consecutive years as one of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks in the top 20 of Best Regional Universities in the Western Region. St. Edward’s has also been recognized by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Opinion: Robert Faires' Top10 Theatrical Wonders of 2012, Austin Chronicle

In today's weekly Austin Chronicle:

 

Top 10 Theatrical Wonders of 2012

History plays with contemporary urgency and giddy surprises made the year memorable in theatre

By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 4, 2013


1) 'ROSE RAGE' (The Hidden Room Theatre) Shakespeare's left-for-dead histories of Henry VI charged to vital, absorbing life by director Beth Burns and the year's most vigorous, committed ensemble. Her Original Practices crew made arcane family feuds over the English crown as urgent as this season's high-stakes political battles and made four hours race by.

2) 'RAGTIME' (Zach Theatre) More than a showpiece for the new Topfer Theatre's bells and whistles, this deeply felt drama of humanity and history threaded together in a tapestry by turns tragic and inspirational said as much about us today as about Americans a century past.

3) BERNADETTE PETERS/BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL (Zach Theatre) Broadway royalty blessed Zach's Topfer Theatre in separate concerts with distinct characters – the queen's poised and glamorous, the king's informal and boisterous – but the same peerless musical-theatre artistry in this deliriously intimate space.

4) 'NOW NOW OH NOW' (Rude Mechanicals) A mind-tickling foray into the natures of beauty, society, evolution, and chance, with attendees teamed in quests, teased with puzzles, toasted with cordials, and treated to a series of giddy surprises.

5) 'SUPER NIGHT SHOT' (Fusebox Festival) Visiting troupe Gob Squad played tricksters along SoCo, drawing passersby into an improvised drama, captured in realtime on video, then screened on completion. Wicked fun.

6) 'THE ALIENS' (Hyde Park Theatre) A detailed portrait of friendship, etched in silences more than words. Beautifully acted, with a fearless Jude Hickey scratching 130 layers under his character's skin just by repeating "ladder."

7) 'JUBILEE' (Rubber Repertory) Watching this show felt rather like spying on endurance tests at a theatre camp, but its odd exercises also tapped some essence of drama in presenting the thrillingly unexpected and unpredictable.

8) 'BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON' (Doctuh Mistuh Productions) Screw the history books. This gloriously messy musical reveled in irreverence, ditching the same-old, same-old "Old Hickory" for an emo rock god, fiercely embodied by David Gallagher.

9) 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION' (Mary Moody Northen Theatre) Another exhilarating spin with director David Long and playwright Charles Mee, this time across the USA, circa midcentury, joyously celebrating and subverting those happy days and American values.

10) 'BOTTLED-IN-BOND: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF A THUG AS TOLD IN FIVE DRINKS' (Fusebox Festival) Patrons were drafted to act out a cornball melodrama of love among thieves, but who minded when served with such good humor, sweet theatricality, and intoxicating craft cocktails? As fun as audience participation gets.

Read at the Austin Chronicle on-line . . . 

Robert Faires Profiles the Zach's New Topfer Theatre, Austin Chronicle, October 4

Wheels of a Dream

With the long-awaited Topfer Theatre, Zach races full-throttle into the future

by Robert Faires, October 4, 2012

(image: Sandy Carson for the Austin Chronicle)

Yes, that's a car on the Karen Kuykendall Stage inside Zach Theatre's new Topfer Theatre: a full-size automobile (albeit one built from the scraps of early 20th century Model Ts). And in a town dominated by postage-stamp stages that'd be hard-pressed to accommodate a soap box derby racer, that might seem an impressive enough signifier for this $22 million addition to Austin's performing arts venues. But it isn't like Zach hasn't put a car onstage before – remember Aralyn Hughes' pink, pig-encrusted sedan rolling onto the Kleberg's thrust in Keepin' It Weird a few years back?

 

No, the remarkable thing here is not the machine, which is just the vehicle for understanding what this new facility means for Zach, but the space around it – the space between those 21-foot tall proscenium sides, expansive enough to hold four dozen actors, comfortably spread out, to ooh and aah over the auto; space beyond the proscenium's frame – 20 feet on either side – into which said auto may be moved and stored without crowding out cast, crew, or scenic pieces; space above it – 70 feet above – into which the car, were Zach mounting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, could be flown out, and out of which all manner of set-pieces can be flown in; space below it, a basement's worth, into which parts of the stage may be lowered for the exits and entrances of actors (or cars) or for creating an orchestra pit; and, far from least important, the space in front of it, large enough that 420 people may peer at the auto from their seats in the auditorium yet with even those most distant from the stage's edge no more than 10 feet farther from it than the back-row patrons in the Kleberg. It's a theatre that allows Zach to do so much that it never could in that 40-year-old mainstage, or the Whisenhunt Arena Stage built 20 years ago, to produce shows of a size and technical complexity comparable to those in major resident theatres across the country and even in Broadway houses. The Topfer represents possibilities.


Read full profile at the Austin Chronicle . . . .

See also
Zach Unveils New $22 million Topfer Theatre by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman, September 29

Opinion: Robert Faires Asks, 'What If You Really Hated the Performance?'

Robert Faires (photo: Leon Alesi)

All Over Creation

When the Truth Hurts

After suffering through a friend's lousy show, is honesty the best policy?

by Robert Faires, Sept. 27, 2012


We've all been there – well, all of us who have friends or loved ones in the arts, anyway: waiting for a relative/BFF/significant other after having just seen his or her latest creative endeavor and the damn thing made you nod off/go postal/lose the will to live. What do you say to someone you're close to when you feel like a project they were a part of – or (horrors!) solely responsible for – left a stink to make a rancid egg and sulphur soufflé smell like Nana's home-baked bread? Do you give it to them with both barrels, trusting in the strength of your relationship to heal whatever emotional or psychic damage your 12-gauge honesty will inflict? Do you lie, swallowing whole your critical distaste (or revulsion, as the case may be), and offer up an unequivocal pair of thumbs pointed skyward? Or do you seek some middle ground, a remark that's hazy enough to sound like a compliment yet leaves you enough wiggle room to be neutral in expressing an actual opinion? The time spent weighing that decision can be supremely uncomfortable, even excruciating, not least because it's as close as many of us ever come to a true moral dilemma.

The matter resurfaced recently among a group of actors I was with, as one had just found herself caught again in its discomfiting grip. She'd seen a play because she knew someone in it, and she hadn't liked it – I mean, really hadn't liked it – and was torn about what to tell her actor friend once he emerged from the dressing room. She didn't want to be hurtful, and yet her response to the show was so negative that she didn't feel right chirping to him, "It was great!" This quandary, while difficult for anyone, whether they're in the arts or not, seems especially vexing for theatre people. They take a certain pride in their strong opinions and feel any moderation of their candid response chips away at their integrity. But because they know firsthand how much positive audience reactions mean to performers – it directly affects their work onstage, after all – and how crushing it can be to hear even a lukewarm appraisal of one's efforts, they're loath to dish out such cruelty to their fellow artists' faces. (Behind their backs? Now that's another story.)

Read more at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

Opportunity: Penfold Seeks 'Film Crew' extras for Moonlight and Magnolias at the Hyde Park Theatre, October 4 - 21

Hello friends, We're looking for two people to help us with choreographed, onstage scene changes for the upcoming production of Moonlight and Magnolias, a comedy about the making of Gone with the Wind. 

They will work closely with the cast, as well as with costume designer Glenda Barnes and director Robert Faires, whose concept for scene changes is a Hollywood film crew prepping actors and set for "the next take."

The show runs Thursdays through Sundays from October 4th to 21st. The "film crew" needs to be present at all performances, as well as for one staging rehearsal and three dress rehearsals. For more information about the show, you may visit our website.

Are you interested? Let us know. We'd love to have you on the team! With many thanks, Ryan Crowder, , Producing Artistic Director,  Penfold Theatre Company