Video: Austin Live Theatre Talks with leads Suzanne Balling and Scot Friedman about 'The Happy Couple' (Last Act Theatre Company, May 8 - 25, 2013)

Austin Live Theatre talks to leads Suzanne Balling and Scot Friedman about the upcoming

production of

The Happy Couple

by James Venhaus

May 8-25, 2013, Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8:00 p.m.

The White House Ranch, 3410 E. Pennsylvania Ave. (click for map)

To celebrate their anniversary, Michael and Mary Elizabeth visit the first home they ever lived in together. But the visit takes an unexpected turn when they discover a group of squatters living in the house. Last Act Theatre Company is proud to present this moving story about what happens when circumstances force people to face the reality of their situations. See what truths bubble to the surface when two different worlds collide!

Tickets available via BuyPlayTix

Video: Austin Live Theatre Talks with James Venhaus, Author of 'The Happy Couple' (Last Act Theatre Company, May 8 - 25, 2013)

Austin Live Theatre talks to playwright James Venaus about the upcoming
 

production of

The Happy Couple

by James Venhaus

May 8-25, 2013, Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8:00 p.m.

The White House Ranch, 3410 E. Pennsylvania Ave. (click for map)

To celebrate their anniversary, Michael and Mary Elizabeth visit the first home they ever lived in together. But the visit takes an unexpected turn when they discover a group of squatters living in the house. Last Act Theatre Company is proud to present this moving story about what happens when circumstances force people to face the reality of their situations. See what truths bubble to the surface when two different worlds collide!

Tickets available via BuyPlayTix

Extra: Derek Vandi's rehearsal week 1 blog entry with photo, April 7

MOON OVER BUFFALO by Ken Ludwig, City Theatre, March 21 - April 14, 2013

(3823 Airport Rd. at 38 1/2 St., behind the Shell station)

presents

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, City Theatre, July 19 - August 12

City Theatre, Austin

presents

(image from Scot Friedman via Facebook)

by Oliver Goldsmith

directed by Bridget Farias

July 19 – August 12. Thursday - Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.

The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D. 78722 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street.

For reservations, call 512-524-2870 or e-mail info@citytheatreaustin.org . General seating $15. Front/2nd Row Reserved $25. Thursday all seats $10. Group and student discounts. www.citytheatreaustin.org

Romantic tomfoolery and mistaken identities abound in Oliver Goldsmith’s great classic comedy. When shy-with-the ladies Charles Marlow sets off to the country to meet his blind date, a practical joke convinces him that the manor is a luxury inn. Treating one’s prospective in-laws as hired help is hardly advisable, but when it appears that Charles is quite a charmer, misdemeanors multiply, mayhem ensues and love blossoms. A bawdy romp of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family.

With Michelle Cheney, Danielle Sawtelle, Scot Friedman, Heath Thompson, Ben McLemore, Katie Green, Anna Schatte, Kevin Cox, Circe Sturm, Alli Huston, Bethany Harbaugh, Clare Boyd and Nguyen Stanton. .

Burn This by Lanford Wilson, 7 Towers Theatre Company, December 2 - 18

For this intimate, powerful urban drama the setting is superb: a balcony-level studio downtown with a kitchen, a vantage point from which one could study passing vehicles, lines of close-parked cars, and pedestrians hurrying to music venues nearby. It's a "studio" in every sense of the word: with the addition of a minimum of furniture it represents a New York loft. Situated in the Ballet Austin building at 501 West Third Street, it's an appropriate practice space for the principal character Anna, a dancer aspiring to take on choreography. She says nothing in the opening moments, wrapped in music and apparently lost in an inner world , moving in a deliberate, expressive non-dance, settling on the beanbag chair and pillows right at our feet.

And it's a studio almost in the cinema sense. The 7 Towers Theatre Company performs close up for a limited audience seated on perhaps twenty hard folding chairs along the perimeter of the room. The action is so close before you and the faces are so near that you could be sitting in the darkness before the big screen -- except that these people are real and immediate, and they are using this studio in which you're no more than hovering eyes and consciousness.

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

Video: Burn This by Lanford Wilson, 7 Towers Theatre Company, December 3 -

Posted by

for

Burn This

by Lanford Wilson

December 2 - 18

City View Terrace, Ballet Austin, 501 W. 3rd Street (click for map)

BURN THIS - "Larry" (Scot Friedman) from Matt Latham on Vimeo.

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to Vimeo]

Funding Appeal: Burn This by Lanford Wilson, 7 Towers Theatre Company, Austin, December 2 - 18

Received directly:

7 Towers Theatre Company

appeals for for $2000 in funding via

for

Burn This

by Lanford Wilson

December 2 - 18

City View Terrace, Ballet Austin, 501 W. 3rd Street (click for map)

As of October 25, $1250 has been pledged; 25 days remain

The Project

Our first full season kicks off with a production of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, December 2-18. The play is an often funny, often heartbreaking look into the human soul after a tragic loss. It deals with the aftermath of a dancer’s death for his roommate, a struggling New York choreographer, and his brother, a hard-edged restaurant manager from New Jersey. Burn This is a play that speaks to the realities of living in a less than ideal world, and finding moments of beauty within it. It’s about the artist’s place within the community. To that end, we’re producing Burn This in the City View Terrace at Ballet Austin. This non-traditional space allows us connection to the larger Austin arts community as well as to the downtown business community that surrounds both our production space and the lives of the characters in the play.

What We Need & What You Get

We need your help to get this first production off the ground! Besides production rights ($600+) and production space ($1000+), we need to provide costumes, set pieces to turn Ballet Austin's space into a New York loft, advertising/marketing costs and stipends for our professionally trained artistic and production teams. (Sadly, we'll never be able to afford to pay these fantastically talented people what they're worth, but you can help us to at least show some appreciation for the time, effort, and passion they've given us!) For your help, we'd love to give you some perks (see the sidebar), and an engaging, thought-provoking night of theatre!

Click 'Read more' for further information or go to the Indiegogo page . . . .

Rumors by Neil Simon, City Theatre, September 29 - October 23

The greater Austin area hasn't lacked for productions of this 1988 farce by Neil Simon. A search of AustinLiveTheatre brings back announcements of stagings by the Wimberley Players in September, 2009, by the Renaissance Guild in San Antonio in July, 2010, by Leander's Way Off Broadway Community Players in January of this year and even by UT's student-run Broccoli Project last March. That sequence resembles the systematic trial-and-error of artillery ranging, back and forth, close and far, until once all the coordinates are set, BAM! the shot goes home. Home, in this case, being the City Theatre, one of Austin's liveliest and most entertaining theatre venues.

Simon was one of the twentieth century's most prolific writers for stage, big screen and small screen. The Internet Movie Data Base lists 83 titles associated with him and its short title for his entry tabs him as the writer of The Odd Couple (1968). Rumors is nowhere in that list, probably because its premise, timing and humor are pure stagecraft. The audience witnesses the arrival of various couples in evening dress, one after another, all invited to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their friend and associate, Charlie Brock, Deputy Mayor of New York, and his wife Myra. Problem: the kitchen staff is missing, the food hasn't been prepared, Myra has disappeared, and their friend Charlie is in a daze, having fired a pistol shot that took off his own earlobe.

They're trapped in a situation that surpasses their understanding. Equally baffled by these circumstances and equally confined in this box set, we watch each couple squirm, panic, bicker and try to cover up as others arrive. Simon paces the arrivals and discoveries, and all we learn of Charlie is third hand -- he's confused, he's crying, he's taking Valium, he's sleeping, he's unavailable to answer when the police come calling to inquire about a car accident, a car theft, and the reports of two shots in the night.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Guys by Anne Nelson, Flash Productions at City Theatre, September 10 & 11

The attack on the World Trade Center towers was variously recalled and commemorated around town last week in schools, churches, lodges, assemblies and official ceremonies. The tone varied, according to the sentiments and the level of extrovert patriotism of those involved. The Austin Statesman ran a distasteful series of "Where were you then?" articles, as if any random individual's reaction to the flagrantly mediatized events could validate the nation's shock and anger. The Gilbert and Sullivan Society did a rousing Sunday afternoon musicale of patriotic song, vivid enough to bring a mist to the eyes of this Federal pensioner, followed by a celebration of New York city with amusingly post-fitted G&S pieces.

The theatre folk had their own commemoration, thanks to two of my favorite Austin actors, their director Gabe Smith, and the City Theatre. I attended that Saturday afternoon. The house was not full but it was strongly sympathetic to the undertaking; looking around me, I recognized faces of live theatre performers from across the town. The Guys, sponsored by the virtually anonymous Flash Productions of director Gabe Smith and Ashley Edwards, was offered only for two weekend matinees, a thoughtful scheduling that made it possible for Austin performers to attend.

Fittingly enough, the set was simple, in fact, almost bare -- a simple living room set before a screen, with the detritus of City Theatre's ongoing production of Hair visible at the depths of the stage. One could seek out ironies in that -- the two very different visions of New York City and the wider nation, set almost 35 years apart -- but no one in the audience was trying to be so clever.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Guys by Anne Nelson , City Theatre, September 10 - 11

Found on-line:

Flash Productions

presents

The Guys

by Anne Nelson
with Suzanne Balling and Scot Friedman
directed by Gabe Smith
presented at The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Road (click for map)
September 10-September 11, 2011, 2 p.m.

September 11, 2001. 10 years ago. A day we will never forget.

Nick, a fire captain, and Joan, a writer, come together in the aftermath of 9/11 to create remembrances of the firefighters who gave their lives. Both touching and uplifting, 'The Guys' is a timeless drama about the healing power of human connection.

A portion of the proceeds from this production will be donated to the Austin Fire Fighters Outreach Fund. www.austinfirefightersfund.org

Upcoming: The Guys by Anne Nelson , City Theatre, September 10 - 11

Found on-line:

Flash Productions

presents

The Guys

by Anne Nelson
with Suzanne Balling and Scot Friedman
directed by Gabe Smith
presented at The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Road (click for map)
September 10-September 11, 2011, 2 p.m.

September 11, 2001. 10 years ago. A day we will never forget.

Nick, a fire captain, and Joan, a writer, come together in the aftermath of 9/11 to create remembrances of the firefighters who gave their lives. Both touching and uplifting, 'The Guys' is a timeless drama about the healing power of human connection.

A portion of the proceeds from this production will be donated to the Austin Fire Fighters Outreach Fund. www.austinfirefightersfund.org

Images by Andy Berkovsky for The Imaginary Invalid, July 21 - August 4

Images provided by Andy Berkovsky, Artistic Director of the City Theatre for

The Imaginary Invalid

by Molière

directed by Karen Sneed

July 21 - August 14

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

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

Click to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .

The Imaginary Invalid by Molière, City Theatre, July 21 - August 14

The 85-seat house at the City Theatre was agreeably full on the opening Friday of Karen Sneed's staging of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. A full house of attentive spectators is always a boost to the cast. Amusement is amplified and reactions build. The natural curiosity of the audience becomes rapport with actors and characters. Comedy, by provoking shared laughter, binds the members of each evening's audience indefinably, in a fashion that differs from night to nigh

That positive crowd effect may have been linked to the fact that 16 actors inhabit this farce, portraying 31 characters. The City Theatre deserves to enjoy a setting similar to that initial "family and friends" effect for the upcoming three weekends of its run.

Effective stage comedies snare us with quirks and jokes, then elaborate and build the fun with absurdities and unexpected turns of plot. That's Molière's method here. Grumpy, stingy hypochondriac Argan bemoans his miseries and the pile of bills from physicians and pharmacists for hair-raising and trouser-dropping treatments, directed mostly via the opening of his lower colon. (During our years abroad we discovered to our discomfort that contemporary French medicine retains an affection for just that therapeutic channel.)

Argan initially rails out loud to himself and at his irreverent serving girl Toinette. We then see him exercise his arbitrary petty tyrannies over his marriageble daughter Angélique, at the same time that he's a witless dupe of his gold-digging young wife and a procession of quacks. Just about everyone onstage is intriguing against everyone else, and we the audience have the cheerful feelling that we're at least two steps ahead of each of them.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

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

Found on-line:

presents

The Imaginary Invalid

by Molière

directed by Karen Sneed

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

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

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

Upcoming: Of Mice and Men, City Theatre, May 12 - June 8

Received directly:

THE CITY THEATRE

proudly presents John Steinbeck's American classic

OF MICE AND MEN

with Derek Jones as George Milton and Andy Brown as Lennie Small.

also featuring Samantha Brewer, Gabriel Diehl, Scot Friedman, Larry Oliver, Garry Peters, Daniel Sawtelle, Gabriel Smith, and Ben Woods

May 12 – June 5

Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5:30 p.m.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street (click for map)

Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed Front/2^nd Row Reserved $25.

Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

www.citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre Company continues its 2011 season with the critically-acclaimed Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. This classic tale and Nobel Prize-winning novella about two migrant workers’ quest for the American dream portrays the struggle for independence, the responsibility we have to one another, and the desire for a place we all long to call our own.

“We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.” - George

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Two Rooms, Rapscallions of the Periphery at City Theatre's Summer Acts! festival, July 8 - 17

Maybe I'm the wrong person to review this play.

I did accept the Rapscallions' invitation to see it, and I rearranged my schedule before departing Austin so as to get there for the opening. I empathized immediately with the leads Scot Friedman and Val Frazee as they explored for us the intimate pain for a married couple of his arbitrary abduction in mid-80s Beirut.

That core story is powerful because of its simplicity: abrupt separation, lives torn apart, a forced interiorization of loss and the hallucinatory escape into memories and wishes.

Blessing's framework for that tearing story shows tawdry incomprehension of the realities of the time. He seeks to complement the interior story with an exterior story, a sort of j'accuse, portraying with contempt the imagined actions and attitudes both of the U.S. government and of the U.S. press. He presents us a bloodless State Department official who has been assigned the task of keeping the wife Lainie quiet and compliant, and he presents us with a bloodhound reporter convinced that he can bust this story wide open by befriending and betraying Lainie.

As the action went forward and the auxiliary characters pressed Lainie and lied to her, I felt a growing distaste, almost a nausea, and my systems began to shut down. Because I had been there.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Taming of the Shrew, original practices, Hidden Room Theatre, April 29 - May 23

The excitement and cameraderie were palpable on the opening night of the Hidden Room Theatre's "original practices" staging of The Taming of the Shrew. This was a gathering of Austin's acting fellowship, in the audience as well as among the company. Director Beth Burns and assistant director Stephanie Delk greeted familiar faces; storyteller-actress Bernadette Nason served the refreshments; musician Jennifer Fielding of the Baron's Men offered masks for sale at the concession stand. After the house was opened, the animation and anticipation were so great that one of the town's most appreciated Shakespearian actors managed to spill his white wine in front of the seats on the south side. Director Beth Burns took the mishap in good humor and went down on her knees with a towel, scrubbing to make sure the playing space was dry and safe.

One fellowship was assembled within the meeting hall of another, for Burns had obtained the gracious permission of a masonic order to use its space to create a court theatre like that of Shakespeare's royals.

A consort of ten musicians led by Jennifer Davis provided enchanting period music with voice, recorder, stringed instruments and percussion, both before the play and at intervals throughout.

The Taming of the Shrew opens with an Induction or prologue, often abandoned today. An aristocrat returning from the hunt discovers the drunkard Christopher Sly passed out in the street. The lord and his serving men bring Sly into comfortable quarters. They fool him into believing that he himself is a great lord and they offer him the company of a wench, impersonated by Bartholomew, a male page. Sly wants to go to bed with his new lady but agrees to the diversion of a pleasant comedy -- the story of Katerina Minola and Petrucio.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

How The Other Half Lives by Alan Ayckbourn, City Theatre, March 25 - April 18

Alan Ayckbourn applies a clever staging twist of time and space in the first act of this contemporary English comedy of manners, and it is a delight to watch the City players accomplish it.

How The Other Half Loves, as the title implies, is a satire of class and sexual mores. I repeatedly mistyped that title in the ALT "images" feature for the production, because my fingers were finding their way back to How The Other Half Lives, the famous work of photojournalism by Jakob Riis, an 1890's exploration of the slums of New York City. That's an additional little ironic note on economic development in the UK, for these two couples are separated far more by class habits than by economic well being.

Frank Foster is the hapless, clueless university-graduate manager at an unidentified firm and Bob Phillips is his smugly lower-class subordinate. The generic living room represents the snug little homes of each man and his wife. Ayckborn's joke is that he runs separate actions simultaneously in the same space, with the couples unaware of one another's presence. This is better than cinematic cross-cutting of scenes, for we're suddenly endowed with a sort of hallucinogenic X-ray vision, comparing the couples, their relationships and their games with one another -- for we rapidly understand that Foster's wife the nervy, nervous Fiona was out the previous evening for a spontaneous roll in the hay with yobbo subordinate Bob Phillips. Phillips' wife Teresa is angry that he was out until 2 a.m. the previous evening and is avoiding her insistent questions about his whereabouts.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Laughter on the 23rd Floor, City Theatre, November 21 - December 20

There's no assembly more live-wire, unpredictable and funny than a room full of comedy writers. In Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, director Andy Berkovsky and a wild, accomplished cast mint anew the eccentrics of the early days of television.

Word has gotten around about this show, which opened in November, took a long weekend's break for Thanksgiving, and will now be on the boards until just before Christmas. I planned to slip in on a Thursday night, usually a quieter time for theatre venues. The parking lot was full, and so was the theatre. They might have benefited from holiday spirits, but word of mouth and favorable reviews probably had a lot to do with it.

This is Simon's tribute to the wild clan that wrote Sid Caesar's Show of Shows, the variety and sketch show that had a huge following in the early days of television. Caesar hired Simon and his brother Danny on the strength of comedy sketches they staged at Camp Tamiment, an adult summer camp in the Poconos. In the play the young writer Lucas Brickman, played by the affably sincere Keith Yawn, serves as narrator, chorus and stand-in for Simon.

Simon presents the eight writers as magnificent New York eccentrics, mostly Jewish and mostly with recent ties to Europe -- principally to Russia and Poland. The show program provides Simon's one-paragraph sketch of each. Wikipedia matches them to the real-life writers Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, playwright Michael Stewart, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond and Woody Allen and Dave Caesar, Sid's brother.

Read more, view images & videos at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .