Upcoming: THE WHALE by Samuel D. Hunter, A Chick and A Dude Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, February 20 - March 15, 2014

will present 600 pounds of amazing theatre with


THE WHALE 

by Samuel D. Hunter.

February 20 - March 15, 2015

at the Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. at Guadalupe - click for map


The haunting Off-Broadway smash-tragicomedy The Whale will receive its fifth production worldwide in Austin, following successful runs at The Denver Center, Victory Gardens, South Coast Rep, and Playwrights Horizons in NYC. Austin’s own A Chick & A Dude Productions will present the show at Hyde Park Theatre (511 W. 43rd St.) Thursdays through Saturdays, February 20-March 15, 2014. For more information, tickets or reservations, please visit www.achickandadude.com

This production contains very mature themes and strong language.

THE WHALE tells the story of a 600-lb. man—Charlie—as he slowly eats himself to an early grave over the death of his boyfriend, an ex-Mormon named Alan. His caretaker—Alan’s sister, Liz—has been trying to get Charlie to see a doctor for years, to no avail. Charlie, an online teacher of English, is searching for answers and meaning in his life. He begins to find some with the arrival of Elder Thomas, a mysterious young Mormon on his mission, who may know what happened to Alan at the Mormon Church on the highway next to the U-Haul. Charlie also discovers a small measure of honesty with his daughter Ellie, who he hasn’t seen since she was a baby, and who is a bit of a teenaged terror. Add to this Charlie’s alcoholic ex-wife Mary, and we complete a cast full of damaged characters who literally orbit Charlie in what could very well be the last week of his life.

Award-winning Melissa Livingston-Weaver directs an all-star cast, including Erin Barlow (Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone) as Liz, Jon Cook (Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone; The Aliens) as Elder Thomas, Elizabeth Mason (Reefer Madness; Hamlet) as Mary, Kayla Newman (Dog Sees God; We Were Nothing) as Ellie, and Shanon Weaver (HIT.; Glengarry Glen Ross; Dial M for Murder) as Charlie, the Whale.

The design team includes Michael B. Raiford on scenic design, Jason Amato on lighting design, Katy Billik-Hogge on costume and prop Design, and Kelly Ruiz designing and building the 600-lb. fat suit.

The Whale is the winner of the 2013 Lucile Lortel Award—Best Play, the 2013 Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre, and the 2013 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theatre. It also received nominations for the 2013 Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Play, the 2013 Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play, and the 2013 John Gassner Award for Oustanding New American Play.

Praise for The Whale:

"Vibrant and provocative...Hunter explores his material with sharp-eared skill and sensitivity." - Village Voice
" Wonderful...You feel as if you’ve met real people, made of flesh and blood" - New York Post
"Compelling, funny, and unexpectedly impactful...No holds barred." - Associated Press 

About A Chick &  A Dude Productions Now in its eleventh year, A Chick & A Dude Productions is an award-winning Austin theatre company. The ‘chick’ is Co-Artistic Director Melissa Livingston-Weaver; the ‘dude’ is Shanon Weaver, Co-Artistic Director and Resident Playwright. Company members include Technical Director Shawn Ferrell, Art & Media Director Dan Price, Production Manager Katy Billik and Artistic Associates T. Lynn Mikeska and Gary Livingston-Weaver. For more information, visit www.achickandadude.com.

Video: Scene from Hit by Shanon Weaver, A Chick and a Dude Productions, Hyde Park Theatre, May 2 - 18, 2013

presents

 
Hit

by Shanon Weaver

May 2 - 18, 2013, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Added: May 15 'industry night' performance

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe -- click for map

Tickets are sliding scale, $15-$25 ($10-$20 Thursdays.) 

Discount tickets are available for $10 to all Active Duty or retired Military, Fire Department, Police Department, and EMS employees, good for any night. For tickets/reservations, please visit www.achickandadude.com or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, a chick & a dude productions is pleased to announce the remount of our very first show, HIT. by Co-Artistic Director Shanon Weaver.

HIT is a noir-crime family drama focused on the bonds between three hit men in a unique family unit. Contract killers Ervin and Wyatt rescue a young boy—Asher—from an abusive foster family. In Asher, the partners in crime see the heart of a killer, and decide to raise him together in their own image. Several years later, Asher strikes out on a solo career, Ervin meets an untimely end on the job, and Wyatt finds himself alone in the world. On a night that will determine their destinies, Asher and Wyatt separately accept a job to kill the same man at the same place on the same night—but the target doesn’t show. As they piece together the situation, which could have dire consequences for them both, Asher and Wyatt recall the events of their lives that led them to this moment. Issues of loyalty, responsibility, violence, and alternative-family fatherhood take center stage in this award winning script.

Melissa Livingston-Weaver returns to direct Tom Green (B. Iden Payne Award Nominee 2011— Best Actor, Paradise Key) as Wyatt, Garry Peters (B.I.P Award 2010—Featured Actor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) as Ervin, playwright Shanon Weaver as Asher, and Gary Livingston-Weaver (the son of the chick & the dude!) in his debut as Teen Asher.

Review by Jeff Davis at www.austin.broadwayworld.com, May 6

HIT by Shanon Weaver, A Chick and a Dude Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, May 2 - 18, 2013

presents

Hit

by Shanon Weaver

May 2 - 18, 2013, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd Street at Guadalupe

Tickets are sliding scale, $15-$25 ($10-$20 Thursdays.) Discount tickets are available for $10 to all Active Duty or retired Military, Fire Department, Police Department, and EMS employees, good for any night. For tickets/reservations, please visit www.achickandadude.com or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

A CHICK & A DUDE PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY REMOUNT OF AWARD-WINNING HIT

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, a chick & a dude productions is pleased to announce the remount of our very first show, HIT by Co-Artistic Director Shanon Weaver.

 
HIT is a noir-crime family drama focused on the bonds between three hit men in a unique family unit. Contract killers Ervin and Wyatt rescue a young boy—Asher—from an abusive foster family. In Asher, the partners in crime see the heart of a killer, and decide to raise him together in their own image. Several years later, Asher strikes out on a solo career, Ervin meets an untimely end on the job, and Wyatt finds himself alone in the world. 

On a night that will determine their destinies, Asher and Wyatt separately accept a job to kill the same man at the same place on the same night—but the target doesn’t show. As they piece together the situation, which could have dire consequences for them both, Asher and Wyatt recall the events of their lives that led them to this moment. Issues of loyalty, responsibility, violence, and alternative-family fatherhood take center stage in this award winning script.

Melissa Livingston-Weaver returns to direct Tom Green (B. Iden Payne Award Nominee 2011— Best Actor, Paradise Key) as Wyatt, Garry Peters (B.I.P Award 2010—Featured Actor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) as Ervin, playwright Shanon Weaver as Asher, and Gary Livingston-Weaver (the son of the chick & the dude!) in his debut as Teen Asher.


HIT garnered three B. Iden Payne Awards for the 2002/2003 season, including Outstanding Director of a Drama (Melissa Livingston-Weaver,) Outstanding Cast Performance (Shanon Weaver, Ken Bradley, Joel Citty,) and Outstanding Original Script (Weaver.) In 2005, the show was produced as part of the prestigious New York International Fringe Festival where it was honored with an Overall Excellence Award—Cast Performance.

Praise for HIT:

“... Melissa Livingston has done a fine job of creating tight and crisp scenes, and the dialogue crackles...There is very little empty space between cues and given the Mamet-esque dialogue, that's how it should be...the ending is a surprise that you don't see coming… more than worth your while to attend.” —Alyssa Simon, NYTheatre.com

“…Hit hits the mark… the writing is smart and tight; the dialogue in several scenes is so much fun that it garners applause. Director Melissa Livingston shines as well, creating a great deal of suspense with a very spare set...a terrific and memorable production.” —New York Times Free-lancer Hy Bender

About A Chick & A Dude Productions. Now in its tenth year, A Chick & A Dude Productions is an award-winning Austin theatre company. The ‘chick’ is Co-Artistic Director Melissa Livingston-Weaver; the ‘dude’ is Shanon Weaver, Co-Artistic Director and Resident Playwright. Company members include Technical Director Shawn Ferrell, Art & Media Director Dan Price, Production Manager Katy Billik and Artistic Associates T. Lynn Mikeska and Gary Livingston-Weaver. For more information, visit www.achickandadude.com.

This production contains very mature themes and strong language

(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

A Steady Rain by Keith Huff, A Chick and a Dude Productions at the Hyde Park Theatre, February 22 - March 9, 2013

by Michael Meigs

Keith Huff imagines a dark, dark world for us, and Shanon Weaver's set design mirrors that. This is Chicago in grim weather. The bare stage has only a couple of banged up folding chairs and a table, and the stage walls are painted in vertical strips of greenish blue and black. It could be an interrogation room but really it's a barren nowhere, a place of the mind that one could just as easily imagine to be a menacing and oppressive jungle.

A Steady Rain doesn't need pretty. This is a work of words, images and animal energy. Kenneth Wayne Bradley and Tom Green are the only ones visible on this stage. They're a pair of cops who've known one another since grammar school, and who now are united in the grueling business of patrolling the city's seamy south side. The stage is their metaphorical cage; they've both taken the exam for promotion to detective three times, and they've both failed.


They're not the only inhabitants of this space. The story they tell, most of the time in alternate monologues, is peopled with others -- Rhonda the long-suffering wife of Denny (Bradley); a vengeful petty crook who ambushes Denny in an alley, and the crook's young nephew who lures Denny into it; Denny's bloodied and unresponsive young son; a naked and raving 9-year-old Vietnamese boy and the 'surfer-guy' who calmly takes custody of him; the unsympathetic precinct captain; and a couple of other cops who confront a desperate murderer armed with a service revolver.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Auditions for Male Actor, 40s-60s for Shannon Weaver's 'Hit,' February 23, 2013

A Chick & A Dude Productions will hold a second round of auditions for our upcoming 10th anniversary production of HIT by Shanon Weaver, directed by Melissa Livingston-Weaver. Saturday February 23rd from 1-5 PM at Hyde Park Theatre.

Auditioning for the role of ERVIN, male, 40’s-60’s.

Rehearsals begin the week of March 18. Show runs May 2-18. To schedule an audition, please email headshot/resume to achickandadude@gmail.com
Starring Tom Green, Gary Livingston-Weaver, Shanon Weaver, and maybe YOU!

Upcoming: Paradise Key by Dean Poyner, A Chick and A Dude Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, March 31 - April 16

Received directly and researched on-line:

presents

Paradise Key

by Dean Poyner

directed by Melissa Livingston

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

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. at Guadalupe (click for map)

Thursdays - Saturdays, March 31 - April 16, 8 p.m.

Tickets for the show are “sliding scale,” $10-$20 on Thursdays and $15-$20 on Fridays and Saturdays and are available online at www.achickandadude.com. To reserve seats, call (512) 921-4264 or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

Playwright Poynor Visits Austin to Host an after-show Q & A Session on Friday, April 8 (click for more information)

Paradise Key takes place in the summer of 1951. A hidden U.S. Army safe house in the Florida Keys provides the backdrop for this intense physical and metaphysical drama in which Counter-Intelligence Agent David Dunn (Shanon Weaver) has just one night to extract a possible vaccine for Polio from the mind of former Nazi physician Werhner Halb (Tom Green). By using early CIA interrogation techniques—both psychological and physical—David attempts to discover the truth about Halb’s formula. As the Faustian bargain unfolds, we learn that Halb conducted experiments on human subjects in Nazi concentration camps. Halb will only offer information about the formula if David can first prove that he is a man, complicit in the consequences, able to accept that in order to become the hero, one must first embrace the monster.

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

Upcoming: Paradise Key by Dean Poyner, A Chick and A Dude Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, March 31 - April 16

Received directly:

announces the southwestern premiere of

Paradise Key

by Dean Poyner

directed by Melissa Livingston

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. at Guadalupe (click for map)

Thursdays - Saturdays, March 31 - April 16, 8 p.m.

Tickets for the show are “sliding scale,” $10-$20 on Thursdays and $15-$20 on Fridays and Saturdays and are available online at www.achickandadude.com. To reserve seats, call (512) 921-4264 or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

Playwright Poynor Visits Austin to Host an after-show Q & A Session on Friday, April 8

Paradise Key takes place in the summer of 1951. A hidden U.S. Army safe house in the Florida Keys provides the backdrop for this intense physical and metaphysical drama in which Counter-Intelligence Agent David Dunn (Shanon Weaver) has just one night to extract a possible vaccine for Polio from the mind of former Nazi physician Werhner Halb (Tom Green). By using early CIA interrogation techniques—both psychological and physical—David attempts to discover the truth about Halb’s formula. As the Faustian bargain unfolds, we learn that Halb conducted experiments on human subjects in Nazi concentration camps. Halb will only offer information about the formula if David can first prove that he is a man, complicit in the consequences, able to accept that in order to become the hero, one must first embrace the monster.

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

Upcoming: The New Originals, A Chick and a Dude Productions, FronteraFest SF at Hyde Park Theatre, January 28

Received directly from

THE NEW ORIGINALS

at the FronteraFest Short Fringe

Friday, January 28 at the Hyde Park Theatre

program starts at 8 p.m.

Tickets for the festival can be purchased at www.hydeparktheatre.org.

THE NEW ORIGINALS borrows from over 130 different films to create an original dark comedy!

It’s a stormy night, and the Barkeep and the Drunkard are discussing the merits of yet another drink. Enter The Lady In Red and The Guy In The Hat. Their car has broken down up the road, and they are need of assistance. The Drunkard has a wandering eye, and The Guy In The Hat can’t seem to do anything right…can the relationship last the night?

The New Originals is a campy, dark comedy, told using ONLY lines of dialogue from over 130 established films. Starring Shawn Ferrell as The Barkeep, Shanon Weaver as The Drunkard, Chris Loveless as The Guy In The Hat, and Victoria Harrison-Weems as The Lady In Red. Directed by Melissa Livingston.

About A Chick & A Dude Productions Freelancer Hy Bender wrote: "The writing, by...Shanon Weaver...is smart and tight; the dialogue in several scenes is so much fun that it garners applause." For more information, call (512) 921-4264 or email achickandadude@gmail.com.

Upcoming: Winterland by A Chick and A Dude Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, December 3 - 19

Received directly:

Winterland: A Journey

Through ChristmaHanuKwanzaakkah

Invites Children to Experience Winter Fun and Magic through Three Holidays!

A Chick & A Dude Productions proudly presents Winterland: A Journey Through ChristmaHanuKwanzaakkah! at Hyde Park Theatre, 511 West 43^rd Street, at 7 p.m. Fridays, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays, December 3-19. Tickets are $10 for children and $12 for adults. To reserve seats, call (512) 921-4264, or go to NowPlayingAustin.com.

Additionally, A Chick and A Dude announce Winterland as part of the company’s new "Lil' Chicks & Dudes" children's theatre project. A portion of the proceeds from "Lil' Chicks & Dudes" performances will be donated to local children’s foundations and charities.

"A Chick & a Dude Productions is thrilled to be producing such an exciting and interactive learning experience for Austin’s children," said Melissa Livingston, co-artistic director of A Chick & A Dude Productions.

Geared toward pre-school- to elementary-age children (but fun for all ages,) Winterland presents the great Winter Wizard (Shanon Weaver) on a quest to find out why his magical "joy-mometer"—which measures the amount of happiness in the world—is always so full during winter. With help from children in the audience and a little “winter magic,” he is able to summon three children (adult actors Cameron E Holmes, Mitch Harris and Kate Caldwell) to help him out. These children celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. With a little more winter magic, we travel to each child’s home to learn about the three holidays. Will the Winter Wizard solve his mystery? Be there to find out as the Wizard and Austin's children have a great time learning about how different cultures celebrate the holidays! Winterland is written by Melissa Livingston and Shanon Weaver and directed by Melissa Livingston.

About A Chick & A Dude Productions

freelancer Hy Bender wrote: "The writing, by...Shanon Weaver...is smart and tight; the dialogue in several scenes is so much fun that it garners applause." For more information, call (512) 921-4264 or email achickandadude@gmail.com.1

Brass Ring, Hyde Park Theatre, August 8 - 30

Okay, we’ve been here before. The small house at the Hyde Park Theatre wraps around a set that could represent an anonymous, nearly vacant apartment in a half-demolished tenement building. Tom Waits is growling “Dead and Lovely” on the sound system in full derelict mode, followed by some country music phantasmagoria about facing the electric chair.

Down-market Harold Pinter, maybe, or Sam Shepard. Danger, barren stage and threat.

In Brass Ring, playwright Shanon Weaver of “A Chick and A Dude Productions” picks up again two menacing hit-men from his much applauded 2003 drama Hit, which scooped three of Austin’s B. Iden Payne Awards: outstanding director of a drama, outstanding cast performance, and outstanding original script. The company recruited the same formidable actors for those principal roles, Kenneth Wayne Bradley as Ervin (second from left) and Joel Citty (right) as Wyatt.

The action starts with a blackout, a tableau of an execution about to take place, another blackout and a bang. We didn’t know the man on his knees, stolidly facing death, or the young-looking man engaged in some cryptic dialogue with him.

In the blackness we hear a man musing about his work and its difficulties. When the lights come up again, we find ourselves in the company of the lean bald-shaven Ervin and his partner Wyatt, who is happily reporting factoids from a book he might have picked up in a bus station. They are killers on retainer.

They are waiting. Ervin and Wyatt spend most of the performance time waiting, for one thing or another. So much for the glamorous life of hit men working for the anonymous “Old Man.”

Ervin is on a fierce slow burn throughout while Wyatt is usually willing to have small amusements to pass the time.

They dialogue with abrupt, vulgar familiarity; the door flies open and their pistols come out to confront a figure hidden behind an umbrella. It’s Jasmine (now known as “Jazz”). We quickly grasp that there is a deep history between the grim Ervin and the woman who announces herself as the newest emissary of the “Old Man.”

Time splits for us. We follow the back story of Ervin and Jasmine’s first encounter in a bar, where she fingers his next hit and then their developing involvement. These scenes are intercut with the ongoing nervy wait in the tenement.

Along the way we meet the 17-year-old Asher (the playwright, Shanon Weaver), a taciturn youth adopted by the hit men after they blew away his abusing foster father; Asher becomes not quite a son and yet not quite a trainee hit man, either.

The snarling tenement dialogue between Ervin and Jasmine/Jazz quickly reveals that they had married and then split, in part because she could not have children. Armed with that knowledge, we witness the earlier days’ meetings and courtship with a growing sense of doom.

And doom it is, too, with a failed assassination, multiple betrayals, and a fatal shooting.

First things first: this duo of actors is good enough to take your breath away. You can believe that they have worked together as hit men for years. Bradley and Citty certainly had the advantage of lots of material and psychological “build” from the 2003 play, but they wear their characters as if they’d been tattooed in their souls. As Ervin, Bradley is brimming with hair-trigger anger but insistent on “the rules,” a numbered set of precepts setting the parameters for their deadly business. His ability to shift between deadly, still concentration and violent action is terrifying.

His partner Wyatt (Citty, left), as his buddy and the only person one he trusts, accommodates Ervin’s near-nuclear energy while not hesitating to disagree or counter him. This is a scary variant on bad cop/good cop, one that keeps us always on the edge of our seats. Wyatt may be a murderer, but he is perceptive, vulnerable and deeply human.

Lynn Mikeska as the time-split Jasmine/Jazz has a hard role. As Jasmine (then) she must give us an ingenue, awakening to the possibilities of the mutual attraction with a killer; as Jazz (now) she must meet the hit men’s anger and uncertainty with cold assurance, maneuvering to master the situation. Mikeska meets the challenges.

But what a shame about the script. Minor quibbles: playwright Weaver would have us believe that the anonymous “Old Man,” depending entirely upon these two for his "wet work," is dealing duplicitously and simultaneously with the Yakuza and with at least one major Italian American crime family. Weaver tosses us a fast and not very clear explanation of the job our guys will be expected to perform. He gives us voice-overs in the darkness between scenes that sometimes don’t make much sense, either in the action or of themselves. He (or director Melissa Livingston) inexplicably shifts the music at intermission and for the second act from menace-pop to funk.

But the major problem undermining all that really brilliant, character-revealing dialogue is the series of “gotcha” plot revelations in the concluding minutes. They assert that all of the action from “back then” was carried out in a tissue of untruths and impossibilities, justifying the hellish end of the play. Deus ex machina meets Philo Vance.

And who the heck was getting shot in that opening scene? Was that real or not? And if not, why not?

Click for Ryan Johnson's (promotional?) review on Austin.com

Click for Barry Pineo's perceptive review in the Austin Chronicle, August 15