The Book of Grace by Suzan-Lori Parks, Zach Theatre, June 2 - July 20

The marketing strategy of putting the playwright on the poster bothers me. It's a feeling made all the sharper by the Zach Theatre's importing of MacArthur 'Genius Grantee' Suzan-Lori Parks twice over the past six months for sessions entitled "Watch Me Work." The public was invited to watch Parks write -- at a desk? on a computer? on a yellow legal pad? -- for most of an hour, following which she had an exchange with the spectators. Now, that does not at all fit my concept or my requirements for writing; I find that I have to assume something of a hypnotic trance before the computer screen, capturing thoughts and words as if I were hunting elusive butterflies with a keyboard. I may well be wrong, for I didn't attend, but "Watch Me Work" seemed a bit too glam or too cult, the equivalent of displaying the playwright in the shop window.

The Zach has continued that "See The Playwright" marketing, even including in the program an insert with Dave Steakley's interview of Parks.

I didn't read it. Parks seems in Kirk Tuck's rehearsal pictures and in the Zach's videos to be a pleasant and intelligent person, but the identity of the playwright is not what lures me into the theatre. In similar fashion, David Mamet's newly celebrated political conversion from leftish to glowering rightish is frankly irrelevant in my mind to the performance of his work.

Parks' play The Book of Grace first went on stage at the Public Theatre in New York in April, 2010. The Zach Theatre recruited Parks herself to direct the play in this "definitive" version, playing now until July 20. The published play script will be the text used in this production. Parks was evidently still adjusting it during rehearsal . The program advised that there would be no intermission but the Steakley insert informed us correctly that there were two acts with a fifteen-minute intermission.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Tempest, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, September 9 - 26

Prospero's kingdom is an enchanted isle, suggested by the wide circle marked out on the floor of the Rollins Theatre. As did Shakespeare, Ann Ciccolella invites the audience to create that world by participating with their imaginations. The scenery is minimal -- little more than towering dark blue flats at the back of the playing area, an unassuming balcony or elevation at stage right, rear, and a couple of rickety bushes on platforms pushed onstage as needed.

One needs little more than that, augmented by the rich suggestiveness of Jason Amato's lighting. The dense artificial haze generated as the play begins is superfluous and somewhat distracting.

The waves of the opening tempest are evoked by the stage hands holding long, wide muslim bands across the playing area downstage and deepstage, raising and agitating them so that their billows suggest the increasing fury of the storm. The crew despairs of salvation, the members of the noble retinue returning to Naples from Carthage are aghast. Above them on the island's lookout, gentle Miranda and her father Prospero look on.

The Tempest was probably Shakespeare's last work, and it's easy to interpret it as his farewell to the stage. A studious magician in a magic isle is wrapping up loose ends -- preparing to renounce his magic and to drown his books, righting wrongs done against himself and his daughter, rebuking the guilty and preparing to leave and to reassume his dukedom. Prospero's a man of wisdom, a master of the isle and the spirits upon it, endowed with powers sufficient to command the elements. Many an actor plays him with sweep and rhetoric and high authority, like Charleston Heston doing Moses in the Ten Commandments.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Tape by Stephen Belbert, Phoenix Theatre at University of Texas, March 26 - 28

Received directly:

The Phoenix Theatre Company in association with The Salt Theatre Company presents

Tape

by Stephen Bilber
directed by Shaun Patrick Tubbs
March 26 & 27 at 8 p.m., March 27 & 28 at 2 p.m.
The University of Texas at Austin, Room 2.180 Winship Drama Building, 300 East 23rd Street

Admission is free w/ suggested donation.

Tape, a modern morality tale, will keep you guessing until the end. Who’s right? What’s wrong? In a hotel room, in the course of an evening, secrets are revealed, alliances altered and the truth is illusive … even when it’s on tape.

Vince, a dope dealer and volunteer fireman, and Jon, his best friend from high school, have come to town to see Jon’s movie screening at the local film festival. The two friends meet in Vince’s motel room and things heat up when they start talking about Amy Randall, Vince’s high school sweetheart, who now works in town as a prosecution attorney and is planning to meet Vince that night. Accusations fly, surrounding an encounter between Jon and Amy, and a confession is caught on tape. Tension rises as the three old friends battle over the details of an event that has haunted them all for the past ten years.

Cast includes Blade Healey, Lauren Jacobs, and Bishan Jones. Stage Managed by Cate Eby.

Pride and Prejudice, University of Texas, November 13 - 22

Pride and Prejudice at UT's B. Iden Payne Theatre is a beautiful, graceful production. This is a musical text, and not only because of the jigs and reels at the balls sponsored by cheerful Mr. Bingley. Jane Austen's familiar novel about impoverished young ladies and their ultimately successful romances is written largely in dialogue, with cadence, understatement, wit, parry and riposte, quite as if it were a verbal score.

No wonder it has been so successfully translated to the cinema, again and again, and no wonder all 495 seats in the theatre appeared to be filled on opening night. James Maxwell's adaptation gives us much of that familiar dialogue verbatim and all the familar characters.

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