Will Hollis Snider has published on Flickr a set of 17 images from Selkie Project: gestation presented by Divergence Vocal Theater on Saturday, January 23 at the Creative Research Laboratory in Austin.
Shown here are participants Chase Crossno, Caroline Sutton Clark, and Steffanie Ngo Hatchie.
The Selkie Project was a cross-disciplinary installation environment of multimedia performance, opera and new music-theater. Misha penton designed voice, text and sound design. megan M. Reilly did multimediaand lighting design.
Performers were Misha Penton, mezzo soprano; Maimy Fong, piano; Steffanie Ngo-Hatchie, Chase Crossno actors; Caroline Sutton Clark, dancer/choreography.
Divergence Vocal Theater, Houston's "renegade indie opera company," presents
Selkie Project: gestation
A mythical half-seal, half-human creature bobs her beckoning head: seduction to dive below the waves...
Divergence Vocal Theater collaborates to create a cross-disciplinary installation environment for multimedia, performance, opera and new music-theater: The Selkie Project: gestation.
Voice, text, sound design by Misha Penton; multimedia, lighting/theatrical design by Megan M. Reilly. Performance: music of James Norman, Elliot Cooper Cole, Benjamin Britten and Charles Gounod. Project Artistic Direction: Misha Penton & Megan M. Reilly.
The Selkie Project: gestation is part of the curated exhibition of experimental works, Ideas of Mountains, at The Creative Research Laboratory at University of Texas at Austin.
Selkie Project: gestation performance: Saturday, January 23rd, 7 p.m. Exhibition Dates: January 23 - February 6, 2010 Creative Research Laboratory 2832 East Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, Texas 78702 (MAP) Free of charge.
A lot is going on in Brecht's The Life of Galileo, and not just onstage. The program notes at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre will help you some, with a tidy summary of the historical figures, the heliocentric Ptolemaic model of the universe, and the heretical but accurate Copernican revision of it, and some of the elements of the plot.
With that crib sheet you can comfortably follow the depiction of that impatient and skeptical scientist's lifetime tussle with the Catholic Church. Director Michelle Polgar, three Actors' Equity members and the student cast and crew will give you the story, unrolling it much of the time in a design of curiously reduced lighting, as if the dark ages were lingering, literally, in the period 1610 - 1634.
You will not get much of a sense of the intensely brainy Bertolt Brecht or his reasons for fastening upon those 400-year-old events. Study of any of the several texts that Brecht crafted between 1938 and 1955 would show you that ideas and apprehension -- Angst -- are fundamental to the work.
Don't go looking for Robert Rauschenberg the 20th century modern artist in this grab bag. This is homage purely by reference.
Playwright/facilitator Charles Mee is frank in his admission that the piece is a collage of ideas and random bits that had as their starting points some of the images that appear in Rauschenberg's work.
Mee and others free associated about those images. They collected texts and images and other random bits to share in theatre workshops. Mee says that he told his collaborators, "Anyone can steal anything I brought in to make whatever piece they might want to make, and I could steal whatever they brought in."
He sifted through the material, workshopped it again, threw half of the results away and worked the rest up with the SITI Theatre in New York in 2001. We Austinites can think of that ensemble theatre company as the Rude Mechs of New York City.
Hidden Treasures from Afghanistan's National Museum are now on exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the last of several stops in a 15-month tour of the United States. I caught the exhibit in Washington DC last year, but you may have seen it this spring in Houston.
A haunting diorama of a barren Afghan plain shows how the unimaginable golden treasures were preserved in hidden subterranean vaults for thousands of years, even as the fabulous palaces of antiquity above them were torn down for re-use as construction material.
I had hoped that Will Hollis Snider's Orestes would offer us reworked antique treasures, but he provides instead an empty, echoing structure constructed from the pulled-down palaces of Greek myth.
The structure is not entirely barren. One clever touch is to convert the ravaging Erinyes or Furies from avenging spirits to fantasms of Orestes' mind, embodying the murdered -- his sister Iphigenia, sacrificed at Aulis by their father Agamemnon; Agamemnon himself, murdered by his wife, their mother Clytemnestra, upon his return from Troy; and Clytemnestra, whom Orestes has just killed, on instructions from the god Apollo.
music by Harvey Schmidt, book and lyrics by Tom Jones May 22 – June 28, 2009 Thursday – Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm
The world’s longest running musical is back!
The Fantasticks has enchanted audiences for almost fifty years with its timeless story, memorable music, and delightful characters. Songs like “Try to Remember,” “Much More,” and “Soon it’s Gonna Rain” frame the simple fable of a boy and a girl who find the path to true love (and learn that it never does run smooth).
Matt and Luisa have lived next door to each other their whole lives. Their fathers, Hucklebee and Bellomy, know that children only want what’s forbidden, so they build a wall between the two houses and pretend to feud. Matt and Luisa instantly fall in love. To seal the deal and end the fake feud the fathers employ the mysterious El Gallo to “kidnap” Luisa so Matt can rescue her and they can have a Happy Ending. But the young lovers must discover the real world for themselves and face true disappointments and heartbreaks before they can live happily ever after.
The Fantasticks stars Brian Coughlin as El Gallo, Tom Parker as Bellomy, Huck Huckaby as Hucklebee, David Stahl as Henry, Michael Stuart as Mortimer, Jacob Trussell as Matt, Steffanie Ngo-Hatchie as Luisa, and Kasey Eggleston as the Mute.
The Fantasticks is directed by Don Toner with musical direction by Michael McKelvey, costume design by Diana Huckaby, and lighting design by Don Day. Austin Playhouse produced a successful production of The Fantasticks in 2001.The Fantasticks opened in New York on May 3, 1960 and played 17,162 performances before closing January 13, 2002. A revival is currently running at the Snapple Theater Center in New York City.
Austin Playhouse at Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C
Prices: $28 Thursday and Friday, $30 Saturday and Sunday,$35 Opening Night, Friday May 22nd All student tickets are half-price. Info/Reservations: (512) 476-0084 Website: www.austinplayhouse.com
