Photos by Stephen Pruitt for The Cruel Circus by Connor Hopkins, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard, May 8 - 25, 2013

Performance photos by Stephen Pruitt for the








production of

The Cruel Circus
by Connor Hopkins
May 9–May 25, 2013 (8 pm Thursdays – Saturdays, 6pm Sundays.)
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722 - click for map
Arrive early (at least 15 min. before showtime) for preshow music by Cami Alys!

Tickets: $10-$20 at at the door or on-line via

(photo: Stephen Pruitt)

(photo: Stephen Pruitt)

 Frankenstein meets the island of misfit toys . . . and goes to the circus. A mysterious tinkerer brings to life an entire world of strange circus performers — some polished and complete, some clumsy and misshapen — then disappears, leaving them to make sense of who they are and what they are made for.

A new work of dark whimsy from the company who brought Austin award-winning productions of The Jungle, Frankenstein, Riddley Walker, and most recently, Toil & Trouble. Trouble Puppet deploys bunraku-style tabletop puppets to create graceful, lifelike, compelling drama for adults. This production features beautiful, complex puppets of remarkable design, by Connor Hopkins. Come see the handwalker, unicyclist, lion-tamer, acrobats, human cannonball, and fuselier!


Click to view additional performance photos by Stephen Pruitt at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

ONCE THERE WERE SIX SEASONS, environmental puppetry by Glass Half Full Theatre, February 21 - March, 2013

(performing at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. - click for map)

presents

Once There Were Six Seasons

opening February 21, 2013

We’ve leaped into full pre-production mode for Once There Were Six Seasons, a new work focusing on the effects of climate change on traditional societies which will open on February 21st, 2013. The title comes from a true story Caroline heard in Orissa, India, from a story passed down to a man from his grandmother:

In earlier times, in this grandmother’s lifetime, there used to be six seasons in that part of the world. The farmers still used an ancient method of observing animal behavior to determine when and what to plant. Now, that region only has two seasons (Summer, and Rains), and the animal behaviors that farmers counted on to grow their crops have been distorted by the rapidly changing planet. Farmers can no longer rely on their traditional methods, and communities are slowly collapsing as people move on to settle in the city slums.

Stories like this are happening all over the world, and we’d like to invite you to learn more of them with us in February.

The performance will make use of very small puppets existing in vast landscapes on the SVT Mainstage, with visible puppeteers affecting changes in the landscapes and on the puppets themselves. This is a genre of puppetry we have been gradually crafting, which we are calling “Environmental Puppetry.” In this style, the focus is on the changing landscapes rather than the articulations of the puppet’s body. If you are familiar with our piece, “Bob's Hardware” performed in the 2010 Winter Austin Puppet Incident, it’s in that genre.

Donate

Glass Half Full has received a very small amount of City of Austin funding for this project, which will have a workshop performance for two weeks only in February 2013. If you are interested in donating to this project, or learning more about our process of creation, please get in touch at info@glasshalffulltheatre.com or click on our donate button below:



Otherwise, we hope to see you when we present Part One in February.

Thank you from myself and on the behalf of the collaborating team on this show:
Parker Dority, Gricelda Silva, Noel Gaulin, Rommel Sulit, Connor Hopkins,
Kyle Zamcheck, Ia Ensterä, Stephen Pruitt, Zac Crofford, and Eliot Haynes.


Caroline Reck
Producing Artistic Director
Glass Half Full Theatre
caroline@glasshalffulltheatre.com
 
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: Encryption by Stephen Pruitt, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, July 15 - 30

Received directly:

Encryption

a performance by Stephen Pruitt

Salvage Vanguard Theater, Studio Theater.

Friday and Saturday nights, July 15 - 30

Tickets:$12 in advance, $15 at the door

Ticket reservations: http://encryption.eventbrite.com

Every moment you exist your brain is filtering out thousands of bits of information it deems unnecessary to your survival. At all moments of your life, you are surrounded by wildly fluctuating electrical currents floating through the air, each one of them carrying things like music, ideas, secret codes, pictures, love letters - all of it flowing right through you. We perceive most of the world around us only when a tiny piece - the smell of coffee, the sound of an air conditioner kicking on, a glint of light offa window - draws our attention to it, but there is an enormous amount of information that we never perceive, but that surfaces anyway - in dreams, myths, distractions.

Encryption is an exploration of what lies on the edges when we’re not paying attention, and what happens when nothing is expected. It involves stories about late night DJs, flying monsters and ufos, secret codes, short wave radios, and yes, death.

Encryption was originally created as an experiment in live radio performance for the 2009 Fronterafest Short Fringe, under the title TBA. There will be six performances in the Studio Theater and Salvage Vanguard from July 15 - 30, 8 p.m., on Friday and Saturday nights.

Stephen Pruitt: In 1967, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia was possessed by one of the strangest widespread paranormal events ever documented, as hundreds of people saw UFOs, were visited by Men in Black, and reported seeing a huge flying creature with red eyes, dubbed Mothman. Stephen Pruitt was born shortly thereafter, just forty miles South of Point Pleasant, in Huntington, WV.

After slacking through the initial few years, he has been a seedsalesman, an aerospace engineer, a photographer, a film projectionist, a writer, and most often and recently, a lighting and scenic designer. In Austin, Stephen has worked with the Rude Mechanicals, Trouble Puppet Theater, St Edward’s University, Tapestry, Forklift, and Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance, among many others. His scenic and lighting designs have been nominated for numerous awards in both the scenic and lighting design categories, and he won the Outstanding Lighting Design award from the 2010 Austin Critics’ Table. Encryption is his first full solo performance since 2006.