La Fenice Class: Working with Masks, September 8

La Fenice Commedia dall'arte in Austin presents a free class introducing Maskwork, September 8, 2013

Circus Tent Theatre, 6404 Hergotz Lane - click for map


This year, La Fenice is hosting advanced Skype workshops with masters of physical theatre around the globe. While these workshops are held specifically for Company Members, they are open to the public, provided they have taken this Intro to Maskwork workshop or have documented physical training from approved programs.

This Intro to Mask workshop will incorporate basic/modified Viewpoints, Lecoq-based neutral mask work, and character (Commedia dell'Arte) mask work. It is designed as both a refresher course for our Company Members and a means of providing a minimum amount of instruction for individuals interested in participating in our future training sessions. Instructors include Dr. Gian Giacomo Colli, Kate Meehan, and Aaron Johnson, who have a combined 60 years of theatre instruction experience.

Please come dressed to move, with a character or neutral mask if you have one (some will be provided).

HOITY TOITY BACKYARD CIRCUS, La Fenice, June 7, 2013

La Fenice
presents
Hoity Toity Backyard Circus
Friday, June 7, 2013

7713 Woodrow Ave Austin, TX

(WEATHER PERMITTING. This is an outdoor show, and if history is any indicator, Mother Nature hates a circus.) Join us this Friday for some of Austin's finest fringe performing acts in one of Austin's most charming back yards! Featuring international touring sensation Mama Lou Strong Woman, Magician Madman Maverick, La Fenice, and La Fenice's own Brewski Salmineo. BYOChairs/Blankets/Hooch. We'll have some of each on hand. Your favorite costume encouraged. $10 Admission Featuring La Fenice's For Whom the Dong Tolls: For Whom the Dong Tolls follows the story of Arlecchino, a carefree fellow who has traveled to Venice to settle a debt with his old friend, Orlando. However, Orlando's father, the world-famous alchemist Dottore, has recently been murdered for his mystical secrets by rival wizard Pantalone. To make matters worse, Pantalone has snatched both Dottore's book of Spells and his beautiful young intern Olivia. Arlecchino, Orlando and Columbina, Olivia's saucy governess, must stage a daring rescue, braving the sword-wielding Capitano and Pantalone's gauntlet of borrowed magics. Starring Dr. Gian Giacomo Colli, Tate Green, Genevieve Kinney, Aaron Johnson, Kate Meehan and Adam Rodriguez, with music by Bruce Salmon. Adult themes, unlicensed proctology, singing, dancing, sword play, and bad magic tricks.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

FOR WHOM THE DONG TOLLS, La Fenice at Spiderhouse Ballroom, April 26, 2013

La Fenice
presents a preview production:

For Whom the Dong Tolls: Sneaky Austin Opening

Friday, April 26, 11 p.m. at the Spiderhouse Ballroom, 2900 Fruth St. - click for map 

Arlecchino has arrived in Venice to settle a debt with an old friend, Orlando, whose father, a world-famous alchemist, was just murdered for his mystical secrets. When his father's murderer snatches his father's beautiful young intern Olivia, Orlando, Arlecchino and Olivia's saucy governess Columbina must stage a daring rescue, braving the sword-wielding Capitano and Pantalone's gauntlet of borrowed magics.
Starring Dr. Gian Giacomo Colli, Tate Green, Genevieve Kinney, Aaron Johnson, Kate Meehan and Adam Rodriguez, with music by Bruce Salmon.
Adult themes, unlicensed proctology, terrible singing, sword play, dance numbers and bad magic tricks.
$10 Admission
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: La Tempesta, Trinity University and Teatre del Drago, November 9 - 18

The Italians have not left yet! Teatro del Drago will now team up with Roberto Prestigiacomo and  Trinity Theatre to present Shakespeare's The Tempest, complete with puppets and shadow theatre as presented in Teatro del Drago's production of Pinocchio. If you liked Pinocchio, you'll love La Tempesta, and if you didn't get to see Pinocchio, now is your chance to see the talents and unique style of Teatro del Drago's work, never before seen in San Antonio.

La Tempesta Dates

Friday, November 9th, 8 p.m.

Saturday, November 1oth, 8 p.m.

Sunday, November 11th, 2:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 14th, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, November 15th, 7:30 p.m.

Friday, November 16th, 8 p.m.

Saturday, November 17th, 8 p.m.

La Tempesta, an original physical theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, is a co-creation of Stieren Guest Artists Teatro del Drago and Roberto Prestigiacomo. Visually stunning and a novelty never seen on San Antonio stages, it re-tells this magical story through the use of puppets, marionettes, and shadow theatre.

For TicketsCall: 210-999-8515

or

Email: TUtheatre@trinity.edu

Ticket Prices

General Admission $10

Faculty/Staff/Alumni/Seniors $8

Students $6

Season Passes are available!

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

(*) Upcoming: La Tempesta, adapted from Shakespeare's The Tempest, Trinity University, San Antonio, November 9 - 17

La Tempesta

based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and adapted by Roberto Prestigiacomo

Trinity University Dept of Human Communication and Theatre

Directed by Roberto Prestigiacomo and producted in collaboration with Teatro del Drago, a puppet theatre company founded in 1820 by the Monticelli Family of Revenna, Italy.
Trinity University Campus, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas, 78212
Times: November 9-11 and November 14-17, 2012 Friday and Saturday @8pm Sunday @ 2:30pm Wednesday and Thursday @ 7pm
Tickets: Adults: $10.00 Seniors: $ 8.00 Students/SATCO: $6.00

La Tempesta is an original physical theatre adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Created by the 2012-13 Stieren Guest Artists Teatro del Drago from Ravenna, Italy, and Roberto Prestigiacomo, La Tempesta re-tells this magical story through the use of puppets, marionettes, and shadow theatre. Borrowing from the Italian tradition of Commedia dell'Arte and the latest European developments of teatro di figura, La Tempesta promises to be entertaining, visually stunning, and a novelty never seen on the stages of San Antonio.

For More Information: Reservations: 999-8589 -- Information: 999-8511 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming: La Fenice's Backyard Circus, Kenny Doran's Backyard, October 26

La Fenice presents:

An All-Hallows Backyard Circus
Public Event · By La Fenice Austin

Friday, October 26, 2012, 7:00pm until 11:00pm

Kenny Dorham's Back Yard

1106 East 11th St , Austin, Texas 78702

View Map · Get Directions

La Fenice is proud to host an All-Hallows Backyard Circus, this time with some of the finest international circus, sideshow and cabaret acts Austin can offer!

Featuring:
Michele Francis, aerialist
Mister Schave
That Damned Band
and more!

Doors open at 7:00 for socializing and beverages. The show begins at 8:00! You won't want to miss a moment!

Costumes are, of course, encouraged.

$10 Admission

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Green Bird by Gozzi at the Cathedral of Junk, August 11 - 20

by Michael Meigs

Adriana Montenegro and friends have a good time presenting The Green Bird at the Cathedral of Junk at 4422 Lareina Street in South Austin. If you like many others in Austin haven't visited Vince Hanneman's towering backyard construction of strangeness, this free show for Thursday through Saturday evenings would be an apt occasion to repair your shortcoming in Austin lore.

Artist/proprietor Hanneman has hosted theatre events before, including notably the annual theatrical comedy by the Weird Sisters Theatre Collective two years ago. He had agreed to provide the venue for Kyle John Schmidt's Fernando and the Killer Queen in April last year but City of Austin engineers served notice that the place required reinforcement to make it safe for the public. (If you visit, you'll understand that "repairs" wouldn't be the appropriate term for Hanneman's wildly eleclectic three-story assemblage of everything from bicycle frames to gnomes to CDs to miscellaneous tchotchkes). So get there with enough time before the 7 p.m. start to wander around and to absorb his only slightly deranged vision of post-industrial America.

You may wander past the actors in costume and you may get a jolt of surprise in the maze of construction and garden. Two eerie figures will be sitting motionless in separate spots: a grey-tinted female figure with a snipped-off funnel nose and alarmingly alert brown eyes, and a young woman swathed and grease-painted in stark white. Those are Laura Burgess playing Calmon the intermittently oracular statue and Ashley McNerney as the garden statue Pompea with whom the young gallant will fall in love. Their silent presence in the Cathedral and park pose for you the challenge of all silent, motionless mimes: do you pretend that they are indeed inanimate and therefore ignore them? Or do you acknowledge them, inspect them, perhaps speak to them? No one I saw became so bold.

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

On the Road - in Washington DC

The Imaginary Invalid by Molière

In their 22-year history in the nation’s capital Michael Kahn and collaborators have created a theatre based on the classics, one that has no equal on this side of the Atlantic. Even the great British contemporary theatres must find these Americans hard to match. In April of 2007 I saw the Royal Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at the Kennedy Center one night, and on the next, the Americans’ Titus Andronicus in the much smaller and more traditional Landsburg Theatre on 5th street. Titus was the better play. And in my memory, their Washington Coriolanus of 2000 was a better production than that of the Royals in 2007. Eve Ziebert’s article on the competing presentations published in the Washington Post adroitly contrasted Shakespeare’s plays while tactfully omitting any direct comparison of the players.

Chicago has the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, out on downtown Navy Pier near the Ferris wheel, but it's a highly marketed, populist affair (the upcoming season includes "Willy Wonka" and their current Comedy of Errors puts Shakespeare's short early comedy into a dubious framework of a film company working during the London blitz -- amusing stuff but with a treacly overlay in the pre-war style of Shepperton Studios).

In Washington, however, Kahn has progressively attracted patronage of the Great and mostly Good, and last year the company opened a huge new theatre at the Harmon Center in downtown, just across from the former MCI center, home to sports events and circuses. They expanded their season from five to eight plays or more running drawn from the classical repertory (which stretches at times into the twentieth century). Each runs for a month or more. Currently you can attend Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, alternating in the Harmon Center, and from this past week, Molière’s Imaginary Invalid at the Landsburg, just two blocks away.

When we were season ticket holders back from 1997-2000, we always brought along our two children. In 1998 they were 14 and 11 years old – the youngest audience members by several decades. Although our younger one usually couldn’t stay awake past the third act, both were deeply impressed by the theatre. They are Shakespeare lovers today.

The Washington company offers an astonishing deal to subscribers under 30 years of age. Last year they charged only $120 for my daughter’s season ticket to the eight-play season – $15 a show, while full-price mid-week tickets at the box office cost $60 and up.

In addition to entertaining at a high level, the company offers the public a superb education about its plays. Their mail-out brochure for each play offers history, commentary, biographies of principal directors and players, and insights into the production and into the art of the theatre. For all there are Podcasts available on the website, along with videos, generally featuring the director and an academic expert exploring the play and the choices for the production.

Keith Baxter, director of the Imaginary Invalid, re-establishes the “new theatre” that Molière created in 1660s for Louis XIV, France’s “Sun King.” The farce gives a linear narrative – in this case, the intrigue is that of hypochondriac Arpagan to wed his tender daughter to a physician so as to guarantee “in-house” services for bleeding, enemas, and similarly ghastly treatments. This is the text that is regularly presented even today. But Baxter and the company provide as preface, interludes and celebratory coda graceful and amusing ballet, songs, and slapstick drawn directly from the Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte. The show recreates in their imagination and ours the 4th performance of the piece at the court on February 17, 1674 – including the homages to the Sun King and at the last moment, the unexpected appearance of that regal figure onstage.

Rubber-faced René Auberjonois is a self-mocking delight as Molière playing one of his most famous characters. The actors’ diction is uniformly superb throughout, mime and business are subtle and so manifold that one could attend three nights in a row and not catch all the physical jokes. The broad style was perfectly appropriate – let’s call it Marx brothers done declamatory fashion in brilliant costumes and graced by acrobats.

The younger members of the family reported that a couple of 30-somethings seated in front of them got up and left abruptly during the first half (perhaps unwilling to stretch themselves beyond ‘Seinfeld’ -- maybe they should get their theatre at Chicago's Navy Pier). But the rest of us stayed and enjoyed it a great deal.