Ann Pittman's Austin Theatre Favorites in 2013

From her blog aNNpITTMAN, posted January 12:

Top Ten Twenty-Thirteen Theatre

Ann Pittman (via Blogspot)

Everyone has their favorites. And everyone's weighing in (Chronicle critics: AdamRoberts, Robert Faires ... a cat).

Of course, I have my own opinions :)

So here's my credential-free pick for Austin's Top Ten 2013 Theatre Experiences (p.s. I don't include national tours or shows I was in on this list... tours obvs. aren't Austin, and despite my first girl-on-girl kiss this year, its probably biased to nominate performances I was a part of). Of the over twenty shows I saw this year, here's some moments, people and experiences that I loved (in no particular order)...

1. Barbara Chisholm in Fixing King John. This was a fun, smart show by the Rude Mechs, and pulling her hair out in the middle of it was a brilliant Barbara Chisholm.

2. The amazing set of Nursery Crimes (the DAC has never been better utilized) and the supporting characters trio of Travis Bedard, Bobby DiPasquale, and Heath Thompson. Kudos to Last Act's Will Snider for some great choices.

3. Ryan Crowder's big fat crocodile tears (in addition to the rest of his performance) in Penfold Theatre's Red.

4. Martin Burke's final monologue in Harvey. Lovely.

5. Kristi Brawner in general. From Sally in Reefer Madness to Lucy in Charlie Brown, she is quickly becoming Austin's most versatile 20 Something (sorry guys, she's taken).

6. HPT's Ken Webster as Thom Pain. Again.

7. Mad Beat Hip & Gone. I cannot understand why this didn't get more critical attention. Whatev. You guys, it was great. And those lightbulbs...

8. The Drawbridge/Gangplank lowering and raising set piece thing in Austin Playhouse's Man of La Mancha. Awesome and daunting. Broke up the play and the mood perfectly appropriately.

9. Little Shop of Horrors' colorful costumes at Zilker Park.

10. ZACH's A Christmas Story set. You'll shoot your eye out.

AND what I really, really wanted to see (which might have influenced the above list), but, alas, life had other exciting adventures...

1. Mical Trejo in Teatro Vivo's Confessions of a Mexpatriate

2. And Then There Were None by Austin Playhouse

3. Tongues (in the swimming pool!) by Theatre at the J

4. Fat Pig by Theatre En Bloc

So there you have it! Of the Austin theatre events I saw, these were the most super-duper. Maybe next year I'll be brave enough to give you The Worst Of... who knows! In the meantime, here's looking forward to more great, funny, meaningful, important, silly theatre in the heart of Texas in 2014!

Opinion: Why Didn't the 2013 B. Iden Payne Committee Make Any Nomination for Director of a Musical?

Posted by Juliana E. Wright on October 17 as a comment on the Austin Live Theatre blog's listing of the 2012-2013 nominations for theatre art made by the B. Iden Payne Committee on October 8:

How are there no B. Iden Payne Awards Council nominations for Outstanding Director of a Musical for the 2012-2013 season?

There is a lot of theatre in Austin. Good, Bad, Ugly, Transformative.
Austin is fortunate in that it recognizes that there is theatre being produced that should be recognized for its outstanding quality. Thirty-nine years ago, The B. Iden Payne committee was created in order to do just that. Its current mission is to support, promote, and recognize excellence in Austin’s theatre community.

After 39 years in existence, it is disappointing that the 2012-2013 B. Iden Payne Awards Nominations contain no nominations for Outstanding Director of a Musical. It’s also confusing.

Assuming the council follows its posted Artistic Guidelines to quantify a nomination, it is difficult to believe there was not one Director of a Musical that followed those guidelines and met, at the very least, the most basic of nomination requirements.

According to the BIPAC Artistic Guidelines the following are definitions for the categories of both Outstanding Production of Musical category as well as the Outstanding Director of a Musical Category: http://www.bidenpayneawards.com/about/bipac-artistic-guidelines/

Outstanding Production of Musical: DEFINITION: The cohesive synthesis of all production elements including design, direction, & performance.

Outstanding Direction: DEFINITION: Guides and supports all creative and technical elements of a production to tell a unified & integrated affecting story.

Based on just these two categorical guidelines and their definitions, how is it possible that in the 2012-2013 season, there are several Outstanding Production of a Musical nominations, but none for Outstanding Director of a Musical? By definition a nomination for an Outstanding Production of a Musical includes “the cohesive synthesis of all production elements including design, direction, & performance”.

Based on these two categorical guidelines and definitions alone, it is a gross oversight on the part of the council to not include nominations for Outstanding Director of a Musical in the 2012-2013 season and therefore, the council is remiss in upholding its mission.

This theatre is created by and presented by hundreds of artists in this city who have, many to great sacrifice and effort, devoted their time, money, energy, passions and love to its creation. Regardless of motive, this art is created with the idea that it will in some way, strengthen those who experience it. This is by no means the sole (or any) reason to garner awards. However, the artists and community know there is work in this town worthy of recognition, nomination, and award and if the organization tasked to recognize, nominate, and award those accolades fails to recognize it, then the organization is remiss in its duties and thereby, the value of the organizations worth drops.

What does this action say to not only those hundreds of artists that have created this art, but to those patrons, supporters, and volunteers that experience and are shaped by this art? What does it say about the work being produced in Austin? What does it say about the council members and their credentials and qualifications to adjudicate? Is the nomination/voting procedure fair and balanced? To what validity does one hold a nomination if the process is flawed? What value do the BIPAC awards truly hold for artists working in Austin?

The lack of recognition in this particular category is unfortunate for the council and the community in general.

It is hopeful that the council recognizes this oversight and reconvenes for a special session to reassess and garner at least a few nominations for the quality work put forth by the many talented directors of musical theatre during the 2012-2013 season.

Julianna E. Wright
Artistic Producer
Half & Half Productions

Robert Faires on Calling a Thing by its Name, Austin Chronicle, July 25, 2013

From Robert Faires' column All Over Creation, some lexical advice: what kind of town is Austin, anyway?

 

 

All Over Creation: What Do You Mean?

Shaking up the lexicon once in a while is necessary if we want to be clear

by Robert Faires

[ . . . . ] Robert Lynch, president and CEO of the national advocacy group Americans for the Arts, in his speech on cultural tourism at the Marchesa last Thursday[, . . . .] related an anecdote about meeting a couple of folks in an airport, and Austin came up. "Oh, we love Austin," they told him. "Great," he said. "When you're there, do you ever do anything related to the arts?" "No," they replied. "We never do the arts, because we're too busy doing music." 

Rimshot.

Sure, we know what those people meant, but it still points to this divide that persists between anything artistic in popular culture and what are called traditional fine-art disciplines, as if all those sounds being cranked out at clubs and concert halls every night couldn't be part of the arts. Naw, that stuff is church; what bands play is fun. If you want to know why I and a number of other advocates for arts and culture have been ramming the word "creative" down your throat as a surrogate for "artist" of late, that's the reason. After 30 years of culture wars in which the arts have been demonized as elitist and offensive, "artist" is too charged a term to be effective in most public discourse.

"Creative" as a noun – and sorry, lexicon cops, I gotta break the law on this one – not only dispenses with all that baggage, it's more reflective of our contemporary attitude toward who's engaged in artistic pursuits. It encompasses filmmakers, designers, craftspeople, chefs, knitters, mixologists, architects, slam poets, programmers, and, yes, singer-songwriters, as well as painters, playwrights, dancers, and classical musicians. 

What all these very different kinds of people do is creative, and these days they're much more likely to do it with one another – collaborating across discipline and form – than the artists of days past. If we want people in this city or elsewhere to gain a new appreciation for the expansiveness and pervasiveness of the arts in modern society and their profound impact in every corner of our culture – education, productivity, mental well-being, the economy, human values, entertainment – it behooves us to speak in terms that make our meaning as clear as possible. Sometimes that means setting aside favored words of old, words that in a sense point backward, in favor of words that are free of the barnacles of bad experiences and controversy, that can be heard without assumption, without prejudice, and point a way forward.

Read full text at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

Opinion: Are Theatre Critics Too Soft?, Lyn Gardner, The Guardian (UK), May 29, 2013

 

Are theatre critics too soft?

Spectator reviewer Lloyd Evans says his colleagues do theatre a disservice by raving about mediocre shows. Do you agree?

I think it might have been Alan Bennett who once charmingly referred to theatre critics as "giddy chorus girls just waiting to be fucked". Spectator critic Lloyd Evans seems to agree. In his latest column, where he runs the rule over Pastoral at London's Soho theatre and Fallen in Love at the Tower of London, Evans looks to some of the positive national reviews of the same shows and asks of their authors: "Are these people on drugs?"

He goes on to say: "Critics who go into raptures over near-flops risk turning their columns into the sort of perfumed screeds recited at the funerals of Asian dictators."


It's often bloggers who get accused of star inflation, while national critics are perceived as being jaded and hard to please. But it's true there are certainly plenty of four and five star reviews in the mainstream press, and personally I'm guilty as charged. In the past week, I've given five stars to two shows, Not I at the Royal Court and the epic Life and Times at the Norfolk and Norwich festival (although you'd have to go back almost a year before I last got quite so enthusiastic).


Evans may be right in thinking we do a disservice to theatre and audiences when we hyperventilate over the mediocre. There are undeniably masses of three-star reviews, but very few two- and one-star reviews.

Yet are critics more inclined to rave than they once were? Perhaps recession has encouraged kindness, although it's no kindness if people spend their money and are then disappointed. Equally, perhaps the tendency of audiences to rise to their feet and cheer the merely competent is having some kind of effect on reviews. Are reviewers too keen to praise, as Evans suggests – and do you feel critics should be more critical? Tell us what you think.

Click to go to the article at The Guardian Newspaper on-line

Opinion: Robert Matney on Hacking Theatre in a Networked World, Howlround.com

Hacking Theatre in a Networked World

by Robert Matney
April 15, 2013

Robert Matney

We come to the theater to satisfy a Luddite urge for something more visceral, more live and less mediated, more unpredictable than a two-dimensional screen provides. It is, then, no surprise that the theater selects for, and cultivates, in its practitioners a reticence to integrate new technology. Let's own up: collectively we are late adopters.

As theater artists, we have an obligation, I think, to remedy this, or we find ourselves sprinting (faster) toward our obsolescence and abdicating our duty to hold a “mirror to nature” in an increasingly technological culture. Let us hack theater for a networked world, using the Internet's numerical, geographical, and temporal scalability to interact with new audiences, insist on an ongoing and authentic relevance for our work, test new forms, and propagate new possibilities while preserving what is essential about our discipline. Let us trust that theater is resilient enough to make this leap as it has made many others, and that it will survive a modest but important re-programming. And of course, in the pursuit of this remedial integration, let us seek methods that integrate deeply into the art and the aesthetic, rather than yield to the easy seduction of bolt-on and gimmicky technical appendages.


Austin, a bubbling cauldron of new works for theater and a world-class center of hi-tech startups should be a focus of this work, and yet its marvelous potential as a capital of innovation for digital integration with performing art remains largely unrealized. There are virtually no dedicated performance spaces with a functional wired internet connection with proximity to the tech booth/performance space, and only one, to my knowledge, offering a connection greater than low-end residential speeds (>15 Mbps down & 1.5 Mbps up). 

So our work is cut out for us in making good on these extraordinary possibilities in Austin.
I've been collaborating with Beth Burns at Hidden Room Theatre, Graham Schmidt at Breaking String Theater, Ron Berry at Fusebox Festival, Paul Menzer and Matt Davies at Mary Baldwin College (Staunton, VA), and Philip Arnoult at the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD; Baltimore, MD) to work on disparate pieces of hi-tech integration into the work of theater on stage and off.

Our world is networked, and our theater need no longer be wholly defined by a proscenium arch, a black box, or any physical space (empty or otherwise).

For Mary Baldwin College, we are currently working with the Shakespeare and Performance faculty and graduate students to co-create actorscholar.com as an experimental platform for digital dramaturgy (or "digiturgy," a term recently introduced to me by Cassidy Browning during the Cohen New Works Festival). We seek here more than a simple web publishing site (with fair use and copyright sensitive access-control that attends to professional and academic contexts, of course), but also a means of integrating open APIs and freely available web-based data streams to open up new possibilities for dramaturgical content and analysis (such as the ability to easily plot a plays locations in an interactive map so artist and audience can pull the kind of data they desire about the play's location(s)).

With the CITD, Mr. Arnoult, Susan Stroupe, and I are preparing to digitize and live stream for real-time interaction many of the events of Beyond the Capitals II, an international exchange project funded by the Bilateral Presidential Commission: American Seasons in Russia, a program of the US Embassy in Moscow, and which will travel throughout Russia this May. Our goal is to ensure that all of the American participants in the Beyond The Capitals I project can take the journey with us, engage digitally, and interact with the artists we will be visiting in Russia.

At Fusebox, we are in the early stages of building an Art+Technology platform to feature and sustain exploratory work, education, and presentations that innovate in the area of art and technology integration. This year's festival features a number of exciting works, including Motion Bank and Ant Hampton's Cue China.


In the Hidden Room, we seek to solve a distinct art/technology challenge with each project. The first challenge we undertook was to patch together two disparate geographical locations into one contiguous aural and visual performance space. In You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives In London (named so in Austin) / You Wouldn't Know Him, He Lives In Texas (named so in London), we teamed up with Mimi Poskitt and Look Left Look Right theater, and tethered a site-specific venue in Austin with the Roundhouse in London, with each venue containing a portion of the cast and a full in-location public audience. We picked up video in each location and cross-displayed it, "lining up" the people and equipment for mutual visibility for all participants. Additionally, we microphoned and cross-amplified the spaces such that if an Austinite opened a candy wrapper during the performance he could successfully annoy the audience in Austin and London. We then used a separate computer in London to encode the video conversation between the Austin and London locations, streaming the results to the web for a third, online audience. In all locations, a Twitter-hashtag- delimited text stream was presented, and all audiences were encouraged to interact with each other and the performers for shared textual visibility.

Hidden Room's next project was to tune our technical process to enable transcontinental rehearsal. With Rose Rage, we conducted our rehearsals with actors located in London, Cornwall, Virginia, and Austin. This process took us through 75% of the rehearsal period before all gathered in Austin to present a run of this six-hour production.
 
Click 'Read more' to continue or click HERE to go to the article at www.howlround.com

Opinion: Caroline Reck on Austin's 'New Puppet Revolution,' Howlround.com, April 15, 2013

Published at

The Austin Puppet Revolution

Caroline Reck

April 15, 2013

Caroline Reck (photo via CreativeAction.org)

 

I was invited to write this entry about the response of Austin audiences to the “New Puppet Revolution.” Each word in this phrase makes me smile: “new,” because Austin is such a nourishing environment for new theater, “puppet,” because puppet theater (particularly shows geared toward adult audiences) is killin’ it in Austin these days, and “revolution,” because puppets have been aiding and abetting revolutions since people first started moving objects around. Put the whole phrase together, and I’m suddenly thinking about time, objects, and anarchy: a great crossroads to talk about puppets.

Mention puppetry to most people, and the image conjured up is of a creature, perhaps made of felt, probably adorable, with a moving mouth that’s talking to you (or your child), most likely through a television screen. There is really great puppetry like this in America—with the extraordinary Jim Henson Company topping the list. There is also a lot of other puppet work being made that looks nothing like this, and for some reason that is baffling puppeteers in caves and attics across America, audiences are starting to take notice.

Puppetry is a diverse and ancient art form. I won’t get specific on the timeline, but sometime between developing opposable thumbs and the invention of broadcast television, people began animating objects and giving them soul, voice, and intention. These objects have served as great entertainment and meaningful ritual to people young and old for a really long time. Then, very recently, the world industrialized and certain children in lucky nations weren’t an obligatory part of the workforce anymore. Someone noticed that bored children get into mischief, and started gearing puppets shows toward the little ones. Meanwhile, collective common memory in this country forgot that puppets are for grown-ups, too.

Austin audiences like to be presented with new ideas, and to be presented with old ideas wrought in a new way, and they like how puppetry can do both. Glass Half Full and Trouble Puppet both consistently sell out shows, and both make a majority of their income from ticket sales.

Puppetry is a rigorous art form that uses movement, timing, spatial relativity, scale, breath, and gravity to create a sense of visceral recognition in the gut of the audience. Puppets can simply do and be more than humans. They can be beasts and spirits, inanimate forms made animate, ideas made manifest. They make use of scale in a way humans cannot; they can be large in one scene and tiny in the next, which effectively changes the dimensions of the stage. Puppets can fly, breathe underwater, grow onstage; they can vanish. They can be publicly incinerated, internally lit, transparent, and show that they have “no heart” by literally carving out the absence of a heart in their figure. They make costume changes in a flash (two different identical puppets). They evade the stereotypes of the traditional actor. A tiny female puppeteer can perform a giant puppet; an aging puppeteer can play a young hero. They are a democratic, constantly evolving, revolutionary art form that can take many shapes and forms and tell stories that are whimsical, or demonic, or profound.

So there is really nothing new about puppet revolution. But the recent popular response to the puppeteer’s ongoing revolution feels new. The popularity of puppets on Broadway (Lion King, Avenue Q, War Horse) nudged people to find out what else is out there. The puppet has a special relationship with the audience. We know, intellectually, that the puppet is an object. Yet seeing an object repudiate everything our intellect knows to be true, by moving, feeling, being, invites the audience to take that extra step toward believing. Part of the work of puppetry happens in the audience, when they lend their collective imagination to the scene; when the mind’s eye erases the marionette’s string, fades out the tabletop manipulator’s body, and ignores the arm rod sticking from the elbow of the puppet. The audience is uniquely implicated in the energetic triangle between audience, puppeteer, and puppet. They are viscerally involved, part of the magic, moved to laughter and tears.


I’m the Creative Director of a little company called Glass Half Full Theatre, which was founded in France in 2004. We relocated to Austin in 2010, and have had great audiences and critical response to our original, puppet-based work since we arrived. This is in part because Austin audiences are open-minded; they are happy come to see what they’ve never seen before. It’s also because the other puppeteers beat down the path to adult audience in Austin before we got here.

Click 'Read more' to continue at AustinLiveTheatre.com or click HERE to go to the article at www.howlround.com

Opinion: Travis Bedard on Austin as a 'Maker Town' -- Why You Might Want to Make Theatre Here, Howlround.com, April 14

Published at www.howlround.com:

Call a Thing by Its Proper Name

Travis Bedard

April 14, 2013

When opening up a line of conversation about a field as fractured and pasted together as the American theater the first challenge is finding a vocabulary, a framework, a context to hold the conversation together. Artists resist labels at all costs. Terms of art like “devised work” or “immersive theater” get derided as cliché and meaningless before the general population has even become aware of them. Cross-contamination of grant application and business jargon leads to word salad. Trying to define anything is like cleaning up a mercury spill on the tilt-a-whirl.

Add the feral competitiveness of a population believing that they are in a dog-eat-dog zero-sum industry and trying to get a spin-free picture of any location as an “arts city” would seem to be a lost cause. Producing such a snapshot would seem to be a fool’s errand.

I’ll be playing the fool.

The hidden piece though is the audiences. They are surprisingly resilient. They'll show for anything. Not necessarily thousands of them. Not enough to quit your day job. But they're game.

There are basic pitfalls for any fool attempting to assay a city’s arts climate or character. The easiest to fall into is finding and using the first common denominator between yourself and the audience…in theater that first denominator is always the industrial theater of New York. The trap of course is that there is no gestalt level commonality between any city and New York—not in terms of scale, industry or intent. So let’s dispense with the New York mad libs, the idea that somehow East Austin is like Williamsburg with fewer strollers and better boots. Hyde Park isn’t [Name of neighborhood] with [hokey Texas metaphor]. The exercise attempts to borrow big brother’s clothes and just sort of demeans everyone involved.

The second trap is one I am particularly prone to. Austin is every inch a college town with every college town’s native transience. When you try to describe such a place you grab a moment in time out of that river of people and ideas, hold it up to the light and then try to make the truth of that moment and those people the truth for a place rather than a moment.

When you hold yourself out as an advocate for a place, folks come to you when they’re thinking of moving to that town. I get asked a lot about the pros and cons of moving to Austin. As someone who was supposed to leave five years ago but got caught up making things—I am decidedly pro-Austin, but when trying to put together a viewbook of why artists should join your community the impulse is to showcase finished product, big name artists, and world class resources and I have a hard time doing that. I have a list of folks I want you to work with several miles long and shows I’ve loved with my whole being. Shows that have changed my whole being. But you don’t know them, they’re not going to bring you here and moving to Austin isn’t going to get you any more paid than where you are.

For years I‘ve held Austin up as a hothouse for new plays and as a node of the #newplay network. I took what I saw in my first four years in town and extrapolated what was produced as being the environment that produced it. As my tenure lengthened, I began to be a little confused when the new plays started slowing down and classics began to proliferate. Devised work companies went on hiatus or focused on other things and the product no longer fit the narrative. I was, as it turned out, a little shortsighted and frankly selling the town short.

Because well, here's the thing—Austin isn’t a theater town.

So why in the world would I recommend you move to Austin, or extended-visit Austin, or not leave Austin?

Because Austin is a maker town.

If you are interested in making inroads into the existing theater industry this isn’t a straight-line stop on your journey. If you would like to figure out what you want to make, learn how to make it yourself, or if you want to work outside the industry, pull up a chair—there’s plenty of table.

Click 'Read more' to continue at AustinLiveTheatre.com or click here to go to the article at www.howlround.com

Opinion: Jillian Owens' Top 10 (+1) Theatrical Joys of 2012, Austin Chronicle

In today's weekly Austin Chronicle:

 

Top 10 (+1) Theatrical Joys of 2012

Recalling a year of Shakespeare on bikes, masterful Miller, and a one-woman eco-soap

Liz Beckham (photo: Bret Brookshire)

By Jillian Owens, Fri., Jan. 4, 2013

In chronological order:

1) PUPPET THEATRE Connor Hopkins (Trouble Puppet Theater Company) and Caroline Reck (Glass Half Full Theatre) have done Jim Henson proud this year with original works The Crapstall Street Boys and FupDuck.

2) LIZ BECKHAM The charming actress stormed Austin stages this year in Arcadia, Dividing the Estate, and Pride and Prejudice.

3) 'CL1000P'/'NOW NOW OH NOW' (Rude Mechanicals) The Rudes' colorful February workshop evolved into May's epic mystery, in which the audience accidentally let a character die.

4) 'THE ALIENS' (Hyde Park Theatre) I laughed. I cried. And so did everyone else, thanks to Ken Webster and the dynamic trio of Jon Cook, Jude Hickey, and Joey Hood.

5) 'MIDSUMMER IN MOTION' (Austin Bike Zoo) Killer Queen Rudy Ramirez, who directed, combined well-performed Shakespeare with stunning visuals: Sky Candy stunts and creatures escaped from the Austin Bike Zoo.

6) 'THE SOUND OF MUSIC' (Zilker Theatre Productions) I loved it unequivocally.

7) 'ALL MY SONS' (Palindrome Theatre) The company's penultimate production was a masterful reissue of Arthur Miller's tragedy. Nigel O'Hearn's contributions to Austin theatre will be missed.

8) 'ROSE RAGE' (The Hidden Room Theatre) This famously melted my face off. I am still recovering.

9) ZACH'S TOPFER THEATRE Cheers to Eric Scott's special events team, which produced to perfection two back-to-back celebrations, unhindered by even the most obnoxious thunderstorm.

10) HEATHER WOODBURY'S 'AS THE GLOBE WARMS' (Vortex Repertory Company) The one-woman theatrical soap opera was addictive enough to keep me (and Richard Linklater) coming back for more.

11) 'The POISON SQUAD' (The Duplicates) A beautiful/grotesque workshop production from this theatrical supergroup. Look for a full production at Fusebox 2013.

Opinion: Robert Faires' Top10 Theatrical Wonders of 2012, Austin Chronicle

In today's weekly Austin Chronicle:

 

Top 10 Theatrical Wonders of 2012

History plays with contemporary urgency and giddy surprises made the year memorable in theatre

By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 4, 2013


1) 'ROSE RAGE' (The Hidden Room Theatre) Shakespeare's left-for-dead histories of Henry VI charged to vital, absorbing life by director Beth Burns and the year's most vigorous, committed ensemble. Her Original Practices crew made arcane family feuds over the English crown as urgent as this season's high-stakes political battles and made four hours race by.

2) 'RAGTIME' (Zach Theatre) More than a showpiece for the new Topfer Theatre's bells and whistles, this deeply felt drama of humanity and history threaded together in a tapestry by turns tragic and inspirational said as much about us today as about Americans a century past.

3) BERNADETTE PETERS/BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL (Zach Theatre) Broadway royalty blessed Zach's Topfer Theatre in separate concerts with distinct characters – the queen's poised and glamorous, the king's informal and boisterous – but the same peerless musical-theatre artistry in this deliriously intimate space.

4) 'NOW NOW OH NOW' (Rude Mechanicals) A mind-tickling foray into the natures of beauty, society, evolution, and chance, with attendees teamed in quests, teased with puzzles, toasted with cordials, and treated to a series of giddy surprises.

5) 'SUPER NIGHT SHOT' (Fusebox Festival) Visiting troupe Gob Squad played tricksters along SoCo, drawing passersby into an improvised drama, captured in realtime on video, then screened on completion. Wicked fun.

6) 'THE ALIENS' (Hyde Park Theatre) A detailed portrait of friendship, etched in silences more than words. Beautifully acted, with a fearless Jude Hickey scratching 130 layers under his character's skin just by repeating "ladder."

7) 'JUBILEE' (Rubber Repertory) Watching this show felt rather like spying on endurance tests at a theatre camp, but its odd exercises also tapped some essence of drama in presenting the thrillingly unexpected and unpredictable.

8) 'BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON' (Doctuh Mistuh Productions) Screw the history books. This gloriously messy musical reveled in irreverence, ditching the same-old, same-old "Old Hickory" for an emo rock god, fiercely embodied by David Gallagher.

9) 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION' (Mary Moody Northen Theatre) Another exhilarating spin with director David Long and playwright Charles Mee, this time across the USA, circa midcentury, joyously celebrating and subverting those happy days and American values.

10) 'BOTTLED-IN-BOND: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF A THUG AS TOLD IN FIVE DRINKS' (Fusebox Festival) Patrons were drafted to act out a cornball melodrama of love among thieves, but who minded when served with such good humor, sweet theatricality, and intoxicating craft cocktails? As fun as audience participation gets.

Read at the Austin Chronicle on-line . . . 

Jeff Davis's 2012 Favorite Stage Productions in Central Texas, Broadwayworld.com

Jeff Davis lists his 20 favorites for July-December 2012 at www.austin.BroadwayWorld.com:

As 2012 comes to a close, it's a given that BroadwayWorld will reflect on all the fantastic theatrical productions and events that have entertained audiences all across America. Here in Central Texas, theater-goers had plenty to see in 2012. As a new resident of Austin, I sadly only got to enjoy the Central Texas theater scene for the last half of the year, but still all 49 productions I saw and reviewed in that short amount of time were delightful.

Here is a list of my favorite productions produced in Austin, San Antonio, San Marcos, and the surrounding areas during the last half of 2012. As all of the productions listed were spectacular, it proved impossible for me to rank them, so here they are presented in alphabetical order.

Congratulations to all of Central Texas's theatres, performers, and creative professionals on an astounding and successful year.

-Jeff Davis

Contributing Editor

1. Always...Patsy Cline

Georgetown, TX, Produced by Georgetown Palace Theatre

With its simple staging and excellent performances from skilled comedienne and storyteller Linda Brandshaw and Patsy doppelganger Yesenia McNett, Always...Patsy Cline turned this city slicker into a country music fan and solidified my fandom of the Georgetown Palace.

2. Baby

Austin, TX, Produced by Austin Theatre Project

Austin Theatre Project closed out its inaugural season with the forgotten musical, Baby. Filled with warmth and heart and backed by six fantastic leads, the show was phenomenal. We can all expect great things from Austin Theater Project in 2013. They already are a force to be reckoned with in Austin's theatre scene, and they've only just begun.

3. Chess

Austin, TX, Produced by SummerStock Austin and The Austin Playhouse

All three of SummerStock Austin's offerings this year were stellar, but Chess was the stand-out of the trio. While certainly more challenging that SummerStock Austin's other two shows, A Year with Frog and Toad and Legally Blonde, the young ensemble handled the material with a level of polish and professionalism that often goes, pardon the pun, unchecked.

4. A Chorus Line

Georgetown, TX, Produced by Georgetown Palace Theatre

With its direction and choreography by Broadway veterans Danny Herman and Rocker Verastique and its hard-working cast, Georgetown Palace's production of A Chorus Line holds a spot in my book as the best production of the show that I've ever seen, and I am certain my esteem of this intimate, visceral production will remain the same for years to come.

5. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Austin, TX, Produced by The City Theatre

While the dramedy by Ed Graczyk sometimes bites off more than it can chew regarding themes and subject matter, director Andy Berkovsky managed to keep The City Theatre's production on track, and his ensemble cast of women were nothing short of sensational.

6. Heaven-Earth-One

Austin, TX, Produced by Blue Lapis Light

Heaven-Earth-One was by far the best dance show I saw in Austin this year and quite frankly the best and most inventive dance show I've ever seen in my lifetime. The piece seamlessly blended movement, music, and the iconic architecture of The Long Center for the Performing Arts into a unique and unforgettable theatrical experience.

7. Into the Woods

San Marcos, TX, Produced by Texas State University - San Marcos

Into the Woods has always been one of my favorite musicals. It was my first introduction to the work of Stephen Sondheim, and I wrote a paper on the show in college. So when this self-proclaimed Sondheim snob dubbed this production the best Into the Woods he's ever seen live, that was indeed the highest praise I could give, and it still didn't feel adequate.

8. Miracle on 34th Street

Georgetown, TX, Produced by Georgetown Palace Theatre

With Miracle on 34th Street, Georgetown Palace had a miracle of their own. They managed to take this old, clunky, forgotten show by Meredith Wilson and infused it with a strong dose of charm, wit, and humor. In their hands, this rarely-produced flop shined and sparkled.

9. Moonlight and Magnolias
Austin, TX, Produced by Penfold Theatre Company

Frankly, my dear, I'm still chuckling over this behind the scenes story of Gone with the Wind. The hijinks were an over-the-top laugh riot and a treat for everyone, even those not familiar with the classic film.

10. November

San Antonio, TX, Produced by The Playhouse - San Antonio

Just the word "November" is enough to make me smile and reminisce about The Playhouse's hysterical political satire about an unpopular president who abuses his power and clout in order to fund his campaign. It's a good think no elected officials are this corrupt [insert sarcasm here].

Click to go to www.austin.broadwayworld.com for Jeff Davis's comments on the rest of the score:

The Nutcracker (Ballet Austin), Over the River and Through the Woods (City Theatre), Pagliacci (Austin Lyric Opera), Pride and Prejudice (Austin Shakespeare), Ragtime (Zach Theatre), Rock of Ages (national touring company), Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (City Theatre), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Woodlawn Theatre, San Antonio), You Can't Take It with You (Different Stages) and Xanadu (Zach Theatre).

Opinion from Rude Mech Lana Lesley: Building Audience into the Process, Howlround.com

Opinion from Rude Mech Lana Lesley, published in www.howlround.com:







PROCESS


Building Audience Into the Process
by Lana Lesley


December 16, 2012 | BY Lana Lesley

Recently we’ve started to see many a grant proposal and many a conference paper, and heard many a panel struggling with “audience engagement.” It’s the convening topic for the 2012 National Performance Network Conference, and a research topic for APAP’s Leadership Development group. It’s the next “new answer” to the questions that have been flummoxing the regions for the last ten years—how to attract audience under the age of sixty, and how to grow patron populations. Smaller independent companies have best captured the “under-sixty” audience, and because of that, some of the larger regional theaters have been supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (or have led themselves) to seek out these companies, commission works from them, and perhaps partner with them in order to attract new audience. These efforts and questions are laudable and necessary to making performance in the twenty-first century. Rude Mechs’ success in engaging our community and attracting new audience is entrenched in our programming, our aesthetic, and our longstanding partnership with our audience in the creation of our work—work that has become increasingly interactive over the years.

Rude Mechs’ demographic is 52% under the age of forty-five, 38% of that group ranges between eighteen and thirty-five. We create original work that springs from and speaks to our community. We have kept and grown our audience base because precisely how we engage with our audience has been a paramount part of our aesthetic since our inception. We think it’s the ongoing evolution of this engagement that is actually the important part. If trying out new ideas to reach a new demographic isn’t intrinsic to your artistic interests, and/or your institution’s programming, then it probably isn’t really going to “reach” anyone at all.

It has never been part of our mission to explore a singular form, or a particular set of performance ideas, or any through-line to our content. Our plays are wildly different from each other in terms of content, style, and form. Culturally, we have always seemed to be most attracted to the thing we’ve never done before. What our plays have in common is the collective aesthetic that resulted from our individual tastes and interests colliding play after play, year after year. And an ongoing and large part of that aesthetic is our deep concern for our relationship with the audience, and our audience’s relationship to the work. 


Read more at www.howlround.com . . . .

Opinion: Robert Faires Asks, 'What If You Really Hated the Performance?'

Robert Faires (photo: Leon Alesi)

All Over Creation

When the Truth Hurts

After suffering through a friend's lousy show, is honesty the best policy?

by Robert Faires, Sept. 27, 2012


We've all been there – well, all of us who have friends or loved ones in the arts, anyway: waiting for a relative/BFF/significant other after having just seen his or her latest creative endeavor and the damn thing made you nod off/go postal/lose the will to live. What do you say to someone you're close to when you feel like a project they were a part of – or (horrors!) solely responsible for – left a stink to make a rancid egg and sulphur soufflé smell like Nana's home-baked bread? Do you give it to them with both barrels, trusting in the strength of your relationship to heal whatever emotional or psychic damage your 12-gauge honesty will inflict? Do you lie, swallowing whole your critical distaste (or revulsion, as the case may be), and offer up an unequivocal pair of thumbs pointed skyward? Or do you seek some middle ground, a remark that's hazy enough to sound like a compliment yet leaves you enough wiggle room to be neutral in expressing an actual opinion? The time spent weighing that decision can be supremely uncomfortable, even excruciating, not least because it's as close as many of us ever come to a true moral dilemma.

The matter resurfaced recently among a group of actors I was with, as one had just found herself caught again in its discomfiting grip. She'd seen a play because she knew someone in it, and she hadn't liked it – I mean, really hadn't liked it – and was torn about what to tell her actor friend once he emerged from the dressing room. She didn't want to be hurtful, and yet her response to the show was so negative that she didn't feel right chirping to him, "It was great!" This quandary, while difficult for anyone, whether they're in the arts or not, seems especially vexing for theatre people. They take a certain pride in their strong opinions and feel any moderation of their candid response chips away at their integrity. But because they know firsthand how much positive audience reactions mean to performers – it directly affects their work onstage, after all – and how crushing it can be to hear even a lukewarm appraisal of one's efforts, they're loath to dish out such cruelty to their fellow artists' faces. (Behind their backs? Now that's another story.)

Read more at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

Opinion: Robert Faires on Now Now Oh Now, Boom and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Austin Chronicle

Austin Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires offers reflections on learning at the theatre in his engaging portmanteau review of the Rude Mechs' Now Now Oh Now, Capital T's Boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, and the Doctuh Mistuh production of the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson directed by Michael McKelvey and featuring David Gallagher. Here's an excerpt; click the link to read the full text.

David Gallagher

All Over Creation: 

Continuing Education

Turns out theatre is a great place for getting schooled

Robert Faires, Fri., June 15, 2012

The woman said that she was going to speak to us about evolutionary biology.

Now, had this been back in my school days, that declaration would have shot a torrent of Barton Springs-chilled water through my veins. See, at some point in my adolescence, science and math stopped coming easily to me, and the deeper into those subjects I ventured, the more I floundered. In my ears then, "evolutionary biology" would have rung with the sound of being dropped into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico without a flotation device.

But I was not in a classroom, and those days were long behind me. In fact, this was just a few weeks ago, and I was inside the Off Center, seated at a long table along with some two dozen other people, and the woman addressing us was a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, playing a character in the troupe's most recent production, Now Now Oh Now. Now, she did indeed go on to discuss concepts in evolutionary biology, and most of it struck me as beyond your basic Darwin – the primary notion being that nature may select for beauty as well as survival skills – but rather than being at sea, I was thoroughly engaged. I mean, I caught that wave way out in the Gulf and rode it all the way in to the Padre shore. What she talked about was not only clear to me, but it's stayed with me in the days since, and I've been much more attentive to birds, wondering about the extent to which sheer pleasure has shaped the development of their coloration and songs.

Click to read more at the Austin Chronicle on-line . . . .

Opinion: Travis Bedard on Repeats, Theatre and the Rude Mechanicals, 2amtheatre.com, June 12

Repeats

posted by Travis Bedard
at 2amtheatre.com, June 12

No matter how deeply you bury yourself in new plays and new play creation and theory, theatre remains largely a reflection of where we’ve been (check your local listings). Right now I’m in two shows that combined are more than 800 years old. So the tone of this Culturebot article is bizarre to me.

The linked blurb seems to ask what some of our best modern art makers are thinking putting up chestnuts like Dionysus in 69 or Einstein on the Beach. To answer Culturebot’s open question: what this says about the health of the field is that the best companies in the country are humble enough to know that they are following a path and that someone created that path. If you want to break new ground anywhere it’s imperative to know (really know) how others have done it.

Dionysus in 69 was a turning point for performance art, and what the Rude Mechs have done (and are continuing to do) is mine the history of their field to illustrate for their audience what has come before. This interleaved retrospective adds depth (and context) to the form defying work, such as the recently closed genre jumble NOW NOW OH NOW, that they are creating.

The Rude Mechs (and the also-mentioned Gob Squad) don’t stop making the new to reflect on their past. The Mechs loving, deliberate recreation (not reinterpretation) of the Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69 as well as Mabou Mines’ B.Beaver Animations wasn’t in lieu of The Method Gun or I’ve Never Been So Happy or NOW NOW OH NOW, they were simply part of the delirious stew they have cooking at the Off Center.

Read more at 2amtheatre.com . . . .

Opinion: Photographer Kirk R. Tuck on his Long-running Relationship with the Zach Theatre, Visual Science Lab blog, June 10

Here's the opening of photographer Kirk R. Tuck's meditation on live theatre and his unpaid long-term relationship with the Zach Theatre, published June 10 at his blog Visual Science Lab (which just chalked up its 6,000,000th hit -- congratulations!)

Getting Theatrical. Do you go to the theater or does the theater come to you?

by Kirk R. Tuck, Visual Science Lab, June 10, 2012

Belinda and I went to see a performance of Dividing the Estate at Zachary Scott theatre last night. I wasn't there for a shoot so I had to leave my camera at home. As I sat in the theater I started really thinking about the positive, symbiotic relationship I have with the theater.

Zachary Scott Theatre has a collection of over 100 framed and matted, 12 by 18 inch, color prints of my work spread across three buildings, in public traffic areas. Each one has my credit boldly displayed. My work for each production gets prime newspaper display with a large credit line next to each image. The marketing people chose one archetypical image from each dress rehearsal shoot and make it into a beautifully designed, printed postcard that gets mailed out to 25,000 very well targeted and very affluent house holds (approximately 250,000 local impressions per years in print). I am listed in every program as a sponsor.

And I am well presented by them on the web: http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/dividing-the-estate http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/xanadu http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/fully-committed

I get all the comp tickets I can handle and last night there were four complimentary drink tickets paper clipped to my tickets. I love a theater where you can take your glass of wine in for the performance...
 Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .