Upcoming: The Silent City, Boyd Vance Theatre, October 31 - November 1

Found on-line:

The Silent City
An original play by Jeanette Hill.
Oct 31 - Nov 1 7 pm
Boyd Vance Theatre, Carver Museum,
1165 Angelina Street

Kari Bradford, by all outward appearances, is living life large . She is married to Jameson Bradford III, one of the most influential and popular pastors in the city. However, all is not as it seems, they are living a lie and exposing it will not only ruin the life she now has but will devastate their church community and wreck Jameson’s bid for public office. Her life and her sanity are at stake, does saving one mean she'll lose the other?

Friday, October 31 at 7 p.m. Showtimes for Saturday, November 1st are 1pm and 7pm.
Ticket Prices: $15.00

Purchase Tickets: http://www.sasprod.org/events.html or at one of these locations: Mitchie's Gallery 6406 North IH 35 Suite 2800 Austin, TX 78752 512-371-1029 Gay's House of Beauty 3401 Rancier Avenue #110 Killeen, TX 76543-4162 254-699-6935

Lecture: Artaud's Daughters in new Media Culture, November 3, noon

Published on-line, October 29:

“Artaud’s Daughters in New Media Culture”

The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies presents a talk by Theatre & Dance PhD student Heather Barfield.
Monday, November 3, 12-1pm
E. P. Schoch building – EPS 1.128 University of Texas at Austin

Austin theater company Rubber Repertory is pushing the limits of theater and live performance into the 21st century. In their latest production, The Casket of Passing Fancy, they ardently integrate interactivity without apology. “You must choose,” demands the Duchess who sits at the helm of the parlor. You must take your chances and honor the infinite possibilities of presence and liveness; you decide whether you want a tame or taboo offer; you initiate the transaction by raising your hand. You realize there is a precipice to pass behind those curtains: what will happen to you is a mystery that pumps adrenaline through your excited body. You must shed some fear about human-to-human contact, stranger-to-stranger relations, in order to fully engage the senses and take pleasure (or pain) in the performance made just for you. You are thrust from complacent and passive spectatorship.

This production astutely captures the essence of Antonin Artaud’s manifestos on “cruel theater” practices. Also, because the performances are individual and personal, they are performed only once, aligning with Peggy Phelan’s arguments about the ephemeral nature of performance. Taboos are temporarily suspended for the sake of pleasure and fetishistic notions of experiencing something “new.” This theater offers a radical and unique twist on notions of representation and mimesis in live performance.

Heather Barfield is a PhD Candidate in Theater and Dance with an emphasis on Performance as Public Practice. She has been an active player in Austin theater for over 15 years.

[Click for further info from the ALT listing of The Casket of Passing Fancy]

Auditions: Fences, City Theatre, Nov 12, 15, 19, 22

CASTING CALL---AUDITIONS FOR AUGUST WILSON'S DRAMA FENCES

When: November 12 and 15, 19 and 22

Where: The City Theatre 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D Austin, TX 78722

Time: Nov. 12 and 19, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Nov. 15 and 22, 10 a.m. - noon.

*ten minute slots by appointment.

Show dates: February 26 - March 22

Casting all parts - five men, 2 women, variety of age roles

*If you are not able to make this audition time, please let us know.

August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning tale of a Negro League ballplayer turned trash collector features the painfully fractured family relationships and the best of his trademark dialogue and characters. Co-produced for Black History month.

Bring headshot, resume, and a 1 min. prepared dramatic monologue. Please be familiar with the script as scenes may also be performed. 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org. For more show details, go to

www.citytheatreaustin.org

Event & Book: The Necessity of Theatre, Texas Book Festival, November 2

Texas Book Festival
Sunday, November 2
Texas State Capitol: Capitol Extension Room E2.016
3:00 – 3:45 p.m.
Admission FREE

Paul Woodruff, UT professor of ethics, discusses his newly published book-length essay, The Necessity of Theatre. Moderator: Steve Tomlinson

From review by Leah Hager Cohen in NYT, June 1, 2008:

Theater’s tendency to promote empathy serves as the leitmotif of Paul Woodruff’s book “The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched.” It also lies near the heart of the rather brave claim with which he opens the book: “People need theater.” He acknowledges that the assertion might meet with skepticism but insists he means it literally.

Theater is necessary, he says, for no less than “to secure our bare, naked cultural survival.” For Woodruff, a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, theater is essential to the development not only of healthy individuals but of healthy societies. It is not empathy alone he extols, but the way it fosters ethicality. This deep link, then, between theater and ethics forms the philosophical underpinning of his ambitious, somewhat plodding, occasionally transcendent book.

Woodruff has modeled his text, loosely but explicitly, on Aristotle’s “Poetics.” We know as much because he tells us in his preface: “I have written a kind of poetics of my own.” (You’ve got to hand it to him — when it comes to making brave claims, the man’s no slouch.) . . .

If this book succeeds in any measure as a defense of theater, it will also have succeeded at something much larger. Nowhere is Woodruff more eloquent than in this beautifully stripped-down plea: “We must all listen to each other because we are human, because we see only what we can see from where we stand, because there is more to be seen than any one of us can appreciate alone.” (Click for full text of review)

THE NECESSITY OF THEATER The Art of Watching and Being Watched. By Paul Woodruff. 257 pp. Oxford University Press. $27.95. Pub. Date: April 2008 ISBN-13: 9780195332001

2007-2008 B. Iden Payne award winners, Austin Circle of Theatres

Awards made Sunday, October 26, published at ACOT website:

B. IDEN PAYNE WINNERS 2007-2008

Plays for Youth

Outstanding Production of a Play for Youth
'The Red Balloon’ (Tongue and Groove Theatre)

Outstanding Director of a Play for Youth
Andrea S. Smith ("Wiley and the Hairy Man")

Outstanding Actor in a Play for Youth
Mark Stewart (the Boy, ‘The Red Balloon’)

Outstanding Actress in a Play for Yout
Kristin Bennett (Mammy, ‘Wiley and the Hairy Man’)

Music Theatre

Outstanding Production of Music Theatre
'Troades: The Legend of the Women of Troy’ (VORTEX Repertory Company)

Outstanding Director of Music Theatre
Bonnie Cullum (‘Troades’)

Outstanding Lead Actor in Music Theatre
Cedric Neal (Sportin’ Life, ‘Porgy and Bess’)

Outstanding Lead Actress in Music Theatre
Marva Hicks (Bess, ‘Porgy and Bess’)

Outstanding Featured Actor in Music Theatre
James La Rosa (Abraham, ‘Altar Boyz’))

Outstanding Featured Actress in Music Theater
Janis Stinson (Maria, ‘Porgy and Bess’)

Comedies

Outstanding Production of a Comedy
'Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ (Hyde Park Theatre)

Outstanding Director of a Comedy
Ken Webster (‘Dog Sees God’)

Outstanding Lead Actor in of a Comedy
Matthew Radford (‘Benedick,’ ‘Much Ado About Nothing’)

Outstanding Lead Actress in of a Comedy
Katherine Catmull (Winnie, ‘Happy Days’)

Outstanding Featured Actor in of a Comedy
Ben Wolfe (Michael, ‘Featuring Loretta’)

Outstanding Featured Actress in of a Comedy
Bernadette Nason (Madame Arcati, ‘Blithe Spirit’)

Dramas
Outstanding Production of a Drama
"Doubt’ (Zachary Scott Theatre Center)

Outstanding Director of a Drama
Shawn Sides (‘The Method Gun’)

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama
David Stahl (‘Henry Drummond,’ ‘Inherit the Wind’)

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama
Kathleen Fletcher (Catherine Holly, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’)

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama
Tyler Jones (Happy, ‘Death of a Salesman’)

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Drama
Rachel McGinnis (Zubaida Ula et al., ‘The Laramie Project’)

Cast

Outstanding Cast Performance
'The Beauty Queen of Leenan’e (Renaissance Austin Theatre and VORTEX Repertory Company)

Outstanding Ensemble Performance
Content Love Knowles, Betsy McCann, Kira Parra, Emerald Mystiek, Ashley Edwards, Leigh Shaw and Elizabeth Rast (Chorus, ‘Troades’)

Youth Performer
Outstanding Youth Performance
David Bologna (Mickey, ‘Golly Gee Whiz!’)

Technical Achievement Awards

Outstanding Set Design
Arthur Adair (‘The Red Balloon’)

Outstanding Lighting Design :
Jason Amato (‘Troades’)

Outstanding Sound Design:
Jeffrey Alan Jones (‘Death and the King’s Horseman’)

Outstanding Costume Design:
Derek Whitener (‘Porgy and Bess’)

Outstanding Music Director:
Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)

Outstanding Choreographer
Robin Lewis (‘Porgy and Bess’)

Outstanding Original Script:
Zell Miller, III (‘Radio Silence’)

Outstanding Original Score:
Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)

SPECIAL AWARDS

Austin Circle of Theaters Speical Recognition Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Theatre and Performing Arts:
Jason Amato

ACoT's Rudy Kloptic Award for Outstanding Improvistional Theatre
Given in 2008 to Austin's "Improvisational Dream Team" ( the best reps of improvisational theatre, both on stage and in the community.)
Dave Buckman, Asaf Ronen, Tami Nelson, Chris Trew, Michael, Jastroch, Shana Merlin, Roy Janik, and Justin York

B. Iden Payne Committee's Standing Ovation Certificate:
Outstanding Achievement in Animation to Leah Sharpe for ‘The Red Balloon’

Robert Faires' account of the evening, published in the Austin Chronicle of October 30

Sleuth, Gaslight Baker Theatre, Lockhart, October 23 - November 8

I continue to be impressed by the craft and love of theatre of the Gaslight Baker Theatre, which is “putting the art in Lockhart.”

The broad two-story set installed in the former movie theatre on South Main Street is nothing less than epic, with columns, French doors, a working staircase, a billiard table, meticulous set decoration and furnishings that look authentic and very pricey. The production staff once again mastered that huge expanse of stage and created a world for the actors.

Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth is a witty, malicious cat-and-mouse game. Shaffer pits the urbane, rich amoral Andrew Wyke against Milo Tindle, a much younger first-generation, barely-white-collar Brit who is carrying on an affair with Wyke’s wife. She never appears. Except for the intrusion of various policemen, this play gives us a lengthy two rounds of games playing and deception, in which Wyke’s effete British sense of property, puzzles, games-playing and “fair play” arouses the Italian sense of vendetta inherited by Tindle from his Italian watchmaker father.

Andrew Wyke appears initially as an amiable host with a courteous, warbling manner, whose avocation is writing Agatha-Christie-type detective stories. Steve Lawson (half visible, right of the chess piece) has an appropriately off-hand, fuzzy manner as he receives the uneasy Tindle at his deserted mansion, from which the servants have been dismissed for the weekend. Andrew puts smoothly into play a lengthy, cruel and elaborate game that lures Milo Tindle with prospects of money and a clear path to romance with Andrew’s wife. Todd Martin (half visible, left of the chess piece) as the hapless Milo moves from unease to companionable conspiracy to resentful anger and fear for his life. Though Andrew has control of the situation, our attention is captivated instead by Todd Martin, who plays his lines with the vigor and desperation of a tarpon hooked on the open seas.

Before Act One ends, a safe is blown with an impressive bang and flash of fire, Milo winds up in a clown costume, and three shots have been fired, the last one as a coup de grâce.

Act Two, set two days later, gives us the investigation of those events, initially by the terse, moralistic Inspector Doppler (Henry Martin). Tables are turned, with a literal vengeance, and we witness the inexorable reduction, in turn, of the smug Andrew Wyke to a lonely and ridiculous man without hope.

This act contains further surprises and about-faces; since Sleuth has twice been produced as a film, audience members may not be as surprised by them as I was. I did see the 1972 version in which Laurence Olivier as Wyke tormented Michael Caine as Milo, but all I remembered, 36 years later, was the sense of duplicity and cunning, not the details of the plot. Lockhart audiences may, on the other hand, have seen Kenneth Branaugh’s filmed version from last year, with screenplay by Harold Pinter, in which Michael Caine played Wyke and Jude Law was Milo.

I followed the action intently and I was appropriately misdirected, surprised, and satisfied by this production. Congratulations to the actors and to the company for taking it on. I will continue to make that 30-mile trek down to Lockhart to see what they are doing in theatre.

Shaffer’s plot remains a sizzler. Time and changes in custom have altered two key aspects of it, however, and these are dimensions that we as Americans probably have never entirely understood.

The confrontation between the two men is fueled by class, and it is relentlessly reinforced by accent.

Class distinctions were real and always present in Britain in 1972. Shaffer parodied Wyke the aristocrat by tying him to the unreal world of mannered whodunnits, and Wyke inevitably dismissed and despised Milo as a penniless, hopeless son of immigrants. In turn, the viciousness of Milo’s reply embodied the deep anger of the working class and of the struggling middle class. Those were pre-Thatcher days; they were, certainly, well previous to the successes of, for example, Sir Richard Branson.

Those deep class differences were telegraphed by accent. The upper-class or “U” accent marked superiority, to the extent that middle class families paid enormous tuition bills to send children to boarding schools where their most striking acquisition was the “U” accent to replace their maternal “non-U” manner of speech. The wonderful variety of expression in the United Kingdom – stemming both from region and from class – was systematically suppressed. For example, not until the late 1980’s did the British Broadcasting Corporation begin to allow “non-U” newscasters or reporters onto the air. Even today, “non-U” accents can be wielded as political clubs in British discourse.

Cockney Michael Caine as Milo Tindle was perfect casting. Caine as Wyke? (Note to self: rent that 2007 version from Netflix!)

Only the best-voice-coached and most adaptive non-British actors can mine those particular fields. We Americans are not classless, but the class differences of Sleuth are fundamentally alien to us. And our accents are mostly regional or ethnic.

Gaslight Baker’s lead actors Steve Lawson and Todd Martin employ sort-of-mid-Atlantic UK accents, but theirs don’t have the meaning or bite of those in a British production.

And in that connection, I was initially appalled by the Irish-leprechan-begorrah accent used by Inspector Doppler (played by Henry Martin). Wilshire, the locale of Sleuth, is closer to London or Bristol or Cardiff than to Dublin or Cork. But a plot twist appeased me on that score.

The good inspector may well have been pulling someone’s leg.

Internet Movie Database on Sleuth (1972) and Sleuth (2007) (note: Spoilers!)

Upcoming: Political Theatre, Bastrop Opera House, October 17 - November 22

Found on-line:

Political Theater
World premiere play by Boston playwright Sorcha Blaine, Winner of POPS New Play Development Contest
directed by Chester Eitze
Fridays and Saturdays October 17 - November 22, 2008
No performance on Oct. 31 8 p.m.
(optional dinner at 7 p.m.)
Special Sunday Matinee on Nov. 2 at 2:30 p.m. (no meal)

Backstage in a Boston Theater with John Wilkes Booth and Mary Baker Eddy with commentaries by Abraham Lincoln.

Starring award-winning actor Paul Standefer as Booth, Jennifer Warwick as Eddy, and Danne Absher as Lincoln.

Texas Nonprofit Theatres performances of Political Theater are produced in conjunction with TNT, the playwright, and Bastrop Opera House as part of the 2008 Texas Nonprofit Theatres POPS! New Play Project.

Show only tickets: $10 adults; $8 senior 60+; $7 students. Show only tickets can be purchased on line or paid for at the door.
Optional dinner service is available, but please note the deadline for paying for your meal on the ticket page. Dinner is one hour before showtime and costs an additional $15. (Show AND Dinner tickets: $25 adults; $23 senior 60+; $22 students) Make your show ticket and meal purchase on line now.

Dinner Menu Oct. 17, 18, 24, & 25 Cedar's Mediterranean Grill: Chicken Bellini (grilled chicken breast topped with artichoke hearts, diced tomatoes, and diced potatoes in an olive oil, white wine sauce); a side of mixed beans (wax beans, green beans, and baby carrots); a Greek salad; garlic bread; and an assortment of cheese cakes. Deadline 2 p.m. the day of the show.

Nov. 1-22 Fat Cat Caterers: menu to be announced. Deadline to pay for meal is noon the day before the show.

RESERVATIONS Make your show ticket and meal purchase on line now. You may also call (512) 303-6283 or (512) 321-6283 or email reservations@bastropoperahouse.com

Playwright Sorcha Blaine interviewed by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, arts editor of the Austin Statesman, October 30


Click for YouTube slide show of images from performance.