Upcoming: A Celebration of Eugene O'Neil's Birthday, Sidetrack Productions at the Hyde Park Theatre,October 16

A general invitation received from Sidetrack Productions

(Michael Stuart said it's okay to pass it along!):

You are invited to celebrate

Eugene O'Neill's 123rd Birthday

Sunday, October 16, 2011

at the Hyde Park Theatre,

511 W. 43rd Street near Guadalupe (click for map)

with a free (*) staged reading of

Hughie

done by Michael Stuart and Barry Miller at 5 p.m.,

followed by cake and carousing

(* donations gratefully accepted)

(if you RSVP to sidetrackmail@aol.com, we'll be sure to have enough cake!)

{This project is presented under the Actors Equity Members Project Code}

[illustration: Eugene O'Neill drawn by Al Hirshfeld]

ALT note: Here's Amazon.com's description of Hughie:

Hughie, the only surviving manuscript from a series of eight one-act monologue plays that O'Neill planned in 1940, was completed in 1941. In the play, only two characters appear on stage; Hughie, the third and most important one, is dead. It is Hughie's innocence, gullibility, and need to believe in a far more exciting existence than he ever knew that gives purpose to the shabby livs of the two who remain. O'Neill here again writes of the defeated and the courage that comes by way of illusions.

Reviews from Elsewhere: An Evening of Klingon Shakespeare, Washington Shakespeare Company

Thanks to @shakespearecub for a link to this March 2011 review by Eddie Pasa at therogersrevue.wordpress.com:

Washington Shakespeare Company's 'By Any Other Name'

by Eddie Pasa

“You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”
– Chancellor Gorkon, from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
production draft, dated 12/28/90

At first glance, it’s a relatively throwaway and rather humorous line from a Star Trek movie.
Upon second glance, some saw it as a challenge.

With a third glance, the challenge becomes a once-in-a-lifetime event… well, technically, a twice-in-a-lifetime event.

As the Klingon language has achieved a worldwide cult status, it seemed only a matter of time before someone put pen to paper and translated Shakespeare into Klingon. Maybe it was on a lark; maybe some people took it way too seriously. With the participation of the creator of the Klingon language, Marc Okrand, Washington Shakespeare Company mounted a one-night-only show titled By Any Other Name: An Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon in September 2010. Originally a fundraising event, this night featured humorous stories from both Okrand and George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu in the original television show and resulting films.

The show was a runaway success; due to popular demand and a fortuitous coincidence involving the British Broadcasting Corporation, WSC remounted this show for another one-night-only presentation on Sunday, February 27.

Read more at the Rogers Review . . . .

Hamlet with Helen Merino, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, September 22 - October 9

The question that must be addressed when discussing this Hamlet staged by Austin Shakespeare is not "Why cast Helen Merino for the title role?" but rather "What does casting Helen Merino as Hamlet do to the play?"

Merino played Hamlet ten years ago for the same organization, then known as the Austin Shakespeare Festival, at free performances in Zilker Park downtown. She was an Austin favorite at that time; a 2001 article in the weekly Austin Chronicle identified her as one of the 40 "most valuable players" on Austin stages. Merino returned to Austin to play the title role in Schiller's Mary Stuart in February, 2010, and won a B. Iden Payne award for it, the highest recognition voted by members of the Austin theatre community. We know that she's a pro, and the prospect of seeing her in Shakespeare is a draw. But what happens to the play?

Director Ann Ciccolella crafts a vigorous, professional production, as always, with highly talented actors, many of whom we've seen before in Austin Shakespeare productions. She gives Merino the straightforward task of portraying a man, a prince, a would-be sovereign haunted by the questionable ghost of his father -- represented here with the ingenuity of puppetry as a 15-foot-tall spectre with a voice like that of Darth Vader. The puppetry is credited to Gary Jaffe.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The 39 Steps, Silver Spur Theatre, Salado, October 14 - November 5

by Michael Meigs

Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play Arsenic and Old Lace is a "golden oldie" kept alive for American culture by Frank Capra's 1944 film with Cary Grant and by community theatre productions such as the charming one currently at the playhouse in Wimberley.

Theatre critic Mortimer Brewster has been brought up his maiden aunts Abby and Martha, and one wonders how he escaped noticing the fact that they're nuttier than fruitcakes. Mortimer's brother Teddy stalks about the place, throughly convinced that he's President Teddy Roosevelt.

Just as romance is blossoming for the drama critic (who despises the theatre), he discovers that his sweet aunts have been cheerfully poisoning lonely old men and encouraging Teddy to bury them in the cellar as victims of yellow fever at the Panama Canal. Mortimer just might be able to resolve those problems if he could get all three members of his deranged family shuttled off to the Happydale Asylum, but another complication turns up: his long-lost second brother, the homicidal Jonathan, accompanied by a plastic surgeon of questionable ethics and not much talent.

The comedy of the piece springs from the juxtaposition of the thoroughly normal -- doting spinster aunts in their tidy frame house in Brooklyn -- with the deranged and the depraved, creating a bubbling pot that Derek Smootz as the reasonable, rational male lead must keep contained. It's most inconvenient to find unexpected corpses in the window seat and in the trunk of bad brother Jonathan's automobile. All that while trying to keep his increasingly bewildered and annoyed fiancée Elaine (Celeste Coburn) uninformed and out of the way.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: The 39 Steps, Silver Spur Theatre, Salado, October 14 - November 5

Found on-line:

presents Patrick Barlow's

The 39 Steps

based on the Alfred Hitchcock film

directed by Gary Askins

Oct 14 - Nov 5 (Fri and Sat evenings only)

Silver Spur Theatre, 108 Royal Street, Salado (click for map)

Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps, a fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves the magic of theatre! This 2-time Tony® and Drama Desk Award-winning treat is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 zany characters (played by a ridiculously talented cast of 4), an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance!

In The 39 Steps, a man with a boring life meets a woman with a thick accent who says she's a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered. Soon, a mysterious organization called "The 39 Steps" is hot on the man's trail in a nationwide manhunt.

The Tempest, Actors from the London Stage at UT, September 28 - October 1

by Hannah Bisewski

In the midst of the whirlwind of Shakespeare that is the current Austin theatre scene, audiences of this week's performance of The Tempest, put on by the intrepid Actors from the London Stage, were in for an exceptional and wildly successful rendition at the B. Iden Payne Theatre on UT's campus. For the past two years, a small troupe of AFLS actors has taken up a short fall residency at UT Austin, each time performing a different Shakespeare play in their own minimalist fashion. This 35-year-old program, housed at Notre Dame University, brings small groups of actors classically trained in Britain for performances and master classes at U.S. universities.

Because there are only five actors cast in each play, each must assume several roles throughout. When they initially present themselves to the theatre, listing out each character they’ll portray, one may be dismayed or at the very least concerned that the next two hours will be difficult. These actors immediately overcome those misgivings, for they breathe dramatic energy into each character with such precision that not once do spectators find themselves confused.

Auditions in San Antonio: Six Degrees of Separation and King Lear, Classic Theatre, October 16 and 17

Found at the website of

AUDITIONS FOR

6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION by John Guare and

KING LEAR by William Shakespeare

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16 - 6-9 PM and MONDAY, OCTOBER 17 - 7-10 PM

By appointment only. Appointments are at 10 min intervals.

Call 210-589-8450 for appointments. Auditions are at the Sterling Houston Theatre at Jump-Start, 108 Blue Star in the Blue Star Arts Complex, 1400 S. Alamo, San Antonio, TX 78204 (click for map)

"6 DEGREES" WILL MEET IN DECEMBER, REHEARSE IN JANUARY, AND PLAY FEB 10-26, 2012. Anna Gangai is cast as Ouisa and Justin Keown as Paul. All other roles are open. Diane Malone directs. "KING LEAR" WILL REHEARSE IN MARCH-APRIL, AND PLAY MAY 11-27, 2012. Allan Ross is cast as Lear; other roles are open. Tony Ciaravino directs.

Auditioners are requested to prepare a 1 minute monologue from a modern play if auditioning for 6 Degrees; a 1 minute monologue from a Shakespearean play if auditioning for King Lear. If auditioning for both, two monologues are required.