Upcoming: Lear Workshop Showcase, Austin Shakespeare, November 23

Found on-line:

Showcase: King Lear Workshop

directed by Ann Ciccolella

Austin Shakespeare presents a FREE Showcase of King Lear highlights at 8 pm Tues., Nov. 23 at Salvage Vanguard, 2803 Manor Rd.

Featuring Michael Costello, Justin Scalise, David Boss, Cyrus Cassells, Steve Cruz, Jennifer Davis, Lindsley Howard, Chelsea DuVall, Simon Day, Bridget Farias, Senait Fessahaye, Ciara Flynn, Stacey Glazer, Hanna Haide, Robert Stevens, Ashely McNerney, Lindsey McKenna, and Jason Phelps.

Meet Lear, and his fool, his daughters: Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia, the heroic Edgar, the devious Edmund, and experience the transformation of Gloucester!

Images by Brett Brookshire: Morning's at Seven by Paul Osborne, Different Stages at the Vortex, November 19 - December 11

Images by Bret Brookshire found at the website for Different Stages:

Different Stages opens its 2010–2011 season with Paul Osborn’s comedy

Morning’s at Seven

November 19 - December 11
at the Vortex Repertory, 2307 Manor Road

This story is about the intertwined relationships and long standing sibling rivalries of the four aging Gibbs sisters. Three of them have lived next door to one another for fifty years and the eldest sister lives only a few blocks away. Living so close has taken its toll. The quiet lives these women share with their husbands start to come unhinged when some of them begin to question what to do with their remaining years. Tensions rise when Ida’s 40–year–old son brings his fiancé of 12 years to the house for the first time. A story about growing old, growing up, and letting go.

Directed by Karen Jambon (Eurydice), Morning’s at Seven features Jennifer Underwood (The Carpetbagger’s Children), Lana Dieterich (Vigil), Bobbie Oliver (Spider’s Web) and Kathleen Lawson (On Golden Pond) as the four Gibb sisters. Playing the three husbands are Michael Hankin (The Skin of Our Teeth), Richard Craig (Lettice and Lovage), and San Damon (Spider’s Web). Playing Ida’s son and his fiancé are Jonathan Urso (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Anne Hulsman (The Carpetbagger’ss Children).

Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. There is no performance on Thanksgiving, Thursday November 25. Added performance on Wednesday December 8 at 8 p.m. Tickets are Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, and $30. For tickets and information call 478-5282.

Click to view additional images by Bret Brookshire at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Baal by Bertolt Brecht, Paper Chairs at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, November 11 - 28

Baal was Brecht's first play, written in 1918 at the age of twenty. He had avoided the draft by taking a medical course and he was called up to staff a venereal disease clinic only a month before the war ended, and much of that time he was studying theatre.

Brecht did not articulate his doctrine of theatrical alienation until 1935, but this text and the production of it by Dustin Wills and the Paper Chairs company suggest strongly that he was on his way in that direction from the very first of his career. Playwright and company achieve the Verfremdungseffekt by using plot devices and staging techniques that remind spectators that they are witnessing a theatrical enactment, not real life -- the intent is didactic, pressing viewers to question and to rouse themselves from the comfort of their passivity. It is a tidy justification for a presentational (not representational) stage technique. Many readers and theatre practitioners consider that Brecht's stories and characters gripped his audiences despite of the V-effekt instead of because of it.

I wanted to like this production because I appreciate Wills' exploration of early 20th century theatre and I enjoy the brash ensemble techniques he encourages. You enter the Salvage Vanguard to find a square central stage oriented in proscenium fashion, even though there's no proscenium. Instead, on either side, you see "backstage" dressing and costuming areas, with cast members boisterously preparing for the show. They wear baggy underclothes of tan-colored muslin, they pay little attention to the gathering spectators, they josh, they fret, they give the impression of a circus troupe preparing for one more day on the boards. Some will wander by to greet spectators; others do vocal or physical exercises. The energy is attractive and invigorating.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, November 11 - 21

I knew that this was going to be intense. I had invited friends to see it with me, and we had seats in the middle of the front row, south side of the "theatre in the square" at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre. After Michelle Polgar had dedicated the opening night's performance to the memory of Oscar Brockett, that grand old man of Austin theatre, the lights began to fade and I had a feeling similar to that you get when you light the fuse on a fistful of firecrackers and throw them down.

My usual view is that a cinema version of the text is irrelevant to the stage performance, but here I have to admit that in any staging of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the ghost of Richard Burton and the presence of Elizabeth Taylor roil fitfully about the set. The movie rating code had just been instituted when Mike Nichols' film was released in 1966. The MPAA had relented after a couple of minor revisions of the dialogue and gave it a "suggested for mature audiences" rating. In my town meant that you had to be 18 years of age to get in, unless accompanied by a parent. My father, a secret movie buff, insisted that I see it and he stood behind me as my 17-year-old self bought my ticket.

Thirteen Academy award nominations, including for Nichols as director and all four in the cast, with five wins, including Taylor as the monstrous Martha and Sandy Dennis as an unforgettably inebriated bubble-blowing little wife. So how can a contemporary theatrical production stand up to that?

The answer in Austin is simple but three-fold: by playing to an audience predominantly of college students who do not know the film; by enlisting Babs George for the role of Martha and Ev Lunning Jr. for the role of George; and with Christie Moore's tight direction in Leilah Stewart's starkly effective, almost claustrophobic set.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Shop Talk with Maria Goyanes of the NY Public Theatre, November 19

Received via Twitter:

University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance presents

Shoptalk with Maria Goyanes, Associate Producer of New York’s Public Theatre

November 19, 3:00 PM, B. Iden Payne Theatre (WIN), 23rd and San Jacinto, University of Texas. Free admission.

Maria Goyanes is at UT to serve as the professional respondent to the premiere of Kimber Lee’s FIGHT. Maria will conduct a Shoptalk, moderated by Steven Dietz. Ms. Goyanes is brought here through the generous support of the Michener Center for Writers and the Department of Theatre and Dance.

MARIA GOYANES is currently the Public Theater's Associate Producer. Previously she served as the Director of Special Projects, where she worked on the development and cultivation of new plays and initiatives that supported the work of a wide range of artists. She helped launch the theater's successful Public LAB, a series now in its fourth year that brings productions in development to audiences for only $10.

Both The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman transferred to The Public's mainstage subscription season after successful runs in Public LAB.

She spearheaded the Suzan-Lori Parks' yearlong "365 Days/365 Plays" festival for New York City, working with 70 theater companies and over a thousand artists. She is also the Executive Producer of the OBIE Award-winning 13P. She is the recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Theatre and Dance Info Line- inquiry@uts.cc.utexas.edu or 512-471-5793
Directions: The Winship building is located on the East Mall circle near the intersection of San Jacinto and 23rd streets. Parking is available in the San Jacinto Garage on San Jacinto near Dean Keeton.

Upcoming: So Much to Go Crazy by Sibyl Kempson and Mike Iveson Jr. at the Off Center, December 2-4

Received directly from the Rude Mechanicals:

So Much to Go Crazy (The Show Might Go On) (Sehr Langsam)

New Work by Sibyl Kempson and Mike Iveson, Jr.

with Ilan Bachrach and Ben Williams

Love and Death, Objects vs. Products: a conglomeration, in song and video.

Dec. 2-4 (Thurs-Sat) at 8 pm at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street
Tickets are $10 (First come, first serve at the door)

Fusebox Festival presents another Kempsonian/Ivesonian assault waged against the innocent citizens of Austin, TX. In a return marked by triumphant shame after last year's debacled victory CRIME OR EMERGENCY - they come this time with crooning, preening heartbreaker Ilan Bachrach and again with the dashing, heroic Ben Williams in tow. Their sacred and profane research continues in a fashion crippled and enabled by generously inadequate scheduling and finances. Layering hand-maiden video with Brahms lieder and an ignorantly yet blissfully attempted translation of Knut Hamsun's play Ved Rigets Port: Forspil, they probe to find the heart of all that they have delicately refused. Co-presented by Rude Mechs as part of our Rude Fusion series. Developed at New Dramatists, NYC.

Read about the artists at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Backroad Homeshow and Not Winehouse, The Truck Project at the Off Center, November 23-24

Received directly from the Rude Mechanicals:

The Truck Project turns the back of a 24' Budget rental truck into its own mobile performance venue.
On its debut tour this fall, the Project will present a pair of solo performance installations.

Jean Ann Douglass's riff on American nostalgia

The Backroad Homeshow

will transform 24 square feet of empty space into the most unlikely vaudeville theater you will ever encounter.

Eric Meyer's

Not Winehouse

invites you to meet the singer we all know and love, reinvented as an American guy who happens to look a lot like Eric Meyer.
Tuesday Nov. 23rd and Wednesday Nov. 24th at 8pm
The Off Center (outside - dress for the weather!)

Tickets: $8 Click to purchase tickets on-line.
Advisory: Please be aware that guests will walk up a Budget Truck loading ramp to enter the theater, and approximately four guests will stand and four guests will sit on cushions on the floor during one of the pieces.

About The Truck Project The Truck Project creates original works of theater performed and toured in rented moving trucks. For each work, the truck interior is transformed into a dynamic playing space, based on the needs of each piece. As much an installation as it is performance, one show creates a vaudeville theater, complete with lobby and concessions, while another is performed in a barren, dark space where all audience members are led to their seats with flashlights. Each configuration of the truck can seat 20-35 people, and several short works are performed in repertory each evening. Our premiere in Brooklyn, NY held 10 performances in one evening, with an estimated audience of 250 total patrons, with many more unfortunately turned away at the door for lack of room. In Autumn 2010, we are expanding and solidifying our repertory and going on tour with two 25-minute works. Starting in Brooklyn, we will then tour to Spartanburg, SC (performing in the alley next to HUB-BUB), New Orleans, LA (performing under the auspices of the New Orleans Fringe Festival), and Austin, TX (performing in the parking lot of the Off Center).