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Mama always said it happens in threes..oh, boy, oh boy, say it ain't so..
A fire broke out Tuesday night in the area between the BLUE Theatre and BLUE Genie Arts Bazaar. Rest assured no one was hurt but our beautiful BLUE did receive some second degree burns on both the exterior and interior of the theatre. But we aren't going to let any stinking fire stop us! The BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL Block Party is still on for this Sunday! It was originally intended to be a live music event designed to raise money for new lighting equiptment, but because of the recent fire damage, we are asking NOW more then ever for everyone to come on out and really, r-e-a-l-l-y R-E-A-L-L-Y help us raise some money!
So remember.. This Sunday, August 1st 2 pm BLUE THEATRE, 916 Springdale Road
Come on out and help support all the great programs, productions and installations we are bringing to the BLUE this year. All proceeds from this Sunday will truly help us to keep our doors open. Support the arts in east Austin!
With so many companies and productions busy in Austin and nearby, some duplications are inevitable. The familiar musicals, of course -- Annie seems to come around in some form about every four or five months. The huge and joyful production at the Georgetown Palace ran through the holiday season, Lee Colee's Broadway Bound boot camp in Wimberley did a fine short version, Tex-Arts has just done a junior production, and now SummerStock Austin has settled in -- "for the duration," as they used to say during World War II. Their Annie, free of charge to the public camping on the hillside in Zilker Park, runs almost a month and a half, until August 14.
For Christmastime 2008 one could attend no fewer than four productions of Christmas Belles. I took my spouse to the one in Wimberley and she thought I was nuts to insist on taking in two more. I passed up the version that played at the Harlequin Dinner Theatre in San Antonio.
But sometimes you'll have an unusual opportunity to see versions of a notable piece of theatre, opportunities to glimpse just how great the differences of interpretation and impact can be. Theatre is, after all, a live art. Though texts may be standard or closely aligned, the real life and blood of a piece comes in the staging. Austin, you now have the chance to examine Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare as examples of the powerful transformations of dramatic art.
Last week saw the launch of the beautifully named Medici's lever -- a web based tool designed to model the dynamics of cultural policy in an urban environment. Current pressures on cultural budgets in the USA and UK mean that the launch is timely. However, the launch would be timely whenever it came, since it offers a complex and subtle articulation of how cultural policy works. It is instructive and fun (yes, really!) to play with your different preconceptions and see how they play out. It would be wrong to say Medici's lever is the brainchild of any one person, but the closest approximation is John Kreidler [who] was Executive Director of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley. Medici's lever emerged from that project: "I saw an opportunity to use systems modeling in a way that had never been possible at the Foundation. Given Silicon Valley's prowess in technology, its fascination with rational numbers-based thinking, and its leading position in video games, why not produce a computer game that provided a platform for thinking about the region's cultural future? 'Medici' contains three modules, two of which are games designed to assist with the education of cultural policy students, while the third is presented as an online laboratory that allows the user to simulate conditions in a real or imagined region."
Click to read the introduction as posted on the Medici website
Travis Bedard of Cambiare Productions, Austin gives his thoughts on criticism and context, in the company's blog:
excerpt from
The Most Important Part of the Picture is the Frame
by Travis Bedard
. . . Criticism.
In a time of centralized (truly Mass) media the upper echelons of each field could be recognized and the average person would know at the very least who the Biggest and Brightest in each small niche were. It wasn’t a broad knowledge or anything like even a basic working knowledge of a niche, but you could play word association games – Theatre? Arthur Miller! Poetry? Robert Frost!
In a time of fractured media and self selection of sources it’s more difficult to assume any knowledge whatsoever of a niche.
There’s no context whatsoever for what we’re doing. We talk about microlabels inside our niche “indie” theatre versus “pro-am” or whatever… do a man-on-the-street and ask who the biggest star on Broadway is. Who has the number 1 album on Billboard?
People like knowing what they’re talking about. People like knowing that what they’re seeing is the best, the first, the something-th. They have no way of knowing unless someone knowledgeable steps in provides that knowledge for them. If they walk into the small and oddly shaped Hyde Park Theatre and see Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation this week they don’t know (without someone telling them) that they’re seeing a Obie-winning play directed by an in-town Hall of Famer with a cast that has a few closets full of awards and nominations. Despite the irregularities of the space, the informality of the evening and the affordability of the ticket, you should have high expectations for both the show and the performers. This isn’t a Waiting for Guffman extravaganza written by a bored 5th grader.
I want for the critics of the now, print or on-line, paid adequately or not, to be those context providers. Every town has a narrative. Every town likely has multiple narratives on multiple levels, but let’s stick for the moment stick to the singular. If our critics in each town look to that narrative to inform the coverage and the features we continually build hooks into creating broader interest in what we do.
TexARTS Association for the Visual and Performing Arts is restructuring its management team. Co-founder, Robin Lewis, will continue as Creative Director. Broadway veteran Robert Armitage will join the company as Producing Director. Theater veteran Shari Getz will act as Interim Managing Director and Co-founder Todd Dellinger will continue to instruct students and help with productions and marketing.
The new management team will begin transitioning immediately. Robert Armitage brings more than 20 years of performance, dance, and management experience including productions on Broadway, touring companies, Radio City Music Hall, Disney and Summer Stock. Shari Getz joins the team with expertise in non-profit management as well as significant experience as a professional performer including singing and dancing. These two professionals will allow TexARTS to further develop and pursue its vision of producing outstanding theatrical performances involving Broadway professionals and local artists, and offering a Broadway level of arts education programs and children's theatrical productions.
is ready to open as scheduled this Friday @ 8pm July 23rd and run through Sunday August 8th. Friday and Saturday shows start at 8pm and Sundays @ 7pm.
All shows perform at the new Austin Drama Club located at 12345 Pauls Valley Rd. Look for the big Romeo and Juliet sign @ Fitzhugh Rd and Pauls Valley and you're a block away. (Click for Google map)
What can you expect if you come see the show?
You'll drive down a wonderful hill country road to a group of warehouses off by themselves with plenty of parking.
You'll see our big bay door open and our lobby gift shop with a person there to help you purchase a seat. They'll show you a seating chart of where the seats are located and how much each costs. We have 4 price ranges....$5 seats are your basic fold out type chairs located on the floor up front. $10 seats are more like living room furniture, set on floor level. $15 box seats are on platforms about 5 feet off the ground with comfortable office type chairs and electric fans facing them. $20 (only 2 available) are really large comfortable living room chairs...great for the biggest of theatre fans. We are not taking reservations at the present....audience will be seated as they arrive.
The show, the actors, and the set and lights and sound are all amazing! And at intermission your gonna see an incredible sunset.
President Barack Obama made the following remarks at the July 19 event at the White House saluting Broadway. The evening, featuring a host of performers from the New York stage, was filmed for an upcoming PBS broadcast:
"Now there's nothing quite like the power and the passion of Broadway music....It's one of the few genres of music that can inspire the same passion in an eight-year-old that it can an 80-year-old -- and make them both want to get up and dance....In many ways, the story of Broadway is also intertwined with the story of America. Some of the greatest singers and songwriters Broadway has ever known came to this country on a boat with nothing more than an idea in their head and a song in their heart. And they succeeded the same way that so many immigrants have succeeded -- through talent and hard work and sheer determination. Over the years, musicals have also been at the forefront of our social consciousness, challenging stereotypes, shaping our opinions about race and religion, death and disease, power and politics. But perhaps the most American part of this truly American art form is its optimism. Broadway music calls us to see the best in ourselves and in the world around us -- to believe that no matter how hopeless things may seem, the nice guy can still get the girl, the hero can still triumph over evil, and a brighter day can be waiting just around the bend."
The Village Voice annointed Annie Baker's comedy its Obie (off-broadway) award this year for best new American play and gave another Obie to the cast for their ensemble work. So you can expect an amusing evening when you stop by the Hyde Park Theatre to see them do their second play this year by the 29-year-old Annie B. They delivered her Body Awareness just this past April.
Director Ken Webster and the gang like to play hardball, but this one's a change-up. The familiar and welcome crew of HPT regulars, plus returning company member Rebecca Robinson, are pitching slow softballs and having as much fun with it as kids at a 4th of July picnic.
The set-up is simple. Marty works with a local community center and she has persuaded her husband James to support her notion of offering a six-week class in creative drama. Three other individuals respond. We a watch a succession of short scenes depicting the evolution of Marty’s well-intentioned efforts to help these strangers liberate their creativity.
Circle Mirror Transformation is not, strictly speaking, a comedy. It’s a quiet little drama about needing to make connections and the potential costs of reaching out. Marty is not teaching acting or drama at all; she is dabbling in some very powerful juju. Back in the 1960s and 1970s many folks were attracted to the highs of encounter groups, an approach to group dynamics defined by Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin and pioneered in the United States by the National Training Laboratories. During a lost time in graduate school I participated in three full weekends of assisted but undirected “T-Group sensitivity training,” an experience from which I have probably not yet fully recovered.
Received directly: Photos by director Chris Camplin of
THE LAST BROADCAST OF BAILEY AND LONG
Written by Christie Beckham Directed by Chris Champlin
Overtime Theatre at Blue Star Complex, San Antonio, July 23 - August 14, 2010
It's 1947 and America's most popular syndicated radio show is ending. One of its stars, Jack Long, is moving on, about to get his own show on the new medium of television. The cast and crew of the show, including his trailblazing partner, writer/performer Carole Bailey, must make decisions about the future while trying to produce the best last broadcast ever aired.
With snappy dialogue and songs of the period, The Last Broadcast will tickle your funny bone and warm your heart.
Written by Christie Beckham and directed by Chris Champlin, The Last Broadcast of Bailey & Long is a play that evokes the music and radio personalities of the era. Besides the storylines of the main characters, the play is packed with advertising jingles for imaginary products as well as old products (actual commercials) that do not exist anymore.
There is more theatre playing tonight in Austin, Texas, than in the whole of Sweden. Most of the serious theatre companies, including the many subsidised national and municipal theatre companies, happily follow the rest of Europe on vacation. The most respected companies -- arguably the best ones -- simply shut down from sometime in June until early September. Holiday resorts feature farcees, broad musical comedy presentations or historical dramas, a bit like those homegrow epics that popped up from the 1980s around the United States to celebrate Daniel Boone, Davy Crocket, and other mythic heroes.
The Swedes are doing a production of Macbeth -- on the island of Götland, that beach-and-restaurant destination that fills with the Swedes unable to afford vacation trips to the Mediterranean or to more exotic locations.
But not far away, in Hamburg, Germany, the summer fare is surging with American mythos. Disney's The Lion King has been playing for months in a specially built theatre in the harbor district across from central Hamburg. Access is by special ferry across the Elbe ship channel. Tickets range from about $72 to about $175 and the theatre has been packed -- many days for both afternoon and evening shows. Elsewhere this summer there's a similar massive production of Disney's Tarzan (word is that the show's not that great but the leading actor is as hunky as Johnny Weismuller). The Wall Street Journal has just done a piece on the hugely profitable business of exporting U.S. musical theatre:
From The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2010 (via ArtsJournal daily and via Thomas Cott's "You've Cott Mail!"
At least 13 major productions of American or British musicals are running in Japan. Foreign productions of "The Lion King" have grossed nearly $2.2 billion to date, almost three times the show's Broadway haul. As producers discover that they can reap huge profits overseas -- sometimes even turning a Broadway flop into a foreign hit -- more American shows are enlisting foreign investors and granting international rights at premium prices. International presenters now may pay $200,000 in advance to stage a big U.S. production in a major foreign market, at least double what they were spending a decade ago in many cases. Producers say they're seeing interest from territories that 10 years ago never thought of Broadway. Exporting Broadway shows is a tricky proposition, however. It's not just a question of translating the dialogue and lyrics into the local language. There's also the thorny question of conveying humor and pop-culture references, and trying to gauge what audiences will respond to in vastly different cultures. The musical-export business took off in the 1980s [with] "Cats" and "Les Misérables." Now, the business is expanding as not just the big hits are heading overseas to new territories. That's thanks in part to a shift in focus by producers, who in recent years have moved deeper into markets such as Asia, South America and South Africa. Cameron Mackintosh is opening 35 to 40 shows world-wide in the next four years, twice the amount of a decade ago. Internationally, as on Broadway, the theater industry is weathering the recession by either relying on a handful of blockbusters, or by staging smaller and more nimble productions that run at lower costs. Even at home, Broadway shows today are typically designed with a global audience in mind. About 1 in 5 theatergoers were international visitors in the 2008-09 season, the highest proportion on record.
And then there's the German love affair with the American western.
Most Americans have never heard of "Old Shatterhand" and his Apache blood brother Winnetou. In the late 19th century German writer Karl May had terrific success with romantic adventure tales set all over the world, including a series set in the American Far West. After the Second World War, German cinema and theatre dramatized May's westerns, and an outdoor Karl May drama has played every summer since 1952. As the German-language video from Hamburg Magazine demonstrates, this year it's Half Blood, a rootin' tootin' spectacle featuring eighty actors,well known actors from German film and television, twenty horses, a railroad, a stagecoach, a ghost town, explosions, fights, fire and even the arrival of the cavalry flying the star spangled banner . Promotors estimate that during the season from June 25 until September 5 more than 8000 German holidaymakers, mostly families, will attend this summer's spectacle in Schleswig-Holstein.
As Winnetou the Apache (Erol Sander) comments to reporter Lars Bessel, " It's terrific -- with real horses, real explosions, real drama -- the kids are absolutely amazed. The Americans have their Walt Disney; we Germans have our Karl May!"
The Vortex has been a part of Austin’s live theatre scene for the past 22 years. They performed in many different locations over the years until finally getting their very own facility, which they also offer to other local and national theatre groups, dancers, musicians and performance artists.
You'll see our big bay door open and our lobby gift shop with a person there to help you purchase a seat. They'll show you a seating chart of where the seats are located and how much each costs. We have 4 price ranges....$5 seats are your basic fold out type chairs located on the floor up front. $10 seats are more like living room furniture, set on floor level. $15 box seats are on platforms about 5 feet off the ground with comfortable office type chairs and electric fans facing them. $20 (only 2 available) are really large comfortable living room chairs...great for the biggest of theatre fans. We are not taking reservations at the present....audience will be seated as they arrive. 
July 7th, 2010 at 5:58 pm by 
