Frank Benge - Page 7

TITLE OF SHOW is a one-act musical, with music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen and a book by Hunter Bell. The show is pretty much the Urban Dictionary definition of "meta". It not only chronicles its own creation as an entry in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, it also chronicles the struggles of the author and composer/lyricist as they create a musical about creating a musical. It's sort of like those endlessly reflective fun house mirrors. TITLE OF SHOW was chosen for production by the Musical Theatre Festival and premiered there, in September 2004. It later transferred to Off-Broadway in 2006, picking up three Obie Awards, and finally made it to Broadway later that same year, where it was nominated for Best Book of a Musical. In this production by Austin Theatre Project, the show has been reconfigured as two acts with no noticeable difference for the audience.

HOT BELLY, a new play by Diana Lynn Small, is receiving a rolling world-premiere between paper chairs, happening first here in Austin, and then by the NYC/Chicago based company, The Syndicate. While Small has been a frequent paper chairs collaborator, this is the company's first time to produce one of her plays. It is also the first play ever produced in The Austin Public, a media and film studio on Austin's East side. The venue works as a perfect setting for this play which exists between live television and a daydream.

THR3E ZISTERS by Baltimore-based playwright Lola Pierson was conceived and directed by Yury Urnov of D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth and was first mounted by Salvage Vanguard Theatre in 2015. That smash hit is currently receiving a remount at The Off Center. The original production won 4 Austin Critics Table Awards including Best Production of a Comedy. The show is part modern adaption of Chekhov's Three Sisters and part critique of Chekhov's work along with fresh literal translations of the original Russian text. It is also a bold criticism of the intrinsic conflicts of producing classical theatre in contemporary times. For good measure, THR3E ZISTERS spends a little time analyzing the transitioning roles of gender and performance in contemporary culture.

THE GREAT SOCIETY, Robert Schenkkan's conclusion to the epic tale he began with All The Way, examines the remainder of LBJ's term as president and the turbulent years of the Johnson White House. It made its debut in 2014 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is now receiving its Texas debut at Zach Theatre. This tempestuous time in American history is presented in a highly theatrical and stirring way that resonates deeply with our current times. While there are some subtle and clever riches that only those who saw All The Way will appreciate, THE GREAT SOCIETY stands on its own as a richly rewarding evening of theatre and history. The play opens where All The Way ended, with Johnson having just been elected to a full presidential term, and facing a multitude of problems. What resonates so strongly today is that, despite the ills Johnson fought with legislation designed to make this country a better place for all, these ills remain dishearteningly persistent in the here and now, despite his cagily and cannily achieved successes.

Sarah Saltwick's new play, A PERFECT ROBOT, now in its World Premiere production at The Vortex, is a smart, witty and engaging examination of some familiar themes. At the core, this is a look at the question of the creation of sentience and control. If you create something with free will, can you be certain that what you have created will choose you?

CAGES by Leonard Manzella, is a prison drama receiving its second production here in Austin, by Southwest Theatre Productions, under the direction of Kat Sparks. The play is based on true stories about the treatment of mental patients in California's prison system, gathered by Manzella during his time running a psychodrama program.

HIR is a socially-constructed, gender-neutral, politically-correct pronoun unofficially used in place of him/her or his/her. It is also an extremely dark and angry comedy by Obie Award winning artist and playwright Taylor Mac that made the New York Time's Top Ten Best Theater of 2015 list, about a housewife dealing with a daughter who is transgender, a son returning home after three years in Afghanistan, and a formerly abusive husband who has experienced a stroke that has rendered him nearly speechless. Think of it as Jules Feiffer on LSD wearing a stunning pair of Louboutins and you're getting closer to the neighborhood this play resides in. HIR makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Long Day's Journey into Night seem like quaint fifties family dramas.

LOOSE GRAVEL, a new work by Frank Wo/Men Collective, is a collaborative performance piece by a group of Austin and New York emerging artists that is part dance and part short theatrical scenes that span the gamut from comedic to absurdist and back to dramatic. The work is a gender fluid piece of thirty two individual vignettes that is multi-lingual in places. This highly physical piece takes risks that don't always work, but when they do, there are flashes of brilliance on this tiny stage.

ZACH Theatre is proud to announce the newest addition to its 2016-17 Season -The Texas Premiere of THE GREAT SOCIETY, the second of Robert Schenkkan's LBJ plays exploring Texas' own political mastermind and his memorable years in the White House. The Great Society plays the Topfer Theatre January 25 - March 5, 2017 directed by Dave Steakley, ZACH Theatre's Producing Artistic Director.

Right Angle Entertainment and A Rising Tide Theatrical Group are pleased to announce the all new national tour of GREATER TUNA premiering in Spring 2017. GREATER TUNA, the hilarious hit comedy about the third smallest town in Texas where the Lion's Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never dies, is coming back to theatres, this time with Co-Creator Jaston Williams sitting in the Director's chair.

FOR THE LOVE OF MAHALIA tells the story of white writer Julie Ann Mathews who traveled in 1965 from Alabama to Illinois to get a rare interview with gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. This gospel spirited musical is filled with some of Mahalia Jackson's greatest hits like 'How I Got Over', 'Precious Lord Take My Hand', 'Didn't It Rain' and many more! FOR THE LOVE OF MAHALIA received a Broadway World nomination last season for best writing of an original work in its workshop production.

Continuing our series of articles about Austin performing companies and the artists behind them, we caught up recently with the very busy Bonnie Cullum of The Vortex to ask her about the past, present and future of the popular East Austin venue.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's CINDERELLA is a 2013 Tony Award winning stage adaptation of the 1957 musical for television starring Julie Andrews, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The new book by Douglas Carter Beane is based partly on Hammerstein's original 1957 book. The piece was remade twice for television, once in 1965 and again in 1997, and was adapted for the stage in various versions prior to the 2013 Broadway adaptation. The 2013 score features several Rodgers and Hammerstein songs that weren't in any previous version, including one trunk song originally written for, but eventually cut from, South Pacific. The new songs include 'Me, Who Am I?', 'Now Is the Time', 'The Pursuit', 'Loneliness of Evening' and 'There's Music in You'.

FAHRENHEIT 451 is a play based on the 1953 dystopian novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. The novel is regarded as one of his best works. It presents a future society where books are outlawed and 'firemen' burn any that are found. The title comes from the temperature at which paper becomes combustible. There was a 1966 film adaptation of the novel and Bradbury himself developed it into this play in the late 70s. Bradbury has stated that he wrote it to address his concerns about the McCarthy era and the threat of book burning. In later years, he stated it was a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. The story is set in an unspecified city at an unspecified time in the future somewhere after the year 1960.

PRESENT LAUGHTER is a 1939 comedy by Noel Coward. The play's title comes from a song in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 'present mirth hath present laughter', that urges the sense of carpe diem. Coward repeats one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the main characters tiptoe out as the curtain falls - a device that he also used in Private Lives, Hay Fever and Blithe Spirit. The plot follows the life of self-obsessed actor Garry Essendine (Marc Pouhe) as he prepares for a theatrical tour in Africa. Amid a series of events that border on farce, Garry has to deal with women who want to be with him, placate both his secretary and his estranged wife, cope with a more than slightly crazed young playwright, and overcome an impending mid-life crisis. The story has been described by Coward as 'a series of semi-autobiographical pyrotechnics'.

Audiences first became aware of Jaston Williams as half of the citizens of Tuna, Texas with the debut of Greater Tuna in 1982. The saga continued with A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas. The plays have been performed on and off Broadway at the Kennedy Center, the Edinburgh International Arts Festival, the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. and all over America. He has received Washington DC's Helen Hayes Award nominations for A Tuna Christmas and Red, White and Tuna as well as the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Award for Greater Tuna. He also received the L.A. Dramalogue Award for both Greater Tuna and A Tuna Christmas. A Tuna Christmas was published in 'Best Plays of 1995.' For several years, Jaston toured in Larry Shue's The Foreigner, for which he received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Actor. He performed in The Fantasticks at Washington DC's Ford's Theatre and directed the musical Bad Girls Upset By The Truth at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre. A recipient of the Texas Governors Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts by a Native Texan he performed at the White House on three occasions. His hometown of Austin, Texas has seen him perform at the State Theatre in Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs and at Zachary Scott Theatre in Jay Presson Allen's Tru, for which he received the Austin Critics Table Award for Best Actor in a drama. He has appeared at Zach Theatre in The Laramie Project and next month is joining their production of A Christmas Carol as Scrooge. His play, Romeo and Thorazine, work-shopped at Zach in November 2001. He work-shopped his autobiographical one-man show I'm Not Lying to critical acclaim at the State Theatre and returned it there for a full production in February of 2004 as well as a benefit performance at Washington DC's Kennedy Center. His autobiographical play Cowboy Noises premiered in Austin in February 2008 to critical acclaim. Broadway World recently sat down with Jaston for a Q & A session during the run of his latest play A WOLVERINE WALKS INTO A BAR.

What do you get when you cross Christopher Durang, the master of anxious comedy, with Anton Chekhov, the master of Russian despair? You get VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE, an evening of melancholia and mirth. While Durang starts with Chekhov he soon runs off in every direction. Chekhov and Walt Disney? California Suite and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? Why not? He ends up delivering a warmhearted, surprisingly personable play that is a mixture of clever and sweet that's hard to pull off. The production now on stage at The Wimberley Playhouse pulls it off beautifully. Chekhov's characters are full of angst and dissatisfaction, and so are Durang's. The key difference is that while tragic Chekhov can be funny, Durang is pretty much flat out bonkers.

Greater Tuna co-creator and master storyteller Jaston Williams and TV's Lauren Lane are currently Stateside at the Paramount performing in the Austin debut of A WOLVERINE WALKS INTO A BAR. This new play by Williams brings to life a throng of fascinating, outlandish and delightful new characters that includes an aging hippie, an elderly world traveling Grande Dame with a history of sinking gondolas; an Anglo man who yearns to be Hispanic, married to a Hispanic woman who yearns to be Anglo; the most messed up wedding planner you'll ever meet; and a duo celebrating memories who end up dancing the cotton-eyed Joe. The Stateside at the Paramount stage has been transformed into a bar-like atmosphere allowing a few audience members to be seated around small tables on the stage. The evening of character studies is a collection of hilarious bar stories; five monologues and a closing scene starring both performers, all told through the eyes of several guest directors. Directors include Kevin Bailey, Linda Donahue and Kristin Rogers.

LITTLE WOMEN is a musical with a book by Allan Knee, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, and music by Jason Howland. Workshop productions were presented at Duke University in 2001 and 2004 and the Broadway production opened at the Virginia Theatre on January 23, 2005. Based on the classic 1869 Louisa May Alcott semi-autobiographical novel, LITTLE WOMEN focuses on the four March sisters: aspiring writer Jo (Lilly Lane Stafford), romantic Meg (Caroline Kinnamore), the easily hurt Amy (Maddie Dennison), and kind Beth (Emily McIntyre) as well as their beloved Marmee (Maddrey Blackwood.) The women are at the family home in Concord, Massachusetts while their father is away during the Civil War. The musical begins with Jo trying to sell her stories in New York but soon brings Jo back home. While the events and timing of things aren't exactly the same as in the novel; Allan Knee's script, for the most part, is expertly condensed Alcott retaining the spirit of the characters. Jason Howland's music is pleasant, if rather unmemorable, riffing musical theatre numbers out of period waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles; supported by Mindi Dickstein's rather unmemorable lyrics. The end result feels like a lesser known Rogers & Hammerstein musical. It's just good old fashioned squeaky clean family fun.

Sharr White's THE OTHER PLACE premiered Off-Broadway in 2011, followed by a Broadway run. Watching this potent drama, you may think, at first, that your mind is playing tricks on you. Facts established in one scene vaporize a few scenes later. You may find yourself questioning what you just heard. THE OTHER PLACE lies somewhere between tragedy and mystery succeeding quite beautifully at both. This audience disconnect is no accident. Mr. White purposely keeps the audience questioning everything they are told by the play's narrator, a drug-company scientist named Juliana (Kat Sparks.) White writes with both simplicity and discipline about a situation that is anything but disciplined. Ms. Sparks' performance as Juliana is so commanding that the less we are sure of, the more we are are drawn in. While perceptions of this journey through life may continually shift, the one thing that doesn't is the riveting, nuanced performance of Ms. Sparks.