After a successful inaugural apprenticeship in Spring 2022, Penfold Theatre Company (Penfold) announces Morgan Peterson as the Fall 2022 Arts Leadership Apprentice in partnership with Texas State University, Department of Theatre and Dance.
The kids of Camp Shrewd are in lockdown. With the Coronavirus preventing them from returning home, and an internet outage cutting them off from the online world, they resort to writing letters to their friends and loved ones. But 'extended camp' is not as boring as they expect.
FUN HOME is a musical adapted by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori from Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic novel of the same name. The story is a memoir of Bechdel's discovery of her own sexuality, her relationship with her gay father, and her attempts to unlock the mysteries surrounding his life. It was also the first Broadway musical with a lesbian protagonist. It is told in a series of non-linear vignettes connected by narration provided by the adult Alison character. It ran Off-Broadway from September 2013 to January 2014 where it won three Lucille Lortel Awards (including Outstanding Musical), two Obie Awards and eight Drama Desk Awards. The transfer to Broadway in March 2015 was nominated for twelve Tony Awards, winning five, including Best Musical, and its cast album received a nomination for the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
Ground Floor Theatre has announced the cast for Fun Home running December 6-22, 2018. One of the most groundbreaking productions ever to hit Broadway, Fun Home is the winner of five 2015 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Based on Alison Bechdel's best-selling graphic memoir, Fun Home features music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron. As the first theatre in Austin to produce the Tony Award winning musical, Ground Floor Theatre has cast Sandra Mae Frank as Joan, Broadway veteran (Spring Awakening) and a deaf actress, integrating American Sign Language into this musical.
Ground Floor Theatre is proud to announce the cast for Fun Homerunning December 5-22, 2018. One of the most groundbreaking productions ever to hit Broadway, Fun Home is the winner of five 2015 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Based on Alison Bechdel's best-selling graphic memoir, Fun Home features music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron. As the first theatre in Austin to produce the Tony Award winning musical, Ground Floor Theatre has cast Sandra Mae Frank as Joan, Broadway veteran (Spring Awakening) and a deaf actress, integrating American Sign Language into this musical.
Inviting guests to enjoy MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING in the open air amphitheatre in downtown Round Rock, Penfold Theatre presents a delightful adaptation of this Shakespearean classic. Traditionally classified as a comedy, the comedic elements were matched note for note with somber country western style songs - making this interpretation a dramedy for your viewing pleasure. At the heart of our story are two couples, thriving in desperation and desire at any given time in respect to their ingenue and sarcastic style of speech, they echoe classic Shakespearean qualities. As the character's continue intertwining, Claudio (played by Nathan Daniel Ford) declares his affection for fair Hero (played by Emily Christine Smith) these two are quickly swoon and a wedding date is set. A trick is hatched to play on funny man Benedick (played by Nathan Jerkins) and fiery Beatrice (played by Jennifer Coy Jennings) to falsely reveal the others affections through not-so-private conversations from other characters. Resorting back to childish tactics apparently has worked on people for centuries as their attraction for each other begins to bloom. However a more tricky foil comes to fruition when Don John (played by Suzanne Balling) falsely reveals Hero's infidelity the night before her wedding to young Claudio. Outraged by the thought of an unfaithful partner, Claudio rages away from the wedding altar cursing Hero's name for her promiscuity. The stage is set, the plot is hot and the characters are clamoring to protect one another and come out on top.
THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING was a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took her five years to complete, although she did interrupt the writing for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Caf . The novel has been adapted for the stage, motion pictures, and television. McCullers herself adapted the novel for the Broadway stage in 1950. The film version followed in 1952 and a stage musical version, F. Jasmine Addams, was produced Off-Broadway in 1971. The work examines why people exclude others and the resulting consequences. The central figures also talk about how they wish the world was more fluid and changeable in terms of race, gender and identity, all of which runs thematically through McCullers body of work.
Something For Nothing Theatre Company has a reputation for performing little known Shakespearean works on a shoestring budget, this year it's TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, and it's brilliant.
Now playing in Austin's oldest playhouse, The Scottish Rite Theater, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR delights theatre goers with its gender-bending cast and lively performance. Austin's Scottish Rite Theater is a most appropriate venue for such a play to be presented, giving the audience a passage through time within the Masonic grand hall adorned with decorative antiques around the house. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, written by none other than William Shakespeare, commands any space with a high level of detail, and Scottish Rite Theater fits the bill. Given the historic nature of the theater itself, first opening in 1871 as a German Opera house, the play THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR was interestingly first published 269 years prior. The historic location introduces the audience immediately into another age and lends to the other worldly tone of the play's presentation. The experience within this show begins before the lights are up on the stage - a group of 'merry' players entertain the excited audience as they file in to find their seats. A bar, The Garter Inn, has an innkeeper polishing glassware as would any restauranteur on a Sunday afternoon. The mood is set well by The Weird Sisters Women's Theater Collective and when the curtain rises, the audience can disconnect and journey back into 15th century England.
Playwright Eva Suter has taken tropes from 70's sci-fi and plot elements from Shakespeare's Othello to create HOLD ME WELL. In her play, making it's World Premiere (outside of the UT production a few years back), Suter has crafted a dystopian tale of a desolate Central Texas inhabited solely by women after a catastrophic war has eradicated the male population and the Y chromosome. The threat of another war with an unseen and vaguely described outside force looms in the future as these five women struggle to save 'the stock' which is the future of humanity.
John Barrowman is a Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, host and writer who has both British and American citizenship. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1975. His first big break was as Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes on London's West End. His most recent West End credit was in the 2009 production of La Cage aux Folles. To American audiences, he is primarily known for his TV work playing Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and Torchwood. He is also openly gay.