Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--Phineas Hamm and Messenger #4

The 27 Would-be Lives of Phineas Hamm and Messenger No. 4 (or…How to Survive a Greek Tragedy)

Paper Moon Repertory/Cambiare Productions

February 18, 2012

The BLUE Theatre

East Austin

Runs February 16 to March 4, 2012

These full-length plays were presented as a double feature (although one could choose to buy a ticket for a single play only), and this arrangement gave Dr. Dave a huge theatre night.  Fortunately, the productions were spectacular and well-matched and left their audiences energized and satisfied.  Unfortunately, these shows will soon be competing head-to-head for numerous awards in the upcoming award nominating and granting season—Dr. Dave predicts.

“The 27 Would-Be Lives of Phineas Hamm” is a full-production premiere of an original play by its director, Rachel Maginnis.  The set, costumes and props have a nineteenth century European feel to them, inspecific as to place.  Speaking accents were not used or attempted by the cast.  The title character inherits a device from his inventor father, that, when used, kills him and reincarnates him in a new life.  The ensuing scenes are snapshots of the journey through this soul-vortex or karmic suicide express, a literary device amplified in the 70s by the science fiction writer Phillip Jose Farmer in his Riverworld series.  In this take on it, we see a lot of life, murder, sex, drinking, fighting, whoring, fortune-telling, fortune-gaining, fortune-losing, gambling and more fighting.  We don’t see a lot of answers to fundamental questions about time and the soul, yet the characters ask questions about it anyway; and Phineas never gains control over the mysterious device (don’t touch it, Jim!).  We do see a lot of scene changing by the cast, and they were very good at it.  Standouts in their multiple roles were Aaron Alexander, Andrea Smith and Omid Ghorashi.  The props by David Meissner were brilliant, the costumes by Rachel Maginnis (yes, her again) were sex-ee and the set by Ia Enstera was like some monumental carved European clock—one didn’t know what would pop out of it when the clock struck Never.

   

Messenger #4 hails from the Classically obsessed imagination of Will Hollis Snider of Cambiare Productions.  A literary agency has proprietary technology, which allows it to send the Messengers into every Classical and Elizabethan play—to manage their common literary devices of messengers coming on stage telling the characters and audiences what has just happened off stage.  That way a playwright doesn’t actually have to stage the sea-battle of Actium or anything else enormous that wouldn’t fit onto the stage.  Hilarity ensues.  Messages to different plays get switched; technology goes haywire; and characters fall in love.  Yes, this is farce comedy.

 The action and scenes shifted on the activation of wrist devices that hurled the messengers backward and forward in literary time.  Actors rushed on and off stage to change the set.  Often their set pieces were tree branches, and they enacted trees for the new scene, duly credited in the program.  These rapid-fire transitions afforded many of the cleverest moments of the play.  Consequently, almost all of the actors played several roles, the most being eleven, enacted by the hard-working Jessica Allen.  Andrew Rogers played only the title character, but even he met himself in a time paradox goof-up in the middle of the play.  His lover was seriously confused.  Tap your wrist devices to dislodge static buildup. 

Rachel Weise was a major standout.  Her Puck was a scream, and as Shakespeare she delivered the timeless soliloquy on actors spending a brief hour upon the stage, but the play living on forever (I forget its play source).  This was the heart of this loving tribute in farce comedy to Classical and Elizabethan drama.  Then Shakespeare went on to bring the laughs in a godlike swordfight with his own characters (What?  How dare you kill off my character!  En garde!)  Another excellent performer was Megan Minto, who brought a slightly drier and cooler humor to the play, thus becoming a relieving tropical isle in this ocean of farce. 

Regarding both plays, contemporary theatre has abandoned the proscenium stage with its structured ability to both hide and reveal its theatre magic.  Consequently, there has been a revival of the chorus.  This is post-post-Classical and post-post-Modern.  The New Chorus is tasked heavily with scene changing, as there is no curtain behind which to do this.  And black-clad stagehands are passé and thoroughly lame.  The New Chorus performs all this—and singing and dancing, too!  Both productions took slightly varying approaches to this problem set, but both succeeded brilliantly.  The issue inevitably involves transitions, which must be clear but brief.  The results reflect on direction.  The work here was facilitated by Ia Enstera’s articulating set, designed for both productions and their needs.  The choreographers, Kaitlyn Moise (Phineas) and Rachel Wiese (Messenger) also provided clever solutions throughout.

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--Love in Pine

“Love in Pine”

Written and Directed by Gary Jaffe

The Last Act Theatre Company

The Broken Neck, 4701 Red Bluff Rd. Austin

February 16, through March 3, 2012

The Broken Neck is a term describing a theatre space so raw the word theatre isn’t used in its name.  The location is a former automotive repair shop or warehouse, with tilt-wall construction, lots of corrugated sheet-metal, broke-down cars out front, glaring security lights (Aah! East Austin!); and a chic unfinished plasterboard interior design within, accented with a near-total graffiti layer.  It was safe: there was no crankcase oil on the floor.   This Civilization-teetering-on-the-brink esthetic must not deter anyone seeking unusual locations to find rare theatre experiences.  The venue upholds an avant-garde theatre tradition: it stands right up the street from the former Red Bluff Studios, a similarly repurposed building that was home to many early 90s dance and theatre explorations.  Artist luminaries such as Deborah Hay and Sally Jacques performed and taught there; but now, in this century and in this new ramshackle place, that legacy creativity still pervaded the ether on a cold winter performance night and piqued the imagination for what “Love in Pine” might bring.  

The action of the play took place on platforms and runways projecting at various angles through the space.  A thrust stage is the most apt space concept term for the stage/set design.  The result was three levels of performing space, and all the sight lines from the audience were good.  Such is almost never the case with alternative spaces, and the stage design is one of the most laudable aspects of the production.  The lighting design is best described as Hurling Photons, and there were sufficient instruments to win that game, although the lighting sets were not always well cued.  The sound design was apt but a little understated for my taste.  For example, the horrific Bastrop fires were described in monologue; the lighting design held up its end of the bargain, and this was the perfect place for the snap, crackle and pop of a truly hell-bound inferno.  We got nothin’.  The car-crashes (multiple!) were OK but no more than OK.  Clearly, the sound designer gave vastly more attention to gaining appropriate and evocative prom dance music than nuts-and-bolts sound effects, but the latter are often where the creative opportunities lie.   

The play itself started with a fatal car-crash suffered by a couple on their way to the prom dance.  It went from there through two hours and two acts with ghosts, live people, flashbacks, ‘way flashbacks, ghosts-becoming-people, people-becoming-ghosts, reverse it all again, everyone ghosts, everyone people.  I am not trivializing the action of this play.  There was an immense amount of switching backing and forth at important levels of meaning in “Love and Pine.”  When the playwright is also the director, certain things may be overlooked in the transition from word to stage reality in pursuit of the artistic vision.  The alternative stage setting, already described, did not have curtains or (intentional) blackouts to cue even the most avant-garde of audiences that we are having important changes of state in the set and characters here (human to ghost, ghost to human, etc).  There were a few good lighting cues for the changes, but the burden of making the sometimes-instantaneous transitions fell heavily on the actors, and they did a great job.  The burden of following the many transitions, however, fell crushingly on the audience, seeing and hearing the play for the first time.  If one’s understanding of the action lapses to uncertainty, the effect might be a withdrawal from suspension-of-disbelief, that all-important compact between performer and audience.  I admit that I felt uncertain and a little dulled-out by the end of Act I.

But I persevered.  The kernel of brilliance at the heart of “Love in Pine” is that the celebration of Prom is a central event in the lives of everyone surviving into their late teens, whether they graduate from high school or not.  Love, sex and the future, my future, spiral into this turning point, and we have to take our temperature constantly in order to scry any future for ourselves.  Such a delicate yet raging fear, and playwright Gary Jaffe put his thumb on it with great sensitivity, and, ultimately, compassion. Mr. Jaffe and everyone at Last Act Theatre Co. are young, not long past their own proms, and the commitment with which they staged “Love in Pine” makes the production look like their collective love letter to the world.      

The cast of “Love in Pine” is particularly well appointed.  They are all standouts, and individually deserve entire blogs on their skills and performed work.  Alas, time does not permit; however, it should be noted that the male actors, Chris Hejl and Douglas Mackie, showed particular skill in their physical work.  I credit them with adroit handling of set furniture, wineglasses and lovers’ bodies.  Their intimate scenes steamed up the audience. 

Karen Alvarado conveyed much of the story with utter confidence and agility.  Her work is measured and subtle, and yet her emotionality is quicksilver, making compass turns on the instant (a necessity in this play), but never becoming too much or overdone or opaque.  Few can manage such requirements.  Emily Madden played Tree, and at this point some Dr. Dave back-story is required.  I have had a crypto-career playing trees in dances and plays.  So I know how it is done, and I know all the nuances.  And Emily Madden’s Tree gave me the creepy creeps (and that’s a very good thing).  Bridget Farr is immensely dynamic and plays easily with great passion and smoky subtlety.  At the same time she is sharing and supportive of all on stage with her.  Such high intensity is found in few.  Fewer still can control it.  But not so Bridget: she holds the power and claims the glory.  Bridget’s amp goes to eleven.

“Love in Pine” is not Playwright/Director Jaffe’s first play.  He has won many awards for his work, in his early twenties, and Hello World--he is going to win many more!  I encourage everyone to see “Love in Pine,” overcome its challenges, bask in its delights, and get in on the ground floor of Mr. Jaffe’s work.  I hope to blog a lot of it.  Mr. Jaffe’s  next task will be directing “The Twelfth Labor” by Leegrid Stevens for Tutto Theatre Company, August, 2012. 

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--The Alien Baby Play

“The Alien Baby Play”

by Nicholas Walker Herbert

produced by Tutto Theatre Company

attended 1/20/12

runs January 20 – 22, 2012 at a private residence in Westlake,

and January 24, 28, 29 and February 5, 2012 at Salvage Vanguard Theater,

Austin, Texas as part of Fronterafest Longfringe series.

I arrived after dark at the fancy Westlake home, Google maps making it easy to find, and I was welcomed and embraced by Austin/Southern hospitality like I was coming home from some nameless war.  After five minutes the crowd of about 20 folks felt and acted like old friends, and the living room held us all comfortably.  Without warning, we were joined by a nervous, immensely pregnant woman, gravid beyond gravity, who thanked us for coming and told us this utterly convincing story of her abduction and impregnation by an alien named Gabe.  She would need all our help in giving home birth to this alien’s baby she had been carrying for fifteen months. 

Alright.  The hospitable warmth cooled around the edges a bit.  I had that unsettled feeling most people have when they are near someone they have just now realized is delusional. But is she really delusional?  Our heartstrings were tugged by this young girl who was stuck in a bad situation.  And that’s bad in the bad sense of bad.   Like all good little primates who got eaten by the jaguar, our curiosity overcame our fear and we all stayed to the end, listening to Bethany’s stories, helping her off the floor when the contraction pangs struck like lightning bolts, and munching her cookies, bell peppers and gum drops.  The celery stalk she pulled from her bosom she reserved for herself, thank you. 

This evening was a theatrical treasure, with Bethany played by Kathleen Fletcher in a one-woman tour de force.  The local weekly tabloid called this year’s Fronterafest a promising anthology of one-person performances, and “The Alien Baby Play” must, by any measure, be considered one of its foremost offerings.  Kathleen Fletcher is a native Austinite and actor who is a singing-dancing-acting triple-threat as Broadway measures these things, and, logically, that is where she now resides and pursues her performing arts career.  “The Alien Baby Play” was written by Nicolas Walker Herbert, an emerging American playwright (and director and actor), who penned the play expressly for Fletcher.  This is truly a rare conjunction of stars.  When Tutto Artistic Director Gary Jaffe found out about the collaboration, he insisted that Tutto Theatre Company produce it.  The rest, everyone hopes, will be theatre history.  Deservedly so.

But what was the play about, really?  It resolved some of its mysteries and left others tantalizingly mysterious.  Was it about a new Messiah, or maybe the first?  The play skipped over The Annunciation and went to an angel telling Joseph not to set aside his wife, thoroughly second-classing the Virgin Mary.  Several world religions tell of avatars, messengers arriving on earth through matings of divine beings and human beings.  On a more human level, we can see the isolated and frail Bethany struggling in her human way to bring back her deceased mother, or retrieve her father from falling down the bottomless well of Alzheimer’s.  And then there’s Charlie. I won’t tell you about Charlie; I’ll leave it to Bethany to tell you perhaps the best contemporary story about guilt, compassion, inflicted traumas and struggled healings. 

All the stories were wrenching, connecting with our own lives in some way, until Bethany’s stories became our stories and we lapsed into our own memories and reflections.  Toward the very end, I turned and looked out the French windows and saw a bright light in the night sky.  It seemed to glide, approaching.  In that brief moment before I heard the faint whir of the law enforcement helicopter, I thought transcendence was appearing.  Coming for me.  Coming for her.  Coming for us all.  

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--No Assurance

No Assurance

The Blue Theatre

January 13 and 14, 2012

Produced by Julia Duffy-Dzubinski

The Blue Theatre is becoming the go-to venue for dance in Austin.  So it was for “No Assurance,” the second installment in what may become a yearly anthology series of contemporary dance.  I arrived early and sat on the first row, as I always do.  The dance space was arranged as a thrust, so there were three front rows from which to choose.  The set was minimal, as it needs to be to accommodate the variety of movement expected from eleven choreographers. 

         And there is nothing like starting a show with a knockout blow.  Amanda Leigh Oakley staged “Know Your Limits” a trio danced partly to the song “Sail” by AWOL Nation.  As with the popular song, the trio, Oakley, Randy Leigh Turkin and Kalani Hawks, were unrelenting in the rising intensity of their story of the suppressed agonies of highly made-up yet frustrated women at a house party. Ironically, the performers knew their limits and boundaries while portraying characters exploding out of theirs.  “Know Your Limits” was worth the price of admission, and it was only the first piece. 

         Producer Julia Duffy-Dzubinski gave us “Nonsense” one of three or four duets in “No Assurance.”  The Duffy-Dzubinski duet needed more weight, but it was too short, here and gone in a few moments.  Next came the exquisite trio “Disconnect” by Cherami Steadman and performed by Mysti Jace Pride, Debbie Barnes, and Cate Biedrycki.  The piece started with the performers entering on their backs, making insectlike motions with their arms and fingers, and scooting like that across the stage—waterbugs on a frolic.  And the piece was filled with innovative movement such as that.  Steadman is a marvelous explorer of concepts and images from nature, and her performers complemented her aesthetic with disciplined and precise performances. 

         Errin Delperdang brought on stage an ensemble of four dancers in an energetic and humor-filled piece one would readily characterize as absurdist.  It contained powerful movement, spoken word and non-linear storytelling.  Delperdang is one of a group of UT-Austin fine arts graduates becoming known for strong technique in service to the absurdist aesthetic.  The dance presented here did not disappoint, although Katherine Hodges’ presence (listed in the programme) was sorely missed.  After Intermission, Amnih Abboteen presented the duet “remember the times.”  The piece was a highly gymnastic demonstration by two virtuoso student dancers. Unfortunately, the clanking and tumbling of prop chairs distracted and diverted attention from their movement.  “Folks” followed immediately, a trio from Verge Dance Company, choreography by Kristin Nicolaisen.  Again, the movement and movement values were strong, but oddly, the piece suffered from following a dance with similar staccato movements and musical rhythms.  Toward the end, a bold and almost unique innovation was performed.  The stage lights faded instantly to black, and in the ambient light remaining the highly obscured figures of the dancers could be seen continuing their unison movement without error.  The effect was surprising and satisfying.  The light loss, however, was an accident, a technical failure, and it was entirely unintentional on the part of the choreographer. 

         “Driftwood” was choreographed and performed by Katherine Hodges and Maia McCoy.  The dance was a duet of steadily rising passion between two women.  It became more and more engaging to the viewer as it went on.  Rare is the dance piece that can’t be usefully shortened, but this one could have gone on enjoyably much longer. 

         Next came Randy Leigh Turkin’s piece “Hecate.”  The ensemble piece was easily the most innovative and bizarre work of the evening.  Three grotesque characters entered the stage in black costumes, veils, and tulle drapes.  Following them came a Middle Eastern dancer, Amara, in traditional costume and a tray of lit candles on her head.  The performance became even more stunning after the entrance sequences, powerfully addressing the fundamental conflict between light and dark.   

         The final piece (and final duet) of the evening was “Glass Scratch” by Kristen Frankiewicz.  It was performed by Frankiewicz and Alexandre Soares, and it was a tribute to the sensuality of sculptural bodies at rest, in movement and in flight.  I remember Frankiewicz’ equally memorable piece in last year’s No Assurance, a trio for two men and a woman (Frankiewicz), also performed to a soundtrack of two works of Euro pop.  In both dances, costume choices ran to studiowear and gymwear.  This gave the pieces looks of studio demonstrations rather than performance-ready creations; this year, however, Frankiewicz  added another element to the studio look.  She wore a fine jewelry necklace of shiny gold in multiple strands.  Was this slight change symbolic in some way to the sensual dance?  Or was it simply a new inflection on the costume choice?  I could not resolve this question, but it added to the intriguing qualities of the dance and will lodge it in my memory for years to come. 

         “No Assurance” part II was a triumph of dance art, full of beautiful, innovative and skilled presentations.  The same cannot be said for the production and production values.  The production effectively failed, to the extent that the dance artists seemed exploited.  Specifically, the show appeared to be produced on a shoestring, about which it can be said that if performance-hungry and talented artists are made to appear inept on-stage (the light outage, missed sound cues, late show start, etc), then their careers are advanced more by performing elsewhere or not performing at all that weekend.  Ultimately the artists have to make those choices and decisions themselves, but they rarely know at contract-signing time the level of supportive production they are going to receive at performance time.  Producers can give their well-deserving performers a vastly better experience by spending a few hundred dollars more for better venues, technology, better designers and better lighting and sound operators.  The lack of such efforts allowed the No Assurance production to lapse well below the threshold of viable dance and theatre production in the modern era. 

Meet The Dudleys!

The Full-Stage Premiere of

The Dudleys!: A Family Game

by Leegrid Stevens

Directed by Gary Jaffe

6 – 22 May 2011

Wednesdays – Saturdays, 8:00 p.m., Sundays, 7:00 p.m.

The BLUE Theatre [916 Springdale Road, Austin, TX 78702]

Fridays and Saturdays: $15 General Admission
(GACA/Senior/Student: $12 & Priority Seating: $20)

Wednesdays & Thursdays are Pay-What-You-CAN
Name Your Own Price w/ Donation
of Non-Perishable Canned Food Item(s) to benefit
Hope Food Pantry at Trinity United Methodist Church
[Price without donation is $12]

Featuring the artistic contributions of Actors: Alex Cogburn, Katie Dahm, Robert Deike, Spencer Driggers, Braden Hunt, Jenny Keto, Rachel McGinnis, Blake Smith, David Meissner, and Erin Treadway; Set Designer: Chase Staggs; Lighting Designer: Natalie George; Choreography: Zenobia Taylor; Original ChipTune Music Composed and Performed Live by: Steven Gridley.

This evocative, new play translates the adolescent memories of a young man into a malfunctioning 8-bit video game, the kind he used to play as a child. A life-size video game onstage provides the setting in which the characters must score points and overcome obstacles as they navigate their way through the dangers of their own family. The Dudleys! features original video and a live 8-bit band of Atari's, Gameboy's, and Commodore 64's performing original chiptune songs, a new genre of electronic music in which old video game consoles are hacked and reprogrammed as synthesizers. The Dudleys! pits the two dimensional side-scrolling world of fun and happy endings up against the confusion and aimlessness of real life.

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