Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > November > 15
Sunday, November 15, 2009
A Season of Celebration at the Four Seasons
My shoulders hang looser when I head to the Four Seasons Hotel, as I do once a week during the traditional social season …
Sherri West and Kathryn Scarborough Bechtol
Certainly not because of the construction-muddled parking situation — I walk or park in secret spots down the street — but because I know that every decorative appointment, every poised assistance, every ready refreshment will come off effortlessly …
Sara and Dick Rathgeber
Such was the case with the Season of Celebration for the Austin Children’s Shelter on Saturday. Besides saluting the charity’s 25th anniversary, the gala was the group’s the first since they moved into a handsome new home at the Rathgeber Village …
Brian D’Ambrosio and Katherine Cesinger
Dick and Sara Rathgeber looked pleased as punch at Saturday’s event. As always, Dick slipped me some off-the-record news that will inform my beat and others’ …
David Ackel and Sylvia Griego with Coal
Bedazzling co-chairwomen Kathryn Scarborough Bechtol and Sherri West banked on a winter theme, and guests arrived in full formal wear, including some discreet furs. The exceedingly clement weather on the Four Seasons terrace told a different story. (I’m sure no one complained!) …
Ron and Jo Ann Becerra
I’m positive Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith made a fine emcee; he always does. I was pulled away by conflicting social commitments.
Bryan Bourgeois and Anastasia Olenbush
Hopefully I’ll get to stick around for the 26th anniversary …
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Richard Schechner at the University of Texas
One American theater legend spoke in Austin on Thursday. Another on Friday …
Richard Schechner bussing his prof, Oscar Brockett
Stephen Sondheim’s remarks at the Long Center were dense, clear, anecdotal and on point. Richard Schechner’s were dense, clear, anecdotal and, by design, not always on point at the University of Texas …
Polly Strong and Linda Brucker
Schechner’s work may be less familiar to the average theatergoer than Sondheim’s. Yet to students of theater and of the 1960s, the New York University professor’s indelible contributions include co-founding the field of performance studies and the journal TDR: The Drama Review, as well as the Performance Group, which evolved into the Wooster Group …
Nicole Doorish and Jodi Jinks
Schechner is in town because the Rude Mechs are reviving his breakthrough piece, “Dionysus in 69,” which combines intercultural myths, environmental staging and rampant nudity with a re-reading of Euripedes’ “The Bacchae.” It opens in Austin Dec. 4 …
Shawn Sides and Buck Van Winkle
For the relaxed reception and circuitous lecture at UT, presented by the Humanities Institute, I brought along Oscar Brockett, another theater legend and co-founder of the field of modern theater history. He was my mentor in the PhD program at UT. Turns out he also taught Schechner at the University of Iowa back in 1958! …
Everlasting scamps Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer
Leave aside the Oedipal issues of performance studies elbowing out theater history in some drama departments (like UT’s), Schechner’s talk made the 1960s come alive. We are lucky to have a man who has taken so many notes and thought so thoroughly on the subjects of experimental art and social behavior as performance …
Elizabeth Doss and Evan Carton
No way I’m going to miss “Dionysus in 69”
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